“Color me confused…. Henry Groppe Jr. missed badly with natural gas in the crucial 1980s. I thus invite anyone to challenge my account.”

Last month I visited the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum (highly recommended!) located in Midland, Texas. The exhibits and educational features–in room after room–were exemplary. I learned much and will continue to learn with each visit.

To my surprise, I saw a wall-size tribute to energy consultant Henry Groppe Jr., describing him as a successful, unique seer into the future of oil and gas. This surprised me. In my book Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies (2011), I covered the history of Transco Energy Company, of which Groppe was a board director and consultant with the ear of Transco CEO Jack Bowen. My story was quite different.…

“(Disclosure: My wife works for a private equity firm that invests in clean energy companies, and they have projects in Texas. But my interest in climate change and energy dates back 30 years, and like most spouses, my wife will tell you she has little influence over my opinions.)” – Tomlinson (below)

It is a start—but only a start. In a recent lobbyist-like editorial for the Houston Chronicle, the climate-religionist, bully-like, cut-the-beef Chris Tomlinson confessed to a conflict-of-interest. But the conflict is more than being married to a person that “works for a private equity firm that invests in clean energy companies”; his wife is a multi-millionaire rainmaker in wind and solar–the very two energies that Chris champions so completely and extensively.

His term “clean energy companies,” moreover, euphemizes the deep nature of wind and solar: government-enabled, cost-inflating, dilute, intermittent energies.…

“The Houston Chronicle (Hearst) refuses to answer the simple question: Have environmental groups donated funds, directly or indirectly, for “environmental education” or “environmental reporting” (climate alarmism/forced energy transformation)? Color me suspicious….”

When it comes to energy, Chris Tomlinson is about as anti-consumer and anti-taxpayer as one can get. And he is about as pro-industrial wind and pro-grid solar as possible.

The business editorialist does not see Texas’s $65 billion investment in parasitic, dilute, intermittent energies as the villain in destabilizing a once reliable, secure electric grid. He wants 1) more wind and solar; 2) enormous grid batteries, as if they were off-the-shelf and cheap; and 3) Big Brother demand-management in the home and business.

Chris Tomlinson is a committed climate alarmist without a care to doubt himself. He is unable to be neutral in his business columns: to present the best arguments on each side and let you, the reader, decide.…

The near failure of the Texas power grid, coming just 4 minutes and 37 seconds from a complete collapse on February 14, 2021, was the first alarm bell that something was dreadfully wrong with US power grids. Meredith Angwin, a physical chemist and power grid specialist, described the February 2021 failure of the Texas power grid failure as a seminal event that was not a surprise:

Those of us who were watching the grid had noticed for years that Texas ran with a very low reserve margin…and there were predictions that Texas was going to be in trouble, [1],”

Since then, more power-grid operators have been speaking out about the increasing instability of their grids due to an over-weighting of non-dispatchable wind and solar power. A report on February 24, 2023, from the largest power grid in the US, PJM, warned of “increasing reliability risks” affecting 13 states and the District of Columbia and 65 million people who get their power from PJM.…