March Hare (to Alice): Have some wine.
(Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.)
Alice: I don’t see any wine.
March Hare: There isn’t any.
Alice: Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it.
March Hare: It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited.
— From Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
Energy journalist Robert Bryce in Power Hungry foretells an electricity future anchored by natural gas that will bridge the transition to nuclear power. With his third book in less than a decade, Bryce is now a leading light of the energy policy debate, appearing regularly on op-ed pages and on news shows.
Bryce recently participated in two debates. In one hosted by The Economist, he argued for the proposition that “natural gas will do more than renewables to limit the world’s carbon emissions.”…
Continue ReadingKudos to the Competitive Enterprise Institute for countering the anti-energy (and thus anti-industrial and anti-capitalism) campaign to keep the electricity off this Saturday night with an electricity-is-good event!
Human Achievement Hour counters Earth Hour, which is explained at Wikipedia as follows:
… Continue ReadingEarth Hour is a global event organized by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature, also known as World Wildlife Fund) and is held on the last Saturday of March annually, asking households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. Earth Hour was conceived by WWF and The Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights.
What did Julian Simon have in common with Bjorn Lomborg? Both had strong statistics experience, and both started their research believing in popular environmental and over-population fears. Both Simon and Lomborg were convinced they could employ statistical research to document and address these problems.
However, both Simon and Lomborg unexpectedly proved themselves wrong by looking seriously at empirical evidence. Simon’s Malthusian-paradigm-busting book, The Ultimate Resource (1981), influenced many with its optimistic pro-technology data, analysis, and conclusions. (1) Years later Wired magazine interviewed Julian Simon and put him on the cover, complete with Julian’s little red devil’s horns.
Bjorn Lomborg picked up the Wired issue at the Los Angeles airport and read Simon’s claims with skepticism and even dismay. Simon had to be wrong! And as a statistic professor, Lomborg was confident he could document and popularize the errors. …
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