Amory Lovins Debates, sort of

Amory Lovins withdrew from a debate on the Gristmill Web site over a year ago. His withdrawal was discernible. He promised at least three more posts in response to posts by posts by David Bradish of the NEI. Those posts never appeared. In addition, Lovins had promised a response to a 2007 post by Robert Bryce. Like the Bradish responses, Lovins response to Bryce never appeared. I have recently charged that Lovins failure to produce his promised posts amounted to abandoning the field in debate.

Lovins has now announced that he will participate in a "debate" in San Francisco, next Friday. Lovins opponent will be Robert Rosner, Yhe Director of Argonne National Laboratory. In addition Peter Darbee and Al Fohrer are to participate in a panel discussion following oral presentations by Lovins and Rosner. All of this is set to occur within a span of 90 minutes. 90 minutes is not much time to pin a Lovins down, The whole thing smacks of a set up, designed to get Lovins off of the hook for the stigma caused by his bailout from the last two debates. But Lovins certainly does not deserve a pass on this one. He has set up a situation in which he can get away with his usual trick of offering a bunch of invalid considerations, with his opponent not having been offered enough time to refute his misleading assertions. In short another of AL's shabby tricks.