Posted on 07/26/2006 5:11:24 AM PDT by Valin
“Denmark gets 25 percent of its electricity from wind power. Europeans use energy twice as efficiently as we do. Nuclear doesn’t get you where you want to go. The opportunity costs prevent you. It only makes global warming worse.”
We are sitting, of course, in the Washington offices of Greenpeace, the international organization that rams whaling boats, sabotages fields of genetically engineered crops in Europe, and hangs huge banners across acres of rainforest accusing Colonel Sanders of being an “Amazon criminal” for feeding his chickens with Brazilian-grown soybeans.
Greenpeace’s Washington offices, on the fringe of Chinatown, belie its reputation for international derring-do. If anything, the headquarters are a little more spacious and decorative than the average K Street warren. Workstations are filled with fashionable furniture and sophisticated fluorescent lighting. In the hallway a bicycle rack stores zero-emissions vehicles. At least Greenpeace practices what it preaches.
An hour before visiting Greenpeace I had lunch with Judi Greenwald, director of the Pew Center for Climate Research. Pew has given cautious endorsement to a nuclear revival, and Greenwald tells me that a spirited debate is now raging inside most environmental groups over whether or not nuclear offers a solution to global warming.
Greenpeace is not one of them. Their minds are pretty well made up.
“We can stop global warming with a combination of energy efficiency and renewable energies,” says John Coequyt, policy analyst for energy and the environment. “Solar thermal has large potential. The contracts that are being signed in California are very large. Last year we built the equivalent of a nuke in windmills. And we can do that every year.”
He expresses incredulity only when I ask the deliberately naive question, “What’s wrong with nuclear?”
“If we approached it from the angle of nuclear weapons, does that help?” he asks in disbelief. “If we suggested that a big part of the reason we don’t like nuclear power is because we don’t want nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan, does that help you understand?”
Chris Miller is the voice of reason, interjecting occasionally with a summary statement. “You suggest to us that you’re here to talk about global warming. We’re here to suggest that there are many reasons why nuclear is not the answer and that we have an alternative. It’s right there in front of you—efficiency and renewables.”
Most of the argument is carried by Jim Riccio—a big, square-jawed former Naderite who has one of those steel-trap minds that clamps down on every miscellaneous fact, but once sprung (as Winston Churchill once put it) is very hard to pry open again. Not only can Riccio prove to you that nuclear is unsafe, expensive, and too prone to proliferation, he can also tell you that the industry believes the same thing as well. “I’ve got the documents to prove it,” he says confidently.
Riccio, for example, quotes former Dominion Energy CEO Thomas Capps, who said in 2004, “If you announced you were going to build a new nuclear plant, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s would assuredly drop your bonds to junk status. Hedge funds would be bumping into each other trying to short your stock.” But Capps’s comments were made at a Deloitte energy conference at which he was chiding the industry for ignoring nuclear’s potential. In fact, Dominion has submitted preliminary plans to build two new reactors at its North Anna nuclear station. The TVA is building a new reactor at Brown’s Ferry out of existing profits from other reactors. And Capps retired in 2005.
Oh well, as far as Greenpeace is concerned, the real problem lies with the nuclear industry’s stupendous dishonesty. “When I was at Public Citizen, we sued the nuclear industry over their ads,” says Riccio. “They said ‘We Clean the Air.’ In fact, nuclear power releases radiation into the air and water on a regular basis. We got the Better Business Bureau to recommend they stop running the ad but when we went to the Federal Trade Commission the industry changed its tune. They said it was political speech instead of commercial speech and therefore had wider protection. In the 1990s the nuclear industry was telling people it could replace foreign oil. They ran pictures of Muammar Khadafy and the Ayatollah Khomeini saying, ‘If you think nuclear power is dangerous, consider the alternative.’ Now they’re trying to do the same thing with global warming.”
Robert Socolow, head of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton, probably the most respected international authority on climate change, has recommended nuclear fission as one of fifteen “wedges” that could keep carbon emissions stable over the next fifty years. Among the wedges are:
· Decrease the number of car miles traveled by half.
· Build 10,000 square miles of solar collectors to produce hydrogen.
· Put up 2 million large windmills.
· Capture carbon from 180 coal-to-gas synfuel plants and store the carbon dioxide.
· Install 700 times the current capacity for solar electricity.
· Increase ethanol production 50 times by creating biomass plantations with area equal to 1/6th of world cropland.
· Double global nuclear capacity to replace coal-based electricity.
Of the wedges, doubling nuclear capacity (currently 400 reactors) seems by far the easiest and most practical, but Greenpeace will have none of it. “Nuclear was only one of fifteen possible wedges, and a few months later Stephen Pacala, Socolow’s co-director, said you didn’t need it anyway,” says Riccio.
In a 2004 interview, Pacala did indeed tell The Climate Group, a British organization:
I personally think nuclear is a non-starter.... I cannot imagine that in this era of concerns about terrorism that we are going to start the production of fissionable material all over the world.... Solving the problem entirely with nuclear means increasing deployment by a factor of 10, and if you calculate how many of these plants would have to be in countries like Sudan and Afghanistan, you are just not going to do it.
But the institute has not backed away from its endorsement of nuclear fission.
So far the debate over the nuclear revival is being conducted in a responsible manner. Two weeks ago the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story, “Atomic Balm,” which, although lukewarm and perfunctory, gave the situation a good overview. The Keystone Foundation, a Colorado-based group dedicated to “solving today’s problems and averting tomorrow’s through conflict resolution and mediation,” will hold a three-part conference on nuclear in Washington this fall.
Still, sooner or later, those uncompromising voices at Greenpeace and other anti-nuclear organizations are bound to emerge. Will they be able to frighten the public with visions of routine Chernobyl-like accidents while beguiling them with a dream of a “world run on renewables”?
A great deal will depend on the press. Nader-like organizations usually get a free ride, their pronouncements taken at face value and their assumptions rarely challenged. This time it may be different. Sensible people are beginning to realize that nuclear can no longer be dismissed by waving a few placards. The next time Greenpeace drags the Nuclear Energy Institute before the Federal Trade Commission for making the supposedly preposterous statement that nuclear might help alleviate global warming, some enterprising reporter may pipe up and ask, “What makes you say that?”
William Tucker is a regular columnist for The American Enterprise Online.
So, I'm going to go with the part in bold and draw the conclusion that global warming will be good for the solar thermal energy industry...
The enemies of nuclear-powered electricity generators are loud and very crowded in Washington DC.
I would say to those who preach loudly against building power plants, nuclear or otherwise: You are free to believe anything you want - you are free to say whatever you want to about. However, when we run short of power, we are going to shut you off first. Those luxurious offices are going to be just peachy in the dark with no heat/AC. Have a nice day...
Big energy eaters would need nukes, and these already have nuclear weapons, so all this talk about nonproliferation is dissembling of the first order.
anyone who is concerned about global warming, as opposed to being concerned about what those who say they are concerned about global warming want to do, needs to seriously consider nuclear power as a viable option.... even Patrick Moore, one of the original founders of Greenpeace, is on board because nuclear power is the only mature technology that can produce the base power load needed without producing carbon emissions.
They will just burn candles and store winter ice in the cellar. So there.
In the 1990s the nuclear industry was telling people it could replace foreign oil. They ran pictures of Muammar Khadafy and the Ayatollah Khomeini saying, ‘If you think nuclear power is dangerous, consider the alternative.’ Now they’re trying to do the same thing with global warming.”
This is a laughably stupid comment. Is he saying Khadafy and Khomeini weren't really dangerous? What an airhead!
Yep. Those candle-powered computers and fax machines (for faxing the daily talking points to the MSM) are going to be real spanky...
Give a new meaning to "flaming."
These people are communists and useful idiots. They deserve no respect and should not be given the time of day.
This is a classic example of how true facts can be twisted into misleading statements. The truth is that maybe 25% of Denmark's electrical production capacity is wind power (I read that it was 17%, but I won't quibble over a few percent). Unfortunately, the wind doesn't always blow when and where the power is needed, all while the windmills are capable of working. The total electrical energy produced by wind power in Denmark that is actually used, is more like 2-3%. Some additional comments"
· Decrease the number of car miles traveled by half.Only for the RAM's (Raggedy @ssed masses). The important people, like politicians and liberals will be exempted.
· Build 10,000 square miles of solar collectors to produce hydrogen.Where are you going to put them? Where will the hydrogen be stored?
· Put up 2 million large windmills.NITKBY (not in Ted Kennedy's back yard)
· Capture carbon from 180 coal-to-gas synfuel plants and store the carbon dioxide.Store it? Where?
· Install 700 times the current capacity for solar electricity.There isn't a lot of use for electricity in the places where the sun shines consistently. Most of the electricity would be lost in the transmission from there to the users.
· Increase ethanol production 50 times by creating biomass plantations with area equal to 1/6th of world cropland.It takes four gallons of ethanol to produce five gallons of ethanol. If all of the US farm land were dedicated to ethanol production, it would only produce 30% of our fuel used.
· Double global nuclear capacity to replace coal-based electricity. Why not quadruple it?
Does anyone think for one minute that the tree huggers would allow any of these options to be built? The million windmills would chop up flying birds, the massive solar farms would disrupt the environment and the "not in my backyard" mentality and environmental permitting process would prevent the building of syn-fuels and ethanol plants for decades.
Gerard Jackson
Melbourne: Australia
BrookesNews.Com
Thursday 20 March 2003
Much as Greenpeace has tried to cover up, with the help of sympathetic journalists, its Soviet links, it is a matter of public record that during the 1980s the Soviets helped Greenpeace raise funds in return for which it helped the Soviets plan propaganda campaigns.
During the 80s the Soviets helped Greenpeace raise funds, while the environmentalist group helps formulate Soviet propaganda. It appears, however, that cooperation did not stop with just aiding the Soviet propaganda onslaught against the West.
Greenpeace made Fernando Pereira it official photographer. But Pereira had been and important member of the Stasi-backed Baader-Meinhof gang, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group. The Dutch Communist Party later made him editor of its paper Der Waarheld. Eventually he was arrest by Dutch intelligence as a Soviet agent.
(The view that Greenpeace is evidently not bothered by certain brands of terrorism was given additional weight when it not only supported the eco-terrorist group Earth First but its cofounder Michael Roselle payroll).
Pereira was brought to Greenpeace by the World Peace Council, another Soviet front whose chairman, Chandra Romesh, was a Soviet agent.
So what was Greenpeace doing hiring a Soviet agent who had been an active member of a terrorist organisation? Well, do not bother asking, because Greenpeace ain't saying. But in case anyone thinks an innocent Greenpeace had been taken for a ride by cunning Soviet agents I should direct to attention to those KGB dregs that Greenpeace is still knowingly collaborating with.
William Arkin is the director of the Nuclear Information unit at Greenpeace. He was also a member of the Marxist-Leninist Washington-based IPS (Institute of Policy Studies). The IPS is notorious for having supported every communist regime that ever existed, including every leftwing terrorist organisation I can think of. It was so brazen in its support of the Soviets it even allowed KGB operatives to work in its Washington Office.
Brian Crozier (a highly respected commentator on intelligence matters and a fellow of the prestigious Institute for the Study of Conflict) summed up the real role of the IPS when he wrote:
"The IPS is the perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were too originate openly from the KGB."
Another Greenpeace collaborator is the National Lawyers Guild. This Marxist-Leninist front for the Soviets was set up in 1936 by a caucus of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) which was helped at the time by the International Labor Defence, which in turn was an agency of the Comintern (Communist International).
Greenpeace is also in bed with the CCR (Centre for Constitutional Rights) which was co-founded by pro-Soviet lawyers William Kuntsler and Arthur Kinoy. This pair never saw a communist totalitarian state they did not like. Michael Ratner is the organisation's current president and a notorious fellow traveller who blames the US — you guessed it — for terrorism.
The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy is another longstanding friend of the water melons (green on the outside, red on the inside) that run Greenpeace. The IPS was instrumental in setting up SANE to oppose resistance to Soviet aggression. To make this organisation's pro-Soviet activities more effective Greenpeace helped it build a computer network to coordinate its anti-American activities.
Or we could go back to the old stone age, when we were really in touch with our mother the earth.
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