“The caterwauling from the mainstream media – and claims that 2019’s hot summer was part of human-caused CO2-fueled global warming and a direct cause of alleged extreme maximum temperatures – are just not true. Analysis of the claims and events reveals these were simply hot weather events in a warm summer; claims of new extremes are far-fetched and fade under scrutiny.”

“[T]he BBC report quotes Cambridge University Botanic Garden director Beverley Glover: ‘However, we can’t help but feel dismay at the high temperature recorded and the implication that our local climate is getting hotter, with inevitable consequences for the plants and animals around us.’ If you look at the data you see that this was a one-day weather event; the summer of 1976 was a lot hotter and occurred during the 1970s ice age scare.”

“In the year 2000, the solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy.” [Reagan removed the panels six months later.]

“A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.” [It is a museum piece.]

– President Jimmy Carter, June 20, 1979

Historical evidence and understanding is part of the intellectual case for free-market energy policy, which is simply letting consumers decide for themselves the best energies and keeping taxpayers neutral. A free society, not surprisingly has chosen the dense, most affordable, storable energies over dilute, intermittent, expensive ones.…

This continues my three-part review of Andrew Dessler’s primer on the physical science and political economy of climate change, Introduction to Modern Climate Change (2nd edition: 2016).

Part I, “Suggestions for More Interdisciplinary Scholarship, Less Advocacy,” brought attention to the uneven treatment of issues in science, economics, and public policy that tainted the primer. I questioned the Deep Ecology assumption of optimal nature, wherein, according to Dessler, “any change in climate, either warming or cooling, will result in overall negative outcomes for human society” (p. 146).

This seems exactly wrong in our interglacial period when climate-related fatalities have fallen dramatically and agricultural production has soared thanks to warmth but particularly to fossil-fueled capitalism. Incentives and wealth have proven more than a match for the vicissitudes of weather and climate. As Alex Epstein (The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, pp.…

“This is not an advocacy book…. (p. xi)

“[T]he single most important thing you can do is become politically active … and vote for politicians who support action on climate.” (p. 245)

In the Acknowledgements of Enron Ascending: The Forgotten Years (2018), I co-dedicated the book to a scholar and friend who crossed disciplines to advance our understanding of the real world. His intellectual trespassing benefited from diligence and fairness. I wrote: “Donald Lavoie taught me the value of scholarship in which opposing views are deeply understood, charitably interpreted, and thoroughly evaluated.”

This brings me to Andrew Dessler’s Introduction to Modern Climate Change (2nd edition: 2016, 3rd ed. in process). While this book is well organized, clearly written, and full of settled physical science, it fails the Lavoie Standard in the areas of unsettled climatology, history, and political economy.…