“Chris Tomlinson is financially conflicted, badly so, and over-the-top against Big Oil and the fossil-fuel industry writ large. Yet he has a happy home as the business editorialist at the Houston Chronicle. These are peculiar times of climate alarmism/forced energy transformation….”

What’s the latest from the oil and gas misanthrope Chris Tomlinson, business editorialist at the Houston Chronicle? The fellow that does not feel at the least conflicted swimming in taxpayer-enabled wind/solar monies inside his own abode (involving $2.0 billion and 2,000 MW)? [1]

Not much….

At CERAWeek 2022, Tomlinson was not listening to the (puppet) head of the U.S. Department of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, who stated:

We are on a war footing—an emergency—and we have to responsibly increase short-term [oil and gas] supply…. And that means you producing more right now, where and if you can.

“Certainly, the path of energy transition has never been clear. Five climate summits have taken place over the past 30 years, and progress has always fallen short. This latest setback may just be the latest in a long series of halfway measures and setbacks.”

“For critics of the European Union’s climate policies, the sudden focus away from greenhouse gas emissions and on existing fuel reserves is validating.” (NYT, below)

Let history note that the February 23, 2022, print edition of the New York Times admitted that “net zero” was a long shot. This breaks the narrative that Net Zero was the inevitable future with politics and business and high technology leading the way. Forget energy density; energy reality would be remade by a shared narrative of hoping and wanting it to be remade.…

“Mr. President, America is the world’s energy superpower. It is time we started acting like it again.”

We live in ironic political times when it comes to petroleum, a pillar of the master resource of energy. But consumers know and like their best energies, prominently including gasoline and diesel at the pump.

When citizen voters fuss about key petroleum products, politicians take off their ‘green’ masks and bow to reality. Remember Al Gore in his 2000 presidential run when motor-fuel prices became an issue? The author of Earth in the Balance stated:

I have made it clear in this campaign that I am not calling for any tax increase on gasoline, on oil, on natural gas, or anything else. I am calling for tax cuts to stimulate the production of new sources of domestic energy and new technologies to improve efficiency.

“Yet the methanol initiative is now largely forgotten. And of course, there’s always the problem that EPA regulations do not allow it to be used in automobiles. With natural-gas surpluses now at the point where a national oversupply is being predicted for 2017, however, it may be time to go back and give the California experience a second look.” (Arctic Leaf, 2013, below)

“The Alternative Motor Fuel Act, signed into law by President Reagan in 1988 … provided a waiver of EPA regulations to allow methanol to be used in cars. A year later, President George H.W. Bush became an enthusiast, promising to put 500,000 methanol cars on the road by 1996 and a million by 1998.“

The history of energy technology and policy is important for today’s debates. Again and again, historical research uncovers examples of government-engineered energy choices that start with great expectations and end up in failure.…