A Free-Market Energy Blog

Taylor at RFF: Don’t Assume the Problem, Debate It (why price carbon dioxide?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 1, 2016

“With the RFF moment at hand, it is timely to give voice to the old Jerry Taylor to challenge the new Jerry.”

Will Jerry Taylor speak truth to power or power to truth at tomorrow’s seminar at Resources for the Future (RFF) on public policy toward climate change? This question was asked in yesterday’s post on the (ultra-strange) reinvention of Jerry Taylor to climate alarmism/forced energy transformation.

With the RFF moment at hand, it is timely to give voice to the old Jerry Taylor to challenge the new Jerry. These same questions should be asked of Ray Kopp, who has made a living of assuming rather than debating the fundamental issues surrounding climate change. And to the extent that RFF is a scholarly organization (it is not when it comes to climate change under the very partisan Phil Sharp), every staffer there should take the questions to heart and challenge authority.…

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Jerry Taylor: Climate Change as ‘Political Theater’ (so why become an actor?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 29, 2016

“Will Jerry Taylor speak truth to power by frontally questioning that carbon dioxide emissions is an unambiguous negative externality–a global market failure–that government, every government, must address? Or will he speak power to truth by assuming CO2 is a pollutant for which global government (really, an environmental Pope) can provide, as it were, a giant climate safety net.”

In 1998, then climate realist and energy libertarian Jerry Taylor wrote a piece, “Global Warming: The Anatomy of a Debate,” that piggybacked on the late, great Public Choice economist William Niskanen.

Taylor wrote:

The national debate over what to do, if anything, about the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has become less a debate about scientific or economic issues than an exercise in political theater. The reason is that the issue of global climate change is pregnant with far-reaching implications for human society and the kind of world our children will live in decades from now.

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The Windpower/Health Debate: Ground Zero in Falmouth, MA

By Sherri Lange -- February 25, 2016

“I could work my way through 49 years of observing sleep disturbances and deprivation, but that is more than the scope of this letter. I am writing because I have witnessed Town of Falmouth officials and members of other boards trivialize symptom reports from people who are stalwart residents of the Town of Falmouth…. Furthermore, all the Wind I neighbors I have examined are passionate about the need for sustainable energy in an effort to reduce fossil fuel dependence.”

The human nervous system is the most sensitive instrument available to date for evaluating the impact of the Falmouth wind turbines on residents who live close to them. The ONLY experts in the discussion are the people who are sensing the sound, vibrations, pressure waves, etc. emitted by the turbines. There is no one more “expert “than these people.…

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On Scientific Method: Comment on Hawkins

By Jon Boone -- February 24, 2016
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Science, Advocacy, and Public Policy (MIT’s ‘The Future of Solar Energy’ revisited)

By Kent Hawkins -- February 23, 2016
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Dear Daniel Yergin: Give Alex Epstein the Microphone at CERAWeek

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 22, 2016
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Whales: An Offshore Wind Issue

By Paul Driessen and Mark Duchamp -- February 18, 2016
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‘Peak Oil’ Over, Economists Study Climate Policy Costs

By -- February 17, 2016
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Julian Simon: A Pathbreaking, Heroic Scholar

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 16, 2016
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AWED Energy & Environmental Newsletter: February 15, 2016

By -- February 15, 2016
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