Stanford Prof. Sues Team of Scientists for Debunking 100% Renewables | Hacker News Reader

Stanford Prof. Sues Team of Scientists for Debunking 100% Renewables

environmentalprogress.org

10 pointsacidburnNSA9 comments

Flagged because the website appears to be an anti-solar campaign to promote nuclear.

"Renewables like solar and wind require vastly larger amounts of land and mining in order to produce power that is unreliable. Under the guise of protecting the environment, renewables destroy the environment."

I think that these new 501c educational non-profits which obviously promote a corporate agenda are one of the most dangerous threats to rational discourse in our day.

I was hoping it would prompt a good discussion. By putting it up and talking about it here, what is the nature of the threat you're worried about? Isn't it worse to not talk about these kinds of things at all?

The threat is that companies can create fake "educational non-profits" and lie to people and even get their lies into classrooms, presented in the pseudo-objective light of educational material.

I do not know which nuclear company funds this "non-profit" but its bias and bad faith is obvious.

When I was a student teacher, I was put into a program, at the time funded apparently by Visa, who's sole purpose was to deliver anti-regulation propaganda to 4th graders. The program seems to have since expanded its list of sponsors to many other large financial institutions [1].

The material I was teaching included demonstrably false claims, including the claim that WTO promoted free trade included sufficient environmental protections. Along with cartoonist pictures of jumping dolphins and people smiling an planting trees. When the reality of WTO mandated free trade looks like this [2].

[1] https://www.juniorachievement.org/web/ja-usa/financial-repor...

[2] https://blog.positiveluxury.com/sys/uploads/2015/01/slashbur...

Here's the story from Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...

Instead of stating the assumption the be flawed, they've termed it as a lie. While I disagree with the lawsuit, accusations of lying seem a little outlandish.

No journal should encourage publication of accusations of lying

That's because this site is a bunch of nutters. Have a browse through the site. Perhaps they actually have a point, but it's difficult to take seriously when it's a crazy person trying to make it.

Anyone have a reputable link to the story?

This website used the word lie. The actual paper did not.

The paper discussed "errors, inappropriate methods, and implausible assumptions".

The paper:

http://www.pnas.org/content/114/26/6722.full

Reply on news.ycombinator.com