Search Results for: "1970s"
Relevance | Date“The Electric Windmill” (Part II)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 21, 2021 No CommentsEd. note: This completes a two-part excerpt from Tom Bethell’s “inadvertent autobiography,” The Electric Windmill (1988: pp. 105–06). Part I was yesterday.
“I asked the gentleman from Vermont why the [wind turbine] blades were whirring around so smoothly in such still air. ‘It’s not working off the wind,’ he said. ‘It’s plugged into the power outlet.’ It wasn’t demonstrating the production of electricity. Electricity was demonstrating it.”
“Somehow, at that moment, the sun went in. And the rock music stopped. But the windmill went on turning….”
… someone named Bob Zdenck appeared eventually and told me how the fair was put together.
“First, we wrote a proposal for funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Appropriate Technology, Housing and Urban Development, Department of Labor, Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, and the Community Services Administration,” he said.…
Continue ReadingOn Energy Messaging
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 9, 2021 5 Comments“The only person who can truly persuade you is yourself. You must turn the issues over in your mind at leisure, consider the many arguments, let them simmer, and after a long time turn your preferences into convictions.”
– Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (1979), p. xii.
I have fruitfully engaged in debates regarding energy and climate on social media, some on Facebook and most at LinkedIn. I comment on views I agree with to add insight. But I commonly engage with my intellectual foes, some of whom are quite confident they have the science on their side and share links to prove it.
I learn, while noting the areas of disagreement and why. I remain persuaded that the climate crusade is wasteful and futile–and wealth-is-health entrepreneurship is the way forward, whatever the weather and climate of the future.…
Continue ReadingPoliticized History, Bad History
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 29, 2021 No Comments“You’re not getting a tote bag, and our advocacy work might not seem to benefit you directly. But no other history organization does advocacy work on the scale and scope of the AHA [American Historical Association].”
There is little hidden agenda today. Academia, and the professions within it, are all-go for Left Progressivism to remake the world (“the great reset”) in an egalitarian, government-first way.
To whatever extent there was or is true scholarship–examining both sides of complicated issues, whether it is the 1609 Project or Global Warming–that is now fringe.
My Experience
I was fortunate at Rollins College, a liberal arts school in central Florida, back in the mid-1970s. My history professors were Progressive, but one in particular was fair and open-minded. I remember him calling on me to correct or supplement his discussion of the Great Depression and the New Deal, for example.…
Continue ReadingThe Institute for Energy Research: Formation and Early History
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 24, 2021 No CommentsEd. note: This two-part series addresses repeated media errors about the role of Charles Koch in the formation of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) in 1989. Part I yesterday covered the history of the Institute for Humane Studies–Texas, the forerunner to IER. Part II below reviews the formation and early history of IER, then based in Houston, Texas.
Q1. Roger Donway: First, briefly summarize the major point of Part I yesterday on the founding of the Institute for Humane Studies–Texas (IHS–Texas), the predecessor to the Institute for Energy Research (IER).
… Continue ReadingA1. Robert Bradley Jr.: IHS–Texas was a classical liberal organization focused on education, with Greg Rehmke focused on high school debate and the both of us on summer seminars for business people. Energy was part of it to the extent that I lectured, given my specialization, on oil and gas history and related public policy.