“Human beings create more than they destroy.”

– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton, N.Y.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 580.

“People have since antiquity worried about running out of natural resources–flint, game animals, what-have-you. Yet, amazingly, all the historical evidence shows that raw materials–all of them–have become less scarce rather than more….  And there is no reason why this trend should not continue forever.”

– Julian Simon, “The State of Humanity: Steadily Improving,” Cato Policy Report, September/October 1995.

There is only one thing that is going up more than government subsidies for uneconomic wind and solar power: oil, gas, and coal reserves and resources in the United States, according to a new study released yesterday by the Institute for Energy Research (IER) assessing total North American inventory.…

Michael Mann: “I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause.”

Phil Jones: “I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process.”

The above emails are representative of the sickly fare of a group of physical scientists who set out to change the world from one of open-ended economic growth to one of economic constraint via international carbon planning. The good news is that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gatekeepers have once again been exposed by the e-mail release of last week, now known the world over as Climategate 2.0.…

Robert Bryce of Austin, Texas, as he himself will tell you, is a reformed Leftie/greenie. The solar array he installed on his roof was a bust, and he followed the logic of energy density to conclude that wind, solar, water, crops, plants, and wood would not allow energy to be mankind’s master resource.

And as did Julian Simon in his day, Bryce looks at the data and science before he makes up his mind. And like Simon, he changed his mind away from neo-Malthusian notions of resource depletion and climate pessimism.

Energy Views

Bryce’s views took shape on the oil/transportation side with Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence” (2008) and on electricity with Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future (2010).…

[Ed. note: This is Bradley’s final statement to: “This house believes that subsidising renewable energy is a good way to wean the world off fossil fuels.” After nine days and thousands of votes cast from around the world, the opposition is polling very close.]

“A reliable and affordable supply of energy is absolutely critical to maintaining and expanding economic prosperity where such prosperity already exists and to creating it where it does not.” – John Holdren (2000)

“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen (2011)

Energy density (think energy efficiency) is the most important concept for the House Proposition.…