Readers response to my post on biofuels yesterday was tremendously interesting with many new ideas, perspectives, and avenues to wander down in the future. The second installment at Next Generation Energy is already up this morning offering a different persepctive from Joseph Romm of Climate Progress:
Toyota, General Motors, and Volkswagen have already said they will introduce plug-in hybrid electric-gasoline vehicles to the U.S. market in 2010. These vehicles are likely to have a 20 to 40 mile range running on electricity before they revert to being a fuel-efficient gasoline hybrid. That would allow most people to do most of their driving on electricity.
I expect his closing note should dispel remaining qualms over Shell's sponsorship:
Some have criticized the Shell sponsorship of this blog. But Shell exerts no editorial control, so I'll let others lose sleep over this. Personally, while I once admired Shell, especially their strategic planning about global warming and renewable energy, their pursuit of tar sands and, even worse, oil shale, makes clear they are simply another short-term-profit-maximizing long-term-climate-destroying oil company.
Read the full post here.
- Log in to post comments
With respect, I'm going to draw your attention to Greg Laden's comment from the second post
"I respectfully suggest to my colleagues blogging here to consider statements of the form: 'Oh, what could possibly go wrong ... how can their possibly be a bias because of Shell Sponsorship' to be inappropriate and worthless."
Martin,
You really must post Greg's entire comment, which puts that phrase--which he calls 'ingenuous and insulting' in proper context:
Right, but in quoting part of the comment, in no way did I change the context...
Just to clarify a bit. What I find problematic is that the Energy bloggers are simply issuing a flat assertion that "Shell has nothing to do with the editorial policy". Now, there are three problems you're not addressing, which is why the comment feels vaguely insulting/patronizing.
Firstly, the assurance is hardly going to allay any suspicions, but there's not much you can do about that.
Secondly, you've not explained why you agreed to do this in the first place. If I'd been asked, I would have turned it down - I suspect a lot of other bloggers would have done the same.
Thirdly, you and the other bloggers have failed to address the fact that you're effectively helping to do PR work for Shell. We all know that the only reason Shell are funding this is as a public relations exercise. Now, if you feel the benefits of doing this outweigh that, then fine, but why not write something to address this concern and explain to us readers why it is you've made this decision?
I have already explained here.
In other words, alternative energy is a necessary and timely discussion in today's political, environmental, and socioeconomic climate and a Scienceblog that will engage broad audiences offers the opportunity to open up the dialog.
I suppose the comments of people like Martin don't make much sense to me because my father was a newspaper editor for 30 years. He had full editorial control over the entire paper and never worried a second about whether his reporting or editorializing would cost him an advertiser.
Once I knew I would have editorial control over my content it never even crossed my mind not to blog on ScienceBlogs.
Should I not appear on CNBC because it's owned by GE? Should I not appear on Fox News because that is lending credibility to their biased reporting? Should I not write an article for U.S. News & World Report because they take money from oil companies.
And I can't imagine why I would have to explain why I would want to get my ideas in front of a different audience.