Ed. note: This exchange in 2019 between Robert Bradley and climate scientist/activist Andrew Dessler regards adaptation as the key climate policy. It is reposted for its relevance in today’s debate over air conditioning (see yesterday’s post). “Climate mastery” via fossil fuels, as Alex Epstein has emphasized, is the natural, most rewarding public policy. [1]

“With the very unique situation of CO2 (a global externality of positives and negatives), government mitigation is doomed to fail. Sooner or later, you will have to admit that politics failed, that fossil fuels were just too good given the alternatives of non-use, renewables, nuclear.” (Bradley to Dessler #1, August 3, 2019)

“We have not only market failure but also analytical failure (imperfect you, me, others) and government failure, which is magnified by 190 or so governments.”

Ed. note: The loss of impartial intellectual inquiry and scholarship at Harvard University continues, as indicated by an upcoming article in Harvard Environmental Law Review, Vol. 48, No. 1, 2024, “Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths.” Given this trend, the contributions of a pioneering Harvard business historian, who also broke through the ranks of a male-only faculty, are worth revisiting.

“What we have done is … to put business in its broader political and cultural setting…. We are not out to defend business, but to try to do an impartial, scholarly investigation of an important American institution.”

 – Henrietta Larson (1894–1983), Harvard business historian

For many decades, corporate histories were dominated by simplistic notions of big-is-bad and capitalist exploitation. Ida Tarbell documented many innovations and economies from John D.…

“Halloween is coming October 31st; there is no reason to normalize scares for the rest of the year.”

It is good to see David Simon in the climate sustainability debate. The son of Julian Simon (1932–1998), David is a clear voice contrasting hypothetical doom against real statistics. And it comes in the very year that John Holdren, former Obama science advisor and bitter foe of Julian, predicted as many as one billion climate deaths could occur.

MasterResource has previously highlighted David, a Chicago attorney writing as a fellow of the Washington-based Committee to Unleash Prosperity. Simon’s op-ed, “Paul Krugman Is a Global Warming Alarmist. Don’t Be Like Him” (January 16, 2020), had a zinger in the first of his six major points.

First, the earth’s temperature has been rising at a microscopically slow pace. NASA’s

“With the very unique situation of CO2 (a global externality of positives and negatives), government mitigation is doomed to fail. Sooner or later, you will have to admit that politics failed, that fossil fuels were just too good given the alternatives of non-use, renewables, nuclear.” (Bradley to Dessler #1, August 3, 2019)

“We have not only market failure but also analytical failure (imperfect you, me, others) and government failure, which is magnified by 190 or so governments.” (Bradley to Dessler #2, August 3, 2019)

I have been critical of Texas A&M climatologist and Green New Dealer Andrew Dessler for some time now. He is far too certain about climate doom (“climate dystopia,” to use his term) and refuses to see the risks in climate policy, not only physical climate change.…