December 29, 2019 Message from John Holdren to John Shanahan with JS comments.
John Holdren declines to participate in discussion on fossil fuels and nuclear power John Holdren’s message in green. John Shanahan’s remarks in red. To: John Shanahan From: John Holdren I pass. I am not going to participate in an interaction moderated by an ideologue who makes stuff up to suit his prejudices. Current examples: I have never opposed the use of fossil fuels or advocated their prohibition, as you have claimed in recent emails. Rather, I have argued for the use of regulation to reduce the social and environmental costs of fossil-fuel use, and for charges on greenhouse-gas emissions so that costs arising from emissions that have not been reduced are reflected in the prices paid by producers and consumers. These measures would lead to more economically and socially efficient decisions about energy supply and use, allowing alternatives to compete on a playing field that reflects the true costs of each option. The results would include the faster improvement and deployment of options that are less damaging environmentally, including not only renewables but also nuclear energy and carbon capture and sequestration from fossil-fuel-burning power plants. John Holdren has predicted four different types of climate catastrophe since the 1970s. His statement above is simply his willful effort to obscure, make unclear, and make unintelligible what he has done for half a century. He has sounded alarms about the progress civilization is making from use of fossil fuels. First it was catastrophic manmade global cooling. Then it was catastrophic man-made global warming. Then, catastrophic man-made climate change and most recently catastrophic man-made climate disruption. During this time, a member of his family sent the Shanahan family the following photograph of the frozen Atlantic Ocean in 2018. This rarely happens in Massachusetts.
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Photo: Woods Hole Research Center sent by member of John Holdren’s family January 2018 with the lament “ENDLESS WINTER!” See here, here, and here for more info. According to John Holdren global warming, climate change and climate disruption, almost anything from a mythical paradise steady state is caused by carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. For billions of years, until John Holdren and his colleagues came up with the idea, all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was part of the wonderful cycle of most living things. How does Harvard University manage to continue to employ a professor who teaches that additional carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is causing climate catastrophes? For over 500 articles and PowerPoint Presentations on all sides of the catastrophic man-made global warming topic, see here. For John Holdren’s articles he has given us to post, see here. This website presents all sides of disputed topics related to use of energy. We don’t use language that he does with persons we disagree with on scientific questions. He sets quite an example for Harvard University. I do not oppose breeder reactors per se, as you have also claimed in these notes--with these falsehoods distributed to who knows how large an audience. I oppose the deployment of EXISTING breeder-reactor designs and associated plutonium-recycle technologies, because doing so would make nuclear energy both more expensive and more proliferation prone, If you want nuclear energy to play a larger role worldwide, you should want it to be as inexpensive as is consistent with safety and as resistant to nuclear-weapon proliferation as possible. Deployment of current breeder technology would move us in the wrong direction on both counts, and the abundance of low-cost uranium resources means that there is no serious argument for doing so now. Like both of Obama's Secretaries of Energy--physics Nobel laureate Steve Chu and former MIT physics department chair Ernie Moniz--with whom I worked when I was Obama's Science Advisor and the (unanimously) Senate-confirmed Director of the White House 2
Office of Science and Technology Policy, I supported continuing R&D on advanced breeder and fuel-cycle concepts so the world would have more economical and proliferation-resistant breeder options in the future. Three American physicist have worked tirelessly since the 1970s to stop use of fossil fuels, nuclear power or both. They are Thomas Cochran at Natural Resources Defense Council, John Holdren at Harvard University, and Frank von Hippel at Princeton University. If their efforts to greatly reduce use of fossil fuels and breeder reactors (where most of the energy can be used) are successful, billions of people will suffer and many will die. They are a great threat to humanity. These scientists have contributed little or nothing to developing valuable new energy technologies, just written reports and presentations sounding false alarms about fossil fuels and nuclear. Look what John Holdren says about himself here. All self-congratulatory. I strongly supported Federal R&D on carbon capture and sequestration and helped build collaboration on those efforts with China and India. Far from supporting prohibition on the use of fossil fuels, as you have asserted, I am well aware that fossil fuels will continue to be used in large quantities for decades to come. Therefore, it is crucial that we develop affordable CCS to minimize the impact of such use. If you have read my writings and presentations on these topics--which I have supplied to you and which you have posted on your website--you must know that these are my actual positions; but you have chosen to misrepresent them nonetheless. You likewise egregiously misrepresent my relations with and respect for distinguished scientists and engineers outside "the ivory tower". I have collaborated over a period of decades with some of the most distinguished nuclear (and other) engineers in the world, including the late Wolf Haefele (the father of the German fast-breeder program) and his successor Guenther Kessler; multiple directors and deputy directors of the Electric Power Research Institute; multiple chairs and research directors at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; the Russian nuclear scientist and engineer Evgeny Velikhov (who has advised every Soviet and Russian head of state from Brezhnev to Yeltsin); the engineering leadership of Electricite de France; and the engineers heading multiple U.S. oil companies. My research has been supported in the past by EPRI, Shell, and BP, as well as DOE (but also by many NGOs and foundations); and I am co-leader currently of a project advising the top leadership of one of the world's biggest multinational oil and gas companies on fashioning a transition toward sustainability. Do you think I was elected two decades ago to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (and more recently the Indian National Academy of Engineering) by accident? I am especially offended by your suggestion that I and others concerned with minimizing human impacts on global climate are insensitive to the plight of the world's poor and their needs for clean and reliable energy in order to secure a decent existence. I have been writing about the plight of the poor for five decades, and have been traveling regularly to China since 1984, to Brazil since 1985, and to India since 1987 building collaborative programs on science and technology for development. A number of today's leading practitioners of S&T for development in those three 3
countries--as well as in Mexico, Indonesia, and the Philippines--are my former students. I would be very surprised if you have spent a tenth as much time actually working in developing countries as I have. Although it is less important, you also seem to have invented out of thin air a close relationship between me and Geoffrey Rothwell. I have read some of his work over the years, and we may have met once or twice for long enough to shake hands, but we are not friends and have never worked together on anything. Your lack of respect for reality appears to be a defining characteristic. Why any sensible person would pay attention to your views on climate change—or participate in any way, in your current campaign to continue to muddy the water -- is a mystery to me. John John P. Holdren, PhD Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy, Kennedy School of Government Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences Affiliated Professor, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science Harvard University Thomas Cochran, John Holdren and Frank von Hippel do the work of America’s enemies in getting the United States to reduce use of fossil fuels and nuclear power. Holdren’s “claim” that he supports existing nuclear power technology is the 1% solution that everyone knows will be used only for a limited time. Advanced nuclear power technologies that these three scientists oppose offer the 100% solution, namely use 100% of the energy available in uranium and thorium. The United States hardly has worse foes beyond our borders. John Shanahan, Denver, Colorado, March 2020.
Golden, Colorado
New Hampshire – Presidential Range
The beautiful climate in the United States that John Holdren plays down. Rather, he works to sound alarms about use of fossil fuels and nuclear power. 4