“A recent Politico article on the bad messaging of Democrats on climate and energy, Democrats Bite on Burgers and Straws–and Republicans Feast, is fair warning. It is high time the hometown paper of the center of the oil and gas industry stop the blatant bias against the very energies that consumers naturally prefer.”

There is no representation for conservatives or libertarians on the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle. So when it comes to energy, fossil fuels (because of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions) are seen as the enemy of the climate rather than a greening agent; protection against heat, cold, and precipitation; and a first responder after weather extremes.

Mineral energies in capitalist settings have much to do with the precipitous drop of climate-related deaths in the last century–and are essential to human betterment going forward.…

Editor note: A 2008 exchange at Rossputin.com included these comments from (then) Cato Institute senior fellow Jerry Taylor and his brother James Taylor. Their arguments continue to stand today, defying Jerry’s peculiar conversion to climate alarmism/forced energy transformation.

Jerry Taylor:

“… let me note that there are very good reasons for people (not just libertarians) to be skeptical of expert scientific consensus regarding environmental doom given the track record of that community.”

“Consensus from [the alarmist] community once told us that industrial chemicals were the cause of a modern cancer epidemic; that population growth would outpace food production and usher in a Malthusian apocalypse; that mineral scarcity would soon turn off the industrial engines of the Western world; ad infinitum.”

“Conspiracy theories are not necessary to explain the proliferation of such views – information cascades and professional biases will do nicely.”…

Bradley has tackled a vast and dynamic energy landscape through the big prism of Enron. He was wise to include necessary contexts for 15 chapters of markets and personalities. Navigating FERC deregulation orders over a decade was a fearsome writing task, done well. Pipeline and power plant deals at home and abroad; solar, wind, and other alternative energies, the list goes on. Politics in Austin, Washington, DC, and foreign capitals. Enron was everywhere.

Robert L. Bradley Jr. has written a very important book about Houston’s most controversial company. This is the first of a two-volume corporate biography chronicling the rise, fall, and aftermath of Enron; his tetralogy has already produced a book on worldview (Capitalism at Work: 2009) and prehistory (Edison to Enron: 2011).

Few observers have been as ideally located to chronicle this modern-day version of a Greek tragedy.…

“Ms. Griswold will have to forgive readers if they choose not to believe that she is objectively calling balls and strikes, given how the narrative she concocts in her book is dramatically different from what regulators, independent laboratories, and medical professionals have determined – all of which have been affirmed in multiple courtrooms.”

“Five separate courts, including Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, have upheld the DEP’s findings, yet Ms. Griswold continues to spread these unsubstantiated claims in her new book.”

A recent book by Eliza Griswold – the same author who gave an infamously inaccurate portrayal of shale development in Amwell Township, Pa., in a 2011 New York Times article – takes readers back to Southwestern Pennsylvania over claims of water contamination that have long-since been resolved by multiple regulatory agencies, courtrooms, and expert analyses.…