Response to Comment by Rabilloud on 'prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power'

Hansen, James ; Kharecha, Pushker A.

PID  :  NTRS Document ID: 20140017700
RP-ID  :  GSFC-E-DAA-TN17769

学科分类：原子、分子光学和等离子物理

美国|英语

来源: NASA Technical Reports Server

【 摘 要 】

The critique by Rabilloud-whose only listed professional affiliation is an antinuclear activist group?is grossly biased and contains numerous misleading, hyperbolic, and erroneous claims about our paper2 and about nuclear energy in general. The nature of his comments bears a striking resemblance to the fallacious reasoning commonly employed by climate change deniers to try to undermine public concern about the climate crisis. Specifically, he resorts to cherry-picking of information and diversionary (red herring) arguments, demands unrealistic exactness, and cites untrustworthy sources. None of his claims undermine any of the key results of our paper, most notably our conclusion that nuclear energy has prevented, and can continue to prevent, a very high number of fatalities and very large greenhouse gas emissions due to fossil fuel burning. It follows that, as uncomfortable as it is for many well-intentioned environmentalists to admit, efforts to undermine nuclear energy also undermine mitigation of climate change and air pollution, with a heavy cost in human lives and potentially disastrous future climate change.