Sure they are. You can have the one that kills millions of people per decade, or the one that kills (at most) a few hundred. That's not only a reasonable choice - it's a no-brainer.
That you persist in treating them as indestinguishable in their degree of harm is insane; unless you are actively trying to support the coal industry.
Both of these alternatives are highly polluting , dangerous, toxic and also demanding waste depositories for their waste.
No. Not for any sane definition of the word 'highly'.
Coal is highly polluting, dangerous, toxic and also demands waste depositories for its waste.
Nuclear is so non-polluting that after sixty years, you can name in one breath all three locations on the planet that have been polluted by it. It is so safe that it kills fewer people than solar power; and it demands about a hectare of storage in total for all the waste it will ever produce.
That's a VERY CLEAR alternative.
They are the epitome of NONRENEWABLE.
What does concern me is not your opinion but the fact that somehow this monster problem facing us was given 12 days to come up with what would be done about it.
The problem of storage for intermittent renewable energy sources has been known about for decades.
We are six days in and we have a document with about two hundred fifty pages and 900 unresolved disagreements. On paper no less! There have already been 20 COP's that gave us nothing. That is because they are dominated by fossil fuel and nuclear energy corporations with their public relations programs and politicians on the take from these industries.
And because people like you do everything they can to support coal in what should, based on the facts, be a very one-sided battle between those two lobbies.
That is not that everyone there is like this, but enough are like this to queer any short term resolution of differences...and keep the progress as close to zero as possible so they can extend their record profits.
Or for whatever the hell your motive is; I presume you are not making money out of your support for coal.
I think they should not even be the focus of our remarks. The problem is even bigger than any of these outfits. We are a species that could be regarded as earthbound crust dwellers, living in a paper thin atmosphere on a rock that is still molten deep inside. What this conference is all about is the feedback from our limited environment to our actions. We are altering the chemical composition of our entire atmosphere and affecting the chemistry of our oceans and lands. These are the resources that are limited and that we all depend on, far more than the banks and oil companies. The resources we have to protect end up being our air and our water and arable land. The problem reduces about like that, the more extreme our insults to the environment. There is plenty of coal and oil and uranium. With each of these, we simply cannot stop polluting if we continue using them. They each represent their own threats to human survival and demand repositories for unredeemable wastes they produce. Some of the wastes they produce we have no way of controlling and sequestering from our environment.
Really? I don't think so.
If you think that there is any material we cannot control and sequester from our environment, then you have been watching too much science fiction. This is just matter; it acts in accordance with physics and chemistry. It's not 'The Blob'
Failure to deal with the climate change problem will result in a reversal of man's progress on the planet.
YES. Which is why we need to stop burning coal and switch to nuclear and renewables NOW.
We are witnessing the quantitative convergence of CO2 waste with the limits our atmosphere can sustain without killing a lot of people. I don't think 12 days is enough time to do anything about it when even some of our best and most sincere efforts are apt to meet with some failure.
Then it's a good thing we are not limited in our actions to those that can be agreed in 12 days. This is COP21. There will be a COP22, 23, 24...
Dismal seems to find some humor in the death of birds due to windmills. It is happening. There are solutions to this problem. There are also solutions to storage of energy. Part of the solution is going to be conservation and abrupt reductions in the use of fossils and nukes and perfection of alternatives. None of this is going to happen over night. Solutions will not come without sincere efforts to leave the unsustainable energies behind and most of the proven oil reserves in the ground. Politicians should not erect barriers to the survival of their constituencies, but it appears they have little conscience when it come to those outside their minor domain. I think this whole problem belongs in the hands of scientists and technical workers who clearly understand the problem It should not be a matter of who has the money gets what he wants and everybody else (including some sinking Pacific islands) can just live with our addiction to oil and nukes.
There you go again; Describing a problem with fossil fuels, and then tacking on 'and nukes' as though that made sense.
You may as well write
"I think this whole problem belongs in the hands of scientists and technical workers who clearly understand the problem It should not be a matter of who has the money gets what he wants and everybody else (including some sinking Pacific islands) can just live with our addiction to oil and solar power."; that makes EXACTLY as much sense.
