Journalist and green campaigner George Monbiot puzzled and upset many people when, only a week after the Fukushima disaster began, he announced that he now supports nuclear power. He has also changed his mind about the health impact of radioactive pollution and he has used at least one of his recent public lectures (sponsored by the Guardian newspaper) to make a slanderous attack on Professor Chris Busby.
Professor Busby is Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and one of the world's leading experts on radiation and health. Monbiot has refused a challenge to debate the issues with Professor Busby.
On the website of the Low Level Radiation Campaign Richard Bramhall explains the error of Monbiot's position ...
George has attacked our research on leukaemia along the Plutonium-contaminated coast of Wales. He was very foolish; it's a complex issue and he completely failed to apply any journalistic balance - he failed to live up to his own Hippocratic oath for journalists. And he seems to be unaware of the irony that only two years ago, when the climate-change sceptic Ian Plimer was reluctant to meet him in a public debate, he called Plimer a "grandstander with a broad yellow stripe". The stripe is on George now.
What I have to say to him is “You are propagating a lie about leukaemia and cancer in Wales and you have sneered at our offer to put you straight. You are repeating lies about the health impact of Chernobyl; you are repeating underestimates of how radioactivity from Fukushima will affect people in Japan. You seem to have no idea of the parlous state of the scientific rationale behind those lies and underestimates; or maybe you think it doesn't matter that the industry you have climbed into bed with is bent on spreading its genotoxic byproducts all over the planet. Childhood leukaemia is still a rare disease, fortunately, but it is a miners' canary indicating that radioactive releases are driving the global cancer epidemic.
Wake up and smell the charity shops, George! If you are not a hypocrite you will challenge yourself and your perceptions, and the best person to help you to do that is the man you slandered in Liverpool - the man whose expert testimony in law courts (which, unlike you, cannot ignore evidence) has won military service pensions and compensation settlements worth millions for people damaged by radioactivity.”
The GOS says: The Low Level Radiation Campaign website is an interesting place. We specially recommend another of their pages about Moonbat.
Personally we are in favour of nuclear power, certain as we are that wind power is not a viable or socially/aesthetically acceptable alternative. But we respect the Campaign's efforts to stimulate proper scientific debate on the subject, and despise Moonbat's patronising attitude to such debate.
If people are certain they are right, they should be prepared to say why. Bramhall and Busby are, apparently. Moonbat can't hack it, and resorts to personal attack and denigration instead.
Bastard.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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