A Free-Market Energy Blog

The Free Market Energy Movement: Strong Theory, Rich History, Real-World Momentum

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 7, 2013

“It’s not unlawful to run an ad hominem presidency. It’s merely shameful. The great rhetorical specialty of this president has been his unrelenting attribution of bad faith to those who disagree with him. He acts on principle; they from the basest of instincts.”

– Charles Krauthammer, “There’s a Fly in My Soup,” Washington Post, May 23, 2013.

The alarmist/statist side of the energy/environmental debate is losing intellectually and now politically. The agenda of inferior energies simply cannot stand up to a combination of analytic failure, government failure, and real-world realities. The oil and gas boom … the cessation of global warming; improving air and water quality … alternative energy busts ….

And as the alarmists have become ever more argumentative and shrill, even (former) allies and sympathizers are seeing a quasi-religious, nonintellectual, even ugly aspect to the Climate Progress view of the world.…

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Revisiting Climategate as Climatism Falters

By Steve Goreham -- June 6, 2013

Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, is on the wane. Once riding high, the ideology of man-made climate change is losing its influence in governments across the world. Climategate, the release of e-mails from the University of East Anglia, called the science of dangerous warming into question and turned the tide of global opinion.

Background

On November 19, 2009, and unidentified hacker or internal whistle-blower downloaded more than 1,000 documents and e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in the United Kingdom and posted them on a server in Russia. Within hours, these documents were accessed by websites around the world.

These e-mails were a subset of confidential communications between top climate scientists in the United Kingdom, the United States, and other nations over the last fifteen years.…

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Wind Forcing: New England’s Coming Energy War

By -- June 5, 2013

“Feel-good politics and a desperate wind industry are driving Massachusetts and Connecticut policies, but at some point energy policies have to be grounded in reality. Opposition to wind energy in the northern New England states has settled in, and the residents are beginning to argue enough-is-enough. … As is typical in areas around the world, wind energy will once again bring division.”

New England state Renewable Portfolio Standard (‘RPS’) policies represent some of the most aggressive and costly programs in the country. By 2021, over 20% of the electricity sold retail in the region must come from renewables. Given a robust mix of natural resources, particularly wood biomass, and some hydroelectric, meeting the state mandates, while tough, is possible. But recent legislative and regulatory proposals altering the Massachusetts and Connecticut RPS programs now threaten the balance in favor of building new wind power facilities which could lead to an energy policy war between the states.

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Rex Tillerson (Exxon Mobil) on Climate Change (energy/climate realism trumps alarmism)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 4, 2013
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AWED Energy & Environmental Newsletter (June 3, 2013)

By -- June 3, 2013
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Rice’s Baker Institute Climate Embarrassment (Sass’s ad hominem response to Rep. Smith)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 31, 2013
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Beyond Furloughs: Ax EPA Climatism

By -- May 30, 2013
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Keystone XL Deserves a Presidential “Yes” (consumers, citizens, labor all in support)

By Mark Green -- May 29, 2013
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The Ungreening of Windpower: Dina Cappiello (AP) Blows the Whistle on Big Wind (and others are following)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 28, 2013
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Happy Highway Freedom Weekend (it’s summer, let’s go!)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 25, 2013
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