David Bradish at NEI Nuclear Notes has produced an insightful series of blogs about Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion.
The posts enter into a rather detailed analysis of some of the assumptions, deceptions, fuzzy mathematics and ill-founded conclusions reached by my least favorite energy prognosticator. There is something close to lying about a two time college dropout whose organization’s official web site has the following description of its founder:
Amory B. Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist, is a consultant experimental physicist educated at Harvard and Oxford.
What it does not say is that Lovins dropped out of Harvard twice and attended just two years there. He somehow got into Oxford in 1967 and remained there long enough to be granted an MA, which is apparently not a Master of Arts, but roughly the equivalent of a certificate of enrollment. Forgive me for being an elitist, but no one should call themselves a scientist or a physicist without a piece of sheepskin to back them up.
What really gets my goat is the praise and near worship that he has received by members of the establishment, including people who work for the same employer as I do, who should dig a bit deeper into what he really says. David has done just that in the following series:
Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part One (The Art of Deception)
Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part Two (Big Plants vs. Small Plants)
Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part Three (Energy Efficiency and “Negawatts”)
Go and read David’s posts and get involved in the conversation. It is a good one.
