“Chris Tomlinson is financially conflicted, badly so, and over-the-top against Big Oil and the fossil-fuel industry writ large. Yet he has a happy home as the business editorialist at the Houston Chronicle. These are peculiar times of climate alarmism/forced energy transformation….”

What’s the latest from the oil and gas misanthrope Chris Tomlinson, business editorialist at the Houston Chronicle? The fellow that does not feel at the least conflicted swimming in taxpayer-enabled wind/solar monies inside his own abode (involving $2.0 billion and 2,000 MW)? [1]

Not much….

At CERAWeek 2022, Tomlinson was not listening to the (puppet) head of the U.S. Department of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, who stated:

We are on a war footing—an emergency—and we have to responsibly increase short-term [oil and gas] supply…. And that means you producing more right now, where and if you can.

“We are on a war footing—an emergency—and we have to responsibly increase short-term [oil and gas] supply…. And that means you producing more right now, where and if you can.” (Secretary Granholm, March 9, 2022)

“Believe me, it would take a fool to not see that this empress has no clothes.” (RLB, below)

I have been in the business of criticizing the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) ever since it was created in 1977. And I have never read a more fanciful and pitiful speech than this one. Yes, it is very well written (whoever the speechwriter was). But how do you square the circle; and how do you eat your cake and have it too?

We are in a climate crisis, right? It is an “existential threat,” states President Biden.…

“Certainly, the path of energy transition has never been clear. Five climate summits have taken place over the past 30 years, and progress has always fallen short. This latest setback may just be the latest in a long series of halfway measures and setbacks.”

“For critics of the European Union’s climate policies, the sudden focus away from greenhouse gas emissions and on existing fuel reserves is validating.” (NYT, below)

Let history note that the February 23, 2022, print edition of the New York Times admitted that “net zero” was a long shot. This breaks the narrative that Net Zero was the inevitable future with politics and business and high technology leading the way. Forget energy density; energy reality would be remade by a shared narrative of hoping and wanting it to be remade.…

A historical oddity is how the U.S. government and Exxon “knew” about the ‘greenhouse signal’ and perilous anthropogenic climate change when climate scientists did not. But such is the state of the debate where PR and lawsuits overwhelm a rational view of knowledge. (below)

“In my expert opinion, in the period shortly after President Carter took office in 1977,” states James Gustave Speth, “there was a growing sense of concern and indeed urgency within the federal government that fossil fuel burning was heating the planet and causing the climate to change in many ways that could be catastrophic….” [1]

“Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue,” stated an article in Scientific American. “This knowledge did not prevent the company … from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation.”…