Kerry's nuclear power problem: "Kerry's Web site states that 'nuclear power can play an essential role in providing affordable energy while reducing the risk of climate change.' His aides also say he is for nuclear power. So far, so good. But then on a recent campaign stop in Las Vegas -- about 100 miles away from the planned Yucca Mountain site for the long-term disposal of waste from nuclear power plants -- Kerry said, 'When I'm president of the United States, I'll tell you about Yucca Mountain: Not on my watch.' The realty of the matter, however, is that you can't be 'for' nuclear energy but 'against' Yucca Mountain."




SOME GOOD COMMENTS FROM BRITAIN ON GLOBAL WARMING AND THE IPCC

"Next week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meets in Vienna. The IPCC is a particularly smug body, with much to be smug about. The Kyoto accord is based on its findings, and since science is not John Prescott's strong suit, he could hardly question whether it made sense for Britain when he signed up to it. Besides, in the Year Zero of 1997, he'd have claimed that New Labour could walk on water by 2012.

Kyoto ranks as the most expensive confidence trick pulled on the world since Yalta in 1945. The IPCC's science is nothing of the kind, being merely a series of "scenarios" of what the weather might be like at the end of the century. Since it's hard enough to predict it for the middle of next week, to say that there are difficulties in long-term projections is putting it mildly.

As Martin Agerup, president of the Danish Academy for Futures Studies, has said: "We simply do not know how much warmer the climate will be in 2100. In fact, the degree of (compound) uncertainty is so large that the mere exercise by the IPCC of providing temperature intervals is highly misleading and provides phoney confidence."*

The evidence that the world is warming is now pretty conclusive, but it's far from clear why, and the consequences are not obvious, either. Kyoto fingered CO2, perhaps because burning all that fossil fuel must surely do something bad, and every schoolboy knows about the greenhouse effect. A warming world will melt the icecaps, and raise sea level, won't it? Well, not so far. Nils-Axel M”rner, head of paleo-geophysics at Stockholm University, has been studying the subject for 35 years. As he puts it: "No one in the world beats me on sea level." He's been to the Maldives, often tipped as the first place to disappear under the waves, and can find no evidence that it's doing so. Satellite altimetry has only been going for 14 years, but it tells the same story.....

Madhav Khandekar has been studying weather patterns for 47 years, mostly for Environment Canada, and his conclusion is that it's the perception that has changed. More people and global television mean that freak events are less likely to escape detection, and do more damage because of the higher value of what's in their path. The weather itself isn't getting any worse.

The central mystery is why our politicians are so blinkered on this subject when, as Ruth Lea argues on the back page of today's paper, the policies we are following are clearly going to make us poorer, with slower growth and lost manufacturing jobs.

Forecasting is always difficult, especially for the future, as the old saw goes, and we love to spook ourselves with projections of doom and disaster. Here's one. The last 600 years have seen a series of mini ice ages, well documented by those who shivered through them. They coincide with periods of low solar activity, and the next one is due in the middle of this century. So perhaps, instead of prostrating ourselves on the altar of global warming, we should be worrying about global cooling.

More here.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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