Comments on: Cool Britannia: Climate change is “lawful excuse” to damage coal plant (with Hansen comments)

By: shop

shop — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:38:02 +0000

We should be able to get all the uranium and
thorium we need to fuel nuclear power plants for centuries by
using cinders and smoke as ore. Remember that, to get a given
amount of energy,

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:11:00 +0000

The same moronic approach was taken against Nuclear Power plants 30 years ago. If Greenpeace is the forward thinking organization it would like us all to believe it is those Nukes today would be online today instead of being canceld and we wouldn’t have this global warming issue.

PS Don’t try this in the USA we have guns and we don’t like terrorists regardless of their cause. You might be right but you’ll be dead right.

By: Asteroid Miner

Asteroid Miner — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:12:36 +0000

Coal contains: URANIUM, ARSENIC, LEAD, MERCURY,
Antimony, Cobalt, Nickel, Copper, Selenium, Barium, Fluorine,
Silver, Beryllium, Iron, Sulfur, Boron, Titanium, Cadmium,
Magnesium, Thorium, Calcium, Manganese, Vanadium, Chlorine,
Aluminum, Chromium, Molybdenum and Zinc. There is so much
of these elements in coal that cinders and coal smoke are actually
valuable ores. We should be able to get all the uranium and
thorium we need to fuel nuclear power plants for centuries by
using cinders and smoke as ore. Remember that, to get a given
amount of energy, you need on the order of 100 MILLION
TIMES as much coal as uranium. That means the coal mine has
to be 100 million times larger than the uranium mine, not counting
the recycling of nuclear fuel. We can keep our mountains and
forests and our health by switching from coal to nuclear power.

Chinese industrial grade coal is sometimes stolen by
peasants for cooking. The result is that the whole family
dies of arsenic poisoning because Chinese industrial grade
coal contains large amounts of arsenic.

I have zero financial interest in nuclear power, and I never have
had a financial interest in nuclear power. My sole motivation in
writing this is to avoid extinction by H2S gas due to global
warming.

By: John Hollenberg

John Hollenberg — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:29:28 +0000

Ron, I think you may be undercutting your argument with this juvenile behavior.

By: Ron

Ron — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:37:14 +0000

Joe,

How do you plan to save the world if you can’t even keep a curmudgeon like me off your site?

You are a hypocrite and a whining wussie Joe. And now a few more people know it

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:27:25 +0000

Robert — I beleive I am completely correct in stating than in English law, as in the USA, criminal trials require a unanimous verdict by the empaneled jury, either ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’. In this case it seems that the jury found that the minor vandalism was justified by the warning it delivered. I beleive this now sets a precedent for at least the county and maybe all of England.

Disclaimer: I’m not an attorney and have never formally studied law.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:53:12 +0000

The key thing about the judgement was that it was trial by jury. Clearly a majority of the 9 men and 3 women making up the jury felt strongly enough about the threat of climate change to return a verdict of not guilty, however tenuous the legal justification.

My daughter has just received her law degree this summer and opined the judgment to be absurd. Apparently the law exists to protect a person, for example, who breaks into someone’s house to put out a fire. To me this seems like a reasonable parallel to coal fired power station = climate change and the verdict is perfectly justified.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:30:19 +0000

John — Thanks for pointing out Ron’s TOS violation. He is banned for life.

By: Earl Killian

Earl Killian — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:07:01 +0000

Ron, as far as I’m concerned, that plant is violating most people’s property rights. Something needs to be done about that violation. Property rights are not just for big corporations.

By: John Hollenberg

John Hollenberg — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:57:03 +0000

> I’m sure vandalism against ‘the bad guys’ sounds like a lot of fun –

There is nothing in the article to suggest that this was a random act of vandalism. The article states that the protesters “attempted to shut down the Kingsnorth coal-fired power plant, specifically the six were the ones painting the smokestack with “Gordon Bin It” when interrupted by the police.”

Given the facts presented in the article, it may have been a reasonable step to take in this specific case. Apparently the jury thought so. I don’t see any danger of a jury making the same determination for the other hypothetical cases you presented above, so I don’t think the “slippery slope” is an issue. The rule of law still applies, and in this specific instance, the protesters were not found to have acted unlawfully. I know it is messy to make reasoned determinations in the real world with shades of gray, but that is what juries do every day.

Calling Joe a “well-funded nut job” certainly violates the terms of use. I assume you would agree that we wouldn’t want to allow you on the “slippery slope” and that your punishment for this violation should be sure and swift.