Judith Curry on the Tom Woods Show

Tom Woods is a famous person in the libertarian and Austrian Economics circles.

This time Tom ventured in a bit of a different domain than his normal one, and had as guest Dr. Judith Curry, a famous scientist in the “climate change” debate, who has been labeled a “heretic” for her dissenting views to the mainstream.

A good interview, not technical and very enjoyable for anyone.

http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-555-a-climate-heretic-speaks-out/

 

A tweet from Rod Adams

I became deeply interested in energy in 2011, a few weeks after a powerful earthquake and tsunami swept the eastern shores of Japan, killing many thousands of people and badly disabling infrastructure needed to safely operate the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, which later suffered major breakdown due to hydrogen explosions caused by fuel meltdown.

Luckily no one was hurt at the accident site due to the radiation release, and neither any citizen has ever received any meaningful amount of radiation, thought there is a lot of media misinformation and hysteria still going on after almost 5 years since the accident happen.

But inquiring minds want to know. And that is when my trip thru nuclear knowledge began.

I was always fascinated by technology, and generation of power is something I knew little about, except for visiting an hydroelectric plant on the Adda river south of Bergamo, Italy, during school.

So I had to study, and my research for trusted sources of information quickly pointed me to Rod Adams and his “Atomic Insights” website and blog active since 1995, a must-read for nuclear and energy aficionados.

Not only Rod has a great website, but he also been running a podcast, “The Atomic Show” (iTunes link here) since March 2006, and I became so passionate about the topic and the critical thinking and knowledge exposed by Rod and his guests that I went back to the very first episode of the show, and listened to each and every one of them, including the early ones in which he had a great co-host, Shane Brown, even more technical than Rod.

Last year, when I discovered Alex Epstein and his book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” thru this event at The Cato Institute, it dawned on me that the dry technical matters behind nuclear could very well benefit from the deeper philosophical thoughts that Alex Epstein has always highlighted in his work.

I then emailed Rod about Alex Epstein and his work, and he told me that he had already been in touch with Alex and an episode of “The Atomic Show” with Alex as guest would be upcoming. Episode 230 was released on December 12th 2014 and I have added some comments on the relevant blog post. A must listen in my view.

Why am I talking about a tweet, then?

Because as recently as last Friday December 18th 2015 Rod Adams posted this update via Twitter, something which I liked very much, as it shows a deeper understanding on the whole energy discussion, broadening his view from the purely nuclear space.

Rod_Adams___Atomicrod____Twitter

It’s nice for me to see how two of my main influencers in the energy space are coming full circle back to the most important aspect of energy: every bit of energy counts, nuclear needs fossil fuels and fossil fuels needs nuclear moving forward.

We have to defend our right to energy access and deflect the attacks from those who would like to limit our access to energy. They are the really dangerous people to be on the look for.

Interviewing Patrick Moore

Back in 2011 I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Patrick Moore in person, in Milan, Italy, where I was living at the time.

Dr. Moore was touring Italy to introduce the Italian version of his book “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout” which I highly recommend; at the end of the book presentation I introduced myself to him and to Chicco Testa, who was also present at the event, and shared some nice conversations about nuclear, energy, genetically modified organisms, and other topics.

I kept the contact information for Patrick, and a little more than a year ago I proposed to interview him on behalf of “Atomi per la Pace”, a group of Italian pro-nuclear enthusiasts who have been doing some very interesting interviews with different personalities, mostly focused on nuclear energy. This is the link to the YouTube channel for “Atomi per la Pace”.

This is the one hour long video, worth watching as we touch on many different aspects beyond nuclear, including climate change, GMOs, and his history with Greenpeace.

Alex Epstein talks about his book

I consider Alex Epstein as a great influencer, at least he is for me, but I am quite sure that many more think the same way, and in fact I am meeting more and more people who share the same positive and constructive point of view held by Epstein.

As you might know, Alex Epstein is the author of the book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” which was released in November 2014. This book is a must read in my opinion, as it will change your views on fossil fuels, if you are one willing to listen to a voice very different than what the vast majority people is saying.

Hey, I’ve been there with nuclear already, so I very much know what it means being right, yet being a small minority!

This presentation is about 40 minutes long, and it includes some 15 minutes of Q&A. It begins with the great book video trailer, a small gem. This is all very much worth watching.

A must see presentation from Robert Bryce

Robert Bryce, author of many interesting books such as “Power Hungry” and “Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper”, both very much worth reading if you are interested in energy, is one of the many who hates to use slides during his presentations.

This will not really matter though, because he is a great speaker and he will keep you glued to the screen for the whole 46 minutes.

This presentation is from September 2014, and is still very actual. A must see in my view