> I think it is a mistake to deflate the political aspect of things.

It is also a mistake to inflate, which is what I'm concerned with. I'm under the impression that the political aspect is being inflated because this is an aspect that the average person can more easily understand.

> Listening to experts is also not a good advice on it own, there is a lot of domain specific knowledge out there.

This is why I specifically mention consensus and the vast complexity of the problem. You can easily replace the instances of nuclear in this paragraph with any power source and the basis would still hold true (honestly even the concerns of lobbying from the above paragraph). But there are experts in nuclear power, experts in solar, experts in wind, etc then there are people who have worked in these industries for decades that lead these groups (usually the leaders of these groups hold multi-domain knowledge and there are several members). This hierarchical structure provides the communication network for these people. The mistake you're making here is assuming that these people are working in isolation. Go to any DOE lab and you will find reactor researchers eating lunch with solar researchers. These people talk. They talk a lot. It is their job to talk to one another. Half the models that the climate scientists do wouldn't work if these people weren't talking to one another. You're over simplifying the reality of the situation by creating nice and neat boxes for researchers to sit in. I'm not saying "listen to a nuclear expert" I'm saying "listen to the consensus of several disciplines." Having been in those lab settings I don't see the nuclear researchers being anti-solar or anti-wind, but I do see them being anti-fossil fuels. Similarly I don't see the solar or wind researchers being anti-nuclear (actually the opposite) but I do see them being anti-fossil fuels. Even the researchers studying fossil fuels there are anti-fossil fuels and pro nuclear and renewables. There's a very clear consensus here. They disagree about the proportions of the energy portfolio, but not the components. And honestly their disagreement on proportions isn't large and all sides are making different assumptions about technologies that do not yet exist, and they will gladly admit this.

> Off course I am non of these things, my expertise is in front end web development. I am less then a layman in nuclear or power policy. However I am worried about the climate emergency, and I do worry that experts giving advice in favor of nuclear power are misguided—or worse—have their own agenda.

Do you question that of fossil fuels? Solar? Wind? Hydro? If not, why? What's the difference here? Why do you have faith in one set but not the other? They all have their own agendas, and for the most part they are the same (though applied to their own technology). But a researcher also has a very different agenda than the company providing the energy product. Clearly the latter has a more biased position than the former and I'm saying to listen to the former.

> I don’t think this puts me on a high horse or—more accurately—under a tin foil hat.

These are the same. The tin foil hat is often associated with believing that the scientists have missed something that is clear to you. The tin foil hat is the know it all manager who micromanages but doesn't have the first clue about the technical aspects of your work. We've all had that manager. We all know that manager's ego and how frustrating they are. How they make it more difficult to get work done.

> Experts failed to stop the climate catastrophe before it was an emergency.

I'm not sure where this diverges from my main point. It is exactly the problem I'm concerned with. The experts say one thing. That thing gets politicized. The politicization takes over and manipulates the perception of what the experts say to fit the political narrative. Population becomes confused and argues. Policy fails as we fight and experts are scrambling to clarify what they actually mean and how that's different than what people are saying that they mean.

> Again I am not an expert on what I am talking about.

Then don't take a hard position, but rather a soft one. That is all I'm arguing for here. I'm not sure how many times I need to say this, but I'm not advocating for nuclear so much as "let the experts." If that's a controversial position then I'm highly concerned. We can only do the best we can do. I'm quite certain that the best efforts of experts is vastly superior to the best efforts of laymen. Sure, the laymen will have a few wins now and then, but the likelihood of success is magnitudes higher by going with experts. (Again, I'm not saying don't be critical, I'm just saying that if you're a layman don't bring a baseball bat to the debate. Doing so represents extreme arrogance and leads to a regression in progress)

> When reading commentary on HN I usually try to filter out the people that seem to know what they are talking about.

This is great and should be done, but HN is not highly populated by climate nor energy experts, although there are some here. It's easy to say things that sound intelligent without them actually being.

Edit: I want to add, in my original post I also did shit on the typical pro-nuclear commenter, complaining about how they are talking about things they don't know about (thorium, SMRs, liquid, breeders, etc). It should be explicitly clear that my comment is more "hey guys, maybe this is a complex subject and we should stop arguing so strongly and see what the experts say" and not "fuck yeah nuclear power screw those renewables." I'm tired of anything remotely suggesting nuclear is anything but evil is equated to the latter.