MasterResource: 2Q-2011 Activity Report

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 8, 2011 No Comments

MasterResource, a premier free-market energy blog, is two-and-a-half years old. Since beginning in late 2008, we have published approximately eight hundred posts from 100 authors. Our total views will exceed the magical one million mark in the current quarter. Comments from our loyal, sophisticated readership add substance to many of the in-depth posts.

This site has covered a variety of energy issues on the state, national, and even international level. But our most active area has been the growing backlash against industrial wind turbines. MasterResource is pleased to have become a leading voice for citizens, environmentalists, and small-government  advocates who have united against this intrusive, wildly uneconomic, and government-enabled energy form.

Our concept is different from most blogs. With one in-depth post per day, we have created an open book of mini-chapters, creating a scholarly resource and a historical record for the energy and energy/environmental debates.…

Continue Reading

Oil Exceptionalism … Houston Exceptionalism … Texas Exceptionalism … U.S. Exceptionalism: Private Oil and Gas for the Social Good (Joe Pratt's soulful message to the world)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 1, 2011 7 Comments

“The social usefulness of well-defined property rights, free exchange, and the system of relative money prices . . . has perhaps been demonstrated most convincingly by the catastrophic failure in the twentieth century of those societies that tried to function without them.”

– Paul Heyne, “Efficiency,” in David Henderson, ed., The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1993), p. 11.

“The wildcatters showed their gratitude to their city through their philanthropy. They were not the only ones who supported good causes in our region, but many of the foundations in Houston had their beginning in the oil and gas industries.”

Joe Pratt, Cullen/NEH Professor in History and Business, University of Houston

George Will invoked the theme of Texas exceptionalism in a recent column pitching  the state’s governor Rick Perry for the Republican presidential nomination.…

Continue Reading

Master Resource Update: 1Q-2011 (a blog for now and the future)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 15, 2011 3 Comments

MasterResource is nine quarters old, having started at year-end 2008. Our total views have surpassed 825,000. We have a loyal, sophisticated readership whose comments add substance to many of the posts.

Our “free market energy blog” has attracted talent from across the nation and across disciplines–nearly a hundred bloggers in all. In particular, the growing national movement against industrial wind turbines includes a number of very informed citizens who choose MasterResource to publicize their issues and research.

Our concept is different from most blogs. With one in-depth post per day, we have created an open book of mini-chapters, creating a scholarly resource and a historical record for the energy and energy/environmental debates. We now have more than 300 categories–the index of our ever expanding book.

Most of all, our content will most assuredly meet the test of time as future scholars review MasterResource to understand the intellectual arguments and political discourse.…

Continue Reading

Renewable Mandate Challenged in the Centennial State (An economic, legal case for free, fair energy choice in Colorado)

By Tom Tanton -- April 5, 2011 19 Comments

The American Tradition Institute (ATI) and the American Tradition Partnership (ATP) have filed suit in Federal District Court in Colorado to have Colorado’s renewable energy standard (RES) declared unconstitutional. The plaintiffs find that the Colorado RES discriminates on its face against legal, safer, less costly, less polluting and more reliable in-state and out-of-state generators of electricity sold in interstate commerce, and thus violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Given 29 states with either a RES or a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) of varying strength, the outcome of this case will likely have far reaching implications. The suit was filed yesterday, April 4, 2011.

Part of the suit is a “declaration” of technical aspects and the costs and benefits of how the RES is implemented; I am the author of that declaration.…

Continue Reading

Road to Nowhere: Lomborg’s $250 Billion Throw for Renewables a Step Back for the ‘Skeptical Environmentalist’

By Jon Boone -- November 11, 2010 10 Comments Continue Reading

John Browne’s 1997 Stanford University Speech: The “Beyond Petroleum” Beginning (and beginning of the end of BP?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 19, 2010 22 Comments Continue Reading

The Iron Age & Coal-based Coke: A Neglected Case of Fossil-fuel Dependence

By Vaclav Smil -- September 17, 2009 11 Comments Continue Reading

Where is the Real Dr. Chu, Mr. President? (Climate alarmism – nuclear = not much on the supply side)

By Donald Hertzmark -- July 17, 2009 5 Comments Continue Reading

“Green” China: Big PR vs. King Coal (move over dung, primitive biomass, and Waxman-Markey)

By Donald Hertzmark -- June 24, 2009 9 Comments Continue Reading

CO2 Cap-and-Trade Meets the (China) Dragon: Why Legislating Trillions of Dollars in Regulatory Costs Would Be Climatically Inconsequential

By Donald Hertzmark -- May 13, 2009 8 Comments Continue Reading