Fusion? Greens Opposed It 30 Years Ago.

Schematic of apparatus of the "cold fusion" experiments that raised Erlich's anti-human hackles over 30 years ago. But don't listen to me: I'm already dead, according to him. (Image by Pbroks13, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

With the announcement that scientists have achieved fusion ignition, I was tempted to ask Twitter something like the following rhetorical question: Which will happen sooner: Commercialization or hysterical green opposition?

Figuring the question might already be rhetorical, I took a quick look around and quickly discovered that, yes, while fusion is still ages away from commercialization, none other than Paul Erlich moaned about it over thirty years ago when there were reports (that turned out to be untrue) to the effect that a lab had succeeded in "cold fusion" experiments.

None other than Paul Erlich -- whose error rate in predicting catastrophe is exceeded only by his misanthropy -- rushed in to rain on any parade that might happen on his watch.

Here he is in the Los Angeles Times, as quoted at Power Line:

 [E]ven if desktop fusion really works–a matter still very much up in the air–it is unclear that the power produced will be as cheap or clean as many have suggested it might be.

And even if it were, given society’s dismal record in managing technology, the prospect of cheap, inexhaustible power from fusion is “like giving a machine gun to an idiot child,” Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich says. [bold added]

Wow! This is Erlich, admitting in his own words, to a charge I have often pointed to, by Keith Lockitch of ARI:

It is only on the premise that the environmentalist movement is truly driven by a concern for human well-being that its vehement attacks on carbon-based fuels (without which human life as we know it in the developed world would be impossible), its cavalier lack of any alternative plan, and its active opposition to proposed alternatives (whether real ones like nuclear or hydro, or fantasized ones like solar), make no sense. [bold added]

The icing on the cake to this comes in the form of a prediction, again by Erlich, and again quoted at Power Line:

Fusion proponents, [Paul Ehrlich] notes, also estimate that commercial applications of their work are at least 20 years off. And it will be 30 years beyond then before fusion power has significant impact. In this sense, says Ehrlich, fusion is irrelevant because, he asserts, the world will have long since succumbed to over-population, famine, global warming and acid rain. [bold added]

These two quotes should have already ended Erlich's career as a scientist that journalists can turn to for an intelligent take on energy or environmental issues.

We may not get practical fusion for a long time, or ever, but this announcement can have other benefits, namely shedding more light on the man-hating nature of environmentalism.

-- CAV