Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Bush Accused of 'Fiddling While World Burns' by Ignoring Climate Change: "One of Britain's most eminent scientists has attacked President Bush for acting like a latter-day Nero who fiddles while the world burns because of global warming.

"Lord May of Oxford, the president of the Royal Society and former chief scientific adviser to the Government, said the Bush administration must accept the case has been made about the link between man-made pollution and climate change. Continuing to deny the impact of human activities on the environment may ultimately have catastrophic consequences for everyone on the planet, he said."

The way the Bush administration has been captured by the fossil fuel industry is nowhere better illustrated than by this anti-scientific attitude over such a crucial global issue. Described by Chomsky as a 'sort of Enron administration', it is as corrupt and depraved as can be.

"Lord May accused the Daily Mail of waging an undeclared propaganda war against the science of climate change. He accused the newspaper of misleading its readers with a misinformed campaign.

""It appears to be conducting an undeclared campaign to deny the potential threat from climate change - in the past 15 months the Daily Mail, which attracts six million readers every day, has published six opinion pieces, including four from its science editor, that have used misleading arguments against the scientific evidence on climate change," Lord May said. "It brings to mind the ill-fated and disreputable campaign by The Sunday Times during the early 1990s to deny that HIV causes Aids. It seems that some parts of the media have not learnt the lessons of that unfortunate campaign.""

""Nuclear power has to be considered as a viable alternative to fossil fuel that can generate sufficient power without adding to greenhouse gases. It has to be part of tomorrow's future. I've every sympathy with the attitude that sees it through the emotional haze of a mushroom cloud, and terrorism makes it even more problematic, but you can't approach the things in emotional ways. There are real problems with nuclear but it's hard to see it's not part of the mid-term solution, ultimately one hopes one can move beyond it. We've got to investigate it now because we're on the verge of losing a generation of competence in the area.""

Nuclear energy is expensive, poisonous, non-renewable and not the answer. Uranium is a limited resource and is also expected to deplete this century. We do not 'hope' that we can move beyond it, we have no choice. The focus must be on renewable energy.

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