“I have no idea who Jim Wiegand is, but the Master Resource website is highly questionable….”

“Jim: My apologies. I was overreacting…. Perhaps you would be better served if you avoided that [MasterResource] crowd.”

So said Elliott Negin, Director of News & Commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists, several days ago in the comments section of his Huffington Post  piece, Wind Energy Threat to Birds Is Overblown.”

Mr. Negin is a serial user of the argumentum ad hominem. The Free Dictionary defines ad hominem as: “Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason: Debaters should avoid ad hominem arguments that question their opponents’ motives.”

In his piece, Negin takes on journalist and scholar Robert Bryce, whose exposés of politically correct renewable energy have clearly stuck a nerve with mainstream environmentalists whose embrace of industrial windpower is problematic.…

[Editor note: Six regulatory personalities related to government intervention in the U.S. oil and gas market (through the mid-1980s) are identified by the author. The reader is invited to add categories or examples of regulators to this list.]

The classical tyrant that has frequented other countries has not been a factor in the U.S. oil and gas experience (or the U.S. economy). [1] The existence of private property and democratic institutions is the major reason; the moderating influence of the industry over intervention is another reason. Huey Long of Louisiana, who as governor and U.S. Senator, left a controversial mark on oil and gas politics, probably is the closest to being an exception.

Instead of tyrants, hundreds of legislators and regulators have shaped oil and gas intervention at all levels of government.…

“Georgia … Texas … Arizona…. One story is an anomaly; two, a coincidence; three, a trend. When a so-called conservative Republican talks green energy and sounds like he or she is hitting the right notes, be careful. It’s probably the wrong song.”

Creating jobs…. enlarging the tax base… access to markets … energy choices for consumers…. monopoly busting … resource conservation….

The words and terms are being used by two government dependent renewable energy industries to sucker citizens and legislators to retain, if not enlarge, their taxpayer subsidies and ratepayer cross-subsidies in the current energy debate.

Make no mistake: This is an organized attempt to hoodwink  Republicans, conservatives, limited-government and free-market supporters, and even fiscally minded Democrats. Yet the means and ends of the deceivers are 180 degrees from what ordinary fiscally prudent citizens would support if they understood the gloss and what was underneath the hood.…

“The very real positive externality of inadvertent atmospheric CO2 enrichment must be considered in all studies examining the SCC [social cost of carbon].”

– Craig Idso, “The Positive Externalities of Carbon Dioxide: Estimating the Monetary Benefits of Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations on Global Good Production.” Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (October 2013).

The Carbon Sense Coalition has accused those waging a war on carbon dioxide of being “anti-green.” Why? Because CO2 is the gas of life, feeding every green plant, producing food for every animal and in the process releasing oxygen, another gas of life, into the atmosphere.

A recent study in Remote Sensing, Measuring and Modeling Global Vegetation Growth: 1982–2009) notes that data from remote sensing devices show significant increase in annual vegetation growth during the last three decades.…