h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Personally I know little about the technicalities of Nuclear power, but I would say yes. We will have no alternative. Wind and wave stuff just wont be sufficient on such a small Island like Britain. The whole country would have to be covered with windmills and the like. Bilbobilbo.

Interesting discussion.

As for what sprout said, I don´t think it would be an advantage to be in the opposition. I doubt it would make it easier to get grants. A problem is that many research projects about something´s impact on the environment, only get continued grants if they can show harm. Otherwise the funding would probably get cut. That could easily skew the results. And the "End is nigh" people do seem to get a lot more publicity than the rest, which is part of the problem.

Well - climate change is a good example of what I'm talking about.

There are hundreds of the most reputable scientists and climatologists in the world who sit in the IPCC (international panel on climate change) and produce a consensus view - currently that this is something we should be worried about.

Against that there are a handful of scientists who believe that climate change is down to sunspots/aliens/natural climatic cycles etc, yet when the BBC has a debate on the issue they wheel out one of both as if the issue was genuinely that unclear in the scientific community.

They used to do this for smoking as well, until it became blatantly clear to even the most heavily funded industry scientist that it really wasn't good for you.

sprout

"HappyDude: yours is precisely the sort of reactionary opinion that I was talking about"
Hardly reactionary, I conceded that the debate is now about how bad Climate Change will be.

"identified a vague trend over 15 years"
The evidence for climate change goes back for at least 150 years although much of it has only recently been put in it's proper context.

"Are these the same meteorologists who cannot predict with any degree of accuracy the weather in one month's time"
Scientist do make mistakes but I do trust the very real physical evidence of global warming and do believe we should do whatever we can (within reason) to help reduce it, and an expansion on Nuclear power may be one of those things hence this discussion.




______


One more piece of physical evidence, according to a report in "New Scientist" an examination of coastal fish pens built by the Romans over 2000 years ago show that "nearly all the rise in sea level since Roman times has happened in the past 100 years". (BTW There is also an article titled "Do cosmic rays hold sway over the climate?").

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/health/3554422.stm
radiation news