I’ve been involved in a reasoned discussion with an oil field accountant / attorney about US natural gas prices and total resource base. I thought that it would be worth preserving and sharing that discussion here so that it would not get buried. If you read closely between the lines, you will see why I…
Sabine Roeser, a philosopher, provided a thought-provoking talk at TEDx Delft on the importance of including emotions in debates about risky technologies. Though my initial response to the early part of her talk was defensive, I kept on watching and ended up concluding that I agreed with the vast majority of her message. Though it…
Yesterday I wrote about the need to rationally compare the physical risks associated with producing energy by burning natural gas against the similar risks of producing energy by fissioning uranium in a nuclear power plant. However, even when decision makers includes some reasonable estimates for those kinds of risks, they are still often choosing to…
It is way past time to begin the long process of helping people understand how to rationally weigh the risks versus benefits of available power or fuel systems. For far too many years, promoters of immensely profitable products like natural gas have been loudly and frequently telling society about its benefits while glossing over the…
Suzy Hobbs Baker at Pop Atomic Studios shared a link to an excellent thought piece titled Science and the Greens that is posted on Skepteco: An Ecopragmatist examines the environmental movement. Near the end of the piece, however, there is a section that needed some feedback. Many analysts who warn against the dangers of rapidly…
Widespread power outages stimulate me to intense bouts of thinking about building resilient power systems, both when they happen to me and when they happen to someone else. During the summer of 2012, during one of the hottest weeks of the year, we lost power for a little more than a week as a result…
Many, if not most, of my nuclear energy colleagues believe that our biggest hurdle is overcoming public fears. They believe that the main reason nuclear energy is not more popular is that the public is misinformed by the media. What they do not understand is that selling energy is perhaps the world’s largest and most…
A recent European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) blog post about nuclear energy “subsidies” includes a statement revealing a common misunderstanding about energy system economics. There is also a puzzling contradiction in Foratom’s blog. First it claims, “today nuclear energy is competitive in the internal energy market without requiring public financial support.” Later in the same…
On September 9, 2010, a little more than two years ago, a San Bruno, California neighborhood was rocked by a huge explosion caused by a rupture in a 30 inch natural gas pipeline. That explosion woke up the natural gas pipeline industry and its regulators and made the public slightly more aware of the dangers…
While preparing to take the SAT (many moons ago) I learned a trick I would like share (again). When faced with list of possible answers that each seem correct on first glance, “all of the above” is almost NEVER the right answer. It is as true with regard to choosing an energy path today as…
I came across an article on RosBusinessConsulting titled Russia floods global markets with O&G that supports my theory that at least some of more crafty segments of the world’s oil and gas providers recognize the return on investment (ROI) available to them from steady efforts to stoke irrational fears about the use of nuclear energy….
I keep hearing people talk about how much new natural gas supply horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has provided to the US energy market. They keep telling me that is the reason that US gas prices have stubbornly remained at levels about 1/6th to 1/3 the levels in Europe, Japan and India. The ads –…