A Free-Market Energy Blog

“Energy and Society” Course (Part III: Electricity from Hydro, Nuclear, Renewables, Biomass)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 2, 2019

This continues a series on the syllabus of Pierre Desrochers’ course at the University of Toronto Mississauga, Energy and Society, which gets my vote as the single best course on its subject in North America if not the world.

Part I explored the course description as well as the videos and readings from the first two weeks of the class; Part II covered carbon-based energy.

General
Electrification.” Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century. National Academy of Engineering. 2000. 

Bradley, Robert L and Richard W. Fulmer. Energy: The Master Resource, Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2004, Chapter 2: Using Energy, pp. 19-20, 25-29, 30-31, 45-48.

Environmental Literacy Council Website.
Electricity.”
Electric Current and Power Transmission.”
Electric Power Grids and Blackouts.”

Lomborg, Bjørn.…

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Climate Skeptics: Time to Apologize to Professor Holdren

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 1, 2019

“[Bjorn] Lomborg’s performance careens far across the line that divides respectable (even if controversial science) from thoroughgoing and unrepentant incompetence…. He has needlessly muddled public understanding and wasted immense amounts of the time of capable people who have had to take on the task of rebutting him.”  – John Holdren (2003)

This April 1st is a good time for skeptics of settled, high-sensitivity climate science to make amends. My apology goes to the distinguished John P. Holdren.

My comeuppance (below) reminds me of the episode of Dallas where J. R. Ewing befriends a pretty young secretary at a friend’s office. He talks her up, she bubbles.

At J.R.’s next visit, she bashfully asks if he would like to go to a party with her.

“Sorry honey,” he responded.…

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Earth Hour This Saturday: Why Candles Instead of Electricity?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 29, 2019

“Earth Hour not only coincides with Venezuela’s involuntary, chronic blackouts. It also joins this week’s complete, abject defeat of the Green New Deal. The 0 – 57 drubbing–with not a single Democrat voting “yes”–signals that self-made electricity blackouts will not be tolerated in the US.”

The joke goes: “What did the socialists use before candles.” The answer: electricity.

Such is true today in Venezuela, which is likely to encounter this Saturday’s Earth Hour (a turn-off-the-lights protest against modern living [1]) with an involuntary period of darkness. Atlas is shrugging under the Maduro regime, with electricity experts having fled to freer countries (a classic “brain drain”).

Venezuela is fiction-to-fact with Ayn Rand’s epic novel, Atlas Shrugged. But Rand in a previous book set up a fictional account of the fate of electricity in a dystopian world–what Earth Hour seems to long to bring about.…

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“Energy and Society” Course (Part II: Carbon-based Energies)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 28, 2019
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“Energy and Society” Course (Part I: Introduction, Concepts, and the Big Picture)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 27, 2019
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Energy Efficiency Mandates: No Free Lunch

By Kenneth Costello -- March 26, 2019
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Energy & Environmental Newsletter: March 25, 2019

By -- March 25, 2019
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“No Regrets” Climate Policy: First, Do No Harm

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 21, 2019
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Andrew Dessler’s Climate Sensitivity Lecture: Some Observations

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 20, 2019
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It’s Science Time (Happer-led peer review of climate alarmism long overdue)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 19, 2019
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