Bad Data Leads to Bad Conclusions

In Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, author Mark Hertsgaard claimed that nuclear energy won't help much when it comes to curbing CO2 emissions:

But the truth is that nuclear power is a weakling in combatting global warming. Investing in a nuclear revival would make our global warming predicament worse, not better. The reasons have little to do with nuclear safety, which may be why environmentalists tend to overlook them.

This is a claim we've seen before, but as always when a claim like this is made, it's best to follow the data trail.

As Amory Lovins, the soft energy guru who directs the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado think tank . . . The upshot is that nuclear power is seven times less cost-effective at displacing carbon than the cheapest, fastest alternative -- energy efficiency, according to studies by the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Amory Lovins? Now that's a name we've heard before, associated with a claim we've heard before. Unfortunately, as my colleague David Bradish stated a few weeks back, the data that RMI relies on to support its conclusions can't be trusted:

The Rocky Mountain Institute's summer newsletter "debunked" nuclear's theology and their press release "doused the hype about 'nuclear revival' in an icy bath of real-world data". Well, after checking out the data and doing some analyses, I was far from being doused. They argue that nuclear cannot help with climate change because it is too costly and is a "failed option". Their solution to climate change is cogeneration and renewables.

In this case, cogeneration that's powered by natural gas -- a commodity that costs more than oil when it comes to electricity generation. For more on Lovins from our archives, click here.

As I've written before, it's one thing to make a claim. It's another thing to back it up. And in a time when the Web is becoming the dominant form of mass communication, is it too much to ask an author to provide a link to the study he's referring to?

Over in the New York Times, columnist John Tierney (no supporter of nuclear energy), actually takes the time to list online sources that support the conclusions that he draws. Why can't the Chronicle's op-ed page to do the same? Or do the authors of these pieces know better than to actually site the flawed studies they rely on to draw their conclusions, and let the readers examine that data themselves?

Thanks to Environmental News Bits for the pointer.

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