A Free-Market Energy Blog

Mining the Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 11, 2025

Editor’s Note: Master Resource’s founder and editor, Rob Bradley, is currently struggling with the aftermath of torrential flooding in the Texas Hill Country. Until he can return to work, he has asked me to post “classic” MR entries. This 2008 essay by Bradley about Malthusianism, resourceship, and the ultimate resource surely qualifies. — Roger Donway, Managing Editor.

In 1972, just two years after the first Earth Day, a team of scholars from MIT published a 200-page book called The Limits to Growth. Using the emerging instrument of computer models, they created a worldwide stir by suggesting that science had now put numbers to a few self-evident truths. Non-renewable resources are fixed; the consumption of such resources must eventually end; any civilization based on such consumption must collapse. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called the work “likely to be one of the most important documents of our age” (January 28, 1972).…

Continue Reading

NOAA’s 2020 Prediction Bust: “U. S. Winter Outlook: Cooler North, Warmer South”

By -- July 10, 2025

Editor’s Note: Master Resource’s founder and editor, Rob Bradley, is currently struggling with the aftermath of torrential flooding in the Texas Hill Country. Until he can return to work, he has asked me to post “classic” MR entries. Yesterday, he called in to suggest the following blog post would be a suitable classic. It ran initially at MR on March 11, 2021. —Roger Donway, Managing Editor

By way of introduction, Rob writes: “To critics, NOAA not only provides information but misinformation based on climate models and attribution studies. The post below provides the example of NOAA’s prediction leading into the Texas Winter of 2020–2021.”

“NOAA’s timely and accurate seasonal outlooks and short-term forecasts are the result of improved satellite observations, more detailed computer forecast modeling, and expanding supercomputing capacity,” said Neil Jacobs, Ph.D.,

Continue Reading

Power Density: The Key

By Kent Hawkins -- July 9, 2025

Editor’s Note: Master Resource’s founder and editor, Rob Bradley, is currently struggling with the aftermath of torrential flooding in the Texas Hill Country. Until he can return to work, he has asked me to post “classic” MR entries. A blog post explaining Vaclav Smil’s concept of “power density” surely qualifies. This is the key concept for understanding a civilization’s energy needs.

Unfortunately, our MR files contain no concise explanation of the concept in layman’s language. (We have many explanations that no conceivable lay reader—myself most definitely included—could possibly understand or appreciate.) The closest thing I could find to a useful journalistic entry was a blog post by Kent Hawkins—a retired electrical engineer in Ontario—published on February 20, 2013. It is reprinted below.—Roger Donway, Managing Editor.

Power Density Separates the Wheat from the Chaff

By Kent Hawkins — February 20, 2013

“Power density (W/m2) is perhaps the most revealing variable in energetics…”[1]- Vaclav Smil

It may be a bit of an exaggeration to say that understanding power density may be all the average person requires to put our energy sources and needs into perspective, but there is some merit in this argument.…

Continue Reading

Energy: The Master Resource (by Robert L. Bradley Jr. and Richard W. Fulmer)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 8, 2025
Continue Reading

Energy & Environmental Review: July 7, 2025

By -- July 7, 2025
Continue Reading

Adam Smith’s Insight for Independence Day 2025 (Part II)

By Richard Ebeling -- July 4, 2025
Continue Reading

Adam Smith’s Insight for Independence Day 2025 (Part I)

By Richard Ebeling -- July 3, 2025
Continue Reading

The First Solar Power Plant: 1916

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 2, 2025
Continue Reading

Competitive Solar? A Perennial Deceit (Enron/NYT in 1994)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 1, 2025
Continue Reading

Solar Tax Credits: 1978–2025 (never enough)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 30, 2025
Continue Reading