“‘You let me name the people doing the analysis, and I can get you any outcome you desire.’ Cordato told a Cato Institute that cost-benefit analysis for demand-side management programs is essentially a bogus enterprise, doomed to failure, regardless of how carefully the analysis is performed.”
Great wine ages well. In this case, the nectar has no expiration date.
Some twenty-one years ago, a “libertarian economist” from Campbell University got attention in the energy press by popping a sacred cow of market-failure economics, social cost/benefit analysis as a basis for government intervention in markets. The occasion was a Cato Institute/Institute for Energy Research conference, “New Horizons in Electric Power Deregulation,” held on March 2, 1995, in Washington, DC.
In my dusty files, I recently found this writeup from The Quad Report (April 1995) that is reprinted below.…
Continue Reading
I have been vacationing and now living in Maine since 1949. The lure of The North Woods was ingrained in me from my earliest memories. Our family came every summer from wherever we lived at the time. Alabama, Ohio, New York, Maryland, New Jersey . . . . none of them had the draw we had to this beautiful, wild wilderness. We brought a number of families with us over the years to experience Maine, and every one of them ended up coming back again and again and some eventually retired here.
Our destination was a small lake in the Lincoln area where the last 15 miles of the road was dirt in 1949. The camp we rented was primitive . . . no electricity, an outhouse, no TV and a crackly transistor radio, kerosene lamps, an old fashioned ice box, with real ice, a wood cook stove .…
Continue Reading“Contrary to the impression favored by governments, the corner has not been turned toward declining emissions and GHG amounts…. Negative CO2 emissions, i. e., extraction of CO2 from the air, is now required.”
– James Hansen, “Young People’s Burden.” October 4, 2016.
“The ponderous response of the climate system also means that we don’t need to instantaneously reduce GHG amounts.”
– James Hansen, “We Hold Truths to be Self-Evident“ December 2, 2016.
What a difference a few months make!
Just in time for holiday season, and for the Trump Administration, the father of the climate alarm, formerly a climate scientist with NASA/GISS, and now a full-time scientist/activist, has ameliorated his grand climate alarm. The 10-year ultimatum announced in 2006, made more dire in 2009 and since, is now moderated.…
Continue Reading