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Political notes from Free Press staff writers Terri Hallenbeck, Sam Hemingway and Nancy Remsen


3.22.2010

 

Shumlin out-Foxed?

A few days after the Vermont Senate voted against letting the Public Service Board go ahead with a decision on Vermont Yankee’s future, Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, went on a Fox TV business show that he surely is regretting now.

The show’s host, Stuart Varney, grilled Shumlin about where Vermont would get its power if not from the nuclear power plant. “You must be going back to coal or fossil fuels,” Varney challenged.

Shumlin answered that the state would turn to renewables. “The power market in America is going to dramatically shift,” Shumlin said. “Germany right now is producing 30 percent of its juice from solar.”

“Are you sure 30 percent of it comes from solar?” Varney countered.

“It happens to be a fact,” Shumlin said, until Varney’s colleagues starting surfing the Web and came up with indications that solar amounted to no more than 1 percent of Germany’s power. “I’m not really an expert on Germany,” Shumlin said. “That’s what I’ve been told.”

As it turns out, Germany’s goal for renewable energy is 30 percent. Supporters of Vermont Yankee and the Republican Governors Association have made hay of the interview, sending out e-mails and posting the interview online.

Shumlin said he was mistaken about Germany, but that he merely provided incorrect statistics, not under oath, and never suggested Vermont would replace all of Vermont Yankee’s power with renewables. Nor, he said, was the decision not to endorse Vermont Yankee’s continued operation based on that information. Varney, he said, started the show by spreading misinformation that Vermont would be turning to coal. “Only Fox News has that view,” he said.

The irony, of course, is that nothing has hurt Vermont Yankee’s cause more than its own misinformation in denying the existence of underground pipes that were later found to be leaking tritium.

The Fox interview can be seen at this pro-Vermont Yankee Web site.


- Terri Hallenbeck

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Comments:
This would be Vermont's national face? Looks pretty green around the edges.
 
File this as Exhibit A under "Why Shumlin Will Not Be Elected Governor"
 
This isn't even a story - Shumlin later in the same show corrected himself - where is that info?
 
I watched the entire interview and never saw or heard a retraction. When Shumlin was given the answer from the Web, he sloughed it of with a dismissive "well that's Wikipedia." The closest he came was an admission that he was not an expert on Germany, but that he had been told that it got 30% of its electricity from solar. Just because he was not under oath does not mean he has carte blanche to repeat "statistics" that are wrong by a factor of 43.
 
Welcome back Rod. Nice of you to pop up again since you never answered my last question on this issue.

I watched the whole interview as well and while technically you are correct he didn't "retract" his statement he did acknowledge that he may not be correct, kind of like you weren't correct in something you wrote a while back.

Just curious why a guy that is supposedly relying solely on scientific facts of Nuclear power is injecting such a political agenda into the conversation?
 
@anonymous - I have never claimed that nuclear energy is just a technical or scientific issue. There is a great deal of politics in the choices that are being made. I think you would be surprised to learn that I consider myself to be a liberal Democrat who is strongly supportive of public power, public schools and union labor. Those values are some of the reasons that I like nuclear energy compared to fossil fuel energy.
I do not know what question I failed to answer. Please refresh my memory.
 
The FOX guy is a chucklehead. Not to be taken seriously. I know it's national tv and all, but Pete should pass on FOX. But Obama is putting money into nuke. Can't deny that.
 
And Shumlin is so so smart we should all follow him to the polling place!
 
Of course some of the 300 MW of power that we currently get from VY will be replaced with power that is generated by midwestern and southern coal- or oil-fired plants. That's a "duh," and Shumlin is a liar to say that it won't. But then again Shumlin was never bothered by looking you in the eye and lying to you.
 
This is the problem with fighting these people. they either lie or have zero issue passing along really bad information.

What Anonymous 8:52am posted is utterly and completely false. The NE Grid does not and will get power form the sources he/she references.

ITS NOT HOW THE GRID WORKS.

don't trust me that's fine but here's the difference between these liars and those of us working to close VY. A Source to check info on your own

http://www.iso-ne.com/index.html
 
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