“Radical environmentalists have misled people about the green greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. The indoctrination of school curricula, the ignorance of the public, and the well-crafted lies of the radical environmentalists have wrongly demonized CO₂.”

Today, some people portray carbon dioxide (CO₂) as an enemy of the earth. We hear negative things about it in almost every aspect of life, including in schools, TV shows, and the mainstream media.

But is CO₂ really a villain?

I was a little kid when I first came to know that in photosynthesis plants inhale CO₂ and exhale oxygen. I also understood why plants shrivel and die with too little of it but grow better and better as CO2 levels rise. That’s why CO₂ is not a pollutant.…

“No chemical can both be effective in controlling crop pests and at the same time pass the unrealistically stringent tests imposed by the EU’s BGRD. Catch-22! That’s why EU member nation governments have refused to approve the BGRD for three years.”

The past eight years provided abundant experience with unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats creating new policies, laws, science, and regulations on carbon-based and renewable energy, climate change, air and water pollution, and a host of other topics.

Favored technologies received preferential treatment; those they opposed were hyper-regulated, as they sought to fundamentally transform our economy, agriculture, and living standards.

The new Trump Administration is now taking shape, amid bountiful signals that it will not blindly accept or rubberstamp previous environmental prescriptions. Indeed, the President-Elect’s nominations are generating approvals from many quarters, but howls of outrage from displaced special interests.…

“Added Paul Sadler, executive director of the Wind Coalition, in the New York Times: ‘He [Perry] has been a stalwart in defense of wind energy in this state — no question about it.’”

– Quoted in Kate Galbraith, “As Governor, Perry Backed Wind, Gas and Coal.” New York Times, August 20, 2011.

MasterResource, which plays no (crony) favorites, has been critical of Rick (‘all-energy-things-to-all people’) Perry. Sort of sounds like a politician on the move who wants to fill his political coffers with green money too.

With the news that former Texas Governor Perry is the secretary-designate for the US Department of Energy, I share some quotations from past posts at MasterResource on his pro-wind tenure in Texas. Comments welcome.

“Arguably, Mr. Perry’s most interesting energy efforts have related to wind power, which has boomed under his administration.

“The diversion of the associated massive investment of national wealth away from mitigation to adaption policies is most likely our best chance of meeting all the other major threats to humanity, many of which are more ‘clear and present’ than global warming.”

How are the vast majority of us to assess the claims of problematic global warming and mandated responses? At present, we are simply being told by ‘experts’ what is happening, and what we must do about it. The task of properly assessing climate issues is very complex, and individually we do not have the time to devote to the immense task of properly doing this.

One helpful approach is a simple decision tree model to evaluate policy options for global warming that has been published by Michael Cochrane, whose background includes a Ph.D.…