George Monbiot: worra facking liability

So George Monbiot is pissed off with readers of the Guardian for not doing their bit to combat climate change:

So what happens now? That depends on the other non-player at Copenhagen: you. For the past few years good, liberal, compassionate people – the kind who read the Guardian – have shaken their heads and tutted and wondered why someone doesn't do something. Yet the number taking action has been pathetic. Demonstrations which should have brought millions on to the streets have struggled to mobilise a few thousand. As a result the political cost of the failure at Copenhagen is zero. Where are you.

The problem with Monbiot's attitude here is that he is taking discussion of the serious problem of anthropogenic climate change and turning it into a discussion of the morality and lifestyle choices of Guardian readers.

Not only is this pointless, it is also actively dangerous. It is pointless because even if every single one of the 1,205,000 Guardian readers had moved to Copenhagen for the weekend it wouldn't have made any difference to the 46% of Britons who either don't believe that global warming is happening or don't believe that global warming is caused by mankind.

The fact that such a large proportion of the British public believe a scientific theory to be false is of course irrelevant to the actual state of the universe, but it does raise the question of *why* so many people believe that GW or AGW are false.

Part of the problem must be that thus far well-meaning environmentalists like George Monbiot have made out that global warming is something that requires us to adopt a particular set of moral standards, and have let it be known that anyone who falls short of those standards is a sinner.

And this is why Monbiot's stance is actively dangerous, as it turns what ought to be a sober, rational, quantitative (and probably rather boring) debate about a known fault in our industrial infrastructure into a passion-infused row about ideology and lifestyle-choices.

So here, in a nutshell, we have everything that is wrong with the modern, Monbiot-ist environmental movement. We have:

1) The idea that political change could be affected, if only we have enough people show up to protest.

2) The idea that, in the context of the environment, individual choices of ordinary people matter more than the collective actions of powerful elites.

3) The idea that you can get people to agree with you by repeatedly telling them that they are bastards and should be jolly ashamed of themselves.

If the international public response to the Iraq War teaches us anything it is that the number of protesters against a particular action is irrelevant. What matters are the decisions of elites. The idea that you can change the world by protesting in the streets is one that I just don't agree with, and it would seem the majority of Guardian readers agree with me and disagree with Monbiot on this one.

In the context of the environment small, individual actions really don't matter. If everyone does a little, we'll achieve only a little. I don't buy into the narrative of climate change that implies everything would be OK if only we all suddenly decided to change our behaviour 'cos George Monbiot says we ought to. People respond to incentives. Large groups of people will only make major changes in their lifestyle if they have a big incentive to do so. So, again, slagging off Guardian readers for having the good sense to avoid wasting their time is pointless and counterproductive.

Monbiot has misunderstood his relationship with his audience. Guardian readers are either 1) people he is trying to influence, and win round to his way of looking at the world[1] or 2) people who already basically agree with his political programme. So why is he slagging them off? When trying to influence people it is better not to criticize, condemn or complain. It makes Guardian readers ever so slightly less likely to give a toss what George, and by extension every other environmentalist, has to say about anything.

I, of course, have no positive suggestions (for most of the reasons described here) as to what to do about global warming or what an appropriate response to climate change might look like. All I know is that George Monbiot is making things worse, because my immediate thought on reading his article was not "I'd better do something about climate change" but rather "the fuck did I do?". If I, a typical sort of middle-of-the-road chap, respond as such then imagine how someone who is more generally sceptical of global warming might respond.

So, practically speaking, Monbiot and his brand of hair-shirted eco-puritanism are a liability to the environmental movement.

{Incidentally: This is all described rather more articulately by Charles Stross here}

[1] It could be argued that Monbiot agrees with the observation that people do not read newspapers to be informed, but rather to have their existing predjudices confirmed. But in being so unjustifiably critical of Guardian readers he is undermining both of the potential uses of newspapers.

Nuclear Power Endorsement

There are a number of irritating conceits and half-truths in this Nuclear Power Briefing by Greenpeace on the government's decision to endorse the manufacture of new nuclear power plants.

Comments like this, from the Greenpeace Nuclear Power Briefing:

"“We need baseload, and renewables can’t supply that.”

We also need what’s known as baseload – guaranteed electricity to meet
constant demand - and Britain can generate it with low-carbon technologies like
CHP [Combined Heat and Power] and some renewable technologies like tidal, biomass, biogas and hydro.
More efficient use of fossil fuels also has a part to play."

They don't seem to offer any evidence to support this assertion. Tidal projects are very admirable but there aren't many places that lend themselves to use in the this way. The Severn Barrage is one example, but I don't know if tidal and biomass methods can account for a large fraction of our electricity consumption, yet alone a large fraction of our energy consumption.

Is it not also possible that we could use different designs of nuclear power plant, like the Chinese or South African pebble bed reactors? These address the safety concerns and concerns about productions of weapon grade enriched uranium. Because the Chinese models are intended to be "mass produced" and don't require elaborate safety measures they could also be much cheaper than conventional nuclear reactors.

Surely the solution to the problem is to increase efficiency, increase the proportion of our energy sources that are renewable and low in carbon dioxide emissions? Nuclear power helps fulfill the latter of these points.

Greenpeace seem uninterested in providing figures to support their arguments. I'd like realistic estimates of how much of our energy needs could be met by low CO2 emission renewables and how much our energy needs could be reduced before I dismiss nuclear power.

More from the Briefing:

"“If we don’t go for nuclear we’ll be dependent for gas on unstable regimes
like Putin’s.”

The real threat to our energy security is interruptions to our oil supply. However,
essentially all of Britain’s oil is used for transport and cannot be replaced by
nuclear electricity.

Much has been made of the threat of becoming over-dependent on imported gas,
particularly from Russia. Unfortunately, half of our gas is used directly for
domestic space and water heating and cannot be replaced by electricity.
More is used for industrial processes, leaving under a third that is used for
electricity generation.

Much of that third is used to generate electricity at peak
times because gas turbines can be easily switched on and off to meet short term
spikes in demand. Nuclear power stations must be run continuously. This
considerably limits the role nuclear electricity can play in reducing our
dependence on gas, from wherever it is imported."

OK. So wouldn't it make more sense if our cars and buses and trains didn't run off oil? The stuff is going to be running out soon anyway, and we have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor with hydrogen or cell-powered cars.

Shouldn't our intention be to reduce carbon dioxide emissions? Nuclear power stations could be set up to provide electricity at peak times and spend the rest of their time producing hydrogen via electrolysis that could be used to power transport infrastructure.

As to the problem of heating homes - surely we can come up with some solutions based on electricity and greater efficiency? Combined heat and power has a lot of potential in this area.

We're going to have to switch from an oil-based transport infrastructure to an alternative at some point.

"“We can have nuclear AND renewables.”
In reality going nuclear would squeeze out renewables. Indeed, then Secretary of
State for Business Patricia Hewitt said in Commons debate on 2003 Energy
White Paper:

“It would have been foolish to announce …. that we would embark
on a new generation of nuclear power stations because that would have
guaranteed that we would not make the necessary investment and effort in both
energy efficiency and in renewables.”

Since then nothing has changed."

Huh? We're saving the world here. Can't we ditch Trident and pay for both? Again Greenpeace gives no figures and does not give any concrete evidence that we couldn't or wouldn't pay for development of both renewable and nuclear power.

I find myself in a situation where I don't know whether to believe the government or the greens. This is frustrating and counterproductive.

Watch this Space...

At some time in the future I'll be writing a review of The Meaning of the 21st Century by James Martin.

In it he mentions "the tragedy of the commons" and how companies should factor in the cost to society and cost to the environment of their activities, as well as more familiar expenditures.

These ideas are similar to those explored by Genichi Taguchi in the eponymous Taguchi method of industrial design.

Just thinking aloud. Read and prosper.

Slightly later: LARRY NIVEN'S WRITTEN A NEW KNOWN SPACE BOOK! Thanks.

George Monbiot

Global warming is a problem that needs solving. Polly Toynbee's fellow Guardian columnist George Monbiot is infuriatingly demanding when it comes to carbon dioxide emissions.

"A 90% emissions cut by 2030" is one of Monbiot's stated goals. Although this is technically feasible, it almost certainly won't happen.

The problem is energy. If you list, as Richard E. Smalley does in his Terawatt Challenge, the biggest issues facing humanity over the next 100 years you would probably get something like this:

1. Energy
2. Water
3. Food
4. Environment
5. Poverty
6. Terrorism and war
7. Disease
8. Education
9. Democracy
10. Population

A moment's consideration reveals that energy is fundamental to all of the problems after energy, with the possible exception of terrorism, war, and democracy - but there is no denying that the politics of energy have an enormous effect on war and terrorism. With enough energy you can accomplish anything.

As of this moment there is a vast chunk of humanity (>4 billion) with access to considerably less energy than I do. This is unfair, of course, and in order to promote increased living standards we need to find energy for all the people who don't have enough.

Monbiot's argument in Heat is that we in the UK are currently using "too much" energy. This is inaccurate. We are using precisely the amount of energy we choose to consume. We are however emitting too much carbon dioxide.

In order to stop the twin catastrophes of global warming and global poverty we need more energy and less CO2 emissions. This will be difficult and will require many of the solutions already suggested: increased efficiency, nuclear power, sequestration, and lifestyle alterations.

Bjorn Lomborg

I've just been reading a profile of Bjorn Lomborg on the Times Online. Lomborg has recently published a book: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming. Lomborg (there is a o with a cross through it in the vowel of his first name) seems to be talking a lot of sense: he accepts that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity but rejects the belief that we should place "stopping global warming" at the top of our list of priorities, because:

A: No one is actually really doing anything to stop global warming. If we are serious about reducing our emissions of carbon dioxide and methane then we would immediately take certain steps. This simply isn't happening on the scale required to make a difference. Ergo, if no one really intends to do anything then there's no point doing anything, as the consequences of a full-blown global warming event will be equally devastating as a minor full-blown global warming event (i.e. one where we try to reduce our emissions somewhat).

B: There are much bigger problems in the world that we can see are causing suffering right now and that can be clearly and conclusively linked to various factors: the spread of AIDS in the African continent, the decreasing availability of crude oil and natural gas, wars in Iraq and elsewhere. All these are more immediately important than anthropogenic global warming and the problems are on a scale that makes it more plausible that we might be able to do something about them.

Lomborg suggests an annual $25 billion fund to study global warming. He also suggests that the problem can be solved through technological means.

As is observed in the profile the biggest criticism that can be levied against Lomborg is that of techno-utopianism. That he rejects what many environmentalists believe is the only workable solution to anthropogenic global warming: a harsh and sustained lessening of human ambition in terms of our industry and some elements of our standard of living.

Another criticism is that he underestimates the impact of global warming. I find it irritating when environmentalist charities publish images of natural disasters as "evidence of global warming" - as if natural disasters haven't always happened, and often aren't connected with the atmosphere (c.f. the Boxing Day Tsunami, the Majil Earthquake of 1990, the Landers Earthquake etc), or as if "climate change" hasn't occurred in the past. I suspect we'll never be able to accurately quantify the "impact" of climate change, but we've come up with some reasonable predictions of the impact and how the problem should be dealt with.

However the basic question is this: "Is there something humanity can do right now to prevent enormous and avoidable suffering in the future without unacceptable sacrifice now?"

I count creating an international superstate powerful enough to override the will of all other authorities in the pursuit of a reduction in emissions as an unacceptable sacrifice. I also count any reduction of development and industrialisation (if these are what is takes to improve the standard of living) in developing countries as an unacceptable sacrifice.

Another of my hang-ups concerning environmentalism is the refusal to discuss cost-benefit in terms of climate change. Environmentalists tend to view the Earth (a lump of iron and silicates with a thin outer layer of volatiles and light elements) as some king of spiritual being or godlike entity that must be worshiped. There hasn't been any mainstream discussion of benefit along the lines suggested by Freeman Dyson in this recent article at Edge.org.

Consider the following two scenarios:

1. Sub-Saharan Africa is given a certain number of carbon credits. The constituent countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are each encouraged (by the USA, EU and China) to sell these credits to multinational corporations (based in the USA, EU and China) and also directly to the USA, EU and China.

The countries of Sub-Saharan Africa do this, and get a lot of money, which is spent on aid but cannot be spent on industrialisation, as the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are now required to limit their emissions of carbon dioxide. As a result there is some improvement but on the whole living standards remain behind those of the USA, EU and China.

Over the next century a series of environmental and ecological disasters that are strongly linked to anthropogenic global warming (largely caused by the emissions of the USA, EU and China) wracks Sub-Saharan Africa, millions die or are displaced. The EU struggles to cope with the influx of refugees. There is a humanitarian crisis of a scale unseen in human history.

2. Sub-Saharan Africa is given a certain number of carbon credits. The constituent countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are each encouraged (by the USA, EU and China) to sell these credits to multinational corporations (based in the USA, EU and China) and also directly to the USA, EU and China.

The countries of Sub-Saharan Africa do not do this, and begin the long and sometimes painful process of industrialisation. As a result there is a constant and sustainable improvement in living standards until Sub-Saharan Africa has parity with those of the USA, EU and China.

Over the next century a series of environmental and ecological disasters that are strongly linked to anthropogenic global warming wracks Sub-Saharan Africa, there is enormous suffering, but the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are now rich and developed enough to take it on the chin. They invest in flood defences, irrigation, advanced farming methods, nuclear power, air conditioning, and continue to thrive and prosper despite the changing climate.

This is based on the assumption that little positive action is taken to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, and that the West represses industrialisation in developing countries.

I agree with Lomborg in his rejection of the idea that we should scale back human ambition in the face of global warming and climate change. I don't see why we should stand for it. I'm also increasingly uneasy about the lack of positive action being taken.

I feel if the nation states of the world feel that it is necessary to scale back industry, commerce, transport, and generally dismantle the machinery of globalisation (I have no clue as to whether globalisation is a good thing or not, let me finish, don't bug me...) then they should do it. I suspect this would be a Bad Idea, but I would be hard pressed to prevent them from doing so if they wished.

On the other hand if they're not going to do anything serious then they should stop wasting time and money on point-scoring commentary and pointless prevarication. I gather from what Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth et al are saying that action needs to take place now and it needs to be widespread and drastic. Anything less won't help, so why bother?

It's a bit of a Catch 22 situation in this respect: we can choose to promote technological and industrial development or we can choose to scale back industrialisation and the use of technology. In the first case we are better prepared to deal with climate change, in the second we're hoping it won't happen.

In conclusion I would say that I agree with Lomborg's arguments (as they have been reported, I haven't read his book) but suspect that he might perhaps be underestimating the scale of the problem, but I do believe it isn't beyond human ingenuity to come to an acceptable compromise between our ambitions and our prosperity or successfully deal with the consequences of inaction.

Note: I don't actually believe carbon trading is pointless (though it is potentially controversial) but I'll leave it in because I like the alliteration.

Environmentalism

The excellent online news magazine The First Post has published a right-on article on climate change and the attitudes of environmentalists, the article is brisk and to the point: if we are to deal with climate change we must adopt the attitudes of wartime, from TFP:

"...if they [environmentalists] really are sincere about acting on global warming, they must follow the example of wartime scientists, and give politicians solutions, not problems.

They must drop the notion that a perfect answer exists out there somewhere - if only enough time was spent dreaming it up. For example, no-one thinks nuclear power is the perfect solution to energy generation – but it beats the hell out of letting the lights go out.

There must also be an acceptance that there's neither the time nor resources to tackle every aspect of climate change. And that means drawing up invidious priority lists and building coalitions of the willing to tackle them. Self-indulgent campaigns aimed at making us all feel guilty – about, say, using cheap air travel, which is of trivial importance for climate change – are no way to do either."

(my bold print - I agree with that assessment of nuclear power entirely)

The miserabilist, holier-than-thou, and puritan-sounding PR of climate change activists hurts their campaign more than any amount of opposition from big business, like BAA. To quote some of the protesters (via Johann Hari's report in The Independent):

"Do you know the connection between your flight and the hurricanes and the floods and the droughts we are seeing intensify across the world? Do you care?" and "We are on a trajectory towards the extinction of life on earth. In the main, people have done this unwittingly, so it can be excused. But now we know what we are doing, and it cannot be excused."

I agree entirely with the sentiment of the people at the Camp for Climate Action: but I suspect that if the problem of climate change is to be solved it will require a certain amount of deviousness, compromise, sacrifice and propaganda.

SF-writer Karl Schroeder echoes some of these anti-progressive sentiments in an article on the WorldChanging blog. He posits the challenge facing us in terms of an opportunity to colonise Earth "as though it were a planet with no ecosystem resources to exploit".

Scientist and futurist Freeman Dyson (he of Dyson Swarm fame) also has something to say at Edge.org about climate change, how we could repair the damage caused by global warming, and why "global warming" is a ridiculous oversimplification of something we're nowhere near understanding, from the article:

"The biosphere is the most complicated of all the things we humans have to deal with. The science of planetary ecology is still young and undeveloped. It is not surprising that honest and well-informed experts can disagree about facts. But beyond the disagreement about facts, there is another deeper disagreement about values. The disagreement about values may be described in an over-simplified way as a disagreement between naturalists and humanists. Naturalists believe that nature knows best. For them the highest value is to respect the natural order of things. Any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil. Excessive burning of fossil fuels is evil. Changing nature’s desert, either the Sahara desert or the ocean desert, into a managed ecosystem where giraffes or tunafish may flourish, is likewise evil. Nature knows best, and anything we do to improve upon Nature will only bring trouble.

The humanist ethic begins with the belief that humans are an essential part of nature. Through human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its own evolution, and now we are in charge. Humans have the right and the duty to reconstruct nature so that humans and biosphere can both survive and prosper. For humanists, the highest value is harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. The greatest evils are poverty, underdevelopment, unemployment, disease and hunger, all the conditions that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms. The humanist ethic accepts an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a small price to pay, if world-wide industrial development can alleviate the miseries of the poorer half of humanity. The humanist ethic accepts our responsibility to guide the evolution of the planet."

Dyson has a lot to say: he also comments on the necessity of heretics when it comes to scientific debate - people need to keep asking questions and keep being sceptical.

Again the emphasis is on the challenge and the opportunity for expansion, rather than emphasising the negative aspects of our response to climate change.

The Nuclear Power Debate

I have no opinion as to what the best mix of sources will be for future electrical energy production in the UK.

I strongly suspect that there will have to be a mix of sources. But apart from this I have no opinion. This is rather worrying: I feel it is only responsible to have an opinion and evidence to support this opinion.

The reason I have no opinion is that there is no evidence. I have no idea if building a new generation of nuclear power stations is a good idea. I have no idea if acquiring all the power we need from wind-turbines is feasible or desirable.

I do have an opinion on global warming. It is happening and human beings are causing it. I know this because smart people have told me that it is so, and they have Charts and Graphs and Scary Stories about hurricanes and flooding and melting ice-caps and the Gulf Stream Shutting Down.

Unfortunately there seems to be a dearth of such information concerning the relative merits of nuclear power, wind power, tidal power, and solar power. Everything I do find seems tainted by spin, anger, and uninformed opinion.

There is an interesting article in today's Guardian by Jim Al-Khalili. He is for a concerted research effort into energy-amplifier technology as a way of solving some of the problems with current nuclear power plants.

The benefits of energy-amplifier nuclear reactors over conventional reactors include the reduced threat of runaway nuclear reactions (i.e. a meltdown, or "unrequested fission surplus"), the use thorium as a fuel (which is more plentiful than uranium), less plutonium produced so the risk of nuclear proliferation is less, there is the possibility of the energy-amplifier reactor being fueled by plutonium, reducing the global stockpile of this extremely dangerous material, less long-lived radioactive waste, cheaper once the total cost of building and decommissioning conventional nuclear power plants is taken into account, and the relatively small scale the reactor can be built on.

The main obstacles seem to be technical difficulties, but as no "new science" is needed (i.e. the theory behind the concept is based on sound and well-understood principles) we should be able to overcome these problems.

But that's enough about that. I wonder how George Monbiot will respond to Al-Khalili's article? Monbiot has raised many important points about nuclear power over the years, including the incompetence of the British nuclear industry (2). I've always felt you shouldn't blame people for their mistakes, just make sure they pay for them. If the British nuclear industry cleaned up its act and embraced better standards of storage and general practice, as used by Posiva in Finland, then the strongest arguments against nuclear power in the UK disappear.

Monbiot, like many environmentalists, has been looking at nuclear power anew as nuclear power has been brought up as a possible part of the solution to the problem of global warming and depletion of fossil fuels. He raises good points about the past and ongoing mistakes of the British nuclear industry in this article ten years ago.

I argue that these are stories of human incompetence - they do not affect the central argument over whether to build new nuclear power plants. In fact, building new nuclear power plants would require a plan as to what to do with the waste, meaning that a lot of the problems Monbiot mentions could be solved. People will feel more inclined to look after waste properly if they feel they are receiving an ongoing benefit - electrical energy from nuclear power plants.

Then there is this article from 2004. The first few paragraphs imply a mild resentment that people like George W Bush are finally agreeing with people like Monbiot over global warming. He suggests premier eco-guru James Lovelock is of a generation that will always be disposed to nuclear power.

He then gets to the meat of the issue: "the cruel moral calculus with which we became familiar during the arguments over the Iraq War". This strikes me as a suspect piece of writing: he is trying to subliminally associate nuclear power with something dreadful like the Iraq War. I would say that there is a necessary moral calculus (calculus can be difficult, but it isn't cruel) to be considered when dealing with global warming and energy policy.

Monbiot then admits: "The daily discharges from a plant like Sellafield probably kill several dozen people a year. A meltdown could slaughter thousands, possibly tens of thousands. Climate change has already killed hundreds of thousands, will kill millions, and, if we don’t do something pretty dramatic pretty soon, could kill billions."

He then seems to waver around: he cites Posiva, then worries that it could be used as "a Potemkin village by the rest of the nuclear industry: a showcase project which creates the impression that the problem has been sorted out."

Although this is true, as with the problems with the British nuclear industry mentioned earlier, this is a human problem that we need to solve. Being cynical about it is not helpful.

Monbiot goes on to assert that "we certainly can’t expect Britain’s nuclear generators to behave as responsibly as Finland’s." Well why not? Is there some universal law that says Anglo-Saxons are wasteful, lazy, stupid, and irresponsible and Scandinavians are universally thrifty, hard-working, environmentally-conscious and conscientious (although TBH Scandinavia does seems to be a brilliant set - kudos to the Scandinavians!)?

My point is that if there are problems with the British nuclear industry then it is a problem with how the industry is run and operated, not a problem inherent in the technology.

He goes on, citing various horrific examples of the state of the storage of nuclear material in Britain:

"...the European Commission took the British government to court over Sellafield’s refusal to let European inspectors examine one of its dumps. (Didn’t we go to war over something like this?). Some 1.3 tonnes of plutonium has been sitting around in ponds there for about 30 years. On Tuesday, the Guardian revealed that British Nuclear Fuels has secretly buried 10,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste from other countries. This sort of thing goes on all the time. The UK Atomic Energy Authority used to chuck its waste into two open holes in the cliffs beside its power station at Dounreay. One of the shafts exploded in 1977, scattering plutonium over the beaches, but the authority didn’t bother to tell anyone for 18 years."

He then asserts "This, rather than Posiva’s expensive method, is the kind of disposal we can expect from most of the world’s nuclear generators. So it’s probably fair to say that the nuclear industry WILL kill tens of thousands. If, as seems ever more likely, terrorists get hold of some of this stuff, the deaths could run into millions."

Again, the problem is with how the industry is run, both here in Britain and worldwide, and if a concerted effort is made on a technical front (c.f. Al-Khalili's energy amplifier technology) and an organisational front then the twin problems of storing the waste and terrorists stealing plutonium would diminish over time.

I agree with Monbiot that saving energy and increasing energy efficiency everywhere in our economy and technium (neat new word coined by Kevin Kelly over at Edge.org - required reading) is an obvious step, but I'm sceptical that we can close the gap between reduced need through improved efficiency (and bear in mind we still need to promote standards of living in the developing world) and renewable energy technology.

In another article Monbiot deplores the lack of clean facts and goes for a rough-and-ready back-of-the-envelope calculation. After going over various measures of electricity demand and estimates from increased efficiency and renewables he concludes thus:

"...the choice then comes down to this: we make up the shortfall either with nuclear power ... or with gas or coal accompanied by carbon burial (pumping the carbon dioxide into salt aquifers or old gas fields). The first option means uranium mining, nuclear waste and the threat of proliferation and terrorism. The second means insecurity (gas) or open-cast mining and air pollution (coal) and a risk (though probably quite small) of carbon seepage."

I agree. I may well change my mind about nuclear power, but at the moment I still don't see any reason why it shouldn't be adopted as a method to reduce CO2 emission. But I really want to see reliable, solid, comparative data.

Unfortunately the whole arena of debate is full of propaganda, barely-concealed political and ideological ulterior motives and snide ad-hominem bickering.

I want a thorough and quantitative study concerning the relative benefits of wind-power, solar-power, nuclear-power and CO2-sequestration techniques. Please.