Yesterday, Part I in this series presented the introduction, overview, and opening syllabus of Pierre Desrochers’ master course on energy. Part II today presents the all-importation section on carbon-based energies (oil, natural gas, coal).

Next week, Parts III will cover hydro, nuclear, biomass, and renewable energies, Part IV, will cover the readings for The Great Energy Debate.

Carbon Fuels
– Overview
Alex Epstein. 2015. “Why You Should Love Fossil Fuels.” PragerU (April 20).  

GatesNotes. 2014. Bjorn Lomborg: Saving Lives with Fossil Fuels (June 25).

Oil Sands Action. 2016. “Life Without Oil and Petroleum Products? Not so simple…”  

What If. 2018. “What If No More Oil?” 

American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM). 2016. “Petrochemicals: The Building Blocks of Modern Life.”  

Heritage Foundation. 2018. “Who Is Reducing Its Greenhouse Gas Emissions the Most?…

“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.…

[Editor note: This exchange at the R-Street Institute website (no longer visible) is posted here and here.]

“From the Club of Rome to the present–with scientific models and articles in Science magazine from the ‘consensus’–the verdict has been wrong, wrong, wrong, and trending wrong. And this is before even considering (non-libertarian) public policy of taxes, tariffs, equity adjustments, private/public cronyism, etc.”

So why have neo-Malthusian natural scientists been so incorrect for so long? We have nearly a half-century of (falsified) doom-and-gloom.

Josiah Neeley of R-Street, once a critic of climate alarmism and wind power (see yesterday), is now desperately trying to make a case to libertarians and conservatives that the climate is in crisis and a carbon tax (and all the global government that goes with it) is necessary.…

“Classical liberals must expose the quixotic quest to ‘save’ or ‘stabilize’ the climate and must educate the public about what is really involved: a new, powerful government lever on economies and freedom, anywhere and everywhere. Socialist central planning for economies may be intellectually dead, but global climate planning is alive and well.”

“For classical liberalism, privatizing the subsoil to enlarge and democratize wealth from Mexico to Venezuela to Saudi Arabia to Nigeria is the number one energy issue, not climate change. Yet it goes uninvestigated and unmentioned at R Street and the Niskanen Center. It might be CO2-positive, after all, not something the climate funders want to promote.”

The toxic brew of climate alarmism and climate activism (aka forced energy transformation) is incompatible with the theory and practice of classical liberalism.…