Sub-intellectual one trick pony lifts tail and drops another one

Australian intellectual minnow and anti-nuclear wolf-cryer Dr Helen Caldicott has popped up again spouting her nonsensical claptrap regarding the dangers of the nuclear industry being used to deal with the issue of climate change.

A leading environmentalist and physician says the health risks posed by global warming and nuclear power are worse than those of smoking.

Prominent environmentalist, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and paediatrician Dr Helen Caldicott says global warming and nuclear power plants will increase the spread of disease. She says nuclear power plants contribute substantially to climate change and expose humans to radiation-related illnesses.

Dr Caldicott says public awareness of the health risks posed by nuclear power has dropped off.

"Each reactor makes 200 kilograms of plutonium a year, whose half life is 240,000 years," she said. "[It's] the most toxic substance known to the human race, such that a couple of kilos if adequately distributed could give everyone on earth cancer. So we're talking about a spread of disease that will make the tobacco industry look benign in terms of cancer."

Dr Caldicott has welcomed a new website by medical students at the ANU, which monitors the connection between a changing environment and human health. She says the development of the research website is timely.

"It's been known for several decades that as the earth heats there will be epidemics of malaria, particularly in places that are now cool like Melbourne and Seattle," she said. "Diseases spread by arthropods like mosquitos and the like that will breed in the hot climates that normally are cool."

Seriously. What an unmitigated cretin. You'll excuse me while I vent a bit. Why does the media even listen to what crackpots like Caldicott say?

As I have pointed out previously, Europe is heavily dependent on nuclear power and has been increasing that dependency for over fifty years. In France they obtain 75% of their energy requirements from nuclear power! Have cancer rates in France increased at a rate higher than non-nuclear powered countries? No they haven't. Australia doesn't have nuclear power (though we have one small reactor that is used for the production of medical products) and we have a higher rate of cancer than France - mainly due to our obsession with sitting in the sun and burning ourselves to a crisp but, hey, it's our skin.

Caldicott then repeats the lie about malaria being more prevalent because of warmer climate rather than due to effective eradication in Europe and America before DDT was banned by her do-gooder greenie mates, consigning Africa and Asia to years of human suffering.

The numb-skulled, atavistic view of the world that Caldicott and her ilk have been gibbering on about since the 1960s is really tiresome. You'd think that these people would revise their message to incorporate some facts but I guess that to the Left facts are an inconvenient truth. After all, why spend time learning facts when you can spend time forming opinions?