“Let’s switch out for a better [climate] policy…. Then conservative activists who continue to be in the denialist camp on climate change will find themselves completely isolated.”

– Jerry Taylor, quoted in “Libertarian Group Takes on Conservatives on Carbon Tax.” Energy & Environmental News (sub. req.), March 3, 2016.

“Alarmists … clearly have decided that the best way to win the global warming debate is by shouting down the opposition and demonizing them in the eyes of the public. But that is not dispassionate scientific debate; it is more like a ‘struggle meeting’ during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.”

– Jerry Taylor, The Heated Rhetoric of Global Warming, Cato Institute Commentary, September 15, 1997.

Climate ‘denier’ or ‘denialist’ is a term of political hate speech. Recently, it came from a source that for most of the last quarter century was labeled a ‘denier’ by the pugnacious Left. …

“’Unaccountable statistics’ [are] statistical goulash that sounds tangy and sophisticated but is actually bereft of substance, and used to make predictions that are almost never accounted for. Any number of ‘scientific’ renewable energy reports, from NREL to Stanford to MIT, are of this kind.”

Kent Hawkins’s post yesterday, “Science, Advocacy, and Public Policy,” defends the scientific method against both political correctness and the misuses of the method, often by people who claim to be scientists. This is a major issue in the current energy and climate debate where exaggeration and bias go hand-in-hand. I wish to add support to Hawkins’s theses in light of some of science’s nuanced complexity.

Scientific Inquiry

Here’s how a few mainly twentieth century scientists defined the purpose of scientific inquiry:

“Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world.”–Richard

“Price controls cause shortages, and government allocation exacerbates it. This was learned the hard way during the 1970s, particularly with oil, thanks to Republican President Richard Nixon.”

George Melloan’s review of Jane Mayer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2016) criticized her foray into energy and energy policy:

Ms. Mayer might herself benefit from an economics course. She writes that Richard Nixon imposed economic controls on oil and gas in 1971 to “address the energy crisis.” The Nixon price controls helped to cause the energy crisis.

Intrigued, I bought Dark Money to see exactly what she said.  Here is the passage from Mayer (p. 91) referenced by Melloan:

The fossil fuel industry’s fondest wishes were also fulfilled.

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

Some of the more interesting articles in this issue are:

Five Reasons Why We Shouldn’t Subsidize Wind or Solar

Study: 3.8 Million US Jobs will be Lost in the Transition to Renewables

Turbine Noise Calculations for 1238 Homes

New Research on Turbines Killing Bats

Broken Wing: Birds, Blades and Broken Promises

Recycling: An Energy Loser

No Matter Where It’s Sited, Industrial Wind Energy is a NET loser

MIT PhD writes op-ed on some Wind Limitations

Community once in favor of wind energy, now overwhelmingly opposed

Climate Alarmists now Attacking Satellite Data

Climate Change Science & the Climate Change Scare

Paris Agreement: Recycled Socialism

Conservatives, Climate Change, and the Carbon Tax

1400 CEOs – Climate Change Not a Major Worry

1001 Reasons why Global Warming is so Over in 2016

New Scientific Study: “A New View on Climate Change”

The Corrosion of Conformity on Campus

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Greed Energy Economics:

Five Reasons Why We Shouldn’t Subsidize Wind or Solar

Study: 3.8 Million US Jobs will be Lost in the Transition to Renewables

Pope Francis and the Climate for Giving

60 Minutes: China is behind The Great Brain Robbery

Insurers: Global Warming Makes Natural Disasters Less Expensive

The Gov’t Has Spent a Lot on Electric Cars — Is it Worth it?…