“With 25.3 Quads ‘lost’ in the transition from ‘source’ to ‘site’ (a.k.a. metered) electricity consumption, the overall electrical generation efficiency in industrial processes is 34% (13 Quads ÷ 38.3 Quads). In comparison, direct use of fossil fuel on site at industrial facilities generally exceeds 90%.”
“Industrial electrification is largely being driven by the same cabal pushing deep decarbonization and is further undermining our market economy. The solution: Remove subsidies, mandates and other forms of energy favoritism by letting technologies advance or fail in markets based upon their own true merit or lack thereof.”
Previous articles at Master Resource have focused on “deep decarbonization” through allegedly beneficial electrification of residential and commercial buildings. We’ve discussed the negative consequences of various policy regimes to deny consumers choice to best satisfy their energy usage requirements.
…There are many thousands of academics and others that do not like capitalism, industrialization, consumerism, and mineral energies. The same “consensus” thought that Peak Oil had arrived, time and again. Malthusianism is and has always been “consensus science.”
An ongoing exercise in groupthink is to believe the climate is in crisis because a scientific/political elite says so. Never mind that the Malthusians/ neo-Malthusians have been wrong with their ‘garbage-in, garbage-out’ models ever since the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) “limits to growth” model in 1972.
Enter Mark Mathis of the Clear Energy Alliance, a student of all things energy and climate and a distinguished communicator (see Appendix). Last month at an industry event (Marcellus Utica Midstream Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Mathis stated in “Breaking Through the Regulatory Wall:”
…For a scientist, for a climatologist to say, “we know that we’re the cause,” okay, “and the consequences are extreme” — well, we’ve got these giant natural factors, you know, sunspot activity, oceans, cloud formations, these are all extraordinarily complex things, okay?
“… knowledge is truly the mother of all resources.”
– Erich Zimmermann, World Resources and Industries (1951), p. 10.
The new year presents an opportunity to step back and appreciate the driver of progress in the free economy: the liberated, liberating entrepreneur. The change-makers of the market drive the creation and usage of resources, as well documented by the oil and gas extraction revolution of the last decade or more.
But a largely invisible, ongoing application in the U.S. and elsewhere deserves more attention. Instead of futile and wasteful (government) mitigation policy, the positive approach to climate policy is human ingenuity to anticipate, mitigate, or just capitalize on changing weather patterns, aka climate change.
Increasing ‘depletable’ resources is a paradigmatic example of what Julian Simon called “the ultimate resource,” human ingenuity.
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