Although he claims to be an "environmentalist" Arthur demands a return to large scale coal mining in Britain, he says:
"Britain needs an integrated energy policy that will produce 250m tonnes of indigenous deep-mine clean coal per year - from which could be extracted all the electricity, oil, gas and petrochemicals that our people need."
In fact, he almost sounds like a Climate Denier: (spittt!)
"After the closure of 192 pits since 1980, the loss of 170,000 jobs and the closure or non-operation of nearly 70% of coal-fired power stations on the false premise that they were uneconomic and the worst polluter of carbon dioxide, it is reasonable to expect that there would have been a dramatic fall in CO2 emissions. But in fact CO2 emissions have actually increased ..."
Sadly, Arthur goes on to show that he can't be let out of the Maximum Security Twilight Home for the Terminally Bewildered just yet:
"All existing and new coal-fired power stations should be fitted with clean coal technology - including carbon capture that would remove all CO2 - and at the same time we should be developing a massive renewable energy policy based on wind, wave, tide, barrage, hydro, geothermal, solar power, together with insulation, conservation and reforestation."
Arthur's imaginary friend has been telling him about carbon capture again - something that exists only in fairy tales. And it sounds like Arthur is feeling persecuted by his old comrades; one of the wardens (oops, I mean nursing staff) has told him of George Monbiot's recent conversion to nuclear power:
"Has George Monbiot sold out on his environmental credentials or is he suffering from amnesia? In his article on these pages [The Guardian] last Tuesday he states that he has now reached the point where he no longer cares whether or not the answer to climate change is nuclear - let it happen, he says ... I challenge George Monbiot to test out which is the most dangerous fuel - coal or nuclear power. I am prepared to go into a room full of CO2 for two minutes, if he is prepared to go into a room full of radiation for two minutes."
Hmmm, maybe Arthur has a death wish. With his state of health two minutes in a room full of C02 would be suicide (You can't breath pure CO2 Arthur, pure CO2 is poison, more poisonous than plutonium!). Whereas George would almost certainly be fine after two minutes in a room full of radiation - depending on the type of radiation, obviously.
Surely, as a leader of mineworkers, Scargill should known that there have been over 500,000 deaths in mining accidents over the last 60 years? Shouldn't he also know that over the last 60 years there have been fewer than 25 deaths in radiation accidents - excluding Chernobyl. At Chernobyl there were fewer than 60 deaths from acute radiation poisoning and it was originally estimated that over the following 50 years there would be fewer than 4,000 deaths.
In fact, deaths as a result of exposure to the "Chernobyl Cloud" of radiation have been few and far between and the "Children of Chernobyl" featured (and exploited yet again) in Ewan McGregor's TV travels are nothing whatever to do with radiation.
Somebody refer Arthur Scargill to the section on the effects of Chernobyl on human health on Wikipedia. Normally I would not recommend Wikipedia, but since I wrote most of this section and the Editors have stopped any further vandalism I endorse it warmly. Please don't use the 'alternative' section on Wikipedia since it is simply the vandalised section moved to a different place and given a different title.
Anyway, the point is, why is Scargill recommending a technology that has killed (directly) half a million people in 60 years and is causing "disastrous climate change" instead of a safe technology that will help solve climate change?
Could his very very generous pension for life have something to do with it?
For radiation accidents (ex-Chernobyl), see:
http://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf
For health effects of the Chernobyl accident, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
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