What this blog is all about

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals
- Hamlet Act II sc. 2

 Well hello world!

We humans have depended on combustion to power our vehicles, heat our homes, cook our food, light everything from city streets to bedrooms. In short the energy we get from combustion is what separates us from our stone age, cave dwelling ancestors.

Sadly as the human population of our little planet continues to soar to larger and larger numbers, we cannot continue on this trajectory of burning things. Eventually we will run out of things to burn and very likely long before that, the planet's climatic systems will render earth uninhabitable for human life. The fact is atmospheric CO2 is rising and CO2 is known to be an effective heat trapping gas. We also know that a common byproduct of combustion is CO2.

So what is to be done?

Many people argue for increased use of wind, solar or hydro electrical power (the so called renewables). Over the weeks to come I will write why I do not have faith in these systems to rescue our planet.

Others argue decreasing our load, making a smaller 'carbon footprint', increased conservation. While I personally applaud the attitude I will make an effort to explain why I am confident that will, over the long term, not work either.

I will argue over the weeks to come that nuclear power is our only method of avoiding a climate disaster.

Expanding the Scope

But not only do I plan to discuss the environmental impact of nuclear power as compared with other power sources, I also plan to explain it. I hope that my writing is sufficiently interesting and non-technical that an average reader of a non-scientific background can come away with a better understanding. I hope that my articles will leave my readers with a better understand of the questions:

What is nuclear power?
How does it work?
What is the history of this power source?
What of waste and other anti-nuclear arguments?
What about nuclear weapons, their history and geopolitical implications to expanding nuclear power?

I am not so bold as to suppose that I will change minds, rather my goal here is to help enlighten, to help facilitate, a more reasoned and fact based discussion. We are rapidly approaching a critical point as we continue to unsettle the planet's atmospheric composition, if we are to solve our problems they will be solved by reasonable people engaged in a civil debate of ideas grounded in facts. Flights of fancy and insults will not solve anything.

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