Quiz: What is the only energy source available in the U.S. today that can produce large-scale, round-the-clock electricity without emitting greenhouse gases?

Answer: Nuclear power.

Nuclear is therefore the only energy source that can provide us with reliable and relatively affordable electricity and still keep global warming concerns at bay.

To be clear, we do not believe that global warming, if it exists at all, is anthropogenic, or human-caused. It is generally accepted that the temperature of the Earth has risen by about one degree Fahrenheit. However, over half of this temperature rise appears to have occurred before 1940, well before the contemporary explosion in CO2 emissions.

But we do recognize a stacked deck when we see one. Both presidential contenders seek to curb greenhouse gases by instituting a cap-and-trade regulatory regime. A bevy of large corporations, including Exelon, FPL Group, NRG and Duke Power, have joined with environmentalists to campaign for national global warming regulation. Federally imposed limits on greenhouse gas emissions seem inevitable.

Do we expect the global warming crowd to embrace nuclear energy? Hardly. The folks who campaigned to shut down our own Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant are today’s global warming faithful. They oppose nuclear energy, arguing that nuclear power plants are expensive to build, uranium mining is environmentally unsound and nuclear waste is difficult to store. When a utility in Southern Maryland recently sought to add a third nuclear reactor at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and other greenies opposed the expansion. Greenpeace has fought nuclear power all over the globe. They are now in Finland, trying to shut down development of the European Pressurized Reactor, a more reliable and less costly, next-generation reactor.

These environmental agitators cannot deny that nuclear plants do not produce greenhouse gases. So they have had to reach to come up with a rationale for their opposition that meets the laugh test. Their latest weak excuse, concocted by environmentalist Amory Lovins in a new paper, is that nuclear power “worsens climate change” because development of nuclear power plants diverts money away from alternative energy and efficiency efforts.

But the reality is that the U.S. faces a 25 percent increase in electricity demand by 2030. The wind turbines and solar generating plants the greenies favor will produce far less electricity than we will need. According to the Energy Information Administration, these renewable energy sources today account for only about 2.3 percent of our electrical power needs. The EIA projects that, at best, renewables may fulfill four percent of our kilowatt hours by 2018.

That brings us back to nuclear power. America’s 104 commercial power reactors already provide one-fifth of U.S. electricity, about 70 percent of our carbon-free electrical power. By using nuclear energy rather than greenhouse gas emitting power sources, electric utilities prevented 681 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2006. This much displacement of CO2 is the equivalent of taking 96 percent of all passenger cars off U.S. roadways. Similarly, the European Union recently released a study showing that European nuclear power plants have displaced 7.4 million metric tons of CO2.

Even Gov. Arnold Schwar-zenegger, who has restyled himself as a global warming advocate, has figured it out. Nuclear power “has a great future,” he said, that could be “very beneficial, like in France, where they get 75 percent of their energy through nuclear power.”

That leaves the enviros caught in a trap of their own making. If they truly believe in global warming, they will ultimately have to support the only energy source that can meet electrical demand without releasing greenhouse gases. They will have to become boosters of the very nuclear plants they have clambered to shut down.