In recent years, I have been working on a book trilogy inspired by the rise and fall of Enron, easily a top-ten event in the history of commercial capitalism. I worked at Enron for 16 years and knew Ken Lay (a nice, albeit subtly flawed, man) well. No, I did not know the extent of the company’s problems (very few did), but I should have known more. Still, I was very critical of the company’s political business model and in particular, Enron’s climate alarmism and investments in (uneconomic, unreliable, unprofitable) wind power and solar power.

Book 1 in the trilogy, Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy (2009), spends several chapters on best business practices and sustainable corporate culture under capitalism proper–and the perils for the same from political capitalism.…

Another defender of limited government (and sound science) has petitioned U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reopen the regulatory process that led to EPA’s controversial endangerment finding, arguing that new information casts doubt on the scientific integrity of the determination. The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a Sacramento, Calif.-based group that defends individuals against large, intrusive government, filed an administrative petition with EPA last week that challenges the agency’s finding on procedural grounds. The petition to the EPA is available at PLF’s web site.

According to the filing, EPA must reopen the proceedings surrounding its determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, in light of recent controversy over e-mails released from prominent climate scientists whose work formed the very foundation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 4th assessment on climate change (2007).…

“The quality of [truth-seeking] depends on a willingness to respectfully engage in open, honest, and objective debate, to challenge … our own beliefs…. As the philosopher, economist, and Anglican bishop Richard Whately observed: ‘It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another thing to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth’.”

– Charles Koch, The Science of Success (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), p. 115. [Book review here]

A week ago I posted a tribute to Julian Simon (1932–1998) on the anniversary of his death. The post was picked up elsewhere in the blogosphere, and I received a number of emails from academics who remarked about how much they appreciated Simon’s personal kindness and scholarly qualities. Steve Horwitz wrote at Coordination Problem:

[Simon] was a model of what a scholar can and should be:  well-read, totally on top of the relevant data, fearless about taking on sacred cows, unafraid to be in your face but always with a smile on his face. 

[Editor note: The author has added an update at the end showing why it can be reasonably argued that anthropogenic greenhouse gases may be responsible for less than half of the observed warming since the mid-20th century]

Back in December, the EPA announced that it had determined that greenhouse gases released by human activities “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” This “Endangerment Finding” is the first step toward EPA’s issuing regulations aimed at restricting GHG emissions in the U.S.

Unfortunately for the EPA, a major pillar of support of the Endangerment Finding—that “most” of the “observed warming” since the mid-20th century is from greenhouse gas emissions from human activities—has been shown by recent scientific research in major peer-reviewed scientific journals to be largely in doubt.

Add this result to the list of problems that seems to grow longer with each passing day as more IPCC gaffes are uncovered and Climategate emails are parsed.…