2Q-2010 MasterResource Update: The Progress Continues

MasterResource, a free-market energy blog, continues to attract new talent and a growing audience. We have had approximately 45 authors to date, and our cumulative views have exceeded one-half million.

We are not a mega-blog, but we are an important addition to the energy literature that will, like a good book, be accessed and referenced for years to come.

At Technorati, MasterResource has consistently been in the top 25 (out of 1,550) “green” blogs and has reached as high as #7. But more importantly, serious students of energy policy are regulars at our site, reading our once-a-day, in-depth post or tracking down material on what Enron/Ken Lay really did, what Jim Hansen or John Holdren really said, or what BP was doing under John Browne. We preserve the excesses of the smartest-guys-in-the-energy-room for posterity.

New Talent

MasterResource has proven adept at discovering important new voices for the energy history, reality, and policy debate.

Ph.D. economist and leading industry consultant Donald Hertzmark was one early find. Robert Peltier, editor of POWER magazine, was another. Kent Hawkins has brought his engineering expertise to MasterResource on the all-important question of wind intermittency and related emissions from fossil-fuel backup.

More recently, solar practitioner and expert David Bergeron has posted with us and plans to cover the the solar field for MasterResource. Bill Griesinger, a financial expert, is another new name that you will hear about more at this site.

Grassroots opposition to industrial wind turbines has brought some experts our way such as Jon Boone and John Droz. Their environmental credentials and in-the-trenches knowledge about wind turbines makes them more than just ‘talented amateurs’ in the energy debate.

And California, California. Robert Michaels and Tom Tanton are covering that state (as well as it can be done) for MasterResource.

The ten principals of MasterResource are introduced here. Three dozen other bloggers from a variety of backgrounds have posted at MasterResource. We invite inquiries from potential energy bloggers: email Rob Bradley at rbradley@iertx.org.)

Philosophy

MasterResource blogs share a common grounding: energy realism over energy hype and alarmism, and a preference for free energy markets over energy statism.

Our worldview can be summarized as follows:

1. Energy, the master resource, is indispensable for modern society. Abundance, affordability, and reliability are necessary for the developed world to advance and paramount for the developing world to develop and prosper.
2. The master resource depends on the ultimate resource of human ingenuity, which thrives under conditions of economic and political freedom.
3. Energy freedom is based upon private property and the rule of law where buyers, sellers, entrepreneurs, and owners are free to enter into mutually advantageous exchanges and agreements. Government is passive, keeping the peace and working to set rules where reasonably determined harms are avoided.

More specifically, MasterResource posts have explained:

1. The futility of regulating carbon dioxide and other man-made greenhouse gases. Not only is the science behind claims of catastrophic warming unproven and worse, carbon dioxide (CO2) as the green greenhouse gas has demonstrated benefits for the environment and economy.
2. Why ethanol is not an effective substitute for or supplement to petroleum in the transportation sector.
3. Why wind power and solar power are not effective substitutes for or even supplements to oil, gas, and coal in electric generation.
4. Why in business/economic terms, carbon-based energy is an expanding resource, not a fixed/depleting one.
5. Why free-market energy is sustainable and can be expected to become less scarce and more affordable for an open-ended future.
6. Why the major threat to energy sustainability is not depletion, pollution, or climate change. It is government control and rationing of consumer-friendly energy sources.

Our challenge is to inform the public, academics, policymakers, and even ‘Left” intellectuals that public policy activism must take into account not only ‘market failure’ but also analytical failure (false claims/corrections of market failure) and government failure (political waste in the proffered solution).

We believe that open-minded opponents will come our way when they learn the full story of climate science and of false Gods such as windpower. But these individuals have to want to know. That is the hard part–embracing a challenge culture.

Finally, thanks to you our many dedicated viewers.

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Previous MasterResource Reports

1Q-2010 Report

4Q-2009 Report

3Q-2009 Report

2Q-2009 Report

1Q-2009 Report

Opening post (December 26, 2008)