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).…
Continue Reading“[The DOE exercise] is egregiously biased due to its reliance on overheated climate models, inflated emission scenarios, and pessimistic adaptation assumptions. Using biased [social cost of carbon] SC-GHG estimates to estimate net benefits is arbitrary and capricious..”
“Reasonable alternative assumptions about climate sensitivity and CO2 fertilization substantially drive down SC-GHG estimates, even pushing social cost values into negative territory.”
The climate road to serfdom is one step at a time on different paths. One path is decarbonization, one step is government policy prohibiting or discouraging homeowners from using gas furnaces of their liking. The simple answer, which Milton Friedman popularized a half-century ago, is: free to choose.
An activist U.S. Department of Energy seeks to regulate/prohibit gas furnaces on a pure physical efficiency standard, demoting up-front cost considerations, as well as back-end reliability issues (such as when the power goes out).…
Continue ReadingEd. 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!…