An excellent commentary on labeling.

>That disagreement here between 'hawks' and 'doves' essentially comes down to

I don't see the disagreements here that way. In my view, 'hawks' and
'doves' is a narrow view, which doesn't help anyone understand each
other better because they are labels that pidgeon-hole someone and
closes people's ears that could be used for listening. I'm 100% pro
life and I prefer to view and live my world in that way. I don't think
that I'm a dreamer, because I have experienced a wide range of
perspectives/lives, at the same time, I don't think that I am a static
realist, because I have a long (and idealistic) time view of my life
and the life of the people I care about. So while I see divisions
between people (political, cultural, etc.) they don't strike me as a
hard barrier for me to get from here to there. And usually if
something difficult happens (and I have had a history of difficult
challenges), I look at the possible life-enhancing aspects. Perhaps
that is where I clash with some folks here, in that, I sense often
with them a wish to crush the difficult things instead of working with
those things and using them to grow and learn and be bigger and
better.

Amara

-----Original Message-----
From: KB

CK schrieb:
> The proper way to dispose of high-level waste is to irradiate it inside
> the reactor vessel to promote it's decay to stable isotopes.

"Such a cycle would have to process the high-level waste as fast as it
produces it. Have you calculated this? What about the medium and low
active wastes? "

"And can we assure that this technology, power plants and such, will
always be properly maintained and in the hand of responsible persons?
There're dozens of nuclear driven ships and subs of the FSU rotting in
their habors."

Um, Kai, what about the 3 million people who die, every year, right now, from atmospheric pollutants? You talk on and on about potential this and risk factor that, but what about the people dying, right now, 3 million of them, every year? Have you been factoring them into your risk assessments? Youre talking about nuclear powers *potential* to kill thousands or millions in a single catastrophic event. *potential*. What about the millions that ARE dying, *right now* from fossil fuel combustion? The thousands who die from CO inhalation, natural gas explosions, coal mining accidents. There are 10's of thousands of miles of explosive natural gas lines cris crossing dozens of nations. Temperature increases from global warming could cause millions of deaths in developing nations that are very dependant on existing climates.

"Until then, the remaining risks are too high for my personal measure of safety. If that makes me an "enviro-wacko" in your eyes, I'll
return this with a friendly "techno-loony" :-)"

The fact that you readily condemn a technology because it has a *chance* of killing thousands or millions as a replacement for one that is ALL READY killing MILLIONS *every year* paints you as a 'enviro wacko' in my eyes because you value your pre-concieved idealogies over the lives of human beings. Unless you dispute the claim that pollutants from fossil fuel combustion cause this intollerable number of deaths, then the chance of nuclear power causing similar numbers in individual incidents still far outwieghs coal, as it is here now killing millions. There is 100% chance coal and fossil fuel combustion will kill millions every year.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: KB

Michael schrieb:
> Approximate Thermal Energy release
> Coal - ~6150 kilowatt-hours(kWh)/ton
> Uranium - 2 x 10E9 kWh/ton
>
> What, exactly, makes a material with nearly 1 million times as much
> energy as coal 'uneconomical' Is uranium 1 million times more difficult to
> mine and obtain? I don't think so. Is uranium 1 million times more
> expensive to transport, process, and use than coal?

(1) AFAIK, coal is not suitable for deadly weapons and therefore of no
value for villains of any kind, including "corrupt despotic theocratic
murderous regimes".

Agreed, and if 'suitability for deadly weapons' was the only consideration of what type of power source should be utilized, you could make a strong case against nuclear and for coal. However, other factors include a) cost b) number of people it kills every year d) monopolistic domination potentials etc. etc.

(2) Coal is almost no hazard for human health, except when swallowed or
hit on the head and therefore doesn't have to be kept safe and secured
at all times.

Certainly NOT true, the atmospheric irritants emmited by the combustion of coal, including

Sulphur dioxide (SO2) - respiratory disorders, impaired breathing
Nitrous oxide (NOx) - respiratory disorders, infections, pulmonary diseases
Carbon monoxide (CO) - fatal angina, various other effects
Ozone (O3) - respiratory disorders, impaired breathing, asthma, edema
Particulate matter (PM10) - various toxic particle (organic matter, carbon, mineral dusts, metal oxides and sulphates and nitrate salts) effects, main mortality factor due to fossil fuels
Toxic substances, heavy metals - specific substance effects

are estimated by the the WHO in its 1997 report on sustainable development, to account for 6% of the total 50 million annual global deaths. That’s approximately 3 million deaths *every year* from atmospheric pollutants released from the combustion of fossil fuels. These are real people dying real painful deaths every year. 3 million. Outdoor air pollution in the U.S. due to particulate pollution alone was estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1997 to cause at least 20,000 premature deaths each year. 3rd world countries, many of which cook on wood or dung fired stoves, fare much worse.

(3) The by-products of coal mining can be put back without any hazard
for the biosphere.

Except for the billions of tons of harmful chemicals and radioactive uranium dumped into the air. Sure you got your facts straight on nuclear power?

(4) Coal ashes is not dangerous and does not need to be kept off our
biosphere for thousands of years.

Except for the radioactive uranium present in it. As well as the arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, lead, mercury, nickel and vanadium.

(5) Even a very large malfunction in a coal fired power plant could not
devastate a large area, cost millions of lives and billions of Euros
(please read about the effects of Tschernobyl '86 in FSU and Europe).

Sure, Chernobyl killed 31 people when a pressurized steam channel blew (not even a chemical explosion, let alone a nuclear one) and released approx 6% of the radioactive contents of the reactor. The accident resulted in 31 short term deaths, with 28 due to extremely high radiation exposures. Addiotionally, some 200,000 clean up workers received average exposures of twice the yearly permitted, and a few thousand more receieved ten times the permitted yearly doses. Of the 116,000 nearby residents evacuated, 95% received less than the average of the fist group of cleanup workers. A remaining 400,000 received significantly less than that. For the 1,116,000 total affected out of the workers, evacuaees, and nearby residents, the predicted long term radiation induced cancer deaths and normally non-fatal throid cancers are projected to be some 3,500. Mainly late in life. Most of these could have been avoided had the Soviet governemnt acknolwedged the nuclear nature of the accident and adminstered the iodide pills it had all ready stockpiled for just such an incident. However, this reactor would have never been built, licensed, or operated in any country that gave a shit about its people, unlike the soviet union, which had a long track record of sacrificing thousands if not millions for 'the good of the state'.

In addition to the estimated 3 million annual deaths from atmospheric pollutants...

1984 Bhopal accident at a chemical plant in India caused some 3000 early deaths and several hundred thousand severe health effects.

Dam failures and overtopping have caused thousands of deaths and massive disruption in social and economic activities with the displacement of entire towns - the Varont dam overtopping in Italy and dam failures in Gujarat and Orissa in India are three such examples, each with several thousand fatalities.

Severe coal mine accidents causing several hundred deaths are not rare.

Explosions and major fires in the oil and gas industry have involved both occupational and public fatalities and injuries. A pipeline gas leak explosion in the Urals involved 500 fatalities.

There are estimated to be a few hundred CO related deaths every year in the US due to faulty or innefecient fossil fuel burning home heating systems.

On and on...

(6) An exploding LNG tanker may have the mechanical power of a small
A-bomb, but it will not make the whole area inhabitable for years. BTW,
what would you prefer as a terrorist attack, an oil tanker rammed into a
harbour at full speed, or an atomic bomb on the same area?

How difficult do you think it would be to detonate a single hulled tanker full of LNG with the explosive capacity of a nuclear bomb? How many of these tankers sit unguarded in ports all over the world?

"All this results in much higher costs for nuclear power systems."

All of this idealogicial intellectual dishonest endorsement of fossil fuels over nuclear power leads to thousands if not millions of deaths every year.

"Risk assessment calculates the probability of a risk multiplied by the cost of the consequences. An important factor for the latter is, how many people and their belongings (incl. industry) are affected. In Western-Europe, with its population density between 200 and 300 p/km^2 (New York: 270), the consequences of only one greater nuclear accident outweight every catastrophy even large numbers of exploding coal plants could achieve :-)"

But how many people die every year right now from fossil fuel combustion? As I have said, its some multiple of millions. Every year.

"But I agree that burning fossil fuels is not very intelligent either. As long as we don't have any technology to predict/control the large scale effects of our actions, we are wise to reduce our influence on the ecosphere wherever possible. On the long run, we will have to develop sustainable technological systems on this planet, regardless of how complex and high-tech they may be."

I say a few well guarded breeder reactor plants to provide a majority of the worlds power. These same plants could electrolyze water to provide clean drinking water and hydrogen as fuel for a 'hydrogen economy' or, at least, create synthetic fuels through sabatier cells using existing hydrocarbon infrastructures but not contributing to greenhouse gas increases (as the sabatier cell needs CO2 from the atmosphere) At least until fusion becomes viable. Reducing the global standard of living is not an option, as many millions in third world countries need energy, and lots of it, to get out of poverty.

Michael

This was one of my favorite sources as well. I was glad to see it came back.

The Rational Review has a similar daily news email which I tend to find as valuable as the FMNews.

http://www.rationalreview.com/news/

That is, if you Liked FMNews, youll probably like RR news digest.

Michael

another poster says...

I was reading Paul Johnson's "A History of the American People"
and he says on p. 236:

"The 'physical fallacy' is a belief that only those who worked with
their hands and brains to raise food or make goods were creating
'real' wealth and that all other forms of economic activity were
essentially parasitical. It was commonly held in the early 19th
century, and Marx and all his followers fell victim to it. Indeed
plenty of people hold it in one form or another today, and whenever
its adherents acquire power, or seize it, and put their beliefs into
practice, by oppressing the 'parasitical middleman', poverty invariably
follows. The theory fell on a particularly rich soil because American
farmers in general, and Southerners in particular, already had a
paranoid suspicion of the 'money power' dating from colonial times."

further comments on the principled europeans.

"We've little appetite for war, and none for your average Middle Eastern dictator. And perhaps even less for most of the left wing tree huggers who have little better to do than camp outside airports and make
mischief"

>Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 00:44:17 -0800
>From: "MB"
>Subject: FLAMEBAIT: "Much of what one hears is station identification"

Actually, I'd say he's right in many ways, although I think his analysis of
the reasons for the mistrust of some Europeans is flawed. I think the
Euro-scepticism is more complex than simply glorified jealousy, but in many
circumstances equally silly. I don't think it's a matter of weakness so
much as "just couldn't be bothered", and perhaps to some degree,
fear. Quite apart from it being laughably wrong, I find the whole "you
hate us coz we're strong" argument to be quite narcissistic.

Personally, I'm fearful of anyone who quotes god in every damn speech he
gives. I'm more fearful of a system where this seems to be a
requirement. This is something many Europeans have picked up on. As
someone who is perhaps more aware than most Europeans of the nature of
religion and Govt. in the U.S., I would have concerns about the U.S. that
just wouldn't appear on the radars of most Euros.

He's certainly right about the GMO issue, and I'll have to remember the
GMO/smoking argument :) I'm sure there's many I can catch out with that
one! (As an aside, there's a big push by Govt. here at the moment to ban
smoking in pubs and restuarants, a major change given our pub culture. I
guess they've realized that ciggy smoke doesn't pay much attention to
smoking and non-smoking sections).

I'd certainly agree with his disdain for the
anti-globalization/war/GMO/next big thing crowd, I'm not fan of them
myself. Speaking of the anti-war lobby, many of you may not know that
little ol' "neutral" Ireland has been facilitating the movement of U.S.
troops as part of the recent build-up maneuvers (I'm suspecting they're
moving more than troops through too, but that's just my opinion). There
have also been well reported (here) anti-war demonstrations outside the
airport where this has been going on, who are also suspecting there's more
being moved through than simply armed troops. I live very close to an
Irish air corps base, and my wife has been awakened by some strange sounds
coming out of it in the wee hours of the morning. I've heard such "noises"
in the past myself, typically around times of "strife" in the Middle
East/Yugoslavia. Since we have nothing more in our airforce than some old
cast-off Magisters (and I've been at a few airshows in my time) I can tell
you that, IMHO, it sounds awfully like a turbojet or two on reheat. But
hey, that's just my ignorant opinion.

I'm personally not all that bothered by the whole neutral or not argument
that's going on at the moment (let's face it, our neutrality is a joke - do
you think we'd be so obliging to Iraqi troops?). But I can tell you one
things that's bugging me. Another item probably not reported in your local
news is the recent breach of security at this airport by a member of the
supposedly "peaceful" anti-war group. She proceeded to inflict a cool half
mils worth of damage to one of the U.S. transporters. What bugs me is
that; 1) The state has to pay for this, with my money no less, and 2)
depending on the nature of the damage, she may very well have put lives at
risk.

And the kicker? RTE interviewed a spokesman for one of these groups, and
he distanced himself from her actions but never once condemned it! Instead
he gave some spiel about people being "frustrated" and such rubbish. What
crap. The only ones complaining about it are pretty much all located right
there outside the airport! The rest of us really couldn't be
bothered. We've little appetite for war, and none for your average Middle
Eastern dictator. And perhaps even less for most of the left wing tree
huggers who have little better to do than camp outside airports and make
mischief.

Am I annoyed that the U.S. (plus allies) is going to get rid of
Hussein? Not really. Beats having them financing the little bastard, I
suppose. I would be much more impressed if they'd put away the 'going in
to help the poor Iraqi people' tripe though, and stick to admitting they
want him out. They may very well in fact provide the Iraqi people with a
wonderful new chance, but no one's buying into that as a major policy driver.

Do I believe he's been a naughty boy with regard to ABC weapons? Most
likely. Do I believe that there's evidence linking him to Al-Qaida? I've
not seen it, so I can't say I'm convinced that it exists. But the more
time goes on, the fewer reasons I can think of for not nailing the Bollocks.

In summary, I think the author was right but for the wrong reason. Except
in the final paragraph. I think he was on to something there.


James...
(Married to an American and perhaps biased, but not as a result of that! )


"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and
crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures
to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."
-Q, Star Trek:TNG episode 'Q Who'

Ah, Those Principled Europeans

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

BRUSSELS -- Last week I went to lunch at the Hotel Schweizerhof in Davos,
Switzerland, and discovered why America and Europe are at odds. At the
bottom of the lunch menu was a list of the countries that the lamb, beef and
chicken came from. But next to the meat imported from the U.S. was a tiny
asterisk, which warned that it might contain genetically modified organisms
‹ G.M.O.'s.

My initial patriotic instinct was to order the U.S. beef and ask for it
"tartare," just for spite. But then I and my lunch guest just looked at each
other and had a good laugh. How quaint! we said. Europeans, out of some
romantic rebellion against America and high technology, were shunning
U.S.-grown food containing G.M.O.'s ‹ even though there is no scientific
evidence that these are harmful. But practically everywhere we went in
Davos, Europeans were smoking cigarettes ‹ with their meals, coffee or
conversation ‹ even though there is indisputable scientific evidence that
smoking can kill you. In fact, I got enough secondhand smoke just dining in
Europe last week to make me want to have a chest X-ray.

So pardon me if I don't take seriously all the Euro-whining about the Bush
policies toward Iraq ‹ for one very simple reason: It strikes me as deeply
unserious. It's not that there are no serious arguments to be made against
war in Iraq. There are plenty. It's just that so much of what one hears
coming from German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques
Chirac are not serious arguments. They are station identification.

They are not the arguments of people who have really gotten beyond the
distorted Arab press and tapped into what young Arabs are saying about their
aspirations for democracy and how much they blame Saddam Hussein and his ilk
for the poor state of their region. Rather, they are the diplomatic
equivalent of smoking cancerous cigarettes while rejecting harmless G.M.O.'s
‹ an assertion of identity by trying to be whatever the Americans are not,
regardless of the real interests or stakes.

And where this comes from, alas, is weakness. Being weak after being
powerful is a terrible thing. It can make you stupid. It can make you reject
U.S. policies simply to differentiate yourself from the world's only
superpower. Or, in the case of Mr. Chirac, it can even prompt you to invite
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe ‹ a terrible tyrant ‹ to visit Paris just
to spite Tony Blair. Ah, those principled French.

"Power corrupts, but so does weakness," said Josef Joffe, editor of
Germany's Die Zeit newspaper. "And absolute weakness corrupts absolutely. We
are now living through the most critical watershed of the postwar period,
with enormous moral and strategic issues at stake, and the only answer many
Europeans offer is to constrain and contain American power. So by default
they end up on the side of Saddam, in an intellectually corrupt position."

The more one sees of this, the more one is convinced that the historian
Robert Kagan, in his very smart new book "Of Paradise and Power," is right:
"Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." There is now a
structural gap between America and Europe, which derives from the yawning
power gap, and this produces all sorts of resentments, insecurities and
diverging attitudes as to what constitutes the legitimate exercise of force.

I can live with this difference. But Europe's cynicism and insecurity,
masquerading as moral superiority, is insufferable. Each year at the Davos
economic forum protesters are allowed to march through the north end of
town, where last year they broke shop windows. So this year, on
demonstration day, all the shopkeepers on that end of town closed. But when
I walked by their shops in the morning, I noticed that three of them had put
up signs in their windows that said, "U.S.A. No War in Iraq."

I wondered to myself: Why did the shopkeepers at the lingerie store suddenly
decide to express their antiwar sentiments? Well, the demonstrators came and
left without getting near these shops. And guess what? As soon as they were
gone, the antiwar signs disappeared. They had been put up simply as window
insurance ‹ to placate the demonstrators so they wouldn't throw stones at
them.

As I said, there are serious arguments against the war in Iraq, but they
have weight only if they are made out of conviction, not out of expedience
or petulance ‹ and if they are made by people with real beliefs, not
identity crises.