“Today, many governments give special treatment to a favored few businesses that eagerly accept those favors. This is the essence of cronyism…. One obvious example of this involves wind farms. Most cannot turn a profit without the costly subsidies the government provides.”

– Charles G. Koch, “The Importance of Economic Freedom.” August 17, 2012.

William Simon, the top energy regulator in the Nixon’s Federal Energy Administration, was surprised. Oil company head after head was visiting his office to demand this or that to alleviate their shortages of oil or get more entitlements credit for their refineries. But Koch Industries had come by to just ask the federal government to leave them alone—to allow price signals to allocate crude oil and petroleum products. It was a meeting that Simon would not forget.…

Leslie Stahl (CBS): Part of this [green technology investment] was supposed to be creating new jobs. Everything I’ve read there were not many jobs created.

Steven Koonin (DOE-ex): That’s correct.

Stahl: So what went wrong there?

Koonin: I didn’t say it would create jobs. Other people did.

Stahl: So you never thought it was gonna create ….

Koonin: I didn’t think it mattered as a job creation, no.

Last night (January 5, 2014), Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes (CBS) exposed the green-technology boondoggle before a national audience.

The Cleantech Crash focused on venture-capitalist (and rent-seeker) Vinod Khosla, “the father of the Cleantech revolution.” Khosla has invested more than one billion dollars personally in approximately 50 energy startups, along with much taxpayer commitment. Yet his projects are in the red.…

“The real climate change ‘deniers’ are the alarmists who deny that natural forces still dominate weather and climate events, and refuse to acknowledge that thousands of scientists do not agree with IPCC proclamations and prescriptions.”

The old saws of climate alarmism getting increasingly desperate and intolerant in the face of contrary theoretical evidence and empirical anomalies.

The ad hominem attacks seem strange. Shouldn’t all good citizens of the earth be buoyed by the fact that yet another Malthusian-like alarm is becoming more and more implausible?

Shrilling, If Not Shilling

Al Gore is in full attack model, employing his “Climate Reality Project” to “Draw the Line on Denial,” even as he laid off 90% of the staff at his “Alliance for Climate Protection.” Greenpeace has joined the fray, launching a “Dealing in Doubt” campaign that blames ExxonMobil for funding the “global warming denial machine.”…

“The Baker Institute has some truing up to do in the multi-disciplinary field of climate change. Playing to its strengths, Rice University and Baker should host its third climate conference, titled something like ‘New Developments in the Physical Science of Climate Change.’

[Professor] Ronald Sass in his recent op-ed called for an ‘open, national debate on climate change.’ May Rice University and the Baker Institute lead the way.”

The Houston Chronicle this week ran opposing opinion-page editorials on the climate-change issue, one by Lamar Smith of the U.S. House of Representatives and the other by Ronald Sass, Fellow in Global Climate Change at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

Politician Smith politely makes multi-disciplinary arguments assuming the best intentions of his opponents. Academic Sass goes ad hominem on the Keystone XL pipeline issue and refers vaguely to a scientific consensus for his position.…