Ed. note: The current cold snap (“where is global warming when you need it?”) makes timely a review of the Texas electricity debacle of February 2021. This post by Robert Bradley, “Wind, Solar, and the Great Texas Blackout: Guilty as Charged,” was originally published by the Institute for Energy Research. As of 5 pm yesterday, natural gas and coal supplied about 75 percent of Texas’s electricity (ERCOT scoreboard) and wind/solar 17 percent (versus 50 percent of rated capacity).

“Central planning for a forced energy transformation produced the debacle of debacles two years ago in Texas. It is time for a new era for U.S. electricity policy premised on market entrepreneurship.”

Electricity specialists at the University of Texas at Austin recently revisited the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021.…

Ed. Note: This repost from seven years ago (January 11, 2018) is reprinted for its relevancy today. What 12 or more would you add today? Here are some of mine: Craig Idso, Jr., Anthony Watts (WUWT), Kevin Dayaratna, and the other four DOE science study authors in addition to Judith Curry, profiled yesterday (John Christy, Steven Koonin, Ross McKittrick, Roy Spencer).

I previously recognized twelve individuals associated with free-market, classical-liberal energy analysis and advocacy. Here is a second “tribute” to those who have labored against the mainstream of Malthusianism and energy statism–and now find themselves with new opportunities to formulate, summarize, and promote pro-consumer, taxpayer-neutral energy policy.

This list is in alphabetical order. It is subjective and hardly exhaustive. Other candidates (such as the present writer) could also be included–and could be in a future iteration.…

“Good thing that Jimmy Carter’s Administration did not act on this to join their other sins, from price control to conservationism to creating the Department of Energy to synthetic fuel.”

Do the math with the 1977 climate memo to Jimmy Carter (below). In the next 60 years (to 2037), the memo predicted that increasing CO2 emissions would increase global average temperatures between 0.5 and 5.0 C (midpoint is 2.75 C).

Warming nearing the 50-year market is about 0.8C. Assume the total warming in the next 12 years brings the total to 1C anthropogenic. That makes a mockery of the high end of the estimate, which is the basis of “the possibility of a Catastrophic Climate Change.” And it is around one-third of the midrange of 2.75C.

It gets worse. Some of the warming in the 60-year period is undoubtedly natural, not anthropogenic.…

“The consolation prize for a lot of us is that Joe Romm is so extreme and unprofessional that his cause of “Hell and High Water” suffers. Climate change is exaggerated and nefarious, just like Joe Romm himself.

MasterResource has followed the mercurial climate alarmist/activist Joe Romm since its beginning (2007). Back in the late 1990s, I sparred with Romm while I was at Enron, (“a company I greatly respect,” said he) regarding what turned out to be its most deceitful business, one promising free-lunch energy efficiency. Enron Energy Services (EES) and Romm’s Center for Energy and Climate Solutions (CECS) both bit the dust. For-profit or non-profit, the “energy service company” (ESCO) was a mirage.

Romm has referred to me as a “sociopath” in a private email.…