A Free-Market Energy Blog

Clean Power Plan Repeal: The March to Deregulating Climate

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 12, 2017

“The war against coal is over.”

– EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, quoted in Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, “EPA Chief Tells Coal Miners He Will Repeal Power Plant Rule TuesdayWashington Post, October 9, 2017.

“We are committed to righting the wrongs of the Obama administration by cleaning the regulatory slate.  Any replacement rule will be done carefully, properly, and with humility, by listening to all those affected by the rule.”

– EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, quoted in EPA, “”EPA Takes Another Step To Advance President Trump’s America First Strategy, Proposes Repeal Of “Clean Power Plan” News Release, October 10, 2017.

On Tuesday, EPA Scott Pruitt issued notice of a forthcoming Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANOPR) to repeal the (misnamed) Clean Power Plan (CPP). This action is the latest step away from the climate road to serfdom–and a signal to the world, not only the US, to focus on real here-and-now problems, not hypothetical futures ones with no clear solution.…

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‘Free Market’ Joe Romm? (when it comes to nuclear, that is)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 11, 2017

“[I]t is both pleasing and strange to see Joe Romm don a free market, pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer hat when it comes to nuclear. His (post-modernistic) dream is that wind power, solar power, and negawatts can usher in a post-fossil-fuel era. In reality, however, fossil fuels will replace nuclear to a large degree.”

Perry Just Made Taxpayers Invest in a $25-billion Nuclear ‘Financial Quagmire.’” So read the headline of a recent post by Joe Romm (Center for American Progress). His subtitle: “Nuclear plants are money losers, but Perry is loaning billions more to the last new one being built.”

It is strange. Nuclear is the only scalable CO2-free electrical generation source known to man. Although it is the most expensive way to boil water (and hopelessly uneconomic compared to natural gas- and even coal-fired power), a stubborn, quasi-religious segment of the Climate Malthusians refuses to bulge.…

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False Consensus: The 97 Percent Canard (Oreskes study debunked)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 10, 2017

“It is now widely agreed Oreskes did not distinguish between articles that acknowledged or assumed some human impact on climate, however small, and articles that supported IPCC’s more specific claim that human emissions are responsible for more than 50 percent of the global warming observed during the past 50 years.”

“Her definition of consensus also is silent on whether man-made climate change is dangerous or benign, a rather important point in the debate.”

” Oreskes’ literature review inexplicably overlooked hundreds of articles by prominent global warming skeptics…. More than 1,350 such articles (including articles published after Oreskes’ study was completed) are now identified in an online bibliography.”

The second edition of Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Scientific Consensus. (Heartland Institute: 2015), edited by Craig Idso, (the late) Robert Carter, and S.…

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Bottom Line Climate Science: A Primer

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 9, 2017
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Houston Chronicle: $15/hour Minimum Wage for Rebuilding Houston (economics 101, anyone?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 5, 2017
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Houston Chronicle: Preaching Climate Alarmism Post Harvey

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 4, 2017
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Draining the PC Flood-Policy Swamp

By -- October 3, 2017
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Cabotage Cronyism: Some History of the Jones Act

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 2, 2017
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R Street: Faking Freedom on Climate Change

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 28, 2017
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ANWR Drilling: Why Property Rights Matter

By Shawn Regan -- September 26, 2017
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