grussell’s Recent Comments

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  I agreed with everything you wrote here until about the middle of 2008, then I realised the nuclear industry isn't what it used to be. It hasn't stood still for 30 years. I spent some months reading and reevaluating. If you want to close down uranium mines and get rid of nuclear waste, then paradoxically, a nuclear technology may be the best option. IFR (Integral Fast Reactors) use nuclear waste as fuel and there is plenty to run them for a long time (hundreds of years for the entire planet). My conversion from a lifelong opposition to nuclear is described here: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/30/rethinking-nuclear-power/ As for radiation risks from reactors. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9509 Further information on IFR is available here: http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power/ http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/19/radiation-facts-fallacies-and-phobias/On Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power? posted 1 week, 5 days ago 144 Responses

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  Barry Brook's blog "Brave New Climate" has been discussing energy issues intensively for quite some time. I would urge Grist readers to have a look. A series he is currently running is a useful leadin to the discussion. http://bravenewclimate.com/category/tcase-series/ Also relevant is: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/16/solar-power-realities-supply-demand-storage-and-costs/On Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power? posted 1 week, 5 days ago 144 Responses

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  Yep. The US ratio of cattle to people is about a third of what it is in Australia or Brazil. You have (in nice round numbers) 100 million cattle and 300 million people, Brazil has 200 million of each and Australia has 22 million people and 28 million cattle.On Corn-based meat and ethanol: burning the planet to a crisp posted 3 weeks, 5 days ago 85 Responses

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  Correct. "Adult attained height" (and obesity) are causes of a few things. But you really need to read the detail, plus some of the studies to understand that this isn't just correlational, there are mechanisms (not entirely understood, but getting clearer) behind these causes. Most people intuitively understand why tall people get more back problems, but they also get more cancer, but the reasons are way more complex. Farmers should undertand this intuitively, breeding or feeding for maximum growth isn't the same as feeding and breeding for maximum health and longevity.On Corn-based meat and ethanol: burning the planet to a crisp posted 3 weeks, 5 days ago 85 Responses

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  rogueintellect: I suggest you spend a couple of weeks reading the 500 pages of the WCRF report before deciding what it says. e.g., The report finds NO other foods (other than alchohol, if you count it as a food) for which there is convincing evidence of cancer causality. If you read the definition of what constitutes "convincing evidence" you will see that it requires a broad range of evidence at various levels. First is the epidemiology, measure what people eat, then wait and see who gets cancer. There are now studies from around the world and they all show that people who eat more red meat have higher rates of bowel cancer. In Australia, most of the local beef is grass fed and our Cancer Council estimates that full half of the 12,000 new cases each year are due to more than 1 serve of red meat per week (details in my book http://perfidy.com.au). You will be able to find plenty of 90 year old smokers if you look, but that doesn't prove smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. I mentioned the heme iron before, it is the causal factor which is best understood ... but there are multiple plausible causal mechanisms, but not all are well demonstrated in people. But the heme iron mechanism is pretty well nailed down. Feed a person red meat, collect their feces, examine the DNA in colon cells which can be isolated from the feces (this has taken a decade to work out how to do), and you find the same kind of damage you find in bowel cancer patients. In some people (lucky genes), the damage is fixed and doesn't proceed to full blown cancer, but in others it does. The damaged cell passes through various stages before being full blown cancer and the process takes a long time (10-20 years), this makes it tough to detect with epidemiology, but the evidence is now in and clear. Like I said, a broad range of evidence, from test-tube chemistry, through the ubiquitous rat studies, to clinical trials and epidemiology. It's all in, and the WCRF judges that there is so much evidence that the chances of any new study contradicting what's already in is slim, very slim. One of the most graphic and easily understood demonstrations is to look at bowel cancer rates after the Japanese added red meat to their diet. Two rising curves, separated by a couple of decades, exactly as anybody could (now) predict.On Corn-based meat and ethanol: burning the planet to a crisp posted 3 weeks, 6 days ago 85 Responses