Search Results for: "Julian Simon"
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By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 26, 2008 7 Comments“… our blog name is inspired by the late Julian Simon (1932–1998). He labeled energy the master resource because it is the resource needed to bring other resources from a state of nature to one of human usefulness. Simon also used the term the ultimate resource to describe human ingenuity.”
We are just getting started here, but some of us veterans of the energy debate from a private property, free-market perspective have teamed together to offer our thoughts on late breaking energy items. When I read my newspapers each day, I have some thoughts that I wish I could share with folks from a historical, worldview perspective. I think we all have something to add–and thus the inspiration for this endeavor.
We have a good core group of principal (and principled) bloggers, as well as a growing list of guest bloggers.…
Continue ReadingJohn Holdren on Mineral/Energy Depletion (Part III in a series on Obama’s new science advisor)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 2, 2009 5 CommentsPhysical scientists are prone to viewing hydrocarbons as a fixed quantity. Being fixed, this volume must deplete with production. Extraction costs and thus selling prices must rise. The crisis is only a matter of when [“What will we do when the pumps run dry?” asked Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich in 1974 (The End of Affluence (p. 49)] . Physicist John Holdren is no exception to this view.
Reality is quite different from the hard science formulation, however. In a business or economic sense, mineral resources are not fixed, known, or depleting. They are created by entrepreneurship (“resourceship”) in a market economy where incentives are present and technology improves. Mineral quantities can and do expand over time as shown by time-series data of estimated world resources.…
Continue ReadingJohn Holdren and “The Argument from Authority” (Part VII in a Series on Obama’s New Science Advisor)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 22, 2009 5 CommentsPaul Ehrlich treated his intellectual rival Julian Simon with great disrespect during Simon’s lifetime. Ehrlich refused to debate Simon or even meet him in person. He insulted Simon in print. Ehrlich even scolded Science magazine for publishing Simon’s 1980 breakthrough essay “Resources, Population, Environment: An Oversupply of Bad News,” with the words: “Could the editors have found someone to review Simon’s manuscript who had to take off this shoes to count to 20?” (quoted in Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource II, 1996, p. 612)
Such intolerance for reasoned dissent, unfortunately, has also been a trait of Ehrlich protégé John Holdren. After I published my review of John Holdren’s criticism of Bjorn Lomborg in 2003, I emailed Holdren my paper, “The Heated Energy Debate,” and alerted him to a new book I had coming out, Climate Alarmism Reconsidered.…
Continue ReadingRobert Bryce on James Hansen’s Anti-Coal Crusade (worth reading Sunday)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 15, 2009 No Comments[Note: Sunday posts at MasterResource will include best-of reposts from this blog, best-of posts or op-ed’s from other writers, and other general material.]
Robert Bryce is a straight shooter and exactly the type intellectual that is needed as a rethink slowly emerges from the current politicized energy fare. He himself has changed his mind on vital issues, just as Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomborg did before him. Indeed, as Bryce mentions in the op-ed to follow:…
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