“Funny thing. The climate alarmists’ favorite energies–wind and solar–have ruined the margins of nuclear to cause premature retirements and a lack of private funding for new construction. So the fossil-fuel haters in the nuclear camp find themselves victimized by the climate crusade. It sure is hard being ‘nuclear green’.”
Being active on social media with several thousand followers, I actively engage with my critics for fun and profit. I learn much, and those who have chosen to follow me (6,400+) might also. But I have also attracted scorn, some of the worst kind. My foes are typically wed to an energy dependent on special government failure. The ideological, deep-ecology, Church-of-Climate types spare little invective about how I am a threat to the future. Arguments failing, ad hominem often follows,
I employ plenty of analysis and link to a variety of sources.…
Continue Reading“The fusion propaganda machine has produced a wave of mostly offbeat projects, more than 40 since 2018 by one estimate. The likelihood that any of these fusion pipedreams will produce anything other than red ink is less than slim.”
Harsh reality is again clashing with the fanciful hype of the past several years regarding fusion energy. The only credible attempt to harness the physics of the sun, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, has again pushed back the date when it will attempt a sustained fusion reaction toward practical energy production.
For the second time in two years, the 35-nation project has announced a snag in the project, although it has reported some better news. At a July 3 press conference at ITER headquarters in France, Director-General Pietro Barabaschi said the new goal is to be able to run the toroidal magnets in the donut-shaped tokomak briefly at full power in 2036.…
Continue ReadingThe Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 covers federal energy policy in some detail. The agenda is largely free market, and the subtle politicization of means and ends under the Biden/Harris Administration is identified for reform.
This document is congruent with the very brief Republican Party energy platform, “Make America the Dominant Energy Producer in the World, by Far”. But it falls short of true classical liberalism, as exemplified by my general approach to free market energy; the call by the Cato Institute to “zero out” the U.S. Department of Energy (2011); and end all preferential energy taxation (in 2013); and IER’s American Energy Act (2011).
The energy sections of Project 2025 follow verbatim. I offer a final comment on some of the missing initiatives.
A conservative President must be committed to unleashing all of America’s energy resources and making the energy economy serve the American people, not special interests.…
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