Er, um, we don't like nuclear power. Let's issue a report.

There's a very loud and shouty report on the front page of today's Independent about the rather unsurprising rejection of a return to investment in nuclear power, by the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC).

Chaired by Sir Jonathon Porritt, the commission trotted out some fairly well-worn arguments - and some quite outrageous ones. The idea that "a new nuclear power programme would send out a signal that a major technological fix is all that is required" and that it might hurt efforts to encourage energy efficiency, is hilarious.

Mind you, he's backed by the Friends of the Earth, which "welcomed the findings".

Odd that.

Given that Porritt was formerly Director of Friends of the Earth from 1984-90. A fact which the Independent, in the effort to publish a balanced and professional story, entirely omitted to mention.

There are also various questions about the economics of nuclear power. Again, fair enough. But arguing about public subsidies, when the suggested alternative (renewables, ie wind, wave etc) is also subsidised, smacks of hypocrisy.

Much of the "sustainability" argument seems to be based on the notion that energy is scarce, and shouldn't be wasted. Which, given that the entire universe is made up of energy (ask Einstein), is about as wrong as any argument could possibly be.

This reminds me a bit of the ongoing battles in my usual domain, the telecom industry. "Bandwidth is precious! Don't waste it! We must be as efficient as possible!". While it is true that certain things are capacity-limited (batteries on mobile phones, for example, or radio spectrum), there is as much fibre to create communications capacity as there is sand to turn into glass. The Internet industry (and to a degree the enterprise networking arena) has long had an unspoken philosophy of "OK, forget the elegance and sophistication and optimisation, and just throw bandwidth at the problem until it goes away".

By all means work on ways of making individual things more efficient, for example to reduce costs of distribution. But if there's a way to create large amounts of (potentially cheap, in the long term) power, and "throw energy at the problem", then I'm all for it.

In fact.... we could potentially "solve" climate change this way too. Remember your school-level physics? Heat pumps? How air conditioning and fridges work? Right. So lets build a vast network of nuclear power stations & pump heat out of the atmosphere - maybe into the Earth's mantle, which has a thermal capacity probably 10^10 or 10^20 (someone else do the maths....) greater, and wouldn't notice the odd 0.00000001 degree C

Technological "big fixes" is what we need, not wishy-washy social engineering and poorly-disguised anti-capitalist political rhetoric (step forward FoE and Greenpeace) about "sustainability".

I'm a wireless/mobile analyst....so why do I have an environmental blog?

OK, first things first. I have no direct connection with the environmental "industry" - I'm not a member of any NGOs, environmental charities, pressure groups or similar bodies, with the exception of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. None of my clients is environmentally-oriented, or conversely, energy-oriented.

Professionally, I'm a mobile & wireless technology analyst. This is my company , and this is my "work" blog. My clients are generally software and widget vendors who make chips & gizmos that go inside cellphones, telecom operators, or assorted other IT/technology firms.

Basically, as an analyst, I'm opinionated for a living. I enjoy arguing, and given I'm on the receiving end of 100s of tech companies' persuasive & experienced PR departments, I'm reasonably proficient at de-spinning jargon, and spotting flaws in superficially-compelling arguments. I'd like to think my BS-detector is pretty finely honed.

The environment (and related topics like energy, biotech and nanotech) happens to be an area where I have opinions I work on "in my own time". I've always been interested in sciency-type issues, and I have a fascination with how issues cross over between science, social issues, politics, personality, economics and the media.

So, I've created this blog to give myself a platform to spout forth on stuff that interests - or irritates me.

Some other disclosures - I have a degree in physics but haven't been a "proper" scientist for a long time. I used to work for an investment bank & have some views on how the economy works, the role of globalisation and so forth. Politically, I tend to fall into the awkward un-represented quadrant of "socially-liberal but economically-conservative" (low taxation, more power to the individual, fewer social controls & interventions by government, anti-censorship, anti-"nanny-state", pro-private enterprise). I'm a Eurosceptic. I travel a lot, both for work and for pleasure, which gives me a decent understanding of how different parts of the world work, but which also means I contribute a disproportionate amount of CO2 through air travel. I also have a liking for sports cars, but as I love TVRs (wonderful handmade British cars that are notoriously unreliable, for people who don't know the brand), they probably average out having less environmental impact than a Prius, as they spend a lot of the time stationary & waiting for a tow truck, emitting nothing but steam.