Monbiot loses his marbles
Just a week after the Fukushima disaster began George Monbiot announced his support for nuclear power. Within days he made a garbled public attack on LLRC’s scientific director Professor Chris Busby. Then he refused a public debate, which earned him the label “Chicken George”, and recently he rejected the Mayor of Oxford’s invitation to debate the issues. The debate went ahead without him on November 3rd.
On 21st and 22nd November The Guardian published two poorly researched articles in which Monbiot widened the attack. In preparing them he bullied Busby and ignored information which had been supplied to him.
The Guardian articles include comments attributed to Professor Geraldine Thomas of Imperial College, London — the same Gerry Thomas who, on BBC programmes this year, has claimed that there will be no death toll from Fukushima and that people in Great Britain were not exposed to the radiation from Chernobyl. Her quotes in Monbiot’s article reveal that she thinks radioactive elements do not bind to DNA, that Caesium does not cause heart disease, and that taking Calcium supplements to block the absorption of Strontium is useless. All these views run counter to mainstream opinion and sound evidence.
See www.llrc.org top link for analysis, responses and video clips.
It may be an irony that TMI stands for both Too Much Information and Three Mile Island but hey! that’s where we live.
Campaign action point: write to the Editor, Alan Rusbridger at The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU or Chris Elliott (Guardian readers’ editor) at reader@guardian.co.uk demanding that Professor Busby be afforded space to reply.