“From all signs, the wind-energy field has reached that all-important turning point.”
– C. Flavin, Wind Power: A Turning Point (Worldwatch Institute: July 1981), p. 47.
Christopher Flavin, long associated with the Washington, DC-based Worldwatch Institute (see appendix below), was among the most thoughtful and prolific energy writer in the neo-Malthusian energy/environmentalist camp. His tone was positive, his writing clear, and his research well documented. Flavin’s work is scholarly compared to his (shrill) predecessor, Lester Brown, the founder of WorldWatch. Still, Flavin’s final products are little more than lawyer briefs for energy/climate alarmism.
Flavin is now paying the price for assuming alarmism to hype market-incorrect energies. He banked on wind and solar as primary energies despite the fact that they were dilute, intermittent, and environmentally invasive. Flavin pretty much forgot his early caution and warnings about windpower (see his introduction to Paul Gipe’s Windpower Comes of Age).…
“We were motivated by the public and political controversy fostered by alarming predictions of impending catastrophic anthropogenic global warming [at] NASA …. Many of us felt these alarming and premature predictions … would eventually damage NASA’s reputation for excellent and objective science and engineering achievement.”
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established in 1990 in order to “assist the nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.” Two reports have been released (2000 and 2009), and a third one is due out this year.
The whole (government) exercise from the beginning has been predictably politicized. The reports are a lawyer’s brief for climate alarmism and policy activism–complete with a call for expanded federal research dollars. But the lack of even-handedness with the physical science, no to mention the scientific method itself, has reached crisis proportions.…
“Some molecules are painted with a no export sign. Other molecules are painted with the OK to export sign, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why some molecules are OK and some aren’t.”
– Rusty Braziel, RBN Energy LLC, quoted in “Crude export ban no match for lightest U.S. shale oil,” Fuel Fix, February 26, 2013.
“It’s not often you get to participate in a paradigm shift in an industry, and I think we are doing that now.”
– Anders Ekvall (Shell LNG), quoted in Harry Weber, “Natural Gas Industry Expects Big Things,” Houston Chronicle, April 20, 2013.
At the LNG 17 mega-conference in Houston last week, more than 5,000 industry professionals from 80+ countries, and thousands more visitors enjoying 200,000 square feet of exhibits, plotted to make natural gas a global commodity not unlike oil.…