The Fate and Views of Nuclear Plants

CBS correspondent Steve Kroft reported on April 8 under the topic “France: Vive Les Nukes” (Long Live The Nuclear Plants) stated that “with power demands rising and concerns over global warming increasing, what the world needs now is an efficient means of producing large amounts of carbon free energy. One of the few available options is nuclear, a technology whose time seemed to come and go and may now be coming again.” Incidentally some 30 years ago, the French decided to go their own way and embrace nuclear power plants. Indeed, nuclear energy powers almost everything in France: its homes, its factories and even its high speed railroads besides Paris, the "City of Light". Nearly 80 percent of the country's electricity comes from 58 nuclear power plants. "

The said report reminds me of Dr James Lovelock, the leading environmentalist and scientist who invented the "Gaia theory" and has once told the Western Morning News that he regretted his endorsement of windfarms in the West country of UK. The core of the Gaia theory is about the earth as a self-regulating, living system rather than that of the Darwinian theory of competing physical, chemical and biological interests. Dr. Lovelock believes nuclear power is the only form of energy that will not contribute to global warming and could supply enough power for the planet. (for a fuller report, see Country Guardian’s WIND POWER JUST A GESTURE of 03 February 2004 )

You may also listen to Dr. Lovelock’s soundtracks on
(1) How he came to write The Revenge of Gaia,
(2) Dr Lovelock explains how Gaia theory informs his predictions,

(3) About Nuclear Energy available on the BBC - Radio 4 - Today Programme Science Report of July 6, 2006.

全球反常天氣報告

根據ETtoday.com東森新聞報2007年1月19日有如下報導：『 邁入2007年還不到一個月，全球各地都出現氣候異常，美國冰風暴已經持續一周多，‧‧‧加州馬里布20年來首見降雪，柑橘作物的寒害損失至少8億美元。 西歐、北歐也降下暴風雨，以英國情況最慘，最大陣風時速高達159公里，英國氣象局氣象預報員說，18日橫掃英國的狂風，風速是「1990年1月以來的最高紀錄。」德國也吹起最大時速170公里的如颶風般的狂風‧‧‧』

According to AccuWeather.com’s weather forecast of April 6th: “ A dramatic weather pattern will result in snow in some very unusual places, including the mid-Atlantic region and as far south as northern Texas, along with record-breaking cold and a stormy pattern into next week." It goes on further to state that this week's big, high-impact cold wave will get a shot at rewriting record books across a big swath of the nation early Easter morning.… Although the area of record-setting cold will reach westward into the Great Plains, it will be the South where the highest concentration of new low temperature extremes will be registered. … Daily record lows may fall by 10 degrees, even more. Needless to say, early spring growth, including fruit trees, vegetable crops and home garden plantings, will be at great risk of frost and freeze damage overnight.”

According to Peter Wittoeck of Science & Spirit : "The consequences of global warming for agriculture is seen in the rise of the sea level for low-lying coastal areas will be flooded and will no longer be useful for agricultural purposes. … Besides, it is expected that extreme weather conditions will occur more frequently, involving heavy storms or very dry and hot periods. Also, the present climat zones will move towards the poles: for temperate climates a shift by 200 to 300 kilometres can be expected for every extra degree Celsius. This poses problems for the cultivation of certain crops… Warming also means that summers will have more periods of drought. To get some idea of their impact, we can take the drought of 1988 in the United States as an example. Crop yields dropped by no less than 40%."

讓我們希望今天在美國南部出現的反常現象不是全球大氣變暖的一個直接後果；然而，全球大氣變暖現象和其與溫室氣體濃度的相關性(correlation)是超過90% (見維基百科：Scientific opinion on climate change)的數據，卻是對全人類的一個清晰警號！