Yet the national media assumed and assumed. The TV networks, especially, did a lot of assuming, and what coverage they permitted knowledgeable scientific opponents was so fleeting that if you sneezed you missed it. The dire assertions of global warning primarily are predicated on computer models, of course, and computer models notoriously reflect the assumptions of those who toss in the data. An analogy might be the Americans with Disabilities Act, signed to bipartisan cheers by President Bush. In less than a decade that law has been stretched to define disability as anything from split hairs to congenital crankiness.
Good intentions can lead to judicial and regulatory tyranny.
It is clean, safe and can be economical. But any serious discussion of nuclear power at the conference would have been like having a hawk at a pigeon convention. It does require an exertion of will to think seriously about nukes. The image of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima is imbedded in the collective memory. Than at Three Mile Island.