YES WE CAN replace every coal burner on earth with a nuclear reactor in 8 years, AND WE CAN MAKE A PROFIT ON THEM. We can provide electricity to the Chinese peasants for AT LEAST 30% LESS than what they would pay for electricity from coal. Want a high paying green job? Work at the nuclear reactor factory that we have to build, or at a Canadian nuclear reactor factory.

Of course, a much nicer scenario should have happened: Americans should have replaced all coal fired power plants with nuclear reactors long ago. That would require that Americans had been educated properly. ALL high school students should have taken 4 years of physics, 4 years of chemistry, 4 years of biology and 8 years of math, starting in 1930. If that had happened, the coal industry would have had no hope of driving Americans paranoid of all things nuclear.

I have no connection with the nuclear power industry. I have never had any connection with the nuclear power industry. I am not being paid by anyone to post on Alternet. My sole motive is to avoid death in the collapse of civilization and to avoid the extinction of humans due to global warming.

I do wonder why he chooses the exact words he does though. For instance, a few days Obama said this: “We will make decisions based on facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action”.

When he commented on his appointment of Chu, Obama said, this “should send a signal to all that my administration will value science”. Again, in this video posted here today, Obama says his administration is going to “listen to what scientists have to say”.

Its getting near Christmas, Obama hasn’t even started his honeymoon period in office yet, and what he’s saying is so much more wonderful to hear than anything emanating from the US on climate in history, that I’m still almost ecstatic.

But, what is the “science” he’s going to value, and what “facts” will he base his decisions on?

Things have to be spelled out in greater detail for meaning to emerge. Is Obama going try to get support in the US to sign on to an international agreement aimed at 2 degrees C, or say 450 ppm as Chu has said in the past he wants to make sure Copenhagen commits the world to? Chu has been drawing a distinction between “dangerous” climate change and some other kind which would presumably be happening if CO2 levels stay low enough, Holdren has been saying we’re already there. Will this rhetoric, which occurs everywhere climate is discussed, be clarified? Chu has stated he does not believe civilization will keep CO2 at a level less than 550 ppm – will that become national policy, i.e. aiming for that? Will he listen to that pesky scientist who says the science he understands means that civilization must achieve a level of 325 – 350 ppm at stabilization? Is Obama going to try to commit the US to aim at stabilization at all?

This 80% reductions in US emissions by 2050 target Obama’s been campaigning on, depending on how you calculate it and if you extend the per capita US emissions it represents out to per capita rights to emit for the 9 or more billion people in the world who will be alive then, adds up any way I look at it to more than the total global emissions of today. His target as laid out during his campaign adds up to a continuous acceleration of the forces driving global warming from now until 2050, albeit at a less aggressive rate than business as usual.

And there are the more philosophical questions, such as does carbon capture exist, or how many CCS plants can fit on the head of a pin? Obama campaigned saying he was going to get 5 full scale CCS coal fired electricity plants built. Campaigners have been hitting him with a lot of flack over that. Will his administration listen to the many scientists who have open minds or who are outright promoters of nuclear power? What about this brand new DC national electric grid?

Its still wonderful to hear Obama talk about what he’s going to do, as in this video.

An unnecessary and unjustifiable war at a cost of three trillion dollars; a crashing economy at a cost of trillions more; a degraded environment, a dissipated Earth…….priceless.

And people responsible for these nightmares want their 2008 bonuses……predictable.

It will be easier for his team to make changes if people understand the problems and the possible solutions.

Anything we can do to educate others will be valuable.