[Editor note: Robert L. Bradley Jr.’s book review of Charles Koch’s The Science of Success (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007) appeared in the August/September 2008 issue of The New Individualist (Atlas Society). It is reprinted below to better publicize the worldview of the individual who has been behind a number of free-society initiatives across the country for several decades–and is now a target of Al Gore and the anti-free-market Left).
In 1859, the first treatise on “best practices” appeared: Self-Help, With Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance, by Samuel Smiles. Motivational self-improvement books were not new, but Smiles’s 400-page opus was persuasive. Profusely illustrated with stories of men-made-good in industry, engineering, the arts, and music, Self-Help combined age-tested wisdom with knowledge of the industrial present.
From Self-Help to Organizational Success
Nearly 150 years later, the most recent addition to the self-help literature is The Science of Success by Charles G.…
Continue ReadingThousands of bureaucrats are at another cushy climate confab–this time in Cancun–while Senators Bingaman, Brownback and Reid are contemplating how to ram a federal renewable energy quota through a lame-duck session. Their prospects are not good, which should give them more time to consider the experiences of Europe and windpower. The results of this experiment in energy coercion are humbling.
Germany, specifically, is in the throes of a windpower boondoggle that should be heard the world over. The general lesson is that energy forcing brings with it technological risk that must be factored into the public policy equation.
A North Sea Boondoggle
Barely two months after the inauguration ceremony for Germany’s first pilot offshore wind farm, “Alpha Ventus” in the North Sea, all six of the newly installed wind turbines were completely idle, due to gearbox damage.…
Continue ReadingPart I yesterday introduced the latest version of the Calculator (14.2), which continues to illustrate the futility of wind as a means of reducing fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. This post provides more detail about the approach taken by the Calculator.
As important as the subject is, there are no extensive analyses of real-time information (finely grained time intervals for long periods of time) assessing all the variables affecting electricity system behaviour as wind penetration increases. Existing analyses have some or many of the following important limiting characteristics (not necessarily an exhaustive list):
· Are based solely on annual electricity production and annual averages (even statistical averaging is suspect in terms of real-time operation) of electricity generation.
· Use unrealistically high wind capacity factors, including offshore projections, which in practice deliver at about the same capacity factor as assumed at the high end for onshore.…
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