[UPDATE:
In the comments, Kate Sheppard has responded to this post, saying that I (and William Connolley) have "grossly misconstrued" what she wrote in her Guardian article. Here is my explanation and apology to Kate.]
In an article about the nuclear implications of this week's East Coast earthquake, Kate Sheppard writes:
We had a pretty good warning earlier this year, when the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan caused an even bigger tragedy when the Fukushima nuclear power plant suffered a meltdown.
Anybody spot the problem? William Connolley did and he's all over it:
The tsunami killed 20k people, or whatever. Fukushima killed no-one, directly, though it wouldn't be surprising if it kills a few eventually. So why was Fukushima an "even bigger tragedy"?
Because nuclear power is still a bogeyman to progressives. Many also break out into a cold sweat over genetically modified foods. Nothing anti-science about these positions, right?
