Amory Lovins understands that high quality blogging requires interaction between the author and the people who take time to make comments. He actively engages with readers after he publishes posts on Forbes.com. He even visits here and engages on occasion. I admire that and enjoy the opportunity to spar with a famous person whose views…
Amory Lovins has once again chosen to publicly display his incredibly creative math skills. This time he is claiming that closing and destroying Diablo Canyon, a well-run and nicely situated nuclear power plant, 20 to 40 years before it has completed its useful life will reduce CO2 emissions and save money. His latest example of…
The Precourt Energy Efficiency Center at Stanford University hosted the 2016 Silicon Valley Energy Summit yesterday. The headline attraction was an “Oxford-style” debate featuring two Nobel laureates–Steven Chu and Burton Richter–versus UC-Berkeley’s Dan Kammen and NRDC’s Ralph Cavanagh. The topic was promoted as Resolved: “The World Needs A Nuclear Renaissance.” The event was live-streamed and…
Exelon, a corporation that I publicly “unfriended” in 2009, has apparently failed to receive the assistance it demanded by the May 31st deadline it imposed on the Illinois legislature. Aside: For reasons that aren’t obvious, Exelon’s public communications about financial difficulties affecting its nuclear plants rarely, if ever, mention the magnitude of the cost increases…
During the ECO:nomics Conference held in Santa Barbara, CA April 6-8 2016, the Wall Street Journal’s Russell Gold Michael Brune peppered Sierra Club’s Executive Director with direct questions about his organization’s current and potential position vis a vis nuclear energy and climate change. Brune’s dismissive responses insulted the thousands of hard-working people who have been…
This is the second installment in the series. You can find the first installment here. This post is focused on answering the following question. Is the Turkey Point power station violating the Clean Water Act (CWA)? Bottom line up front (BLUF): FP&L is complying with the Clean Water Act at Turkey Point. SACE’s contentions are…
This will be a multi-part post aimed at addressing a convoluted and emotional issue. It will attempt to satisfactorily answer the following questions. Why are organizations targeting the Turkey Point power station? Why do they claim that the plant is threatening the Everglades National Park, the Biscayne Bay National Park and the groundwater adjacent to…
S. David Freeman and Leah Y Parks have published a book titled All-Electric America: A Climate Solution and the Hopeful Future. There are a number of visionary sections of the book that appeal to me. However, I was not surprised to find out that the book takes a strong position in opposition to nuclear energy….
By Rauli Partanen and Janne M. Korhonen Earlier this year, we wrote a piece called “A most unwise campaign.” Writing as independent researchers, members of the Finnish Ecomodernist Society, and in association with non-profit organization Energy4Humanity, we criticized some of the claims prominently made in support of one of the staples of established anti-nuclear activism:…
During COP16, Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson described attributes of his team’s most recently produced paper. The abstract leads with the following claim about the paper’s content. This study addresses the greatest concern facing the large-scale integration of wind, water, and solar (WWS) into a power grid: the high cost of avoiding load loss caused by…
National Geographic Explorer — now part of the Rupert Murdock media empire — published the below clips of Bill Nye, the bow-tied science guy, beseeching “deniers” to stop denying so that we can all get to work. He calls for an immediate halt to the use of fossil fuels and their replacement with “renewable energy”…
by Paul Lorenzini Part II: Rethinking Environmentalism Today’s environmentalism is premised on two fundamental ideologies: first, solutions must “harmonize with nature” and second, nuclear power must be opposed at all costs. In the first part of this discussion I addressed the conflicts raised by constraining environmentalism in this way and how those constraints are working…