MIT Climate CoLab update – the result?

This is an update to this recent BNC post: MIT competition update – 3 days left, votes needed!

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Guest Post by Ron Gester M.D. The Treasurer of SCGI, Ron is a retired emergency physician and geologist, who is a passionate about solving the climate change problem.

Voting at the MIT Climate CoLab competition after my post last week became quite intense. I know several people who tracked the voting carefully and got quite involved in the excitement of the “race.” Some of us were writing people we had not written in years and people we knew were not supportive of nuclear energy. Some were making personal phone calls while others were sending tweets. The response was overwhelming and beyond our expectations.

We saw votes come from around the globe. We heard back from people who were learning about the potential for 4th generation nuclear power for the first time. We received emails from long time advocates as well as new arrivals who had initiated their own campaigns. The timing of our surge in votes suggests that many followers of BNC jumped into the challenge.

The conclusion is gratifying; when the options for combating climate change are put to a public vote, there is strong support for the inclusion of nuclear energy.

The final results from the competition will not be posted by MIT’s Climate CoLab until late next week. From their post:

From August 1 to August 31, 2013, the public cast over 4500 votes, selecting the most innovative climate change proposals out of 59 finalists.

We are taking a few days to tally and double-check the votes, and will announce both the Popular Choice and Judges Choice winners via email and social media mid/late next week.

Until then we can only say that from what we saw, Tom’s proposal clearly received the most votes in the entire competition. Whether or not this will result in an award from the judges is unknown. We do expect that Tom will be invited to make a presentation at their conference November 6 – 7, 2013. We will keep you posted.

In addition to supporting Tom’s bid for the speaker’s podium, together we have shared the potential of the IFR with many individuals and groups who were previously unaware of this technology. While the actual number of supporters gathered may be small in comparison to number we need to cause change, it is clear that our person to person educational appeal can be persuasive and our collective voice can be strong. In my guest post of August 28, I lamented that “the pro-nuclear side is not tough competition.”

I clearly underestimated your energy.

Thank you for the time and effort you contributed to this project.