This is the first episode taken from Dr. George Erickson‘s Unintended Consequences: The Lie that Killed Millions and accelerated Climate Change. Follow our media for a bite sized portion each week of Dr. Erickson’s book with additional images and references for easy information access. Follow our social media to read some of the best, some of the most concise words you’ll find on Climate Change and how Molten Salt Fission TechnologyTM with Thorium can fix it.
Over to you Dr. George Erickson…
Back in the sixties, when I was living in a small Minnesota farming community, my sons were taught to “duck and cover” beneath their desks in case of a nuclear war.
We’d been warned about radiation and fallout, so I built a concrete block shelter in my basement that I hoped would shield my family for a week or two if events with Russia turned sour.
Time passed. The Cold War waned, and when concerns about nuclear power changed from making bombs to making electricity, my concerns about nuclear issues receded – until I attended a lecture on thorium near the turn of the century. Intrigued, I began to investigate thorium because of its many advantages over uranium for producing electricity
I joined the National Center for Science Education and the Thorium Energy Alliance, which provided a huge upgrade to my better than average knowledge of physics and energy issues, including Climate Change.
I had known about greenhouse gases, global warming and sea level rise, and I had read about Dr. Charles Keeling’s work with carbon dioxide on the slopes of Mauna Loa, but I hadn’t realized that expanding nuclear power, which creates no carbon dioxide (CO2) could be our most effective weapon for combating Climate Change, much of which is caused by burning coal, oil, wood and natural gas to supply electricity to an expanding world that exceeds 7 billion – a world that is finally beginning to consider the value of CO2-free, environmentally benign nuclear power.
One solution seemed obvious: replace the carbon-burning steam generators at every power plant with nuclear power plants. However, I quickly discovered that many powerful organizations oppose almost everything nuclear – some out of ignorance, many from fear, and some for profit, but I also found support from those who’d set their fears aside after discovering the impressive safety record and efficiency of CO2-free nuclear power. And so, with Climate Change becoming deadlier every year (assisted by former Pres. D. J. Trump, our anti-science Climate Change Denier in Chief), and because my grandchildren’s futures are at stake, I have decided to respond to those who fear our safest, most efficient, environmentally benign power technology by revealing its true record – including that of Chernobyl, which has caused fewer than 80 deaths, and of Fukushima Daiichi, where two workers drowned at the plant – and I’ll highlight some of the new plants that are even safer and more efficient than the hundreds we have relied on for 60 years.
But first, I must mention two discoveries that came as a huge surprise – the fact that our radiation safety standards are based on a fraud that became dogma not long after World War II [Ed. see later episodes for this explanation], and the existence of compelling evidence that low levels of background radiation can even improve our lives. I know that sounds crazy, but there is abundant science to back it up.
“An ecologist must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.” Aldo Leopold – 1943
The Green New Deal will accelerate climate change and damage our environment unless it expands safe, highly efficient, resource-sipping, CO2-free nuclear power and stops funding inefficient, resource-gobbling environment-damaging wind and solar farms, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, Argentina, Poland, Sweden, Finland, India, China, the Czech Republic, Estonia, the Netherlands, France; Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Gr. Britain, Belarus, Ukraine, the Emirates, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Egypt have approved or are building nuclear plants, and we [Ed. “we” = USA] should, too.
The belief that we can get all of our energy from wind, water and solar is exactly what Dr. James Hansen, former chief scientist at NASA, had in mind when he wrote, “We have two political parties; neither wants to face reality. Conservatives pretend that climate change is a hoax, and liberals propose solutions that are non-solutions.“
We must turn away from carbon. We must do better than this!
[Ed. Cartoon copyright Toles 2013, The Washington Post. Reprinted with permission of Universal Uclick.]
This is the end of the first episode taken from Dr. George Erickson’s Unintended Consequences: The Lie that Killed Millions and accelerated Climate Change. Each week we’ll be posting a bite sized portion of Dr. Erickson’s book with additional images and references for easy information access. So follow our social media to read some of the best, some of the most concise words you’ll find on Climate Change and how Molten Salt Fission TechnologyTM with Thorium can fix it.
Coming up next week, Episode 2 – Forward of Unintended Consequences.
Links and References
1. Next Episode – Episode 2 – The Forward
2. Launching the Unintended Consequences Series
3. Dr. George Erickson on LinkedIn
4. Dr. George Erickson’s Website, Tundracub.com
5. The full pdf version of Unintended Consequences
6. Thorium Energy Alliance
7. National Center for Science Education
8. Dr. Charles David Keeling on Wikipedia
9. Dr. Charles David Keeling Biography
10. The Green New Deal by John de Graaf
11. Aldo Leopold
12. Nuclear Power Is the Best Climate-Change Solution by Far by Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller
#GeorgeErickson #UnintendedConsequences #MoltenSaltFissionEnergy #Thorium #ClimateChange #MoltenSaltFissionTechnology
