A Free-Market Energy Blog

Ken Green on the New ‘Denialists’ (circling the wagons on Climategate)

By -- January 2, 2010

 [Editor Note: This piece originally appeared in the Calgary Herald on December 28th. It should be noted that a new website is devoted to Climategate.]

Responses to “Climategate”–the leaked e-mails from Britain’s University of East Anglia and its Climatic Research Unit — remind me of the line “Are your feet wet? Can you see the pyramids? That’s because you’re in denial.”

Climate catastrophists like Al Gore and the UN’s Rajendra Pachauri are downplaying Climategate: it’s only a few intemperate scientists; there’s no real evidence of wrongdoing; now let’s persecute the whistleblower. In Calgary, the latest fellow trying to use the Monty Python “nothing to see here, move along” routine is David Mayne Reid, who penned a column last week denying the importance of Climategate.

Unfortunately for Professor Reid, old saws won’t work in the Internet age: Climategate has blazed across the Internet, blogosphere, and social networking sites.…

Continue Reading

Julian Simon on the Ultimate Resource (Forget Peak Oil, Worry About Peak Government)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 1, 2010

Best of MasterResource 2009: This post originally appeared on September 5th.

Julian Simon (1932–98) is an inspiration to those of us here at MasterResource and, indeed, the whole capitalist movement. Indeed, it was he who characterized energy as the master resource and human ingenuity as the ultimate resource.

In honor of Simon, I have reproduced some quotations from his works and invite readers to add their favorite in the comment section.

“The world’s problem is not too many people, but a lack of political and economic freedom.”

– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton, N.Y.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 11.

“There is only one important resource which has shown a trend of increasing scarcity rather than increasing abundance. That resource is the most important of all—human beings.

Continue Reading

Dear John Holdren: Where is our “Indispensable,” “Reliable,” “Affordable” Energy?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 31, 2009

[Editor note: A previous iteration of this post was published on January 14th. Given the inaction of the Obama Administration on offshore drilling in the last year, part of a pervasive strategy to discourage carbon-based energy production and usage, this post, this question needs to be raised anew.]

From time to time, John Holdren has acknowledged that plentiful, affordable, reliable energy is vital to human well being. Indeed, there is no going back to an energy-poor world. (Remember: caveman energy was 100% renewable.)

America–and the world–need more carbon-based energy, not less. Wind and solar are inferior energies compared to the real thing that consumers choose and want more of–oil, gas, and coal.

Holdren on the Importance of Energy

When Holdren or Obama advocates policies that risk making energy artificially scarce or less reliable, these words can be used to argue for nonregulatory approaches to energy policy:

“Virtually all of the benefits that now seem necessary to the ‘American way’ have required vast amounts of energy.

Continue Reading

Classical Energy Thinking: Right on Renewables (intermittency), Not-so-Right on Fossil Fuels (coming exhaustion)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 30, 2009
Continue Reading

Industrial Wind Power: An Old, Tried Failure (the intermittency curse then and now)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 29, 2009
Continue Reading

MasterResource’s 1st Anniversary: 300,000 Views; A Top ‘Green Blog’

By -- December 28, 2009
Continue Reading

WSJ’s “Heard on the Street”: Political Energy Down, Market Energy Up Post-Copenhagen (Remembering the risks of Enron’s political capitalism model)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 26, 2009
Continue Reading

Three Cheers for Holiday Lights!

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 25, 2009
Continue Reading

Countering Sen. Kerry’s Catastrophic Climate Claims (Part 2)

By Kenneth P. Green -- December 24, 2009
Continue Reading

Countering Sen. Kerry’s Catastrophic Climate Claims (Part 1 of 2)

By Kenneth P. Green -- December 23, 2009
Continue Reading