“… if you make a living doing left of center climate and energy policy, there are strong social, political, and professional incentives to get climate risk wrong…. There is little tolerance on the Left for any expression of materialist politics that challenge foundational claims of the environmental movement.”
Ron Clutz of Science Matters [1] is one of many “talented amateurs” who has worked to correct climate exaggeration and check the excesses of the United Nations’ IPCC/COP process. His post, Why Climate Alarmists Can’t Recant, is an example of his work. Clutz’s recent comment at MasterResource is worth publishing here, after which I add my observations on the reasons for the futile, wasteful crusade.
Ted Nordhaus explained why, unlike Gates, doomsters can’t recant [in his] paper:
Why I Stopped Being a Climate Catastrophist….…
On January 26, the U.S. Department of Energy released the Fact Sheet, “The Energy Department Is Delivering on Accelerating the Deployment of Nuclear Power, subtitled “President Trump is Unleashing America’s Next Nuclear Renaissance.”
Nuclear Renaissance? Like that of Joe Biden? George W. Bush? Here is a summary of federal subsidies/initiatives for commercial nuclear power from the US Department of Energy (to date).
“Nuclear fission is the most complicated, fraught, expensive way to boil water to produce steam to drive electrical turbines.”
What U.S. industry is at once the most subsidized and regulated by the federal government? The answer is commercial nuclear power. As a result, the 73-year-old “Atoms for Peace” program represents the most expensive failure (malinvestment) in US business. potholed with uncompleted projects and massive cost overruns with completed projects. Future decommissioning costs will add to this liability.
But hyperbole rules with this technology, and there is always tomorrow. Forget that competitive viability did not emerge in the 1950s or 1960s, and George W. Bush and Joe Biden both failed at their attempted “nuclear renaissance.” Expect the same to result from today’s interventionist energy policy.
A future post will outline the crash attempt by President Trump and DOE secretary Chris Wright to get new nuclear capacity on track.…
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