MasterResource’s growth and influence continues. First quarter visits of 115,000 were the highest in our five quarters of existence, and our total visits will exceed a half-million this quarter.

MasterResource is a top 25 “green blog” according to Technorati. We are currently #21 out of 2,172 qualifying blogs as of 4/10/2010, and we have reached as high as #14.

Our one-per-day posts are now regularly picked up by other blogs such as Tom Nelson and Junk Science, but also from time-to-time by the megablogs WattsUpWithThat? and Climate Depot.

MasterResource, the free market energy blog, is now a very top energy blog. Our scholarly and well categorized posts will remain relevant for many years to come. Each of us writes for the day but also for the record.

New Principal: Kent Hawkins

MasterResource is ‘owned’ by its principals, not any individual or organization.…

Editor note: Part I examined Dr. Ehrlich’s views on Julian Simon, growing energy usage, and depletion. Part II examined his errant energy forecasts. (Previous posts on the worldview and statements of Obama science advisor John Holdren are here.)

Energy conservation(ism) was the Ehrlichs’ silver bullet for fossil-fuel depletion. Current usage levels were decried as enormously wasteful. Depletion and climate change called for “a reorganization of the American way of life” to cut energy usage in half or else “the nation would go bankrupt.” [1] The bankruptcy would come after “frequent unpredictable blackouts and brownouts, the continual need to devise more ‘emergency’ measures, and the return of closed gasoline stations.” [2]

Transportation Usage

On the transportation side, smaller cars, alternative vehicles (even with “miserable pickup”), “slower coast-to-coast transportation,” and an end to two-car families were recommended as, potentially, “the cost of survival.”…

[Editor’s note: Part I in this five-part series examined Dr. Ehrlich’s views on Julian Simon, growing energy usage, and depletion. Part III examines Ehrlich’s conservation(ism) views.]

The Ehrlichs’ angst about the energy future was rife with forecasts that have been proven false–and embarrassingly so. As mentioned in Part I, the Ehrlichs’ protégé John Holdren has made similar radical pronouncements and wild exaggerations (see here and here) and even joined Stephen Schneider and other climate scientists in the global cooling scare.

Running Out of Oil

Writing in 1974, the Ehrlichs predicted that “we can be reasonably sure . . . that within the next quarter of a century mankind will be looking elsewhere than in oil wells for its main source of energy.” [1] Consequently, “we can also be reasonably sure that the search for alternatives will be a frantic one.”…

According to M. Mitchell Waldrop, editorial page editor for Nature, “global-warming deniers . . . are sowing doubts about the fundamental [climate change] science.” Further, Waldrop argues in his op-ed “Climate of Fear, “scientists’ reputations have taken a hit.”

Let’s ignore the snarky reference to “deniers” and ask: is science and are scientists under attack? The answer is Yes. But in an intellectual sense, isn’t this the essence of falsifiable, non-verifiable  physical science?

Climategate (et al.) is not simply about “deniers” and Waldrop’s complaint that skeptics are “stok[ing] the angry fires of talk radio, cable news, the blogosphere and the like.” It’s much more nuanced than that.

As a quick aside, perhaps Dr. Waldrop can be forgiven for failing to see the big picture. To critics (can he tolerate them?),…