Michael, duuuude, what a fantastic piece you wrote here!

I just started as editor over at the Science and Philosophy publication:

https://medium.com/science-and-philosophy

Small publication, but as a scientist (not a philosophical bone in my body) I’m enjoying it just for the exposure to a new discipline.

Can I tweet your story to the followers of S&P?

And it would be cool if you could write a follow-up (and link to this May article) as a submission to S&P. Doesn’t have to have any explicit philosophy - none of mine published there don’t. Would you do that?

Also, can I ask? You must have an engineering background - you take a very structured approach to the argument that screams “engineer” to me (I was an engineer for a couple decades before I jumped ship to be a scientist in an academic lab). Are you an engineer?

And do you use any kind of a structured breakdown of energy systems, similar to FMEA (failure modes and effects analysis) which is a bottom-up failure analysis, or fault tree analysis which is a top-down failure analysis… as a means to thoroughly evaluate diverse energy system proposals?

Engineers in a wide variety of industries from auto to medical devices (where I worked) use these methods to make sure they don’t miss anything (or minimize the chances), especially when a miss can be lethal.

Anyways, just wanted to say Nice Job!

S. Duuude