This essay, published twelve years ago in PERC Reports (“the magazine of free market environmentalism”), challenged the then-popular theory that oil production would inexorably reach a maximum and decline thereafter. What would become the U.S. and global shale oil and shale gas boom was just getting started.
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“This time it’s for real,” says the cover story of the June 2004 issue of National Geographic. “We’re at the beginning of the end of cheap oil.”
Books and articles written by geologists, environmentalists, and others regularly announce a new era of increasing oil scarcity. 1 Today’s resurrected hero of the depletionists is M. King Hubbert (1903-1989), a Shell Oil Company geologist who a half-century ago presented a bellshaped curve depicting oil production over time. But the theory of a little-known twentieth century economist, Erich Zimmermann, suggests this is unsound.…
Continue Reading“If the industry’s plans go unchallenged and with 280 massive turbines planned for Altamont, the turbine rotor sweep will increase 2-3 times when calculated in square meters. Calculated in cubic meters, the blade sweep will increase by as much as 5 times.”
“Our supposed regulators and wildlife protection services have looked the other way for 30 years, while the industry produced reams of bogus “studies” designed to justify its existence and hide the death tolls.”
The next hearing on expanding wind energy production at the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area in California is set for January 14, 2016. “Depending on final turbine selection, micro-siting and other considerations, a capacity of 54 MW is still expected to be yielded,” says an Alameda County announcement about enormous new Siemens turbines being installed there.…
Continue Reading“Shameless preplanned back-slapping accompanied a Paris climate accord that guaranteed nothing except continued high fossil fuel emissions.”
– James Hansen, “Wanning Workshop + Beijing Charts + Year-End Comments,” December 29, 2015
The cheering for the global climate change agreement had not even died down before its critics were hard at work pointing out the shortcomings of the plan. One of the most prominent critics was none other than former NASA scientist and Columbia University adjunct professor, James Hansen.
Mr. Hansen is popularly credited with being the “father of global warming,” since retitled “climate change.” In 2013, Mr. Hansen retired from NASA and government service so he could become a climate change activist and stage protests, something banned for government workers. His subsequent activism led to several arrests outside the White House as he illegally protested against mining and the Keystone XL pipeline. …
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