The climate-change deniers have now gone nuclear (UK commentary)

[jpak]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,1822941,00.html

When the rightwing tradition of bad science comes onside, it's time to look seriously at other energy technologies

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The old right has been on an arduous journey, with most finally converted to the truth universally acknowledged, except by flat-earthers: the world is warming at life-on-earth threatening speed. When the climate-deniers' case collapsed, they retreated to an ideological redoubt claiming global warming was a natural phenomenon, not amenable to man-made remedy. But that fortress crumbled too, and even George Bush, last of the deniers, conceded.

For some reason the old deniers, barely batting an eyelid, shifted over to nuclear as the only salvation, though those who have been so wrong owe a little humility when it comes to next steps. Many hail from a bizarre tradition of rightwing bad science: remember Andrew Neill as Sunday Times editor running a dangerous campaign that denied HIV caused Aids, branding the latter as a disease only of gays and the wildly promiscuous. Consider the continuing claim of the Mail and Melanie Phillips that the MMR vaccine causes autism, panicking mothers into failing to immunise babies. Posing as hard-headed realists, those on the right are more prone to pit their ideology against the weight of science. Seat belts? Motorbike helmets? Chlorofluorocarbons and the ozone layer? Smoking bans? Advertising junk food to children? The science-based realos tend to be on the left, conviction fundis on the right.

<snip>

Even the CEO of the US nuclear power company Dominion said that, despite US government wishes for new nuclear power stations, he would not build, to avoid giving credit raters Standard & Poor's and his own chief financial officer "a heart attack". Standard & Poor's say that not even government help with construction costs changes this reality: "an electric utility with a nuclear exposure has weaker credit than one without and can expect to pay more ... for credit".

<and much much more>