Guest KP,

"I think you could make the same argument for nuclear. What you are doing is concentrating heat that was already there in the earth (radioactive ores produce heat) and using that to make electricity and creating waste heat. The heat will be coming out into the air (or into the cooling water that nuclear plants) use rather than into the earth's crust so there will be some heat capacity issues but the total amount of heat released will be same. However, I'm more of a chemist than a physicist so I'll check that out some time."

The problem with nuclear ( which I prefer, for other reasons, but realize it's weakness) is that the heat release is accelerated- the natural rate of decay would be thousands of years or more, which a reactor releases in a few years. Waste is a problem ( though less than coal, since the amount of fuel required is so much less) but but recycling of used fuel , and reuse of waste as radioisotopes for medical and industrial use would take care of that.

Recycling in general is good- it takes less energy to reuse aluminum than to produce it from ore.

MOST of what the Goreistas want to do has some benefits- it is just that
1. the reason they give is false, which WHEN CLIMATE CHANGE occurs anyway will invalidate ( to the public) what they propose, EVEN WHEN IT IS a good thing to be doing.
2. They do NOTHING to adapt the population or even civilization to the change that will occur, regardless of their actions. The false sense of "safty" they offer will prevent the required actions to adapt until it is both more exspensive, and much more likely to be done by violent actions.