His iron clad opposition to nuclear power was so forceful, I just couldn't take it.
He sounds just like all of our "renewables will save us advocates," identical in fact. I suspect that actually at least one such poster actually <em>is</em> Al Gore, since he speaks for him so confidently.
...Just kidding.
In 2005, the nuclear industry, which was, as we all know dismantled during the Clinton-Gore years, produced the second largest amount of energy in it's history, slightly down from 2004.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec9_5.pdfAs we read from the table the amount of energy produced by the nuclear industry was 780 billion kilowatt-hours. This is 2.8 exajoules of electrical energy and at 33% efficiency represents 8.5 exajoules of primary energy.
The comparable figures for the highly successful solar energy industry was 0.06 exajoules (0.06 quads approximately). The extraordinary wind energy industry which has single handledly eliminated global climate change as a world problem produced 0.150 exajoules. (Renewable figures are for 2004.)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/table1.htmlThus the nuclear industry only produced 18 times more energy than wind and a mere 42 times as much as solar.
The solar industry was founded in 1954 after scientists at Bell Labs discovered the solar PV cell, which was launched on the Explorer satellite in the late 1950's. Since then the solar industry has been exploding by leaps and bounds, brazillions of percent per year, and has provided limitless clean safe energy as advertised. Thus Mr. Gore can confidently point to the fact that the phase-out is easy to address.
Actually everything is so wonderful, I have no idea what the fuck Mr. Gore was doing at Congressional hearings this week. Maybe he was chatting up old friends. Maybe he was trying to chat up work for all of the people who have been laid off because of the abandonment of coal, oil, and natural gas in this country.