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Posts from June 2020

‘The Increasing Sustainability of Conventional Energy’ (1999 analysis for 2020)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 30, 2020

“The Petroleum Economist’s headline for 1998 projects, ‘Ever Greater Use of New Technology,” will also characterize future years, decades, centuries, and millennia under market conditions. If the ‘ultimate resource’ of human ingenuity is allowed free rein, energy in its many and changing forms will be more plentiful and affordable for future generations than it is now, although never ‘too cheap to meter’ as was once forecast for nuclear power.” (Bradley, 1999: 40)

From time to time, MasterResource dips into the history vault to demonstrate how well the free-market, human ingenuity worldview has stood the test of time. Julian Simon Lives!, in other words.

Twenty-one years ago, I published a Cato Policy Analysis, The Increasing Sustainability of Conventional Energy (No. 341: April 22, 1999). It was 51 pages with 250 references.…

Anti-Humanism: Book Review of ‘The End of Nature’ by Bill McKibben

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 29, 2020

“Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” -David Graber, Los Angeles Times (below)

Bill McKibben, a radical deep ecologist, has been normalized in today’s alarmist, TDS world. He has a regular column in The New Yorker, claiming that man-made climate change is “the most thorough and complete crisis our species and our civilizations have ever faced, one there is no guarantee that we will survive intact.”

I recently came across a book review of McKibben’s deep-ecology manifesto, The End of Nature (Random House: 1989), titled Mother Nature as a Hothouse Flower.

Published in the Los Angeles Times in that year by David Graber (“a research biologist with the National Park Service”), the review was all-in with McKibben’s scary worldview.…

Censorship for Climate Alarm: Dessler Joins Mann in Intellectual Cowardice

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 25, 2020

“[Facebook is] a powerful way to misinform people, since these groups can’t win in the actual scientific arena, so they only can win in these media environments where they can pay to promote stuff.” (Andrew Dessler, 2020).

“All of the noise right now from the climate change denial machine, the bots & trolls, the calls for fake ‘debates’, etc. Ignore it all….Report, block. Don’t engage.” (Michael Mann, 2019)

Andrew Dessler and Michael Mann are two very emotional climate alarmists in today’s vigorous, unsettled debate. “Hide the Decline” Mann, the leading culprit of the Climategate scandal, triggered “a public-relations disaster for science” by manipulating data and techniques to reach a preordained (alarmist) result. Andy Dessler, who admits to a “very low threshold for outrage,” is the alarmist’s alarmist–a true catastrophist.…

Joanna Szurmak Interview: Extending the Julian Simon Worldview (Part II: Population Bombed!)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 24, 2020

Joanna Szurmak Interview: Extending the Julian Simon Worldview (Part I: Worldview)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 23, 2020

“Seven Principles of Sound Environmental Policy” (Hayes and Myers on free-market environmentalism)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 22, 2020

Asphalt Paves the Way

By American Oil & Gas Historical Society -- June 18, 2020

Petroleum Trash to Treasure: Market Incentives Spark Human Ingenuity

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#pierre-and-joanna">Joanna Szurmak</a> -- June 17, 2020

Julian Simon: High School Debaters Hear His Message

By Greg Rehmke -- June 16, 2020

GE: Contra-Capitalism’s Toll (lightbulb unit sold)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 15, 2020