A Free-Market Energy Blog

Deep State: Obama’s Carbon Colonialism/Corruption Continues (Part I)

By Paul Driessen and David Wojick -- August 6, 2018

“Left elites fear that newly middle class families would want more stuff: real houses, cars, refrigerators, stoves, lights, and vacations to exotic locales now enjoyed mostly by climate conference attendees. All that would require taking more resources out of the ground, which would hurt Mother Earth.”

“Indeed, the best way to ensure ‘climate resilience’ is to have strong economies, modern technologies, early warning systems, and modern infrastructures that are built to withstand nature’s onslaughts.”

It’s obscene enough when the multilateral anti-development banks do it. But Trump agencies?!?

In a prime example of Deep State revanchism, despite the profound change in administrations, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is still funding and advancing anti-energy Obama-era climate change dogmas and policies for developing countries. USAID handles tens of billions of dollars a year, roughly half of all US foreign aid, so this climate alarmism puts literally millions of lives at risk.

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On Global Lukewarming

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 2, 2018

“There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing,” says lead author John Fyfe, a climate modeller at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, British Columbia. “We can’t ignore it.”

Susan Solomon, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, says that Fyfe’s framework helps to put twenty-first-century trends into perspective, and clearly indicates that the rate of warming slowed down at a time when greenhouse-gas emissions were rising dramatically.

 – Jeff Tollefson, “Global Warming ‘Hiatus’ Debate Flares Up Again.Nature, February 24, 2016.

It was officially noted in early 2016 with the above article in Nature, which was subtitled “Researchers now argue that slowdown in warming was real.”

I was reminded of this upon reading Pierre Gosselin’s recent post at NoTricksZone, “Global Temperature Rise Some 75% Lower Than Models Projected!

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Minerals as Manufacturing: The Case of Oil and Gas

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 1, 2018

“If resources are not fixed but created, then the nature of the scarcity problem changes dramatically. For the technological means involved in the use of resources determines their creation and therefore the extent of their scarcity. The nature of the scarcity is not outside the process (that is natural), but a condition of it.”

–  Tom DeGregori (1987). “Resources Are Not; They Become: An Institutional Theory.” Journal of Economic Issues, p. 1258.

The above quotation from one of my mentors goes a long way to explain the paradox of how “fixed” mineral supply (gold, silver …. oil, gas) expand rather than contract in a global free market.

A back-page current from the Wall Street Journal–just business-as-usual in the industry and in reporting–reminded me of Professor DeGregori’s insight. …

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Milton Friedman’s Energy Wisdom (would be 106 today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 31, 2018
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Energy & Environmental Newsletter: July 30, 2018

By -- July 30, 2018
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Lake Erie Offshore Wind Proposal: Economic Cronyism, Environmental Boondoggle

By Sherri Lange -- July 26, 2018
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Master of Incorrect: Joe Romm (Part III: UAH Temperature Update)

By Joe Romm -- July 25, 2018
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Master of Incorrect: Joe Romm (Part II: ‘Hell and High Water’ book, 2007)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 24, 2018
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Master of Incorrect: Joe Romm (Part I: “Mideast Oil Forever,” 1996)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 23, 2018
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Enviros vs. Zero-Carbon Energy (hydropower, in this case)

By Donn Dears -- July 19, 2018
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