As part of the discussions stimulated by their airing of Pandora’s Promise, CNN hosted a debate between Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute and Dale Bryk of the Natural Resources Defense Council. That debate included some commentary that I thought was worth promoting to the front page. A commenter named Fred, a tech who has…
In the above clip titled Is nuclear power good for our planet Andrew Birch, the co-founder and CEO of Sungevity says that the main reason that he does not like nuclear energy is that it “costs too much”. However, he reveals the shallow nature of his energy production understanding and his financially driven bias by…
Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute states that he loves wind and solar and always has, but he has learned to recognize their limitations. He reminds viewers that solar energy produces less than one tenth of one percent of the energy used in the United States. He is deeply concerned about climate change and the…
Joris van Dorp is an HVAC and energy systems mechanical engineer at a building installations consultancy. His primary work is associated with projects intended to improve energy efficiency/sustainability within the field. Clients include medical centers, airports, data centers, laboratories, office buildngs and some industrial clients. On October 18, 2013, Joris submitted the following comment. It…
On October 9, 2013, David Letterman interviewed Mark Z. Jacobson, a leading proponent of a 100% renewable energy future. He described Jacobson as a man with a plan that should make us all more optimistic; that plan describes a world that has a completely changed energy supply system that does not threaten us with catastrophic…
Someday, America is going to return to logic and reality. We may be making some progress as shown by the fact that there are an increasing number of people who no longer watch TV or trust the TV talking heads in the entertainment business called “television news.” However, we still have our issues. One irrational…
Tina Gerhardt has published an almost sadly amusing article on the Huffington Post titled Obama’s Climate Action Plan: Nuclear Energy? in which she tries to make the case that President Obama’s climate action plan is an undeserved endorsement of nuclear energy. Although less in the headlines than the plan’s position on coal-fired power plants, hydraulic…
Rick Maltese is a creative artist who spent this afternoon creating an amusing parody of the diffuse, weather dependent, unreliable power sources that some think can beat both fossil fuel and nuclear energy. Share Call Them Unreliable widely! PS – Just in case you would like to have a sing along at your next pronuclear…
I’ve been engaging in a discussion with several commenters who strongly disagree with my assertion that atomic fission is the ONLY technology that has the technical potential to beat hydrocarbon combustion in the market. It can provide cheaper, cleaner and more reliable heat that can be converted into useful power in almost exactly the same…
Matt Wald at the New York Times published an article titled Nuclear Opponents Invoke Solyndra that alerted me to a new tactic by the forces arrayed against the beneficial use of nuclear energy in the battle against hydrocarbon addiction and climate change. The new meme is a smear on nuclear energy by falsely attempting to…
A friend just posted a link to a site that everyone who wants effective energy decision making should bookmark. It is titled Performance of Photovoltaics (PV) in Germany. The site includes animation features that illustrate the modeled output of solar installations over the course of each day. The model used should provide a reasonably good…
I’m mad as hell and I don’t want to take it any more. Groups that fight any and all use of nuclear energy and also spend time advocating for the increased use of massive, industrial scale energy collectors on undeveloped, virgin land should NEVER be called “environmental groups”. I am not saying that the groups…