“For a long time to come—until all energies used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells come from renewable energy sources—modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels.”
– Vaclav Smil, “What I See When I See a Wind Turbine (March 2016).
Vaclav Smil, distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba, has published 37 books and almost 500 papers on “the fields of energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy.”
One of the great energy experts of our age, Smil’s output easily rivals whole US Department of Energy laboratories which, incidentally, are easy candidates for elimination under a new political regime.
This month, Dr. Smil’s published a short piece in IEEE Spectrum titled “What I See When I See a Wind Turbine.”…
“Let’s switch out for a better [climate] policy…. Then conservative activists who continue to be in the denialist camp on climate change will find themselves completely isolated.”
– Jerry Taylor, quoted in “Libertarian Group Takes on Conservatives on Carbon Tax.” Energy & Environmental News (sub. req.), March 3, 2016.
“Alarmists … clearly have decided that the best way to win the global warming debate is by shouting down the opposition and demonizing them in the eyes of the public. But that is not dispassionate scientific debate; it is more like a ‘struggle meeting’ during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.”
– Jerry Taylor, The Heated Rhetoric of Global Warming, Cato Institute Commentary, September 15, 1997.
Climate ‘denier’ or ‘denialist’ is a term of political hate speech. Recently, it came from a source that for most of the last quarter century was labeled a ‘denier’ by the pugnacious Left. …
“In the United Nations Paris Accord last December world leaders promised to try to reduce future emissions. These politicians shamelessly clapped each other on the back, pretending they had accomplished something important. However, they had agreed beforehand not to even discuss the only action that could rapidly reduce global emissions.”
– James Hansen, “‘I am an Energy Voter’” February 23, 2016.
James Hansen is mad at the “I am an Energy Voter” campaign that encourages consumers to vote for their favorite energies at the ballot box, not only at the pump. Hansen, in fact, is mad at the free society where buyers voluntarily buy and sellers voluntarily sell. Ludwig von Mises called that consumer sovereignty.
Hansen wants otherwise. Renewables as savior is for the Tooth Fairy, he believes, so nuclear and forced conservation (conservationism) is atop his agenda — forced by a punitive carbon tax (or fee-and-dividend as he puts it).…