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Dieter Helm’s The Carbon Crunch: How We’re Getting Climate Change Wrong–and How to Fix It has the potential to be an influential energy policy book, not just for the UK but for the rest of Europe and the United States. Helm has been making the rounds to promote the book and recently...

An article titled Fukushima inspires safety features for Georgia nuclear reactors is a recent addition to CNN’s Powering the Planet series. It is packed full of misinformation about nuclear energy along with subtle and not so subtle promotion of natural gas, one of nuclear energy’s strongest...

I’ve been involved in a reasoned discussion with an oil field accountant / attorney about US natural gas prices and total resource base. I thought that it would be worth preserving and sharing that discussion here so that it would not get buried somewhere. If you read closely between the lines...

A commenter on my last smoking gun report claimed that it did not provide direct evidence of antinuclear activity by the beneficiaries – in that case, the people selling LNG tankers to a market that is growing because of the forced shutdown of operable nuclear power plants in Japan and Germany...

It’s been a while since my last ‘smoking gun’ report so it might be worth a brief reminder of what that categorization means. For Atomic Insights, the tag ‘smoking gun’ means a story that includes evidence of fossil fuel related interests working to oppose nuclear energy...

I came across an article on RosBusinessConsulting titled Russia floods global markets with O&G that supports my theory that at least some of more crafty segments of the world’s oil and gas providers recognize the return on investment (ROI) available to them from steady efforts to stoke irrational...

Richard Muller has a lot in common with Amory Lovins. They both received MacArthur Foundation Fellowships (aka “Genius Grants”) several decades ago – Muller in 1982 and Lovins in 1993. They both get a lot of attention from the commercial media and from elected politicians. They both...

On February 2, 2012, the Sierra Club allowed a Time magazine blog to break a poorly kept “secret” whose existence had threatened to get out of hand. In a post titled Exclusive: How the Sierra Club Took Millions From the Natural Gas Industry—and Why They Stopped Bryan Walsh described how one...

On January 9, 2012, The Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University held a hydrofracking workshop. The organizers invited a number of speakers from both industry and academia to discuss a contentious, but important energy issue from a variety of perspectives. You can read about the workshop...

As an undergraduate, I was trained to read between the lines and to interpret the words on the page in context with the author’s background and intent. With that in mind, I see an interesting marketing plan in between the following words from page 31 of ExxonMobil’s 2012 The Outlook for Energy...

An article in The Guardian titled UK’s faith in nuclear power threatens renewables, says German energy expert is full of evidence of the alliance between natural gas salesmen and the advocates of unreliable sources of energy like wind and solar in an effort to discourage the use of nuclear energy...

Proving the Principle provides some wonderful and inspiring stories about the days when the United States had a place where atomic tinkerers could explore new ideas and test those ideas with real reactors and real materials. It also provides some insights about the economically and politically motivated...

A ‘smoking gun’ article is one that reveals a direct connection between a fossil fuel or alternative energy system promoter and a strongly antinuclear attitude. One of my guiding theories about energy is that a great deal of the discussion about safety, cost, and waste disposal is really...

I have recently been introduced to a fascinating energy industry information source called European Energy Review. It is useful to find new perspectives on a topic as broad and as important as the large and lucrative energy supply business. The situation in Europe has always been substantially different...

John Hofmeister's book Why We Hate the Oil Companies should be required reading for people who aspire to engage in the energy conversation. It helps to explain so many things. I do not agree with his proposals or even the point of view that Hofmeister expresses; the reason that I want people to read...

During my stint as a Washington DC bureaucrat, I noticed how certain phrases worked their way into the daily language. Most people were probably not even aware of how quickly they would adopt the popular phrases, but I have always been a bit fascinated with language and how it develops. I tried to take...

I have a number of acquaintances who either work or have worked for ExxonMobil. Most of those ExxonMobil employees were people I met at the Naval Academy or at alumni functions. They are some of the brightest and numerically competent people I have ever met. Figures from 3rd Quarter 2010...

There is an article on RenewableEnergyWorld.com titled Welcome to the Revolution: Emanuel Sachs and Frank van Mierlo that includes some remarkably negative commentary about nuclear energy, especially considering the education level of the men being quoted. One of them has a PhD from MIT and one has both...

I once earned the nickname of "Fuels" while participating in a series of Naval War College seminar courses titled National Security Decision Making, Strategy and War, and Joint Maritime Operations. Each course in the series was taught in three-four hour blocks one night per week and lasted...

Alex Matthiessen, President of Riverkeeper, has written a letter to the editor of the New York Times with his suggestions for replacing the 2045 Megawatts of emission free electricity produced by the Indian Point nuclear power station. Because letters to the editor sections of commercial newspapers often...

On September 23, 2009, John Felmy, the chief economist of the American Petroleum Institute (API) spoke at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport, PA about the vast opportunities that the API sees for developing the shale gas that is buried about 6,000 feet below the surface. Warning:...

The Boston Globe has published an op-ed piece from John E. Rosenthal, president of Meredith Management, that is titled A recurring nuclear nightmare . The opinion piece included several pieces of misinformation including the following statement: Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, obligating...

One of the most famous battles against nuclear energy in the US, a struggle whose effects remain important to this day, was fought on Long Island. The saga involved nearly two decades of highly publicized effort marred by many failures in management and a well-organized opposition effort that successfully...