A Free-Market Energy Blog

Archive

Posts from December 0

Game, Set, Match Fossil Fuels? James Hansen Sleepless in Ningbo

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 13, 2014

“Recent events have been spiraling down so rapidly that I find it hard to sleep. Ex-President Clinton campaigns for a huge pipeline to carry Canadian tar sands…. Dogged insistence by environmental groups that intermittent renewable energies are the only alternative to fossil fuels.…”

Writing from China earlier this week, and no doubt preparing his testimony for Thursday’s “Keystone XL and the National Interest Determination” hearing in Washington before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, climate scientist/policy activist James Hansen has once again laid bare the internal contradictions of Big Green’s codependency on dilute ‘green’.

In his missive Sleepless in Ningbo, Dr. Hansen described how the Chinese authorities during a tour of the country’s renewable projects gave him some sobering news. China’s energy pie is divided into 78% coal, 12% gas, 7% oil, and 3% renewables.

Ad Hominem against MasterResource: Climate Alarmism at Wit’s End?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 11, 2014

 “The Master Resource people are whores of the fossil fuel industry. (Yes, that certainly includes you.)”

– David Appell (@davidappell) | March 5, 2014 at 10:33 pm |

Judith Curry at Climate, Etc. posted about a new analysis by Nic Lewis and Marcel Crok, “A sensitive matter:  How the IPCC buried evidence showing good news about global warming” (Global Warming Policy Foundation: press release here; short version here), for which she wrote an introduction (see Appendix B below).

Several hundred comments followed. A critical, emotive thread of comments toward Lewis/Crok, and by implication Curry, was coming from David Appell, a highly credentialed journalist with a widely read blog, Quark Soup, that focuses on climate issues from an alarmist perspective.

I noticed this comment from Dr. Appell in response to pokerguy (aka al neipris) | March 5, 2014 at 7:16 pm who argued that at lower climate sensitivity, the external effects would “more likely … be overwhelmingly positive in its effect.”…

Charles Koch on Cronyism

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 10, 2014

Today, many governments give special treatment to a favored few businesses that eagerly accept those favors. This is the essence of cronyism…. One obvious example of this involves wind farms. Most cannot turn a profit without the costly subsidies the government provides.”

– Charles G. Koch, “The Importance of Economic Freedom.” August 17, 2012.

William Simon, the top energy regulator in the Nixon’s Federal Energy Administration, was surprised. Oil company head after head was visiting his office to demand this or that to alleviate their shortages of oil or get more entitlements credit for their refineries. But Koch Industries had come by to just ask the federal government to leave them alone—to allow price signals to allocate crude oil and petroleum products. It was a meeting that Simon would not forget.…

Kenneth P. Green: 20 Years in the Energy/Environmental Movement (Part II)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 7, 2014

Kenneth P. Green: 20 Years in the Energy/Environmental Movement (Part I)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 6, 2014

AOTA (‘All of the Above’) Energy Policy: A Political Argument for the Uneconomic, Cronyism

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 28, 2014

Energy Realism Amid Climate Alarmism: James Hansen Rides Again

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 25, 2014

Is the Environmental Movement Net CO2 Positive? (James Hansen wants to know)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 24, 2014

Fidel Castro’s 1992 Earth Summit Speech: Big Red as Malthusian Green

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 19, 2014

Julian Simon’s ‘The Ultimate Resource’ (1981) Speaks to Us Today

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 12, 2014