This post reprints Section 3.2.1 of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels (Summary for Policymakers here.) This is the fifth volume in the Climate Change Reconsidered series published by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

This treatise from The Heartland Institute continues a tradition of offering citizens and scholars an alternative view of all issues relating to climate science and climate policy. This brief excerpt (subtitles added) will be joined in the New Year with many other excerpts on specific issues to better disseminate the major findings of this major treatise.

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“The modern history of wind power and on-grid solar power can be summarized in four words: economically incorrect, politically correct. U.S. companies invested heavily in renewable energy technologies in the 1970s/80s only to suffer losses and, in most cases, to exit. Only massive taxpayer and consumer subsidies in the 1990s reversed these market verdicts, leading to today’s government dependence.”

Last week, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) published my research paper, The Economic Fall and Political Rise of Renewable Energy. This study is drawn from chapter 13 of Enron Ascending: The Forgotten Years, 1984–1996, which reviewed Enron Corp.’s game-changing forays into solar power (1995), wind power (1997), as well as in other alternative energies.

Major Points

The Press Release made these five points:

• Renewable energy had almost a 100% market share throughout human history until it was replaced by more affordable and efficient mineral, carbon-based energies that powered the industrial revolution and vastly increased living standards.

“I have applied Simon’s framework to the issue of climate change, although my historical perspective allowed me to see more of the forest rather than obsess about a few trees. Try as I might, I just cannot ignore the unique and large-scale benefits brought to humanity by the ever increasing use of carbon fuels (e.g., from longer lives and better health to cleaner air and water, more abundant food and reforestation).”

Yesterday, Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak, summarized their new book, Population Bombed! Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change. Today, MasterResource is pleased to interview Professor Desrochers about his latest book.

Q. In his 1981 classic, The Ultimate Resource, Julian Simon decoupled population growth from resource depletion, rising pollution, food supply, and other popularly believed barriers to progress.…

“Milton Friedman’s timeless energy insights should be appreciated for all time.”

Born on this day 106 years ago, free-market economist Milton Friedman (1912–2006) was one of a kind. Even the dyspeptic Paul Krugman called his rival “the economist’s economist…a very great man indeed—a man of intellectual courage who was one of the most important economic thinkers of all time and possibly the most brilliant communicator of economic ideas to the general public that ever lived.” The Economist (November 23, 2006) called him “the most influential economist of the second half of the twentieth century… and possibly all of it.”

Milton Friedman’s major professional mark was in monetary economics. But as a public intellectual, writing popular books and a biweekly Newsweek column, he became conversant in different fields, including energy.

Friedman understood how, for much of US history, major energy regulation was sponsored by some segment of the industry.…