“Natural gas shortages and reliability concerns in New England are neither short-term, nor unanticipated…. ISO-New England and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have for many months called attention to the very real reliability issues likely to face the region in the coming winter months due to insufficient supply of natural gas.”

“New England power plants generated an estimated 4.18 million metric tons of CO2 in January 2022, up from 2.77 million metric tons in January 2021, with the region’s heavier reliance on oil accounting for most of the difference.” (INGAA, below)

Government intervention creates emergencies and shortages unlike self-interested transactions within a true free market. This was true a century ago with World War I planning; and it remains true today.

The 1970s oil and gas shortages should have taught politicians that price and allocation controls do not work.…

The false idea that fossil fuels’ climate impacts are an “emergency” that requires us to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels has caused an energy emergency. The “climate emergency” movement must be held accountable. The world is experiencing the worst energy crisis since the 1970s… (- Alex Epstein, October 20, 2022)

May this thinker have the last word on today’s energy and environmental debates on all media platforms. Daniel Yergin, hand the microphone to Alex Epstein at the next CERAWEEK. Energy companies, broadcast this speech live in your board rooms and employee conference rooms. It is his turn. (- RLB, below)

Energy philosopher/realist Alex Epstein (Center for Industrial Progress) might well be the leading voice in his domain today. (Robert Bryce is in the race too.) His stock is rising, while voices of climate alarm/forced energy transformation are falling.…

Episode 1 of BBC’s Big Oil vs The World is a polished, emotional, lawyer-like brief for one side of a multi-sided, complex issue. But in the final analysis, the BBC case is long on agenda and feelings and short on facts, balance, and proper context. The documentary is slick propaganda that accuses oil companies of producing slick propaganda.

With its documentary Big Oil vs The World, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has added its voice to the chorus accusing the petroleum industry in general, and ExxonMobil in particular, of misleading the public and slowing the global response to climate change. The three-part documentary (Denial, Doubt, and Delay) was produced in cooperation with PBS, which ran its version on Frontline under the title The Power of Big Oil in April and May of this year.…

“The global cooling scare was real from some leading climate scientists and leading environmentalists. And it was promoted in the mainstream media heavily as is well documented. So was the ‘Population Bomb’ (from food shortages) and ‘Peak Oil’/’Peak Gas’.”

In response to a LinkedIn post on the global cooling scare of the 1970s, one comment was:

It’s a myth that the climate science community was predicting global cooling and an imminent ice age in the 1970s. The media was all over a few proponents of cooling the way they’ve been all over the rare climate science contrarians, so their voices were overamplified, the way the voices of the science denier scientists have been overamplified in the media. 

To which I replied:

Stephen Schneider was a leading climate scientist who sounded the cooling scare.