“Over the past 15 years, the U.S. has spent $150 billion on global warming, and this year’s budget calls for another $18 billion. What do we have to show for all this spending – numerical models that can’t make accurate forecasts for 17 years and numerous failed green energy projects (i.e. bankrupt Solyndra that cost U.S. taxpayers a half-billion dollars)?”
– Neil Frank (Ph.D), Letter to the Editor, Houston Chronicle, October 3, 2014.
The mainstream media, including the Houston Chronicle in my hometown, has neglected to expose the falsified, exaggerated claims of climate alarmism. For example, no Chronicle reporter bothered to cover the expert-laden energy/climate conference hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation last month here in Houston, At The Crossroads: Energy & Climate Policy Summit.
Eric Berger, the paper’s science reporter, and yesteryear’s straight shooter on the skeptic-versus-alarmist climate debate, has largely disengaged (his last climate piece, at least according to his blog, was last Spring).…
“In terms of affordability, availability and scalability – methanol and ethanol are the best prospects to [displace oil in transportation] quickly.”
– John Hofmeister, quoted in John Holeywell, “Q&A: He Ran Shell Oil Co. – and He Thinks We Use Too Much Crude,” Houston Chronicle, September 19, 2014.
Milton Friedman once opined: “The two greatest enemies of free enterprise in the United States … have been, on the one hand, my fellow intellectuals and, on the other hand, the business corporations of this country.”
Enter T. Boone Pickens, crony capitalist extraordinaire. Enter John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Co. (2005–2008), the Houston-based U.S. subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. [1]
Hofmeister maliciously titled his signature book, Why We Hate the Oil Companies: Straight from an Energy Insider.…
Two weeks ago, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) hosted a state-of-the-art climate and energy conference in the nation’s energy capital of Houston. The global warming establishment may have stayed away, but a large crowd was treated to a sound, multi-disciplinary review of the physical science, political economy, and resource economics.
The evening keynote for At The Crossroads: Energy & Climate Policy Summit was an address by Texas Governor Rick Perry. While Perry’s general public policy positions are free-market–and thus pro-consumer and pro-taxpayer–his energy security, don’t-import-but-export argument smacks of Mercantilism and U.S.-side protectionism. Furthermore, Perry pulled his punches regarding the conference’s major themes on climate and energy policy. It was a timid, uninspired keynote just when the momentum dictated going the other way.
Soft on Climate Propoganda
Perry could have, should have, reiterated the conference’s major themes: the 15–20 year ‘pause’ in global warming; lowered climate sensitivity estimates (and explanation for the same in the peer-reviewed literature); the desperate, speculative tie-in’s between anthropogenic climate change and extreme weather events (if there has been no warming, how can ‘climate change’ be involved?);…