Just as I am finishing my course here at Dartmouth I learn that Lovins or someone else from Rocky Mountain Institute will speak here this summer. I guess I'll try to go.
“It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we might do with it,...like decide that nobody needs The Rocky Mountain Institute, or my services"
I am particularly incensed with his caricature of the evil technocrat elite as well, as it has been my experience as well that infrastructure is built and maintained by people with a deep sense of duty that are well aware of their roll and importance of their task. Most if not all take it as a compliment to their skill and dedication that they are not noticed by the public - it means they are doing their job right.
I've said this elsewhere before, if not here: when I see Lovins and his hypocritical fellow-travelers living the sans-culottes. low-energy life they preach about, I will grant them some respect - but I'm still not going to agree with them.
While listening to the radio and checking the different political views out there, besides the dittohead variety which most of it is unfortunately, I came across Air America's broadcaster Thom Hartmann.
He believes that that all we have to do is make the switch to solar and wind energy and do away with nuclear power. Then he uses the example of Germany, which is aggressively pushing solar energy, as an example we should follow.
But for some reason he neglected to mention the Germany, like other European nations, are on a massive coal power plant building spree. If solar and wind energy was so great why would Germany have to build new coal fired plants and send god knows how many tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?
I am not a scientific person but it appears to me that for renewable energies to work there must be at minimum other power more traditional power sources that can kick in immediately when the sun is not shining and the wind not blowing.
Maybe Amory Lovins has a solution for that he is working on.
Amory Lovins has been writing about energy for more than 30 years. His "bridge" solutions for the times when conservation, wind and solar are not sufficient are coal, gas, and oil.
Why is it that Al Gore and other environmentalists who are fond of quoting Lovins don't notice his promotion of fossil fuel combustion?
Just as the Green movement and Gerhardt Schroeder, now a Gazprom exec, have succeeded in increasing Germany's carbon footprint by replacing nuclear plants with fossil fuel combustion, so Lovins is diligently making sure that his clients, the high-carbon emitters, continue to thrive in the US.
Wikipedia says Amory Lovins' former wife Hunter Lovins was "Named Henry R. Luce visiting professor at Dartmouth College", yet his own biography on rmi.org says he was the "Luce Visiting Professor at Dartmouth".
Just found your blog through Paidbypixels. See, advertising DOES work!
It's nice to see someone getting the word out that not every nuke plant's going to go up like Chernobyl, kind of like every ship isn't going to break in half like the SS Schenectady.
It's sad that so many of the people that lament nuclear power will also be the ones who say that wind power is bad because they kill birds, hydroelectric is bad because the reservoirs destroy habitats, and tidal power is bad because it upsets fragile coastal ecosystems. It's as if they want six billion people to willingly go back to an era before the Industrial Revolution.
Kevin:
Glad you found Atomic Insights. For those of you who do not know what PaidByPixels is, it is a way that Callie Lewis of Geek Brief is raising money for a 50 state tour. I am hoping that she and Neil plan to visit a nuclear plant or two while they are traveling.
With regards to the rest of your comment, I think all those other power sources do have negative drawbacks that make them bad for the environment. What gets my goat is when people point to wind, hydro, and tidal as possible solutions when they have no hope at all of displacing fossil fuels on a technical basis - they are far too dependent on specific geography and weather. In addition to their environmental limitations, they are too expensive for more than just a few heavily subsidized demonstrations.
My real enemies are people that work against nuclear power and talk badly against fossil fuels, but still run their computers, SUV's, latte machines, hair dryers, hot showers, washing machines, and expect their food to show up in the grocery stores.
The end result of that kind of activity is to continue the addiction and continue enriching the purveyors of fossil fuels while delaying and increasing the cost of the atomic alternative.
Kit
A lot depends on your specific needs and desires. Do you want a 'brick and mortar' experience at a major university? If so, where?
Would you be open to an online degree? I represent the nuclear industry on the Governance Committee for EPCE, a collaboration of energy providers that has worked with Bismarck State College and Clemson University to provide accredited Associate and Bachelor degrees - all online. www.epceonline.org
Thanks for the detail on Amory.
As you may recall, Rod, I posted financial information on several ‘non-profits’ last week in the Mother Jones blogs. All non-profits must file a tax return to the IRS. By law they must make these forms public. In fact, the IRS regs say they must keep their three most current years’ forms on hand at any office with more than three employees and they must show them on demand to whoever requests them.
To save you shoe leather, some entrepreneur gathers them all from the IRS and posts these IRS forms, Form 990 on a website in .pdf format. Form 990s are akin to our Form 1040s. The site’s search engine works well to track down every non-profit registered in this country. www.guidestar.org Check out Amory’s little cash cow, or any of the other anti-nuclear activist organizations. Here are some of the details found in RMI’s 2006 Form 990:
Rocky Mountain Institute – Amory Lovins, CEO.
Receipts of $9,371,101, Expenses of $7,530,761…almost $2M in profit
$3.2 million in salaries.
$706K in travel.
$108K for telephones.
$6.3 million in investments and a $1.2 million line of credit.
Amory’s compensation was $189,163 and Martha Picketts was $169,392.
Five other employees made between $108K to $176K each.
As part of $2.5 million in Assets, there are three different “Staff Housing” properties listed. Perhaps another employee benefit or free housing for Amory.
Is it even possible for a pre-industrial Earth to support the present world population?
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