“The Baker Institute has some truing up to do in the multi-disciplinary field of climate change. Playing to its strengths, Rice University and Baker should host its third climate conference, titled something like ‘New Developments in the Physical Science of Climate Change.’
[Professor] Ronald Sass in his recent op-ed called for an ‘open, national debate on climate change.’ May Rice University and the Baker Institute lead the way.”
The Houston Chronicle this week ran opposing opinion-page editorials on the climate-change issue, one by Lamar Smith of the U.S. House of Representatives and the other by Ronald Sass, Fellow in Global Climate Change at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.
Politician Smith politely makes multi-disciplinary arguments assuming the best intentions of his opponents. Academic Sass goes ad hominem on the Keystone XL pipeline issue and refers vaguely to a scientific consensus for his position.…
…“[The Obama] administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company, even those that flout the law repeatedly. Instead, the government is shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the [bird] deaths secret.”
– Dina Cappiello, “Obama Administration Allows Wind Farms to Kill Eagles, Birds Despite Federal Laws, Washington Post, May 14, 2013. [Note: WaPo scrubbed the article where the link does not work.]
“By accepting the compromises of the real world and enthusiastically supporting the establishment of the wind industry, [environmentalists] entered the devil’s bargain that now prevents them from fighting the power companies. . . . Here in the almost wilds of Altamont Pass, the environmentalists and Kenetech have reached the point where solutions become problems–the point at which there is blood on the answer.”
Over at Center for American Progress (and Climate Progress), where oil production and oil consumption are considered bads, Memorial Day is not a welcomed time. And so their holiday-weekend message is that oil is not a good buy (it is more expensive thanks to the policies CAP/CP advocate), and “Big Oil” is a culprit. Here is their spin:
Beginning with the Memorial Day weekend and throughout the summer, Americans will spend their hard-earned dollars traveling to visit family, friends, and the great outdoors. Meanwhile, Big Oil will be making huge profits off of these travel expenditures on fuel, while at the same time fighting for decreased public health and climate-change protections.
At MasterResource, we celebrate the beginning of the peak driving season knowing that our free-market philosophy is about energy abundance and affordability.…