“Diminishing returns are opposed by increasing knowledge, both of the earth’s crust and of methods of extraction and use. The price of oil, like that of any mineral, is the uncertain fluctuating result of the conflict.”
– M. A. Adelman, quoted in Michael Lynch, “Morris A. Adelman, Petroleum Economist, Has Passed Away,” Forbes, May 9, 2014.
A giant of petroleum economics, MIT economist Morry Adelman, died last week at the age of 96. (A short mention in the Boston Globe is here.)
Unlike the Malthusians and peak-oilers in particular, Adelman kept his eye on marginal costs and institutions (resource ownership, government policy) to understand that oil was not a fixed, depleting asset but, at least potentially, a super-abundant, expanding one. To grow and thrive, petroleum needed market incentives just like plants need water to grow and thrive.…
“This is not sober, balanced science; it is ObamaScience for open-ended government planning.”
Despite uncooperative data regarding global warming (in a 15+ year ‘pause’), hurricanes, and tornadoes; despite the failure of climate models to predict and thus explain; despite the inability of the same models to attribute regionally; and despite the well-known benefits of carbon dioxide fertilization and moderately warmer/wetter climate scenarios, Obama and the Malthusian Left (including many cooperating scientists) soldier on.
But it will not be easy. The all-in effort to stretch climate science beyond the normal peer-review literature (John Holdren got his wish) may well backfire. Good science drives out bad, and the public is already alerted to the politicization of climate science and the nefarious agenda of “saving the planet.”
A Wall Street Journal article, “Obama Climate Push Faces a Lukewarm Public,” explained the climate conundrum.…
“We need to recognize the enormous health and environmental benefits in ending energy poverty, eliminating household air pollution, and increasing access to low-cost electricity. Everyone in the world deserves to live as well as those in developed nations. Let’s use more energy, more cleanly, every day.”
– Gregory Boyce, chairman and chief executive officer, Peabody Energy (February 26, 2014)
Bravo! … This is by far the best coal-industry campaign since the Greening Earth Society made a powerful case for the positive externalities of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions back in the 1990s. The new effort, two months old, was announced with this headline:
Advanced Energy for Life Campaign Launched to Build Awareness and Support to End “World’s Number One Human and Environmental Crisis” of Global Energy Poverty
“Calling global energy poverty the world’s number one human and environmental crisis,” the press release read: “Peabody Energy today launched a comprehensive global campaign aimed at building awareness and support to eliminate energy poverty, increase access to low-cost electricity and improve emissions through advanced clean coal technologies.”…