Exchange with a Climate Alarmist at Desmog Blog (unmasking emotion, anger on the other side)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 20, 2019 4 Comments

“The multitude of smoking guns in the Climategate emails made it a war zone. And the ‘missing heat’ raised by Climategater Kevin Trenberth plagues high-sensitivity warmists today.”

“You can be happy and optimistic…. The dense (mineral) energy era (fossil fuels) has been a boom to you, me, and virtually everyone. CO2 is greening the ecosphere while climate-related deaths plummet. And the Paris Climate Accord is failing–a good political outcome for the developing countries in particular.”

A recent post at DesmogUK, titled Why the Climategate Hack was More than an Attack on Science, caught my eye. Funny how the apologists have to defend an event that happened a decade ago! They would love to just ignore it and move on. But in clear words, sentences, and in English, science was tortured in the name of a cause.…

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Why is California Blaming Wildfires on a Small Percentage of Downed Power Lines? (Part I)

By -- November 13, 2019 5 Comments

“California’s reliance on hydropower and proliferation of remote, centralized renewable energy plants; the mandated environmental mothballing of 19 coastal natural gas power plants located close to customers; redundant transmission lines for green power; and seasonal wind blasts, results in lethal blast-furnace-like wildfires that leave trees alone but incinerate houses.”

“California leaders and opinion-makers must first abandon their blame game and diagnose the problem more clearly than using clichés like ‘global warming,’ ‘Donald Trump,’ ‘greed’ or even ‘not enough clear cutting,’ if they are going to responsibly deal with the dangerous unintended consequences of de-modernizing its electric grid.”

A question arising out of California’s recent wave of wind-fanned wildfires, is why are public officials mainly attributing the cause to downed electric transmission lines that comprise less than ten percent of all the causes of such fires?

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Halloween: Neo-Malthusian Day

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 31, 2019 1 Comment

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children. It has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate.’” (Joe Romm, quoted in Thomas Friedman, Is the Inflection Point Near?, New York Times, March 7, 2009)

“Is there any more single-minded, simple pleasure than viewing with alarm? At times it is even better than sex.” (Kenneth Boulding (1970), p. 160. [1]

Are free-market optimists the dumb ones who jump off tall buildings and report that everything is fine, even breezy, on the way down? Or are those who fear, rant, and make this analogy bungee-jumping with reality?

The optimists have been jumping off buildings ever since Robert Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on Population was published in 1798–and not hitting the ground.…

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ADM and Early Ethanol Subsidies: ‘A Case Study in Corporate Welfare’ (Dwayne Andreas remembered)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 25, 2019 No Comments

“Using ethanol for vehicle fuel is hardly a new practice. In fact, ethanol has been used for fuel for more than 100 years. A USDA report noted, ‘The use of alcohol as an automobile fuel dates back to the first modern internal combustion engine, the Otto Cycle (1876), which used alcohol as well as gasoline. Henry Ford designed the Model T (1908) to use alcohol, gasoline, or any mixture of them.'”

In September 1995, the Cato Institute published Policy Analysis No. 241 by then associate policy analyst at Cato, James Bovard. “Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study in Corporate Welfare” is at once eye-opening and infuriating. ADM was not only the “most prominent” but also the “most arrogant” recipient of special government (read taxpayer/consumer) favor in the U.S. Only Ken Lay’s Enron, on a much broader basis, could rival ADM chair Dwayne Andreas.…

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A Legacy of T. Boone Pickens: Political Capitalist

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 24, 2019 1 Comment Continue Reading

Energy & Environmental Newsletter: August 29, 2019

By -- August 29, 2019 4 Comments Continue Reading

Energy & Environmental Newsletter: July 29, 2019

By -- July 29, 2019 3 Comments Continue Reading

James E. Rogers (1947-2018): Political Capitalist

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 18, 2019 5 Comments Continue Reading

Andrew Dessler: The Certain Climate Alarmist

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 27, 2019 16 Comments Continue Reading

FDR’s New Deal with Energy: Part V (Rural Electrification)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 15, 2019 1 Comment Continue Reading