A Free-Market Energy Blog

Is GOP Opposition to Cap-and-Trade Self-Contradictory?

By -- August 17, 2010

Barring the trickery of a lame duck conference committee, cap-and-trade is dead in the 111th Congress. Some blame President Obama for not taking a more hands-on role. Others blame environmental groups for waging a $100 million lobbying campaign without winning a single GOP convert to the Kerry-Lieberman bill. Others blame the allegedly “well-funded denial machine,” even though proponents, who include major corporations like BP as well as Big Green, must have outspent free-market and conservative advocacy groups by more than 100 to 1.

The August 11 edition of Climatewire (subscription required) featured interviews with Exelon Corp. VP Betsy Moler and Resources for the Future President Phil Sharp, who lament that Republican lawmakers, the “inventors” of “market-based” environmental policy, turned against their own “invention.” Moler and Sharp are trying to spin GOP opposition to cap-and-trade as self-contradictory, hence as unstable, hence as reversible. …

Continue Reading

The Economic Costs of an Offshore Drilling Moratorium: A Summary of the Mason Study

By Eric Lowe -- August 16, 2010

In his highly relevant study, Dr. Joseph R. Mason, chair of banking at the Ourso School of Business at Louisiana State University, offers a sophisticated estimate of the economic impacts of a federal moratorium on exploratory offshore oil drilling. The new moratorium, issued by the Obama administration after federal judge Martin Feldman issued an injunction banning the government from enforcing the original moratorium, freezes some 33 current exploratory drilling operations and places a six-month ban on the issuance of exploration permits by the MMS (now the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement).

Dr. Mason begins by identifying the “phases” of drilling that support local economies. Exploratory drilling and the development of offshore facilities, the extraction process, and the refining of the crude oil are all identified as impacting Gulf of Mexico economies.…

Continue Reading

The New “Skeptical Science” Website: What is Going On Here?

By -- August 13, 2010

I was recently informed of a website called “Skeptical Science” run by a Mr. John Cook. As a scientist (physicist), I decided to check it out to see what I could learn. I started with the assumption that Mr. Cook was a competent and well-intentioned person. After some looking around there, here’s what I found out and concluded.

The first red flag is the fact that Science (by definition) is skeptical, so why the repetition in the name? It’s something like naming a site “The attractive fashion model”.

Of more concern is the fact that (c0ntrary to what one might be led to believe by the title) the site is actually focused against skeptical scientists — specifically those who have the temerity to question anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Hmmm.…

Continue Reading

Texas Fight! What Other States Can Learn from Texas vs U.S. EPA

By Daren Bakst -- August 12, 2010
Continue Reading

Here Comes Ingenuity! Offshore Drilling Will Be Better, Cleaner, Safer in the New Era (Julian Simon speaks to us today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 11, 2010
Continue Reading

Authoritarian Science: The Public Wants–and Deserves–Better

By Kenneth P. Green -- August 10, 2010
Continue Reading

Ethanol Opponents Launch Counterattack (the Left/Right ‘FollowTheScience’ coalition)

By Robert Bryce -- August 9, 2010
Continue Reading

The Ethanol Tax Credit – It’s Worse Than You Think

By Harry de Gorter and Jerry Taylor -- August 6, 2010
Continue Reading

Arctic Energy Production: Let’s Move Forward, Not Backwards

By Maureen Crandall -- August 5, 2010
Continue Reading

Smart Grid Problems Revealed: The NERC Study

By Kent Hawkins -- August 4, 2010
Continue Reading