“This encyclopedic and even-handed survey of the evidence of global warming is a welcome corrective to the raging hysteria about the alleged dangers of global warming. [Thomas Gale] Moore demonstrates conclusively that global warming is more likely to benefit than to harm the general public.”
– Milton Friedman, back-cover endorsement, Thomas Gale Moore, Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Global Warming (1998).
“Of all my father’s accomplishments, I believe the one he was proudest of was his role in ending military conscription. I do not think he would be happy to be conscripted, posthumously, for someone else’s cause [of a carbon tax].” (David Friedman, below)
The son of the late Milton Friedman (1912–2006), David Friedman, called it “A Case of Posthumous Conscription.”
The controversy harks back to 2014 when Bob Inglis of RepublicEn (a fake, Left-funded Republican front group) chaired an event at the University of Chicago titled, “What Would Milton Friedman Do About Climate Change?”…
“To refine our estimates of climate sensitivity will require breakthroughs in climate physics and more high-quality measurements…. Both outcomes likely lie a couple decades hence….”
“Are Climate Model Projections too Hot?” Niskanen Center (downloaded January 19, 2020)
Climate activists, whether scientists or members of a nongovernmental organization (NGO), eschew direct debate. “The science is settled!” … “We must take action now!” … All to keep fossil fuels in the ground and let the consumers worry about energy affordability, reliability, and convenience.
But the holy grail of climate sensitivity to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, the enhanced greenhouse effect, remains in stubborn dispute today as in the 1980s. The range of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is wide and not expected to come down soon.
The bottom end, as projected by models and accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is in net positive territory, according to leading climate economists.…
Are there really depletable resources? The answer was “yes” if and only if there was an associated “cessation, once and for all, of technological progress.” This is clearly not the case for natural gas development. Technological progress is alive and well, and technology is the most powerful non-price determinant of supply. The “theory of the mine” (Harold Hotelling, 1931), not the mine, has been abandoned. (Enron Corp., The 1995 Enron Outlook. Houston, Texas: 1995, p. 8.)
Part I yesterday described my early effort to sell the idea of natural gas as a bridge fuel to environmental NGOs as part of their climate strategy. Behind this effort was Enron’s case for an expanding resource base for gas.
After severe shortages with natural gas during several winters in the 1970s, partial gas price deregulation resulted in artificially high prices, which quickly led to a supply glut and a price crash.…