Hansen, the Red Star, and a bad bad law

My reading this morning included an idiotic Torstar editorial and a challenging 15-page opinion piece by James E. Hansen which, again, provides a lot of great information for those studying energy and emissions.

From a summary of Hansen's Renewable Energy, Nuclear Power and Galileo: Do Scientists Have a Duty to Expose Popular Misconceptions? 

I suggest that the public support CitizensClimateLobby.org. People with free time can volunteer to organize a new chapter. Citizens Climate Lobby is growing rapidly and exists now in most states in the U.S. and several other countries. Their objective is to persuade legislators to support fee-and-dividend, i.e., a rising carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies and distributed 100% to the public, equal amounts to all legal residents.
Fee-and-dividend follows conservative principles. It allows the market to choose among alternative energies and energy efficiency, leaves choices to individuals, and provides no money to increase the size of government. Thus it yields a basis for compromise between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives accept the reality of climate change, but liberals cannot use climate change as an excuse to collect more taxes and increase control over people’s lives.
I also recommend that the public stop providing funds to antinuke environmental groups.  Send a letter saying why you are withdrawing your support. Their position is based partly on fear of losing support from anti-nuke donors, and they are not likely to listen to anything other than financial pressure. If they are allowed to continue to spread misinformation about nuclear power, it is unlikely that we can stop expanded hydro-fracking, continued destructive coal mining, and irreversible climate change. 

I've always found Hansen's carbon taxation proposals the most coherent - to the possibly unhealthy point I really can't listen beyond "we need a carbon tax to raise revenues to fund..."

I think it's worth the time investment to read Renewable Energy, Nuclear Power and Galileo: Do Scientists Have a Duty to Expose Popular Misconceptions?, but I was already a convert.

More people are probably going to read the latest idiotic editorial from the Toronto Star, Give Ontario ‘green’ laws a chance: Editorial

Partisan antics are threatening innovative “green” laws at Queen’s Park.
...
Four environmental bills — ones that would reduce garbage, keep lakes and air clean, and protect community activists from intimidation lawsuits — will hit the rubbish bin if a spring election is called, the odds of which are increasing after the NDP’s recent byelection success.

The Star ceasing publication would reduce garbage.

The reference to "air clean" is made due to Toronto Premier Wynne's grandstanding "Ending Coal for Cleaner Air Act" which is the latest in an idiotic trend of avoiding the engineering expertise that might flourish from regulating emissions with the lobbying sycophancy that is flourishing with letting rank amateurs/ranker lawyers dally in energy policy.

The Star quotes a lobbyists exactly fitting Hansen's description of the anti-nuclear expert, "Each large environmental organization has a nuclear “expert” (often a lawyer, not a physicist)"

While the coal and lawsuit protection bills have not faced lengthy filibustering, they remain at risk. As Gillian McEachern of Environmental Defence says, “We’d like to see co-operation to get these bills passed because protecting the environment is too important to fall prey to the deadlock we’re seeing.” In other words, get to work.

Because the evil team is working on plans for a new coal plant?
Because Gillian McEachern needs to be an expert?
Because we need to be distracted lest we notice Wynne's government plans on increasing emissions from the generation of electricity by eliminating nuclear power plants Gillian McEachern has long opposed?