Amy runs a blog for the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research. On my post answering Drudge’s questions to Gore, she writes:
But if you go back to my original post, you’ll be hard-pressed to know which three answers she is talking about. I don’t think the answer to any of the questions could be clearer. She herself cites only part of one answer in her post, the answer about nuclear energy:
“If a significant price for carbon makes nuclear attractive to utilities and financiers, and if the plants meet the necessary safety and environmental codes, and if the country can finally agree on a place to put the nuclear waste, then new nuclear plants may well make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in this country….”
She then writes:
If, if, if, and “may well.” Why does the suggested answer contain four qualifers?
It contains four qualifiers because there are many reasons that nobody has ordered a new nuclear plant in this country for decades and we can’t just cram them down the throat of the public until and unless they make sense. [Gore's actual answer in the House hearing was shorter and sweeter -- nukes may play a role, but probably not a big role because they are so costly.] Amy then writes:
Wouldn’t 700 new nuclear plants reduce carbon dioxide emissions even if Congress refused (and wisely so!) to have Washington control the public’s carbon dioxide emissions?
She hasn’t read my book (and unwisely so!), and thus she doesn’t know that the 700 new nukes are built worldwide over 50 years. The part of my answer she cut out explains that the U.S. can cut emissions sharply without building new nukes. Apparently any answer other than “yes” or “no” constitutes ducking a question to Amy.
So who is Amy Ridenour and why is she so confused about Climate Change? Hilariously, I’ve answered the first question but ducked the second.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
A simple statistic is that imposing California efficiency standards at the Federal level and bringing U.S. electricity use per person down to California’s level (i.e. going from 11,997 kWh per capita down to 6,732 kWh per capita in 2003) is the equivalent of building 217 new nuclear reactors in the U.S. Currently we have 104 reactors, so this would be like adding 209% to our reactor count. Efficiency is always better than building. All it takes is the political will in Washington DC to pass what California passed 30 years ago. It wouldn’t hurt to make Arthur Rosenfeld U.S. energy czar either.
A follow up on the above:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2005publications/CEC-999-2005-003/CEC-999-2005-003.PDF
see page 12.