Joe Romm, Influential Liberal Climate Change Expert and Blogger
The former Clinton administration energy official is a go-to witness for congressional hearings
TOP ENERGY PLAYER
In terms of his cachet in the blogosphere, Joe Romm is something like the climate change equivalent of economist (and New York Times columnist) Paul Krugman. Romm runs his own blog, climateprogress.org. He was a deputy assistant secretary of energy in the Clinton administration. Today, he's a senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, an oft-cited expert on climate change issues, and a go-to witness at congressional hearings.
Romm's positions are well defined and, in most cases, aggressively liberal. He holds that climate change is advancing more swiftly than most people think and than the mainstream media usually report. He has called for significantly ramping up government spending on clean energy technology, halting the construction of new coal plants, rapidly increasing the use of energy-efficient technologies, and imposing a cap-and-trade system to sharply limit carbon dioxide emissions.
Romm is a prolific writer and commentator. On his blog, he cuts through opposing arguments with an array of statistics, citations, cross-links, and sarcasm. One such headline: "Memo to T. Boone Pickens: Your Energy Plan Is Half-Brilliant, Half-Dumb." He's also a critic of the media for failing, in his view, to adequately inform the public of the connection between current events, like the devastating wildfires in Australia, and global warming, which he says must be addressed now. "I think that the media has to make clear what the vast majority of the scientific community says," Romm says.
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Reader Comments
Romm
Joe Romm is an articulate spokesman with good intentions, but his zeal tends to overcome his interest in rational deliberation.
There is indeed a climate problem but it is not so thoroughly and absolutely understood that immediate and unquestioning action is the appropriate response.
There are a variety of solutions in vogue, mostly because they have been repeatedly asserted as being effective. Careful technical performance and economic consequence analyses, incling complete cost analysis are essential to avoid serious missteps that could fail in their intent as well as poisoning the waters for more effective solutions.
Efficient vehicles and power generating systems of a sort not recognized by Joe Romm could offer much more progress than the things on Joe Romm's accepted list. See www.miastrada.com for some future possibilities.
Now we are tangled up with subsidies having the uncertain intent of stimulating the economy, with maybe some benefit to the environment. It is time for influential people to think a bit more carefully.
Bureaucratic leech
Romm is an ultraliberal Douche. Many of his doom and gloom predictions have already proven to be failures. The rest will be soon enough. He openly insults highly esteemed scientists, yet prechaes all his positions from behind the funding and agenda of a partisan ultraliberal think-tank. In other words he is the paid representative OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT, despite his assurances that the science he promotes is correct and impartial.
Long story short, he is a phony and a walking conflict of interest. The fact that he has served in a government post, and subsisted off the overgrown bureaucracy in Washington hardly makes him a voice worth listening to, but rather someone to question and lend at most a cautious ear to. Meanwhile an independent assessment of his scientific views by truly independent scientists is even less flattering.
FACT: Listening to Joe Romm and accepting his scientific and political views will lead to higher taxes, higher costs of goods, and a decreased quality of life. Just thought this story could use a little balance and facts. Amidst all the butt licking it was a little light on both...
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