Patrick Moore: Concerned About Fossil Fuels Just 5 Years Ago

Patrick Moore was, as co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition (CASEnergy), interviewed by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) in 2009. (CASEenergy is the public relations arm of the NEI, so this is, needless to say, a fake interview):

NEI: What are the drivers for that [Moore's claim, earlier in the interview, that there was more public support for nuclear power]?

Moore: For a lot of people, it is climate change. A lot of people see that connection between nuclear energy and reducing greenhouse gases [and] that nuclear power is nearly 75 percent of the U.S.’s clean electricity and is the most important carbon-free technology.

It’s clear to me that the big change that needs to be made is in clean electricity, which means reducing the use of fossil fuels and increasing nuclear energy, with a bit of wind power in the mix. The clean energy can then be used to run geothermal heat pumps in all our buildings, eliminating fossil fuels for heating, cooling and hot water. The clean electricity can also be used to charge batteries in plug-in electric hybrid cars that are coming along soon. If we actually did just those three things, we could move into a far less carbon-intensive world without huge economic pain.

(Emphasis mine.) This is from someone who, only four and a half years later, would tell a Senate committee:

There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years. 

Moore included a chapter from his 2010 book with his Senate testimony, and requested it be made part of the record. In it he wrote (p. 360):

Perhaps our CO2 emissions will have some negative effects. But in my view CO2 is one of the most positive chemicals in our world.

The chapter he included is full of some very egregious errors and simple-minded (even laughable) arguments. Somehow I can't bring myself to recommend it.