“DeSmog’s methodology of listing the ‘denier’ qualifications, quotations, and activities–as if the debate was settled toward climate alarmism and forced energy transformation–is utterly unconvincing. Their growing list is impressive and a badge of honor, so let their project continue.”

Stephen Koonin has done much to help “mainstream” the problems with alarmism based on climate modelling–at least for the open-minded and curious. Humility must rule in the face of radical complexity. After all, what can be known in the absence of causal physical equations that are sub-grid scale anyway?

Climate models cannot be expected to “get it right,” if earth modeling is even possible. This is why data-data-data can and should drive the climate sensitivity debate.

Professor Koonin has been profiled relative to Andrew Dessler at MasterResource (here and here).…

“Thank you Doug Sheridan. Thank you Alex Epstein. Thank you Robert Bryce. Thank you David Siegel. And many others…. The great middle is coming your way on the polarized energy/climate issue.”

Doug Sheridan, an energy consultant with EnergyPoint Research in Houston, has tens of thousands of followers on LinkedIn. He is an energy realist and speaks truth to power on energy and climate in a scholarly tone. And his message is resonating well in the mineral energy sector and beyond.

I was struck by his recent post describing the growing recognition of the vital role of mineral energies (vs. dilute, intermittent, infrastructure-heavy, government-dependent wind and solar). Sheridan piggybacks on an article by the U.S. reporter for the Financial Times, Derek Brower.

Sheridan’s post follows:

Derek Brower writes in the FT, pro-oil voices are suddenly bolder, swatting aside environmentalists for having the gall to worry about the climate during a global energy crisis.…

Environmentalists fighting to ban oil and gas need to learn about the 30 percent of the barrel they ignore when they espouse a world powered exclusively by electricity generated by renewables. Replacing the organic properties of petroleum is a life-threatening void in the hubris of the enemies of mineral energies.

…it is estimated industrialized nations currently consume petrochemical products at a rate of 3.5 gallons of oil per day per person.

A recent opinion column in the Wall Street Journal, “You Can’t Build Roads Without Oil,” pointed out the fallacy of the “keep it in the ground” movement against fossil fuels. Forced energy transformationists want an end to the internal combustion engine and shuttered fossil-fuel-fired power plants. It is a wind-and-solar world with existing nuclear plants maybe to continue.…

Ed Note: This excerpt is from Erich Zimmermann, World Resources and Industries: A Functional Appraisal of the Availability of Agricultural and Industrial Resources (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933).

“Harnessing the air for generating electric power … [is] engrossing the attention of scientists and technicians and may revolutionize the German electric industry. [Hermann] Honnef claims to have … overcome the drawback of the inconstancy of air currents which hitherto has been a handicap to the utilization of this source.” (1932)

Erich W. Zimmermann’s World Resources and Industries (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933) is one of the towering tomes of energy and mineral thought. The treatise (850 pages) in the old tradition, wherein a scholar presents a unified system of thought and considers differing viewpoints.

It is a tradition that seems to have stalled, with the next-best-thing being the latest book from Vaclav Smil.…