Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Acolytes

(Hat tips to the Sovietologist, who referred to Lovins acolytes last year, and to Red Craig who pointed me to an article by Ferdinand Banks, that elaborates the Lovins, Romm link.)

My last post on Joe Ramm raised for me the question about where Ramm is coming from. I had never looked at Romm's Wikipedia page untill this morning. When I did I found that"from 1991 to 1993, he was a researcher at the Rocky Mountain Institute. He co-authored the 1994 Rocky Mountain Institute Report, Greening the Building and the Bottom Line: Increasing Productivity Through Energy-Efficient Design." Romm and Lovins co-authored a Winter 1992-1993 Foreign Affair essay, ‘Fueling a competitive Economy’. s in which the two energy "experts" maintained,
"For example, the Swedish State Power Board found that doubling electric efficiency, switching generators to natural gas and biomass fuels and relying upon the cleanest power plants would support a 54 per cent increase in real GNP from l987 to 2010 – while phasing out all nuclear power. Additionally, the heat and power sector’s carbon dioxide output would fall by one-third, and the costs of electrical services by nearly $1 billion per year. Sweden is already among the world’s most energy-efficient countries, even though it is cold, cloudy and heavily industrialized. Other countries should be able to do better. "

Energy economist Ferdinand E. Banks stated that the statement "and similar contributions are misleading bunkum." Ah well isn't misleading bunkum par for the course for a pseudo-physicist who claims to have repealed Jevons Paradox, and for his follower, who stops thinking whenever his master orders it?

Romm appears to be a Amory Lovins acolyte who follows the masters line no matter how crazy it is..

Romm's frequent cross posting on the Gristmill Blog, is also suggestive. Last year NEI Nuclear Notes made some interesting observations concerning Roberts. The comment first quotes Roberts: "The question is not whether nuclear power is "acceptable" or "good" by some subjective standard -- economic, moral, or otherwise. It's not even whether investments in nuclear power could lead to emission reductions. The question is: what is the maximum amount of climate change mitigation we can get for a given dollar of investment? Nuclear fails that test."

Then NEI Nuclear Notes asks, "where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, Amory Lovins. Roberts quotes him in the post but that last sentence from Roberts above looks like he’s pawning Lovins’ words as his own."

Googling "Roberts and Lovins" brings up multiple instances in which Roberts has serves as a Lovins literary acolyte. Roberts like Romm then should be considered as Amory Lovins' intellectual stooge.

I recently noted that a former California Energy Commissioner John Geesman, Roberts and Romm almost symaltaniously launched very similar attacks on nuclear power. All three focused on cost issues. I had previously done a little research on Karl Rove's use of symaltaniously attacks by Bush administration media stooges, against Al Gore in 2004. The type off to the existence of a coordinated was that numerous media personalities were saying the same thing at the same time. The likelihood that as many as a dozen people would independently have the same idea was low. None of them acknowledged a dependency one someone else for the idea through a quotation, and their language was not consistent with a common literary source. The most likely explanation was that someone had contacted each of them and planted the idea in each head. My suspicion was that the coordinator was Karl Rove.

We must ask then if we are looking at a similar situation, a propaganda campaign conducted by Lovins acolytes, and coordinated by Lovins.

Update: The other shore dropped, the master just posted a 52 page Anti-Nuclear scree.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent work, Charles. I was very disappointed to learn of the Romm-Lovins connection when I read his Wikipedia article as well. The huge irony is that Romm is talking about 1000 GW of nuclear as one of his "wedges" while at the same time writing attack pieces on nuclear that are riddled with inaccuracies (like ignoring the role of thorium in future energy supply, stating that CSP plants won't use cooling water, ignoring the effects of increased materials costs on wind and solar, etc.)

Anonymous said...

I enjoy your work as well Charles. I have always wondered why a person with a technical background was so anti nuclear. You have shed some light on that.

In a recent paper he deliberately misrepresented the water consumption issue.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/2/121833/6504/#6

it completely destroys his credibility in my eyes.

Bill Hannahan

Charles Barton said...

Bill can I copy your Gristmill response on Nuclear Green?

Anonymous said...

of ccourse, anything you like

Bill H

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