Ed Note: This excerpt is from Erich Zimmermann, World Resources and Industries: A Functional Appraisal of the Availability of Agricultural and Industrial Resources (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933).

“Harnessing the air for generating electric power … [is] engrossing the attention of scientists and technicians and may revolutionize the German electric industry. [Hermann] Honnef claims to have … overcome the drawback of the inconstancy of air currents which hitherto has been a handicap to the utilization of this source.” (1932)

Erich W. Zimmermann’s World Resources and Industries (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933) is one of the towering tomes of energy and mineral thought. The treatise (850 pages) in the old tradition, wherein a scholar presents a unified system of thought and considers differing viewpoints.

It is a tradition that seems to have stalled, with the next-best-thing being the latest book from Vaclav Smil.…

“Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner. (IPCC, below)

… government (coercive) mitigation policy is being left behind by self-interested energy actions around the world. Wind and solar and batteries … are running into limits. A new public policy era post-COP27 is called for. (RLB, below)

The UN Conference of Parties to be held in Cairo, Egypt, next month (COP27) has long been in preparation. Net Zero may be a dead he/she walking (Halloween fright?), but expect no backtracking from the Church of Climate. “Don’t Look Up” … IPCC reports … ExxonKnew … it is a one-after-the-other global media campaign to not focus on the Green Energy Crises or the tripartite fossil-fuel boom but on … Net Zero.…

David Siegel is a man with a message. His Deep Optimism Manifesto spells out a new approach to viewing the world that is at once realistic and optimistic. Written last year, its message is timeless and timely. His opening quotation comes from Julian Simon’s essay in The State of Humanity, p. 642.

I am writing this in response to the Ecomodernism manifesto. It’s a group of smart people doing very important work to help improve the future for humanity and nature.

I think if they looked more into the science of climate change and the economics of abundance, they would arrive at Deep Optimism, a term coined by Matt Ridley, the rational optimist.

People who understand the economics of abundance don’t apply enough critical thinking to understanding climate and the natural world (Hans Rosling, Bjorn Lomborg, Peter Diamandis, Tyler Cowen, Steven Pinker).…

Ed. note: This post excerpts energy and climate material from the Media Balance Newsletter, a fortnightly published by physicist John Droz Jr., founder of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions. The complete MBN for this post can be found here.

Renewables (General):
*** The Wind and Solar Energy ‘Paradox’: A More Costly Way Forward
*** The Penetration Problem. Part I: Wind and Solar – The More You Do, The Harder It Gets
*** Clean Green Energy – Net Zero – Fairy Tales on Steroids
*** The Myth of Clean Energy
*** Energy experts sound alarm on Europe’s energy crisis as ‘clear and present warning’ for America
Short video: Renewable Energy Storage: No Wind, No Sun, Now What?
‘Green’ energy company cuts down primary forests in Canada
The Coming Green Electricity Nightmare

Wind Energy:
*** Critically Thinking about Industrial Wind Energy
*** Reality Bites Wind
*** Right Whales Endangered by Wrong Energy Policies!…