Activists who embrace nuclear power

And the is the point with the anti-nuclear campaign. It is to argue that nuclear is not a solution to the climate crisis (or at least a very bad option next to renewables). I would argue that environmental activists that argue for nuclear are doing the cause a disfavor. We might be in an agreement that fossil fuel is bad, and we might agree that renewables are good. But we are in disagreement about whether nuclear is good (hence we argue).

> Since we are in an agreement on the questions about fossil fuels then everything else are unimportant

Quite the contrary. Where we go from here is very important. Firstly because there is world after the climate crisis (hopefully!), and we should be careful how we build that world. Secondly it might turn out (and evidence suggest) that nuclear is not a solution the climate crisis. This is important—as GP suggests—because renewables and nuclear are competing for attention of public policy makers. My government representatives might tomorrow start making the case that we should focus more on nuclear and allocate money and time that would otherwise have been spent on renewables to the nuclear pipe dream. Worst case scenario. New nuclear power plants are build over the next decade instead of renewable infrastructure, and a decade from now we are still emitting more carbon into the atmosphere. This the nightmare we in the anti-nuclear campaign are trying to avoid.

I'm sorry, I get defensive when people go against expert advice and think their own opinions supersede decades of research by those that devote their lives to the subject matter. I've worked in nuclear technologies (not reactors) and closely with energy and climate people. I trust their advice (not mine, theirs) and my work experience put me in close proximity to allow me to ask an annoying amount of questions (to refine my understanding of their advice). What I'm upset about here is this comes off as some random person on the internet being aggressive about a subject matter that is extremely complex (extremely is an understatement), where they have no expertise, and goes against the expert consensus. Such claims come off as exceedingly arrogant and I honestly don't see it as any different from the anti-vaxers who think a few youtube views and blogs makes them experts on difficult subjects. You're throwing your gut feelings against the livelihood of many researchers. This is an unacceptable thing in our society and doubly so on HN.

> GMOs

You're over simplifying (which was my original complaint). It isn't a food security problem or a distribution problem but a food security problem and a distribution problem that also got highly politicized. It is not an either or situation but an and. Besides, many GMOs are also aimed at increasing the shelf life of foods, which directly affects the distribution and logistics aspect. It was also discussed about how to make plants more resilient, provide extra vitamins, and grow in places they couldn't before. We've directly seen this increase the well being of many (and would be more if golden rice wasn't controversial simply for the fact that it is a GMO and nothing else). But this problem is itself complicated since transporting food is a traveling salesman problem. There's also a question about food security in America and The West vs elsewhere. In the former it isn't that large of an issue but in the latter it is a huge issue and we can't conflate the two. As for the politicization, you need to differentiate the scientific consensus from the media consensus. When the news starts being shitty, go to the source. If the source is wrong stop trusting the source. If the source tells a different story, stop trusting the soapbox (but not the source). If the source disagrees with you, maybe it is you that is wrong (sure, you might also be right, but chances are someone who has dedicated their life to studying a subject is more knowledgeable about said subject).

Or just stop politicizing everything and listen to the experts (news and science evangelists aren't actually experts btw). "Trust but verify" is great (and _highly_ encouraged) but "distrust and find reasons to ridicule" is not okay. We're talking science, not politics. Opinions aren't what matters, evidence is.

I am perfectly fine (and actively encourage) asking critical questions of the experts. I encourage getting domain knowledge. But there's a large difference between having some expertise and being an expert. We can argue over that line but that's not what the (G)GP was doing, or the vast majority of these threads.

Sure. This was in response to this: Every square meter of Earth is part of some ecosystem that is under stress due to human activity.

> If you place tens of millions of solar panels in a region you will destroy the ecosystem of that region, and yes, deserts are ecosystems too.

This is untrue. This solar farm will take up 120 sq km (out of the 10,000 sq km cattle property), and is unlikely to cause any environmental issues from the panels themselves, since they'll just shade some areas of sand.