david says:
January 20, 2015 at 1:50 PM

There’s a big difference in what we’re told about climate change versus the effects of radiation.

Decades ago people subjected test animals to “large” amounts of radiation, and extrapolated their results to “small” amounts of radiation. The assumption was that as the amount of radiation decreased, then so did the effects of the radiation linearly. This implies that even at low doses of radiation there would be some damage. (ie. 1/10th the radiation = 1/10th the damage, 1/100th the radiation = 1/100th the damage..)

However, that’s not how science works. They had an hypothesis, but where were the experiments to prove it true?

Eventually it was found that the LNT model didn’t hold to be true. The expected cancers from Chernobyl didn’t match what was expected. Different parts of the world have different background levels of radiation, yet those changes don’t seem to correspond with the LNT hypothesis. There were accident where people were subjected to radiation, yet once again no correlation with cancer rates as suggested by the LNT hypothesis; in fact, in such cases it sometimes appeared that low doses of radiation could decrease cancer rates.

The LNT hypothesis is dead, or at least it should be. But there are people who benefit from keeping it alive, and rather than going back to the labs to try to figure out the proper relationship between radiation at low levels, and genetic damage, they try to muddy the waters.

Climate change might have its fear-mongers, much like the supporters of the LNT hypothesis do, but it has yet to be proven wrong. We know that greenhouse gases do affect the Earth’s climate, though to what degree our meddling will affect it is open to some debate, as is how harshly those changes will affect us humans. But, since the Earth isn’t a frozen wasteland, we “know” that greenhouse gases do affect the climate.

In short:
———-

Low doses of radiation:
-> has fear mongers
-> those fear mongers have been proven wrong.
-> end of story, (or it should be.)

Climate Change:
-> has fear mongers, and also
-> has those who benefit from denying it.
-> greenhouse gases affect climate, else the Earth would be a lot colder.
-> end of story, including how bad it will be, is yet to be written.

Given we don’t know the full story, we should research, and act, because the worse case scenario is disaster for us human. Replacing coal with nuclear is a no brainer. If there is room for some small release of greenhouse gases by us humans, it won’t include the use of coal to generate electricity. That’s one of the lower-hanging branches that we should be eliminating now.