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Open Energy 4: Renewable energy versus nuclear: dispelling the myths

March 4, 2019

Open Energy 4: Renewable energy versus nuclear: dispelling the myths

Don’t believe the spurious claims of nuclear shills constantly doing down renewables, writes Mark Diesendorf. Clean, safe renewable energy technologies have the potential to supply 100% of the world’s electricity needs – but the first hurdle is to refute the deliberately misleading myths designed to promote the politically powerful but ultimately doomed nuclear industry.

The strategies and tactics of RE deniers are very similar to those of climate science deniers.

To create uncertainty about the ability of RE to power an industrial society, they bombard decision-makers and the media with negative myths about RE and positive myths about nuclear energy, attempting to turn these myths into conventional wisdom.

The article Renewable energy versus nuclear: dispelling the myths was published in The Ecologist in April 2016. The Ecologist describes itself as “The Journal for the Post-Industrial Age” which leaves me a little confused. Diesendorf appears to be promoting 100% renewable energy as the best option for the future of industrial society but promotes this image in a journal that represents the collapse of industrial society as we know it.

Perhaps I have grown a little sensitive, but I truly resent the use of the term “denier” to describe scientific skepticism.  The connotations with Holocaust Deniers makes this vile language to use.

But a part of what Diesendorf says is true. The tactics deployed by renewable energy skeptics and climate change skeptics are very similar. The common name for these tactics is science.

Let us take a quick look at some of the Myths that Diesendorf wants to dispel. In the spirit of Open Energy threads I am going to resist excessive commentary myself but invite commenters to deconstruct what Diesendorf says. He lists 15 Myths in all, I have only reproduced 5 of those below. Please feel free to reproduce more in the comments.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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