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RE: Nuclear Power, Trivializing Global Warming
I agree that global warming can have a deleterious effect on mankind, I also agree with Howard that the anthropogenic effects seem to be negligible compared to natural causes. As was pointed out by several people, there have been cyclic swing of several hundred feet in the oceans sea level, to which man's contribution to this effect was almost if not entirely zero. For example, Susan Gawareck mentioned, " ... at the height of the last interglacial warm period, the sea level was some 300 feet higher." It seems to me that a reasonable question is, "should we make rules and regulations that have a huge effect on people to mitigate the negligible effect that we have on global warming."
-----Original Message-----
From: Stewart Farber [mailto:farbersa@optonline.net]
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 1:52 PM
To: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Cc: RuthWeiner@AOL.COM; Howard Long; John_Sukosky@DOM.COM; maury
Subject: Re: Nuclear Power, Trivializing Global Warming
6/1/04 11:36:27 AM, maury <maury@webtexas.com> wrote:
......
>A principal scientific question still centers on: if and to what extent
observed climate changes are anthropogenic.
>>My conclusion from the balance of available evidence is simply that the
anthropogenic component of total >variance in climate change is trivial.
>===========================
>John_Sukosky@DOM.COM wrote:
>
>> Ruth and Howard,
>>
>> What makes you so sure this is a hoax?........
=========
Dear Ruth, Howard, and all:
NONE of the folks on Radsafe are climatologists [to the best of my knowledge].
There is obvious and substantial expertise on all aspects of ionizing and non-
ionizing radiation, and most folks here have a stake in sane societal attitudes
toward nuclear technologies.
More and more, interest is being expressed from all over the world [even from the
lifelong Green father of the Gaia hypothesis as noted in a recent Radsafe thread]
as to the advantage and absolute need of the essentially zero carbon emissions
from the nuclear fuel cycle. The world's nations are struggling with how to slow
the growing emissions of CO2 from the fossil fuel cycle, and meet the Kyoto
protocol's goals, which cannot happen while meeting society's needs for energy
without stopping the building of more and more coal plants and building more
nuclear power plants.
Why should anyone on this list be trivializing the potential environmental
impacts of global warming, stating that salt water intrusion into Florida canals
has more impact than global warming ever would as Ruth stated? The greenhouse
effect on climate is something that once it begins is likely to have
accelerating, synergistic components. Melting snowpack extent all over the
Northern hemisphere [which is already being observed] will decrease albedo and
speed up heat absorption by the earth. Once begun, global warming will have a
time component of hundreds, if not thousands of years before it can be reversed.
When the oceans rise by another 10" by 2100 [consensus estimate today] cyclones
sweeping into the Bay of Bengal will kill thousands more in poor nations like
Bangladesh. Should this be trivialized? Humanity has embarked on an experiment of
global dimensions in releasing carbon to the atmosphere via combustion in a few
hundred years which it took nature hundreds of millions of years to store in the
earth.
QUESTION: Why should anyone on this list "be spitting into the wind" in trying to
fight public beliefs and concerns about the greenhous effect? Why should any of
us seek to trivialize global warming's environmental and health impacts [an area
none of us have any real expertise] and thereby make ourselves look like
environmental reactionaries or Luddites to the general scientific community, the
media, and the public? Why should scientists and professionals interested in the
sensible application of nuclear technologies [and sensible regulations] fight an
issue that has the potential to make governments, the public, and the media
embrace the need for a revival of nuclear energy and to finally realize that the
radiation impacts of the nuclear fuel cycle are trivial vs. any ready bulk-power
alternatives [as would happen if the public realized they had NO ALTERNATIVE to
more nuclear plants if their lifestyle and environmental/climatic protection
demanded it].
Stewart Farber, MS Public Health [Air Pollution Control]
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