“Population Bombed”: Interview with Pierre Desrochers (new book out today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 16, 2018 7 Comments

“I have applied Simon’s framework to the issue of climate change, although my historical perspective allowed me to see more of the forest rather than obsess about a few trees. Try as I might, I just cannot ignore the unique and large-scale benefits brought to humanity by the ever increasing use of carbon fuels (e.g., from longer lives and better health to cleaner air and water, more abundant food and reforestation).”

Yesterday, Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak, summarized their new book, Population Bombed! Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change. Today, MasterResource is pleased to interview Professor Desrochers about his latest book.

Q. In his 1981 classic, The Ultimate Resource, Julian Simon decoupled population growth from resource depletion, rising pollution, food supply, and other popularly believed barriers to progress.…

“A Conservative’s Approach to Combating Climate Change” (Adler’s 2012 argument revised)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 11, 2018 3 Comments

“A carbon tax is not a fundamentally un-libertarian idea. Jonathan H. Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law … has argued for the use of carbon taxes as part of a market-based approach to tackling climate change.”

– Eric Boehm, “The Republican Carbon Tax Bill Would Create Power Commission with Access to All Government Data.” Reason, July 24, 2018.

It was titled “A Conservative’s Approach to Combating Climate Change.” Published in The Atlantic (May 30, 2012), its author did an about face on his prior beliefs on climate alarm and the role of government policy (see his “‘Greenhouse Policy without Regrets'”).

The 1,800-word new view of Jonathan Adler did not so much refute as bypass his prior views on the nature of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and government energy policy.…

Richard Kerr (Science) in 2009: Warming ‘Pause’ About to Be Replaced by ‘Jolt’ (but still waiting ….)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 9, 2018 2 Comments

“Pauses as long as 15 years are rare in the simulations, and ‘we expect that [real-world] warming will resume in the next few years,’ the Hadley Centre group writes…. Researchers … agree that no sort of natural variability can hold off greenhouse warming much longer.”

“Our prediction is that if past is prologue, the solar component will turn around and lead to rapid warming in the next 5 years,” says [GISS climate modeler David] Rind.”

Climate modeler David Smith of the Hadley Centre … says his group’s climate model forecasts … are still calling for warming to resume in the next few years as ocean influences reverse.”

– Richard Kerr, “What Happened to Global Warming? Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit,” Science, October 1, 2009.

Richard A. Kerr, the longtime, award-winning climate-change scribe for Science magazine, the flagship publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

John Holdren on Trump’s Energy/Climate Armageddon (Part I: federal R&D, Paris withdrawal, China)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 26, 2018 2 Comments

“The private sector will never do the amount of fundamental research that society’s interests require because you cannot tell in advance the nature of fundamental research…. The companies can’t tell whether there’ll ever be any return.”

– John Holdren, December 2017 Interview.

Less than one year ago, John Holdren, Obama’s beginning-to-end science adviser, and now Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, spoke of his concerns about Trump energy policy in a Climate One podcast from San Francisco.

Holdren quotations are below in red, followed by my rebuttal comments indented in black (subtitles added):

Government R&D as Savior

Holdren: “Well I think the biggest damage that the Trump administration is doing is first of all reducing or proposing to reduce very drastically investments in clean and efficient energy research and development by the government.…