MasterResource is nearing its three-month anniversary. Our total views have exceeded 50,000–not bad for a start-up, energy-focused blog. We have had as many as 3,200 views on a day and now have a base daily viewership of around 500.
We have had 111 posts (at least one per day!) from 21 different authors. Our post categories exceed 50. Nearly 500 comments from more than 150 individuals have been received, and more comments are being added to different posts. We welcome critical comments so long as they are made in good faith and in good taste.
Our most popular posts (and comments on posts) to date have been:
Smart Grid, Dumb Economics (Jerry Taylor)
Part I in an Occasional Series Challenging Ultra-skeptic Climate Claims (Chip Knappenberger)
Beware of the New “Limits to Growth” (and looking for ReaganVision?CarterVision) (Robert Bradley)
Wind Stimulus: Bad Green (Glenn Schleede)
Philosophy
MasterResource is unabashedly market oriented, which is a consumerist, egalitarian position in today’s contentious debates over energy policy. In this regard, we agree with this statement of the World Energy Council:
“Accessibility to modern energy means that energy must be available at prices which are both affordable (low enough for the poorest people) and sustainable (prices which reflect the real costs of energy production, transmission and distribution to support the financial ability of companies to maintain and develop their energy services. Availability relates to long-term continuity of energy supply as well as to short term quality of service, because an energy or an electricity shortage can also be disruptive for economic development.”
– World Energy Council, Energy for Tomorrow’s World—Acting Now! (London: Atalink Projects, 2000), p. 65.
Most but not all of the contributors to MasterResource are economists with a utilitarian bent (what energy policies work for consumers; is the science realistic?). We can agree with Penn State’s Richard Gordon who stated:
“The pro-market stance of academic energy economists . . . arises from prolonged observation of energy developments. Assertions that ideology or abstraction is dominant are calumny.”
– Richard Gordon in IAEE convention speech, “Energy, Exhaustion, Environmentalism, and Etatism,” The Energy Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1994), p. 2.
Our public policy position (with many more examples) was stated by MIT economist M. A. Adelman:
“The right public policy, in my view, is in the doctors’ oath: do no harm. Do not make things worse. Rule out price and import controls.”
– M.A. Adelman, The Genie Out of the Bottle (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1995), p. 329.
MasterResource accepts submissions from interested bloggers. Please send your material to Robert Bradley at rbradley@iertx.org.
Thank your for your interest and support, and please share our link with your friends.
“Rule out price and import controls”
Or say, putting a “price” on an invisible, harmless trace gas…
Wait til the price of gas skyrockets again, and Obama’s cap-and-trade nonsense sends electricity rates into the stratosphere. Your viewership will rise accordingly.
Paul:
That is a good point: the more the government intervention with energy, the master resource, the greater the interest in energy issues and the more the readership of MasterResource.
I am all for less government intervention and thus less readership. Maybe someday MasterResource can be of just historical interest, an energy blog in a dark time when climate alarmism and energy hyperbole were at their peak.
What a great retirement gift that would be for some of us!
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