Can't believe radial enviros would harp on the fact they insist NASA spend what's left of their tattered budget on the question of direct human involvement on global climate change. NASA is legally bound to expand a vision for space and humans in space; lunar, mars and beyond with space exploration and research. If radical enviros want to spend their money on investigating human culpability on earth climate change there's other govt agencies built for that purpose and yeah...they have all that Al Gore Hollywood money they can surely throw plenty of bucks on another who-done-it movie.
I agree with that. We are spend about 10 times as much per year on cimate change research as we are on nuclear fusion. Without nuclear energy this is no way to reduce CO2 emissions to levels that would do any good (even if the AGW theory is right which I doubt).
Environmentalists, by my experience, don't let small things like facts get into the way of their argument. They are often very ignorant of science as well, and don't know more about nuclear fusion then "NU-KU-LAR = BAAHD".
EDIT:
I'm also not surprised that the envarionmentalist do more about screaming about the problem, then trying to solve it. THAT's very typical.
...almost zero carbon. Except for the energy generated on site to power the drag-line shovels, to fuel the dump trucks to haul the overburden and ore, and to run the crusher and ore processing plants. And to power other industrial processes along the way...
However, nuclear power has the capability to give closure to this--most of the industrial processes using electricity or heat can be obtained from nuclear power--including the electric drag line shovels. If we really wanted to we could power the dump trucks with liquid hydrogen burning gas-turbine engines--but that is getting really nit picky--the open pits themselves probably 'exhale' more CO2 into the atmosphere that what could be saved by not burning diesel in the trucks. Sill it could be possible...
Nuclear Energy is just about the only option available to us now that can positively displace petroleum consumption, reduce carbon emissions (if that is indeed a problem) and give us sustainable energy in industrial quantities for millenia--if we choose to use a deep burn, reprocess, breed, and burn again cycle...by being a responsible species we can efficiently, safely, and relatively cleanly supply enough energy that we can sustain ourselves without collapsing, and going back to pre-civilization agrairian sustenance--that way leads to our eventual extinction guaranteed!