5 ms·

One of the authors is known for heavily cherry-picking his facts, making some pretty extreme and outrageous assumptions, and suing fellow academic critics who p

One of the authors is known for heavily cherry-picking his facts, making some pretty extreme and outrageous assumptions, and suing fellow academic critics who point this out. Caveat lector.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Good to know. I posted it here because it'll get a critical review.
- scottlocklin 8y ago
  https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/mark-jacobson-drops-lawsuit-against-critics-of-his-100-renewables https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/mark-jacobson-d... Looks like an idiot to me.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Judge the math, not the man.
    - vowelless 8y ago
      Refute the critics, not sue the critics.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        Regardless of what your opinion of the author's character (and my polite rebuttal to look at the data instead), you might be biased on the topic [1]. I'm attempting to discuss from a place of intellectual honesty, and I expect the same from others. "And it’s the 21st century — its embarrassing that we are talking about wind energy!" "Simply put, we need nuclear power. We need to spend more time and energy trying to innovate on nuclear energy. That’s what is needed to support the power needs of 10 billion people who will have the energy demands of a modern western nation today. Solar and wind will just not cut it." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18907686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18907686
        asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
        Hang on. Didn't you just say, "Judge the math not the man." What are the ground rules here. Are we allowed to take into account authors' previous bad behavior or aren't we?
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        toomuchtodo 8y ago
        > What are the ground rules here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. " "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
        asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
        Sure, I agree with all that. But you're dismissing the parent poster based on his comment history, while castigating him for dismissing your link based on the author's lawsuit history. That seems a little inconsistent to me, is all I'm saying. Personally, I think a history of suing one's critics does open one's subsequent work up to significantly increased skepticism from the community, because it's a strong signal that something's off. There's some norm-breaking going on. I wish I could read this article but it seems like it's behind a paywall.
        kortilla 8y ago
        Posting rational thoughts in other threads does not mean you are biased in everything else. Unless you mean the author is biased against dogma?
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - scarejunba 8y ago
      I'm not going to read bullshit by some kook. He can go judge his own damn math.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - xupybd 8y ago
    "His core defense: That massive, unexplained increase in hydropower capacity wasn’t a modeling error; it was a modeling assumption. He assumed that the U.S. could simply add turbines on existing dams such that they could deliver 15 times more instantaneous capacity, even though total flows for a year would remain constant" This seems like a pretty big error. Enough for me to be unsure of the paper linked here.
jessriedel 8y ago
For others: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z._Jacobson https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z._Jacobson
- amacbride 8y ago
  Oh, that guy. Suing PNAS and the author of a study critical of his work is honestly quite shocking. One would hope the work would stand for itself, or at least the response should’ve been another paper rather than a lawsuit.
  - strainer 8y ago
    You find it shocking that he might have a valid case against them, or that he has money to waste on legal harassment ?
    - archgoon 8y ago
      It is thoroughly inappropriate to respond to legitimate criticism, made in good faith, published in a reputable journal, with a lawsuit. It doesn't matter if you're right. If you're right; arguments can be made to show that your opponents are wrong (and he was in fact allowed a rebuttal letter in PNAS). Filing a lawsuit breaks any semblance of civility of discourse and dispassionate pursuit of truth; and results in everyone worse off, as the discussion has become thoroughly toxic. It's burning down the entire house because someone disagreed with your analysis.
      - strainer 8y ago
        Whether it was appropriate or not depends on whether the criticism was legitimate or not. That is the legitimate purpose of legal proceedings to determine.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - 8y ago
godelski 8y ago
It is pretty easy to find him doing just that in this paper. Here's some examples > Nuclear energy is often seen as a fundamental or bridging technology for future low-carbon systems (International Energy Agency, 2015a; Echavarri, 2013). While it is true that electricity production from nuclear energy is characterized by very low CO2 emissions during the operation phase of the plant, its full life-cycle CO2 emissions, including all up- and downstream processes, are typically much more CO2 intensive. While this is true, the paper does not make an equivalent comparison to their scenarios. They do not include the upstream and downsteam emissions from PV and wind. Which should include their energy storage requirements. When addressing storage requirements they hand wave, pointing to two papers that also hand wave the requirement. They all but flat out deny the duck curve. But regardless, they don't include these parts into their own scenarios. Later when they present their 6 scenarios, they assume no change in nuclear. If you do want to make a good comparison moving forward, you should have a scenario 7 that would shut down the current reactors and replace them with new genIII or genIV reactors. You might say I'm being facetious, but the issue is that this is what the nuclear camp wants. The nuclear camp does not want scenario 1 (business as usual), and agree that it is a bad idea. So to make a claim about which direction we want to move forward to be the cheapest and most environmentally friendly you need to address the other positions. While I wouldn't be surprised if this was still a more expensive option, by not addressing it the authors are creating a strawman argument. In reality they do even worse than this, they create scenario 6 which is scenario 1 but with decreased efficiency (which they don't cite evidence for the number they use). tldr: I'm not sold on the paper. There's merit to it, but the study was not rigorous enough and did not consider the arguments of the opposing scenarios that it is specifically countering.
- rory096 8y ago
  Don't miss the assumptions they're relying on: >Emissions are considered per kWh of produced electricity (kWhel), including emissions that occur over the complete life-cycle of a technology (cradle to grave). We use the following values (based on Sovacool (2008), Lenzen (2008) and updated values from Jacobson (2009); nuclear: 66 g-CO2/kWhel, onshore wind: 10 gCO2/kWhel, PV (no difference between utility-scale and rooftop): 30 g-CO2/kWhel. That paper Jacobson (2009), the subject of the dispute mentioned above, factors in emissions from the burning of cities from nuclear war (at the high end, one city every 30 years), as well the "opportunity cost from planning-to-operation delays." The latter assumes 10-19 years to set up a nuclear plant, during which time emissions from a hypothetical incumbent coal plant are attributed to it. Somehow, PVs and wind have no opportunity costs from delays (though section 4b says they should take 2-5 years). Apparently PV production scaling will never bottleneck as they're deployed grid-wide. http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=EE&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b809990c&Iss=Advance_Article#tab4fna http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArtic...

One of the authors is known for heavily cherry-picking his facts, making some pretty extreme and outrageous assumptions, and suing fellow academic critics who point this out. Caveat lector.

toomuchtodo 8y ago

Good to know. I posted it here because it'll get a critical review.

scottlocklin 8y ago
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/mark-jacobson-drops-lawsuit-against-critics-of-his-100-renewables https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/mark-jacobson-d... Looks like an idiot to me.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Judge the math, not the man.
  - vowelless 8y ago
    Refute the critics, not sue the critics.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Regardless of what your opinion of the author's character (and my polite rebuttal to look at the data instead), you might be biased on the topic [1]. I'm attempting to discuss from a place of intellectual honesty, and I expect the same from others. "And it’s the 21st century — its embarrassing that we are talking about wind energy!" "Simply put, we need nuclear power. We need to spend more time and energy trying to innovate on nuclear energy. That’s what is needed to support the power needs of 10 billion people who will have the energy demands of a modern western nation today. Solar and wind will just not cut it." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18907686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18907686
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
        Hang on. Didn't you just say, "Judge the math not the man." What are the ground rules here. Are we allowed to take into account authors' previous bad behavior or aren't we?
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        toomuchtodo 8y ago
        > What are the ground rules here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. " "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
        asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
        Sure, I agree with all that. But you're dismissing the parent poster based on his comment history, while castigating him for dismissing your link based on the author's lawsuit history. That seems a little inconsistent to me, is all I'm saying. Personally, I think a history of suing one's critics does open one's subsequent work up to significantly increased skepticism from the community, because it's a strong signal that something's off. There's some norm-breaking going on. I wish I could read this article but it seems like it's behind a paywall.
      - kortilla 8y ago
        Posting rational thoughts in other threads does not mean you are biased in everything else. Unless you mean the author is biased against dogma?
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    I'm not going to read bullshit by some kook. He can go judge his own damn math.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- xupybd 8y ago
  "His core defense: That massive, unexplained increase in hydropower capacity wasn’t a modeling error; it was a modeling assumption. He assumed that the U.S. could simply add turbines on existing dams such that they could deliver 15 times more instantaneous capacity, even though total flows for a year would remain constant" This seems like a pretty big error. Enough for me to be unsure of the paper linked here.

jessriedel 8y ago

For others: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z._Jacobson https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z._Jacobson

amacbride 8y ago
Oh, that guy. Suing PNAS and the author of a study critical of his work is honestly quite shocking. One would hope the work would stand for itself, or at least the response should’ve been another paper rather than a lawsuit.
- strainer 8y ago
  You find it shocking that he might have a valid case against them, or that he has money to waste on legal harassment ?
  - archgoon 8y ago
    It is thoroughly inappropriate to respond to legitimate criticism, made in good faith, published in a reputable journal, with a lawsuit. It doesn't matter if you're right. If you're right; arguments can be made to show that your opponents are wrong (and he was in fact allowed a rebuttal letter in PNAS). Filing a lawsuit breaks any semblance of civility of discourse and dispassionate pursuit of truth; and results in everyone worse off, as the discussion has become thoroughly toxic. It's burning down the entire house because someone disagreed with your analysis.
    - strainer 8y ago
      Whether it was appropriate or not depends on whether the criticism was legitimate or not. That is the legitimate purpose of legal proceedings to determine.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- 8y ago

godelski 8y ago

It is pretty easy to find him doing just that in this paper. Here's some examples > Nuclear energy is often seen as a fundamental or bridging technology for future low-carbon systems (International Energy Agency, 2015a; Echavarri, 2013). While it is true that electricity production from nuclear energy is characterized by very low CO2 emissions during the operation phase of the plant, its full life-cycle CO2 emissions, including all up- and downstream processes, are typically much more CO2 intensive. While this is true, the paper does not make an equivalent comparison to their scenarios. They do not include the upstream and downsteam emissions from PV and wind. Which should include their energy storage requirements. When addressing storage requirements they hand wave, pointing to two papers that also hand wave the requirement. They all but flat out deny the duck curve. But regardless, they don't include these parts into their own scenarios. Later when they present their 6 scenarios, they assume no change in nuclear. If you do want to make a good comparison moving forward, you should have a scenario 7 that would shut down the current reactors and replace them with new genIII or genIV reactors. You might say I'm being facetious, but the issue is that this is what the nuclear camp wants. The nuclear camp does not want scenario 1 (business as usual), and agree that it is a bad idea. So to make a claim about which direction we want to move forward to be the cheapest and most environmentally friendly you need to address the other positions. While I wouldn't be surprised if this was still a more expensive option, by not addressing it the authors are creating a strawman argument. In reality they do even worse than this, they create scenario 6 which is scenario 1 but with decreased efficiency (which they don't cite evidence for the number they use). tldr: I'm not sold on the paper. There's merit to it, but the study was not rigorous enough and did not consider the arguments of the opposing scenarios that it is specifically countering.

rory096 8y ago
Don't miss the assumptions they're relying on: >Emissions are considered per kWh of produced electricity (kWhel), including emissions that occur over the complete life-cycle of a technology (cradle to grave). We use the following values (based on Sovacool (2008), Lenzen (2008) and updated values from Jacobson (2009); nuclear: 66 g-CO2/kWhel, onshore wind: 10 gCO2/kWhel, PV (no difference between utility-scale and rooftop): 30 g-CO2/kWhel. That paper Jacobson (2009), the subject of the dispute mentioned above, factors in emissions from the burning of cities from nuclear war (at the high end, one city every 30 years), as well the "opportunity cost from planning-to-operation delays." The latter assumes 10-19 years to set up a nuclear plant, during which time emissions from a hypothetical incumbent coal plant are attributed to it. Somehow, PVs and wind have no opportunity costs from delays (though section 4b says they should take 2-5 years). Apparently PV production scaling will never bottleneck as they're deployed grid-wide. http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=EE&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b809990c&Iss=Advance_Article#tab4fna http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArtic...