🧵 Today, on International Women’s Day let’s remember & celebrate an incredible scientist who you’ve probably never heard of:

Austrian-Swedish physicist LISE MEITNER

Lise was born in Vienna in 1878. Lise excelled at science from an early age, but as a woman she no was advised to pursue another career.

Lise went on to co-discover and coin the term ‘fission’ anyway, although she was excluded from the Nobel Prize for it.

She also co-discovered the element protactinium.

Professor on the panel who argued for solar: nuclear cannot be built quickly enough to decarbonise. It cannot be done in under 20 years anywhere in the world, and (etc)

Me: Actually, in France…

Professor: Thank you for that Zion, I didn’t know. You’ve changed my mind.

🎯 The students were also v engaged & asked good questions. I did a similar debate to this two years ago and the experience & reception were wildly different… Just goes to show how much things have changed. Going to take some credit for that. Thanks to everyone else who has helped!

This font. No. It’s hideous

🧵 Vandana Shiva is widely celebrated as an “eco warrior goddess,” but she spreads misinformation about GMOs and campaigns against them and other solutions. In fact, her campaigning harms people.

In an era of eco-anxiety, how do we protect young people from the lure of doomerism?

56% of young people feel that ‘humanity is doomed.’ Out of desperation and fear, many young people are joining climate activist groups.

zionlights.substack.com/p/in-an-era-of… I understand why: I’ve been there, done that, bought the rhetoric. But after two decades of taking action, it’s become clear that some groups are doing more harm than good.

I was misled by these organisations, and many young people are being misled now.

Energiewende, or “energy turnaround”, was Germany’s plan to run on only renewable energy by 2038. Integral to this was complete closure of nuclear energy.

Energiewende has failed; Germany is missing its own climate targets. This is not just due to the invasion of Ukraine.🪡 In 2018, a European Commission report concluded: “Simultaneous phase out of nuclear energy & growing energy demand has led to unchanged levels (same as 1990) of energy generation from gas,coal & lignite leading to slower decrease in GHG emission levels”

ec.europa.eu/info/sites/inf…

Absolute shame on Greenpeace for using the Ukrainian flag this way, when Ukraine is FOR nuclear power.

Greenpeace’s activism is the reason countries like Germany are so dependent on Russian fossil fuels, thereby funding Putin’s war. 🗑

https://twitter.com/RogerSpautz/status/1544226633619496961

Get in the 🗑 @Greenpeace_Lux

This is not true and it’s crucial that there is level-headed communication about this that doesn’t cause panic, which can also be dangerous. It’s a worrying situation, but a meltdown is not going to be “10x Chernobyl” 🧵

https://twitter.com/dmytrokuleba/status/1499543775240196099

Listen to the experts on this. I’ll post some useful links on this thread, and I’m sure Ben and others will be happy to answer questions too. >

https://twitter.com/benpheard/status/1499553057838751745

Here's a🧵to debunk today's article in @guardian by @jonathonporritt, which makes many false (& frankly irresponsible) assertions about clean energy. theguardian.com/commentisfree/… /1 First, the title calls nuclear & hydrogen 'techno-fixes' while advocating for (only) renewable technology. Newsflash: the large-scale development of renewable tech is also a 'techno-fix' > nationalgeographic.com/science/articl… /2

**Breaking news** Climate action group Nuclear for Net Zero have just projected messages on the sides of London landmarks in support for new nuclear power plants, ahead of @RishiSunak's Spending Review tomorrow> #nuclear4netzero *Journalists*: For the full press release & more photos please DM me with your email address.
#climateaction