A Free-Market Energy Blog

Sustainability: Ideology versus Reality (Part I: Biofuels and Solar)

By -- August 26, 2019

“United Nations conference organizers could have invited free market-oriented experts to offer thought-provoking, evidence-based analyses and critiques of UN precepts that are under fierce attack economically and politically. But they invited no such experts…. This intellectual void prompted the Heartland Institute to organize a separate event.”

“Eliminating fossil fuels means the world would also have to replace the oil and natural gas feedstocks for pharmaceuticals, wind turbine blades, solar panel films, paints, synthetic fibers, fertilizers … and plastics for cell phones, computers, eyeglasses, car bodies and countless other products. Including those needs, the required land would roughly require two India’s of land for biofuel plantations.”

They could have had a global teleconference to save millions of dollars and millions of gallons of aviation and vehicle fuel. They could have set a good example and avoided massive carbon dioxide emissions.…

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Health Effects of Wind Turbines: Testimony of Ben Johnson versus MidAmerican Energy (Madison County, Iowa)

By Sherri Lange -- August 23, 2019

“The annoyance of sight and the heard pulsating wind turbulence creates indirect adverse health effects. This combined with the direct effects of sleep disturbance may activate the body’s autonomic nervous system to increase sympathetic-mediated responses with endocrinological consequences.”

“Increasingly activated, risk factors that promote adverse cardiovascular consequences may then promote/facilitate/enhance cardiovascular disease – most easily named as hypertension, arteriosclerosis, ischemic heart disease and stroke.”

– Ben Johnson, Testimony before the Madison County Board of Health, Madison Country, Iowa.

Individuals and communities are collectively reporting the same NOCEBO effects, heart palpitations, ringing in the ears, dizziness, nausea, disorientation, sleep disorders, and other disorders from nearby industrial wind. There is no global conspiracy, there is only a mountain of data (data is when you have enough anecdotes) contradicting the narrative that such wind power is clean, safe and free.…

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Review of ‘Introduction to Modern Climate Change’ by Andrew Dessler (Part II: Physical Science)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 22, 2019

This continues my three-part review of Andrew Dessler’s primer on the physical science and political economy of climate change, Introduction to Modern Climate Change (2nd edition: 2016).

Part I, “Suggestions for More Interdisciplinary Scholarship, Less Advocacy,” brought attention to the uneven treatment of issues in science, economics, and public policy that tainted the primer. I questioned the Deep Ecology assumption of optimal nature, wherein, according to Dessler, “any change in climate, either warming or cooling, will result in overall negative outcomes for human society” (p. 146).

This seems exactly wrong in our interglacial period when climate-related fatalities have fallen dramatically and agricultural production has soared thanks to warmth but particularly to fossil-fueled capitalism. Incentives and wealth have proven more than a match for the vicissitudes of weather and climate. As Alex Epstein (The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, pp.…

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Dessler’s “Introduction to Modern Climate Change:” Suggestions for More Interdisciplinary Scholarship, Less Advocacy

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 21, 2019
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Adaptation: Think about It (a ‘free-market jihadist’?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 20, 2019
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‘America’s Energy Dominance and Manufacturing Revival’ (Trump Remarks, August 13, 2019)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 19, 2019
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Charles Koch vs. Crony Capitalism

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 15, 2019
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Renewable Energy: Second Thoughts (Moore/Gibbs documentary in the news)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 14, 2019
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Trump on Energy: August 1, 2019, Cincinnati Rally

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 13, 2019
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Energy & Environmental Newsletter: August 12, 2019

By -- August 12, 2019
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