Atomic Rod joins Cam and Rich on G’World #108
The Good Friday episode of G’World includes a discussion about the implications of Apple’s Boot Camp.
I joined Cameron Reilly and Richard Giles for the great debate – Cam decided that he could handle talking to two Mac guys as he wonders whether or not this development would finally give him the motivation to try own a Mac.
When an opening in the conversation appeared, I took the opportunity to provide a few non religious reasons why I have owned a series of MACs stretching back 20 years even though I have been required to work in the Windows environment at my day job.
At the end of the show, Cameron made an comment about the fact that the World Wildlife Foundation was interested in the conversation now taking place on The Atomic Show. Cool!
Hi there. I was the one that was chatting to Cameron about the nuclear debate, and he pointed me to your show. I’ll hopefully be catching up on the “back-episodes” in the coming weeks…
There’s certainly a lot more real debate (read: not political point-scoring) required about the use of nuclear energy as a means to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, matched with a serious look at how it compares with alternatives.
WWF’s Clean Energy Future report:
http://wwf.org.au/ourwork/climatechange/cleanenergyfuture/
outlines WWF’s vision. The report probably needs some work to make it punter friendly (lots of technical language in there), but the basic gist (as I understand it) is that although wind and solar are not capable of meeting our energy needs yet, combined with gas-fired power and energy use reduction it can go a long way.
I do hope that we can work with TPN, and your show, to look at our energy options, both for Australia and internationally, although I’m just the lowly website administrator – so I still need to work out who’s best to talk to you and see what we can do 😉
In the meantime, Worldchanging.com recently posted this:
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004300.html
I’d be interested in your thoughts.
P.S. We are now known as WWF (not spelled out – our full name is actually different to what you mentioned in your post) – there’s a lot of confusion over our name already with so many different spellings, we’re trying to simplify things by just using WWF.
Grant:
Thank you for the links; I will go and check them out.
I apologize for using an incorrect name – I was trying to prevent confusion for my American listeners/readers since the World Wrestling Federation is also known as WWF and they spend a lot more money in marketing that your WWF does. (Also, as a long time government employee, I get tied up in alphabet soup on a regular basis. I once sat in a brief that used the abbreviation IA three times on s single slide and each instance had a completely different meaning.)
I plan to download the reports and read them over the next few days. It would be very interesting to engage in a discussion with people that have open minds. Though I am pretty confident of the conclusions I have reached so far; I learn something new every day. Life is a learning experience when you pay attention.
Grant:
I could not resist the Worldchangin.com discussion on the prospects for nuclear fission to make a growing contribution to the world’s energy needs. I posted a comment over there, but in case anyone does not want to wade through the long and useful debate, here are my thoughts:
Thanks Rod. No dramas about the name – it happens an awful lot! The wrestlers are now known as WWE, but nobody seems to know that 😉
Glad you had a chance to check out the Worldchanging posts. Let me know when you’ve had a chance to look through the reports, and I’ll see what I can do to find someone here who has the requisite knowledge and open mind to chat.
Regards, Grant
Grant:
I have skimmed through the Clean Energy Future report, reading some sections in considerable detail. I almost get the feeling that fission had never been discovered and if it had, that it had never been used to generate electricity or heat. There were only 3 minor mentions of the word “nuclear”, none of “atomic” and only one (in the definitions section) of “uranium”.
Not that I want to pick a fight, but could it possibly be that the sponsors of the study, which include the Australian Gas Association, the Australian Wind Energy Association and the Renewable Energy Generators of Australia had something to do with the possible energy sources considered? Perhaps none of them mentioned the “elephant in the room.”
Nuclear fission is clean enough to run inside a seal submarine. It has been used in various applications for more than 50 years. Australia has the world’s largest reserves of uranium. Isn’t it a bit disingenuous to simply ignore the topic in a study of energy futures?