[Editor Note: This post originally appeared at MasterResource during Holiday Week 2009. Perhaps the update to this six years later is ‘only more so’ with the statistics of improvement and the case for energy optimism given the increasing sustainability of fossil fuels.]
Environmentalists critical of electrified America must have mixed emotions this time of the year. It may be the season of good cheer and goodwill toward all, but it is also the time of the most conspicuous of energy consumption. America the Beautiful is at her best in December when billions of tiny stringed light bulbs turn the mundane or darkness itself into magnificent beauty and celebration. Holiday lighting is a great social offering—a positive externality in the jargon of economics—given by many to all.
While energy doomsayers such as Paul Ehrlich have railed against “garish commercial Christmas displays,” today’s headline grabbers (Grist, Climate Progress, where are you?)…
“If implemented, this agreement will do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States. The potential to add incremental gas sales, and additional demand for renewable technology is enormous. In addition, a carbon emissions trading system will be developed.”
– John Palmisano, from Kyoto, Japan (1997)
A Hall of Shame crony memo just turned 18 years old. Dated December 12, 1997, it was written from Kyoto, Japan, in the afterglow of the Kyoto Protocol agreement by Enron lobbyist John Palmisano.
Global green planners such as Palmisano were euphoric that, somehow, someway, the world had embarked on an irreversible course of climate control (and thus industrial and land-use control). His memo reflects the train-just-left-the-station mentality, as well as the specific benefits for first-mover ‘green’ Enron.…
“What has been noticeably absent so far in the ClimateGate discussion is a public reaffirmation by climate researchers of our basic research values: the rigors of the scientific method (including reproducibility), research integrity and ethics, open minds, and critical thinking. Under no circumstances should we ever sacrifice any of these values; the CRU emails, however, appear to violate them.”
This item at Judith Curry’s website caught my eye. She recounts the “crazy days of Thanksgiving 2009 when I spent all weekend writing my ‘Open Letter'” in the wake of Climategate.
Six years later, in the middle of COP 21, it is time to give voice to Curry’s contribution, which was reproduced by Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth at the time under the title, “A Climate Scientist Who Engages Skeptics” (November 27, 2009).…