Ed. note: Julián Salazar Velásquez is a geologist and petroleum engineer with a nearly 50-year career in the Mexican and Venezuelan oil industries. A leading educator and proponent of free market energy, he is author of numerous articles and Gerencia Integrada de Campos de Hidrocarburos (2020), a primer on the oil industry value chain. His four-part world view starts today and continues this week in Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

The current depiction of the oil and gas industry is not only incorrect but worrying. In the more than two years that I have been educating at conferences, in courses, in articles, and in my book—I have seen how unsound dogma threatens progress and prosperity in our countries.

Background

In December 2021 in Petroleum Magazine, I published “Energy Transition or Transgression?…

Ed. note: This post excerpts energy and climate material from the Media Balance Newsletter, a free fortnightly published by physicist John Droz Jr., founder of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions. The complete Newsletter for this post can be found here.

Renewable Energy: Health and Ecosystem Consequences:
*** Short video: The Disturbing Reality of Cobalt Mining for Rechargeable Batteries

Renewables (General):
*** Don’t Fall For “Feel Good” Where Evil Lurks
*** Duke Energy’s “Black Christmas”: Outrageous Story of the Week
*** Short video: Rick Perry – We can’t let climate alarmists drive us from energy reality
Never-opened $300 million-plus biofuels refinery facing foreclosure in Oregon
Green Energy Infatuation Puts Millions at Risk of Death
Researchers work toward harnessing ocean energy to power devices

Wind Energy — Offshore:
*** New NOAA map shows North Atlantic Right Whales in very same areas targeted for offshore wind development
*** NJ congressman demands investigation into whether offshore wind projects are killing whales
*** Whales on losing side of wind energy
In the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, a Quiet Reckoning Over Offshore Wind
The silly giant scale of US offshore wind development
No!…

“What we have is one-way bureaucratic command-and-control making poor decisions with funding derived from captive consumers and one-sided radical agendas. Accordingly, the environmental zealots demonize fossil fuels, while maintaining that only wind and solar are ‘green’ enough to ‘save the planet.’ This itself is greenwashing.”

Like Rob Bradley’s “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’” (see Part I), my colleague Tom Tanton wrote a major piece about the over-regulation of the rare-earth extraction industry in the U.S.: “Dig it!  If you want more information on the importance of rare earths within the U.S economy, this would be a good place to start.

The long-term feasibility of this transition to renewables simply assumes sufficient raw materials exist for it at all. Professor Michaux of the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) has studied these issues, probably more extensively than anyone else and thinks not. Professor…

“My major argument: any planned transition to an all-electric renewable energy monoculture is likely to fail, at least in America. That is mainly because peak winter heating requirements can greatly exceed peak summer cooling requirements by as much as 400 to 500 percent in cold climates and because the required minerals are severely limited.”

On August 27, 1997, the Cato Institute published “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’,” written by Robert L. Bradley Jr. (A 58-page PDF of the study is available here and a 25^th anniversary review here.)  Bradley’s piece focused on the many stark ecological tradeoffs of politically favored renewables, as well as the high cost/low value associated of dilute, intermittent sourcing. This post extends that thinking to the deep decarbonization/all-electrification government program.

Rare earth minerals, on which the forced transition to “clean energy” depends, are critically constrained by many of the same factors as fossil fuels.…