Am I still allowed to question climate change?

[unbeliever 10]

That sounds nice.

 

Are you optimistic about if and when that shall happen?

 

 

I don't think it will happen. We're doing completely the wrong things to achieve it. As I have been saying for quite some time.

[Obelix 11]

And what supports the popular meme that the green lobby has strong influence?

 

You can't dismiss the lobbying efforts of a multi billion £ industry, whilst claiming that a vastly less rich group of environmentalists succeeds with lobbying can you?

 

Do you remember the Brent Spar when Greenpeace knowingly and mendaciously lied about almost everything to get Shell to abandon the deep sea disposal of the platform.

 

It got so bad that Shell stations were attacked and the staff assaulted before Shell gave in. Then Greenpeace basically said "Yeah we lied and we will carry on lying about things to get our way"

[Flexo 10]

Ah. Then I'm lost as to what your point was there.

 

As you mention "green lobby" (if we must put people into tribes) and nuclear.... I don't recall much comment about nuclear being environmentally bad for some time now. That peaked in the 80's and 90's.

 

Some, like George Monbiot, have become quite evangelical supporters of nuclear power.

 

NIMBYism will be a problem of course. Some folk go insane at the thought of having a windmill in sight - they won't want a nuclear power station. But there are sites we can use and that issue is worst in densely populated countries like the UK.

 

There was a debate about Hinckley C but largely around the very high price the govt has guaranteed to pay for the electric. George Monbiot suggest this is owing to it being developed off the govt balance sheet:

 

So how do the operators, the French company EdF, expect Hinkley C – even if it can be built – to be economically viable? By extracting from the government a price guarantee of £92.50 per megawatt hour for the electricity it produces, index-linked for 35 years.

 

This is simply astronomical. It is more than twice the current wholesale price of electricity, and more than the government is now paying for solar power, whose costs are expected to fall greatly during the lifetime of the nuclear plant. Against current prices, the government’s guarantee represents a subsidy of over £1 billion a year.

 

One of the reasons that the cost is so high is that the plant is being built with private cash, on the expectation of a 15% return. This is a classic example of market fundamentalism trouncing value for money. If the government were building this plant, it could borrow at 2.5% across 30 years.

 

It’s not as if the risk is wholly born by the investors anyway. The government is underwriting much of the cost of the project through its infrastructure guarantee scheme. If the project fails, it could mean that taxpayers had to cover £17bn of the £24.5bn construction cost.

 

....

 

Some fourth-generation designs, if governments are prepared to invest in sufficient research and development, could answer three needs at once: for low carbon energy, energy security and the disposal of nuclear waste. But Hinkley C commits us to 20th-Century technologies for much of the 21st.

 

Yes, we are still pro-nuclear. But not at any price.

[flamingjimmy 10]

You can't dismiss the lobbying efforts of a multi billion £ industry, whilst claiming that a vastly less rich group of environmentalists succeeds with lobbying can you?

 

That appears to be exactly what he's doing as far as I can see.

 

In any case, here's some stuff:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/17/fossil-fuel-industry-gives-37m-to-major-parties-and-gets-big-subsidy-in-return

 

http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/05/06/donor-watch-tory-city-donors-invested-in-coal-oil-and-gas/

 

And across the other side of the pond

 

https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/02/17/fossil-fuel-industry-spending-millions-2016-presidential-candidates

 

Also there's the fact that the former CEO of one of the World's largest oil companies is apparently about to have a senior position in the world's most powerful government.

 

That's from 10 seconds of googling, to be honest I can't really believe anyone actually challenged the statement. Just to be clear Obelix what is it that you don't believe? That the fossil industry donates millions to political parties or that there's some equivalent well of money on the other side that that greens have to take from?

 

And before you go on about government subsidies for green industries, the fossil fuel industries apparently get even more:

 

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/new-figures-published-by-the-imf-show-the-uk-provides-more-subsidies-for-fossil-fuels-than-renewables/

 

---------- Post added 12-01-2017 at 16:51 ----------

 

Depends whether you count the vast amount of taxpayers' money available to the green lobbies and their supporters.

 

Kind of like the even vaster government subsidies available to fossil fuel industries, according to the well known hippie green thinktank the IMF.

Edited January 12, 2017 by flamingjimmy

[El Cid 214]

Not directly at least.

WWF gets some tens of millions per year from governments.

I haven't checked the others.

 

 

WWF is the world's leading independent conservation organisation. Does the WWF for an environment group too?

[unbeliever 10]

Can anybody name a major environmental group which is not against nuclear power?

I've been looking as I can't find any. Moonbat is not a lobby group and I generally don't have a problem with his column.

 

Climate change we told poses an existential threat to humanity. Nuclear waste does not. Why then delay tackling climate change by refusing to adopt nuclear?

[flamingjimmy 10]

Can anybody name a major environmental group which is not against nuclear power?

 

No, mostly their thinking is distorted by what they want to believe, kind of like how you somehow don't believe that the billion dollar coal and gas industries don't have significantly more power than them (and have chosen to completely ignore the point about the massive subsidies they receive, instead only choosing to focus only on government grants that go to green energies). You don't want to feel like you're taking the side of Goliath against David.

 

Why not focus on educating people about nuclear power instead of using it as a stick to bash the apparently all pervasive green lobby? Their hearts are in the right places, they're just wrong. That does not apply to the lobbyists for fossil fuel companies.

Edited January 12, 2017 by flamingjimmy

[unbeliever 10]

No, mostly their thinking is distorted by what they want to believe, kind of like how you somehow don't believe that the billion dollar coal and gas industries don't have significantly more power than them (and have chosen to completely ignore the point about the massive subsidies they receive, instead only choosing to focus only on government grants that go to green energies). You don't want to feel like you're taking the side of Goliath against David.

 

Why not focus on educating people about nuclear power instead of using it as a stick to bash the apparently all pervasive green lobby? Their hearts are in the right places, they're just wrong. That does not apply to the lobbyists for fossil fuel companies.

 

I don't think the green lobbyists are wrong. If they did I would take the approach you suggest. I think that they're false.

I have no love for the fossil lobbyists either. I'm not sure why they're relevant to the matter of nuclear vs renewables though.

[flamingjimmy 10]

I don't think the green lobbyists are wrong. If they did I would take the approach you suggest. I think that they're false.

 

You think they genuinely know and understand that nuclear is relatively safe and environmentally friendly yet still deliberately choose to pretend that it isn't and lie about it in order to pursue the renewable energy agenda?

 

That's insane! Why assume conspiracy when stupidity can much more simply explain it? Try Ockham's razor.

Edited January 12, 2017 by flamingjimmy

[unbeliever 10]

You think they genuinely know and understand that nuclear is relatively safe and environmentally friendly yet still deliberately choose to pretend that it isn't and lie about it in order to pursue the renewable energy agenda?

 

That's insane! Why assume conspiracy when stupidity can much more simply explain it? Try Ockham's razor.

 

It's not insane just cynical. They reject fossil and it's obvious replacements then they have decades of funding and meaning fighting a problem that they've basically created.

It's not plausible that they don't know. Its too damn obvious.

[flamingjimmy 10]

It's not insane just cynical. They reject fossil and it's obvious replacements then they have decades of funding and meaning fighting a problem that they've basically created.

It's not plausible that they don't know. Its too damn obvious.

 

So I'll echo Obelix's response from about a page ago:

 

Do you have a reference for that assertion?

 

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And you're not just being cynical you're invoking a conspiracy that envelopes (as you yourself have pointed out) every single high ranking member of every major environmental group, with none of them ever coming out about it, over about 60 years.

 

No really there isn't a conspiracy against nuclear energy (apart from that coming from the fossil fuel industry who actually do have massive vested interests in the regions of billions and billions of pounds in keeping us reliant on them). The grass roots green movement certainly isn't a part of it. It's just lack of education and people being silly for the most part.

Edited January 12, 2017 by flamingjimmy

[andyofborg 11]

You think they genuinely know and understand that nuclear is relatively safe and environmentally friendly yet still deliberately choose to pretend that it isn't and lie about it in order to pursue the renewable energy agenda?

 

it's relatively safe only until it goes wrong....

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster