A Free-Market Energy Blog

ITER Fusion Energy Project: ‘Record-setting Disaster’

By Kennedy Maize -- July 25, 2023

“With each passing decade, this record-breaking monument to big international science looks less and less like a cathedral—and more like a mausoleum.” — Scientific American

The 35-nation International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, advertised as “the way to new energy,” has hit another snag. “The world’s biggest fusion experiment,” Bloomberg reported, “faces new delays and potentially billions of dollars in extra costs after defective pieces and broken supply chains disrupted the reactor’s construction in southern France.”

It was bad news at the 32nd annual meeting of the ITER, with a bland press release describing activity but little else. “Council Members reaffirmed their strong belief in the value of the ITER mission and resolved to work together to find timely solutions to facilitate ITER’s success.”[1]

The week before the meeting, Scientific American exposed problems in the article, “World’s Largest Fusion Project Is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal.”…

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James Hansen on Fire

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 24, 2023

“Interestingly, none other than Michael Mann disagreed with Hansen’s climate acceleration hypothesis. Is it because Mann et al. know that doomerism is a political loser? Climate science is so political and PR-driven it is hard to know.

Recently in the Guardian, James Hansen unloaded on the complacent public for giving the world the current heat wave. How interesting, coming 35 years after he went alarmist to inspire exaggerated and falsified predictions of future temperature and sea-level-rise. And today, even alarmist scientists are pushing back on Hansen’s dire prediction of heating acceleration.

Here is another data point on the outlier Hansen. In 2006, he gave this ultimatum:

We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.

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Renewable Tax Credits: Kiesling Ducks Again

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 20, 2023

“Are you sure you don’t want to just go ahead and say the PTC is bad policy? (It is.) … I’m asking why you’d leave it for another day when the downsides are so painfully clear.” – Fisher to Kiesling (below)

“Because I’m tired after two hard days of riding in advance of a gravel bike race next weekend and it’s a holiday weekend.” – Kiesling to Fisher (below)

And the great dodge continues where the coverup is worse than the crime. The ‘crime’ is pretending to be free market or classical liberal in electricity policy when you are not. Mandatory open access with all the trimmings (renewables favoritism in particularly) is an obvious regulatory, interventionist model. Period.

The cover-up is ‘woman of system‘ Lynne Kiesling (and Michael Giberson of R Street) refusing to define, much less advocate, a free market/classical liberalism policy program for electricity.…

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Shell Knew? No (outlier climate prediction exaggerated)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 19, 2023
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Texas Wind Power: The Beginning (1993)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 18, 2023
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Energy and Environmental Review: July 17, 2023

By -- July 17, 2023
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Tomlinson’s Narrative on the (Wounded) Texas Grid: More Misdirection from the Houston Chronicle

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 13, 2023
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Woman of System? Lynne Kiesling as Electricity Planner

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 12, 2023
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Free Market Electricity: End the Blackout (Kiesling bobs and weaves)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 11, 2023
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Energy Appliance Victory! (DC Circuit vs. DOE)

By -- July 10, 2023
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