“Climate denial is a deeply cynical enterprise; the people misrepresenting evidence and sifting through emails for ‘gotcha’ quotes have to know that they’re not being honest. Yet their rage against ‘elitists’ who continue to point out inconvenient truths is very real — because it’s a fact of life that many people feel special hatred for those they’ve mistreated.”

 – Paul Krugman, “The G.O.P.’s Climate of Paranoia.” New York Times, August 20, 2018.

In his recent “The G.O.P.’s Climate of Paranoia,” Paul Krugman invokes sound bites and invective on the subject of climate science and climate policy. The New York Times columnist is all-in regarding climate alarmism and forced (government) energy transformation. He knows he is right and just fusses at the rest of us.

Krugman’s statements are in red; my response is indented in black.…

“Very few scientists dispute a link between man-made CO2 and global warming. Where it gets fuzzy is the extent and time frame of the effect. One crucial point of contention is climate ‘sensitivity’—the mathematical formula that translates changes in CO2 production to changes in temperature. In addition, scientists are not sure how to explain a slowdown in the rise of global temperatures that began about a decade ago.”

– Stefan Theil, “The Backlash Against Climate Scientists,” Newsweek, May 27, 2010.

An article in Newsweek eight years ago, “The Backlash Against Climate Scientists,” rings true today–if not more so.

When seen from today’s perspective, Theil’s 450-word piece underscores how slowly climate science is really moving, where the more you know, the more you find out you don’t know.…

[Editor note: This recent post by Lea Giotto of Energy in Depth expounds on the controversial, sputtering involvement of the Niskanen Center and the Colorado climate lawsuit. Her title: “Contradictions Mount as Lawyer for Colorado Climate Lawsuits Struggles to Defend His Role.” For more on the policy shift of Niskanen founder Jerry Taylor from libertarian to climate/energy statism, see here.]

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When David Bookbinder signed up to help Colorado municipalities sue the energy industry for the impacts of global warming, he claimed his purpose was not about climate change. But when he recently attempted to defend his role with those climate lawsuits, the Niskanen Center attorney not only contradicted himself, but may have undermined the broader climate litigation campaign.

Bookbinder – who was previously a climate-focused attorney with the Sierra Club – took an unconventional approach in his latest defense of climate litigation: he penned a guest commentary for the Federalist Society, an organization that has provided a forum for many who express skepticism about the validity of these cases.…

” It is difficult not to conclude that the 2008 oil price spike was a bubble, reflecting momentum trading spurred on, in part, by belief in the peak oil theory.”

“The misinterpretation of high oil prices as driven by geological scarcity instead of transient problems exactly mirrors the mistakes of the 1970s, suggesting that some, at least, never learn from history.”

Suggestions that the oil price will soon reach $150 or more need to be considered carefully, coming from respectable sources (in some cases), and given that the market saw such an elevation a decade ago, with the price of Brent crude reaching $144 per barrel on July 3, 2008.

The popular thinking is that oil prices collapsed shortly thereafter from the financial crisis.  And crude oil regained three-digit levels for a couple of years before shale oil production soared and sent prices tumbling in 2014.…