A Free-Market Energy Blog

Climate Scientists Try to Rescue Renewable Energies from ‘Planet of the Humans’

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 14, 2020

“I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or her professional credibility.”

—Dr. Michael Mann, Climategate email, May 30, 2008.

“The film [Planet of the Humans] presents a distorted and outdated depiction of the renewable energy industry in an effort to malign renewable energy, thus ironically promoting the agenda of the fossil fuel industry.”

– Dr. Michael Mann. Quoted in E&E News (May 5, 2020).

If Big Environmentalism loses wind, the supply-side ruse is over, and people will reconsider climate science given that the “cure” is not there. Hence Michael Mann versus Michael Moore.

“The cause” of climate alarmism and forced energy transformation has been pushed backward by a very long overdue hard look at renewable energy as a mass substitute for mineral energies.…

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Subsidies Keeping Iowa Wind Turbines Turning

By Janna Swanson -- May 13, 2020

Editor Note: The article below, a revised version of a post at Stop These Things, is an example of a grassroots volunteer propelled by the menace of industrial wind turbines. Her analysis of wind-stronghold Iowa is pertinent for the national debate in regard to a villain in Michael Moore’s game-changing 100-minute documentary, Planet of the Humans.

Iowa is a big wind state, having force-started the industry with a 1983 mandate for state utilities to buy power from 105 MW of wind capacity. With state subsidies in addition to the federal Production Tax Credit, wind literally pays for itself with in reduced corporate taxes. Wind is Iowa’s largest power source, with 10,000 MW of capacity generating 40 percent of the state’s electricity. It is also at the forefront of landfill issues of scrapped wind blades.…

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Surge Pricing, Not ‘Price Gouging’ (an economist’s protest)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 12, 2020

All told, it is cheaper to surge price than have consumers worry and waste the most precious and depleting commodity of all, a person’s time.

The free market is needed even more in an emergency than in normal times. In the current Pandemic, a run on toilet paper and paper towels occurred as consumers stocked up in the fear that shortages would persist. Back in the 1970s, gasoline and other petroleum products, underpriced by federal law, caused shortages where consumers repeatedly topped off their tanks in long gasoline lines at the service station.

Surge pricing (the proper term for ‘price gouging’) is needed from time to time to save consumers from themselves. Increasing prices to the point that consumers know that there will be supply at the store prevents panic buying, not to mention the worry and lost time hunting for uncertain supply.…

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Inferior, Subsidized Energy Feels the Pain

By -- May 11, 2020
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A Malthusian Confronts Renewables (review of ‘Planet of the Humans’)

By Sherri Lange -- May 7, 2020
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Houston Chronicle vs. Petroleum: The Latest

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 6, 2020
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Linowes on a 13th Extension of the Wind PTC (crony coronas exposed)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 5, 2020
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Energy & Environmental Newsletter: May 4, 2020

By -- May 4, 2020
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Antitrust Protectionism: Domestic Independent Producers Charge “Dumping” against Oil Imports

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 30, 2020
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“Petroentrepreneurs” are Environmentalists Too (DEPA tribute rings true)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 29, 2020
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