A Free-Market Energy Blog

‘Free Market’ Joe Romm? (when it comes to nuclear, that is)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 11, 2017

“[I]t is both pleasing and strange to see Joe Romm don a free market, pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer hat when it comes to nuclear. His (post-modernistic) dream is that wind power, solar power, and negawatts can usher in a post-fossil-fuel era. In reality, however, fossil fuels will replace nuclear to a large degree.”

Perry Just Made Taxpayers Invest in a $25-billion Nuclear ‘Financial Quagmire.’” So read the headline of a recent post by Joe Romm (Center for American Progress). His subtitle: “Nuclear plants are money losers, but Perry is loaning billions more to the last new one being built.”

It is strange. Nuclear is the only scalable CO2-free electrical generation source known to man. Although it is the most expensive way to boil water (and hopelessly uneconomic compared to natural gas- and even coal-fired power), a stubborn, quasi-religious segment of the Climate Malthusians refuses to bulge.…

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False Consensus: The 97 Percent Canard (Oreskes study debunked)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 10, 2017

“It is now widely agreed Oreskes did not distinguish between articles that acknowledged or assumed some human impact on climate, however small, and articles that supported IPCC’s more specific claim that human emissions are responsible for more than 50 percent of the global warming observed during the past 50 years.”

“Her definition of consensus also is silent on whether man-made climate change is dangerous or benign, a rather important point in the debate.”

” Oreskes’ literature review inexplicably overlooked hundreds of articles by prominent global warming skeptics…. More than 1,350 such articles (including articles published after Oreskes’ study was completed) are now identified in an online bibliography.”

The second edition of Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Scientific Consensus. (Heartland Institute: 2015), edited by Craig Idso, (the late) Robert Carter, and S.…

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Bottom Line Climate Science: A Primer

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 9, 2017

“Climate scientists, like all humans, can be biased. Origins of bias include careerism, grant-seeking, political views, and confirmation bias.”

“[General Circulation Models] systematically over-estimate the sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide (CO2), many known forcings and feedbacks are poorly modeled, and modelers exclude forcings and feedbacks that run counter to their mission to find a human influence on climate.”

In 2015, the Heartland Institute published the second edition of Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Scientific Consensus. Edited by Craig Idso, (the late) Robert Carter, and S. Fred Singer, this 100-page primer usefully rebuts the (political) notion of settled climate science–and climate alarmism in particular.

This post reproduces the Key Findings of the book (for full citations behind each point, see the online document). Tomorrow’s post reprints this book’s refutation of the “97 percent consensus” study that has become a sound bite for climate alarmists.…

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Houston Chronicle: $15/hour Minimum Wage for Rebuilding Houston (economics 101, anyone?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 5, 2017
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Houston Chronicle: Preaching Climate Alarmism Post Harvey

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 4, 2017
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Draining the PC Flood-Policy Swamp

By -- October 3, 2017
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Cabotage Cronyism: Some History of the Jones Act

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 2, 2017
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R Street: Faking Freedom on Climate Change

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 28, 2017
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ANWR Drilling: Why Property Rights Matter

By Shawn Regan -- September 26, 2017
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Energy & Environmental Newsletter: September 25, 2017

By -- September 25, 2017
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