If Texas A&M scientists calculated that an asteroid was heading our way, we would likely head for the hills with a lot of pills. But when this university’s climatology department warns of dangerous man-induced global warming and calls for government action (think new taxes and regulation), roll your eyes and watch the wallet. [But] we live in a postmodern world where emotion and desire substitute for humility and scholarship.
– Robert Bradley, “Political Scientists: Gerald North and Andrew Dessler Double Down on Climate Alarmism,” October 11, 2013.
Andrew Dessler is an alarmist/activist climate scientist. He is very certain of his positions on the hard science questions (what Judith Curry warns is really an uncertainty monster). Dessler also veers outside of his expertise to confidently assess the prospects for (government) forced energy transformation away from fossil fuels, the area of political economy. …
Continue Reading“Increasing the affordability of both U.S. and global energy is an important economic and humanitarian objective. Policy makers heeding the time-honored healer’s maxim, ‘First, do no harm,’ should reject policies to tax and regulate away mankind’s access to affordable energy.”
It is titled Free to Prosper: Energy and Environment: A Pro-Growth Agenda for the 116th Congress. It is the work of the energy and environmental stalwarts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the organization long led by Fred L. Smith Jr. and now directed by Kent Lassman. And as always, it is reliable scholarship to inform both sides of the political aisle.
The energy White Paper is part of a broader book, Free to Prosper. The eight areas other than Energy and Environment are Regulatory Reform and Agency Oversight; Trade; Banking and Finance; Private and Public Lands; Technology and Telecommunications; Labor and Employment; Food, Drugs, and Consumer Freedom; and Transportation That’s a lot of the federal matrix of public policy.…
Continue Reading“Depletionists believe that once a production peak is reached, there can be no recovery. This is simply not true when the history of oil production in many regions is examined.”
“Such is the state of Greenpeace ‘scholarship’ where it seems that the Peak Oil choir, out of songs, needs anything to sing. I’ll let you know when this dead horse tries to run again.”
Incredibly, in these days of an oil glut, Greenpeace published a piece by its co-founder Rex Weyler titled Will Peak Oil Save Earth’s Climate? “Given the slow pace of climate action,” he states, “some ecologists have wondered if peak oil production might arrive in time to forestall runaway global heating.”
Others have worried that peak oil and gas would mean higher coal usage and thus more carbon emissions, a question for another day.…
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