“But make no mistake, [Bradley]’s as venomous an antinuke as the most biased Greenpeacer.” (Colin Hunt, Canadian Nuclear Society)

Social media exchanges are educational and informative. Going head-to-head with an intellectual foe is a great opportunity to learn and unmask error–and to find out what you do not know. I report, you decide on the exchanges below, which get into some basic issues and the history of a troubled, government-subsidized technology.

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This LinkedIn exchange began with a post by Chris Keefer, Physician and President Canadians for Nuclear Energy:

Nuclear to the rescue. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Nuclear is best suited to replace many fossil fuel services. When fossil fuels become constrained nuclear doesn’t just become attractive, it becomes inevitable.

I responded as follows:

New nuclear capacity is just way too expensive and complicated compared to the alternatives.

“The superior case for dense mineral energies economically and environmentally should inspire a rethink. And climate policy is in shambles heading into COP 27.”

“What is really fishy is that those that admit to ‘climate anxiety’ do not have any appetite to seriously entertain the case for CO2/climate optimism, aka energy freedom for the masses. And they see no evil in the eco-sins of wind, solar, and batteries….”

I actively engage in (and occasionally share) debates on LinkedIn against climate alarmists/forced energy transformationists. I sometimes feel like a teacher presenting a suite of arguments that have been cursorily dismissed. The good news is that there are a lot of readers in the middle who see what is going on. A number now join me in what is a two-sided debate at LinkedIn.…

LinkedIn is the premier business-related social media site, and they allow respectful discourse on the climate topic in my case. I have been very active at LinkedIn this year and have shared previous exchanges such as this one at MasterResource.

Here is another example. It began with a LinkedIn post from Favian Le Gay Brerton: “When the Oil and Gas industry talks about planting trees, producing hydrogen, and deploying CCS…. Moral Hazard.” He links to “The Era of the Great Carbon Fraud Is Upon Us” in the Australian newspaper, The Canberra Times. The article begins:

Instead of rushing to end fossil fuels, there is going to be a gold rush for carbon offsets, dirty hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS), all designed not to stop climate change, but to actually drive up the consumption of coal, oil and gas.

“Koonin is … not REMOTELY qualified to dispute the conclusions of thousands of working scientists…. Koonin will say whatever he is paid to say.” (Paul Bryan, below)

“Bryan offers only  ad hominem attacks. Sadly, so characteristic of the public conversation about climate science.  If he’d made a specific criticism of what I said about climate science, it might be worth responding to.” (Koonin, below)

Emotions run high in the climate debate between the ‘settled-science’ alarmists and cautious, data-driven critics. There is every reason to listen and learn in a quite unsettled area (climate models?) and not be crude and offensive, much less engage in angry hate speech.

“Fossil fuel troll” … “You are simply shilling for the addiction model of energy and the dealers that profit from it” … “Your arguments are tired, old, oft-debunked pages from the Denier’s Playbook.…