Talk:Amory Lovins

Quack editors

There seems to be a major cancer across wikipedia with editors drinking the kool-aid and describing Amory as a physicist. Yet even here in the article it spells out rather cloakingly of course, but nonetheless, between the lines you see that "he is a college drop-out", that simply publishes advocacy pamphlets for hire, pamphlets which no actual physicist takes seriously.

I'm too busy right now to deal with this disturbing dogma-guru-man and their influence but at the least, you need to start describing Lovin's as something based in fact, such as an energy advocate. Or something like that. As even the moniker "analyst" would be too much, as for example, someone who advocates for lobotomies as a cure-all are nowadays not called a medicine analyst, now are they? When no one in the scientific literature continues with that "cure-all", now do they?

So what is Lovin's but akin to the other hugely popular homeopathy selling "Dr." mercola? [Who isn't a doctor either, who would have thought?]

By the way, this isn't me calling him this, it is actually but reputable secondary sources which describe him as a "college drop-out" etc.

Checking the archive here on this talk page, shows that this "he's a physicist" issue is not new. Yet, what do you know 9 years later and it's still an issue. With fans of theirs pushing fake "dr"/"physicist" labels.

I mean "soft energy"...wtf does that even mean? Other than the common guru-phenomenon of inventing a False-dichotomy? Is it that you'd have to be Soft-in-the-head to believe such a thing exists. What next? Fluffy-energy? Cuddle-some-energy? Boundarylayer (talk) 19:18, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Other editors have been bringing this clear case of self-promoting up for close to a decade on the talk page, with the article then somehow, really who would have thought, repeatedly finding its ways back to describing Lovins as essentially, identically as his fanclub does.

[1]

Yet anyone who does a basic search will find, Lovins' entire education history and cultivation of their 'environmental cred' is, to put it mildly, really, really not what they self-promote.

One of the great ironies in today’s America is that a two time college drop out and Friends of the Earth campaigner who strongly advocated for increasing coal use is often held up as a hero of the environmental movement while also making a lot of money as a consultant for the natural gas industry,

...and another.

What it does not say is that Lovins dropped out of Harvard twice and attended just two years there. He somehow got into Oxford in 1967 and remained there long enough to be granted an MA, which is apparently not a Master of Arts, but roughly the equivalent of a certificate of enrollment. Forgive me for being an elitist, but no one should call themselves a scientist or a physicist without a piece of sheepskin to back them up.

An | Actual physicist Alexander DeVolpi, in an identical fashion went thru the same realization, in an exchange he had with him in a magazine, Amory is not a physicist. As much as anyone else who drops out of college is a physicist. Is this the new-age way? Especially if they then start essentially down the same path as the likewise infamous Dr. Mercola. Making prognostications about human health and in Lovins case, pontificating about energy systems that likewise are affecting government policy/human health?

I also hope I don't need to make it obvious that the listing of honorary degrees is genuinely not some more disturbingly transparent hand-waving, as in what world does the receiving of college campus-popularity-contest-prizes, make anyone anything else, but popular in what is the deeply ideological-crazed domain of, the college campus? What metric of expertise does that convey, other than the ability to con impressionable youth?

If you're still on the fence over the recognition of this person and their 'institute' as WP:FRINGE. Then perhaps this secondary source People, Politics and the Struggle by Berman, O'Connor might do it. | Citing the wisdom of Amory Lovins, Berman and O’Connor tell us that using energy is morally wrong. Amory Lovins’s wisdom: “For over 90 percent of energy uses, electricity is an indefensible luxury]

Ok?...Lovins wants us back in the caves, with just enough electricity to read his wikipedia article then, we take it? Yet in this article, no mention to any of these bizarre beliefs are made, nothing about how he isn't an accredited physicist, noting about how he openly advocated and advertised for increased coal usage, none of it is ever mentioned. You're told he is a physicist, a professional of high-standing, who influences the world. Wait, but isn't that just like how fans of Dr. Mercola, would describe him, then?

Boundarylayer (talk) 03:11, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

FYI an MA from Oxford is roughly equivalent to a BSc or BA elsewhere (except more than that, since it's from Oxford, which is far more prestigious). They don't just hand them to you for enrolling! A friend of mine's brother got an MA, but he was doing a PhD in Chemistry, but in the last few weeks his entire experiment detonated, and so he couldn't finish his research. He went 'fuck it', and left, and got an MA as a consolation. But you don't just get it for enrolling. ;) GliderMaven (talk) 04:25, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't know where Rod Adams got that particular piece of information from, however the story of Lovins' education is on very shaky ground. As per his research. Moreover, there is also the possibility that in the sixties in which this is said to have occurred, 'Oxford' could very well have had a consolation enrollment policy...that let's say...could have been very different in the handing out of MAs than your modern anecdotal case, conveys. All we know is secondary sources have put a lot of question marks over this 'physicist' description that seems to be everywhere, yet no actual evidence for it exists. There also seems to be this, a quote by Lovins, himself?

'My status as a Harvard and Oxford dropout with only honorary doctorates (currently 12) and an Oxford MA by Special Resolution (by virtue of being a don) should not surprise anyone, as it’s explicit in many of my shorter biographies' - Lovins, the 'physicist'?

in addition to physics, he studied law, linguistics, and chemistry. But when, in his junior year, he was told he would have to complete a major he dropped out and moved to England-Why specifically there, no one knows? He attended Oxford until he was once again pushed toward a prescribed course of study, at which point he quit school again. Lovins the physicist? Lovins the 'great', or Lovins 'the voice' for all those others who fail at college and take money from big oil? It's all becoming so clear now.

Boundarylayer (talk) 07:52, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

'Guru' and big-oil interests business man?

Original research
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/01/22/mr-green Environmentalism’s optimistic guru Amory Lovins by Elizabeth Kolbert. I don’t do problems” is how Lovins once put it to me. “I do solutions.” Lovins makes his living as the C.E.O. of [XYZ energy advocacy company, and hey look it's located in guitarist, John Denver's old haunt, yo how 'rad' man]...it now employs more than fifty people Employing fifty people to promote your brand of clearly nonsensical 'soft-energy', would fairly obviously mean, there is something of a major conflict of interest when say actual accredited scientists or agencies come along, as they routinely do and publish things that as a 'guru', would know, could upset the apple-cart of their business? Does it not? Something that is a little concerning. Life as, the fossil fuel funded, 'soft-energy' guru In 1969 oil tycoon and largest land owner in the US Robert Orville Anderson, contributed $200,000 in personal funds to launch the self-described 'radical environmental group', Friends of the Earth. By 1971—Lovins had come under the influence of David Brower, the charismatic founder of Friends of the Earth, and he went to work for the organization in London. In 1971, Lovins dropped out of college for the second time to become a full time employee of FOE. In October 1976, Foreign Affairs, a publication owned by the oil industry-linked Council on Foreign Relations, published Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?, which is described as a landmark essay that introduced Lovins to the world as an energy strategy guru. In Top 11 Reasons to Oppose Nuclear Power, Once Amory Lovins manufactured some arguments against nuclear power in the early 1970s, this tactic became the anti-nuclear power argument Though no mention to his source of income in the seventies, work for an organization set up by an oil tycoon and beginning of Lovins as the anti-nuclear spokesman, shall be made in this article? Boundarylayer (talk) 09:33, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

• Nothin' like a good old c-o-n-s-p-i-r-a-c-y theory to delegitimize a person whose work you don't like. Sheesh. Anomalous+0 (talk) 06:00, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

This debacle just sucks. One thing comes to mind when mentioned waking up Sunday morning hearing the crews putting in a bike lane. If street parking was so important, how did they manage to stripe bike lanes with cars parked there? Was there even one single car parked there that day? Sounds like not. People just want their damned “just in case” parking spot. You never know how much parking you’ll need! What if I have a big party with all my multi-generational extended family and friends? Looking forward to the supposed middle ground solution that is somehow in the middle between the bare minimum (pained lines) and nothing. As Watts (I think) suggested, maybe speed bumps. Speed bumps and sharrows I bet. Or maybe just painted speed bumps. 173.164.116.25 (talk) 03:27, 15 December 2023 (UTC)