“Falling commodity prices in general are a good thing in a free market because, as economist Ludwig von Mises emphasized, the sole end of production is consumption. Consumption first, production second. Also the US is a net importer of both oil and natural gas, which means we consume more than we produce. So provincially speaking, the US gains more than it loses from well-to-pump or well-to-burner-tip price drops.”
Business consultant Carlos Lara and I produce a monthly financial publication, the Lara-Murphy Report, which highlights the Austrian School of economics in both academia and the financial markets. The January 2016 issue interviewed Rob Bradley of Houston, Texas, who was trained in Austrian-school economics and is a longtime historian of oil markets. This interview is reproduced below.
Robert L. Bradley Jr. is the founder and chief executive officer of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a 501(c)3 educational foundation with offices in Houston, Texas, and Washington, D.C.…
Continue Reading“The so called ‘green’ energy sources usually lauded on Earth Day have a heavy toll on the environment to produce piddling amounts of unreliable and costly energy. Both wind and solar energy are so dilute that large areas of land must be sterilised by roads, transmission lines and construction sites to collect significant energy. Already many wind towers have been abandoned and others are being de-commissioned because of high maintenance costs or poor energy production.”
It was petroleum that provided the kerosene that replaced whale oil in lamps and greatly reduced the slaughter of whales.
Coal saved the forests that were being cut down for smelters, forges, charcoal, heaters and stoves. Steel made with coke then replaced wood for mine props, bridges and tall buildings. As steam engines and iron ships replaced wooden wind-jammers in world navies and merchant fleets, the forests expanded.…
Continue Reading“The month-long decommissioning project was the first in the world for an offshore wind farm, but more projects will soon follow as early turbines reach the end of their two-decade lifetimes.”
– Sonal Patel, “Vattenfall Completes World’s First Decommissioning of an Offshore Wind Farm.” Power magazine, April 1, 2016.
“… many calculations of the much relied on measure of levelized hourly cost assume a 30-year lifetime…. As a result, many publications of levelized costs for wind turbines are understated by a factor of about two.”
– Kent Hawkins (below)
The April 2016 issue of Power Magazine contains a very likely revealing story on offshore wind plants. Given the political correctness of wind power, the revealing story can be interpreted in two ways: