The Joe Romm Treatment

A fierce debate on the merits of energy efficiency, triggered last month by David Owen's article in The New Yorker, has perhaps entered an ugly phase today, with this post by Joe Romm. And that's too bad, because the thorny questions raised in Owen's piece deserve to be judged on the basis of reasoned argument. On that note, let me say that part two of this post (tomorrow) will discuss the broad outlines of the current debate. For the moment, I'm going to focus directly on the style of argument waged by Romm in his post today, because he has a large, devoted following and has the ear of influential pundits in the media. I'm just going to ask a few simple questions. Romm fans are invited to respond and maybe Joe will stop by himself, as he is wont to do from time to time. So my first questionis: Does Romm's latest bashing of The Breakthrough Institute (TBI) qualify as an "attack"? I'm asking because in his post, Romm says that TBI recently