By rbradley Over at Center for American Progress (and Climate Progress), where oil production and oil consumption are bad, they greet Memorial Day with mixed emotions–and anti-”Big Oil” spin: Beginning with the Memorial Day weekend and throughout the summer, Americans will spend their hard-earned dollars traveling to visit family, friends, and the great outdoors. Meanwhile, Big Oil will be making huge profits off of these travel expenditures on fuel, while at the same time... Read More

By rbradley “A carbon tax would have a net negative effect on consumption, investment and jobs, resulting in lower federal revenues from taxes on capital and labor. Any revenue raised by a carbon tax would be far outweighed by the negative impacts to the overall economy.” Pricing carbon dioxide (CO2) to wring competitive advantage and appease environmental pressure groups used to draw a lot of business support from the big players, such as Ken Lay’s Enron and John... Read More

By rbradley The Sierra Club, as yesterday’s post described, has ditched its previous support for natural gas, the cleanest burning fossil fuel. And so goes the modern, Washington, DC-based environmental pressure group movement, rejecting not only oil, gas, and coal but also nuclear, hydro, and most biofuels. Translated into today’s energy usage, some 98 percent is bad and 2 percent good. [1] Turning an industrial economy over to the two most costly, unreliable (intermittent)... Read More

By rbradley An influential branch of the modern environmental movement rejects a human-centered anthropocentric view of the world in favor of a nature-first ecocentricview. Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in a 1973 essay differentiated between shallow ecology, a concern with pollution and resource depletion in the developed world, and deep ecologywhere “the equal right to live and blossom” ends what is seen as a master-slave relationship between human and nonhuman (lower animal and plant)... Read More

By rbradley “The draft assessment continue[s] to miss the positive externalities associated with climate change, like the fact that we have doubled our life spans in societies that were largely powered by fossil fuels that have slightly raised mean global temperature. Doubling the lifespan of, say, two billion people, is equivalent to saving one billion lives. This dwarfs any negative effects of climate change. Me, I’ll take 85 quality years versus 43 with a price of one degree... Read More

By rbradley “The distinction between renewable and non-renewable resources is tenuous and perhaps in the last analysis untenable.” - M. A. Adelman, The Economics of Petroleum Supply (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993), p. 66. “The tradition in academic energy economics is to stress the ability to overcome depletion threats.” - Richard Gordon, The Energy Journal, (Vol. 22: No. 2), 2001, p. 128. The headline from the May 15th Time article reads: “The IEA Says Peak Oil Is Dead. That’s... Read More

By flawrence “The Permian Basin is a story about combining the various talents of independents, majors, and service companies in using advancing technologies to sustain the lifespan of existing fields, to tap into zones that were previously uneconomic or inaccessible, and to increase the Permian’s proven reserves in a remarkable fashion.” The Permian region, in western Texas and extending into southeastern New Mexico, has been one of North America’s major oil and natural gas... Read More

By llinowes “The claim that wind projects in the U.S. are achieving 30% average capacity factors nationally [are] … not meaningful when considering that state RPS mandates are based on local resources. For states like New York and Pennsylvania, where average capacity factors are in the low- to mid- 20% range, many more wind turbines and related infrastructure (transmission) will be needed to meet RPS mandates than originally forecasted resulting in increased costs and impacts.... Read More

By rbradley “[A]s my father liked to tell me, ‘Son, a fool with a plan can beat a genius with no plan any day.’ Right now, when it comes to America and our effort to achieve greater energy security, we’re a foolish nation without a plan. If it were up to me, America’s energy plan would have ….” - T. Boone Pickens, “Leadership Absent on Energy Plan,” Omaha World-Herald, May 1, 2013. “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little... Read More

By rbradley When it comes to energy, T. Boone Pickens esteems government planning. When asked about President Obama’s recent proposal for an Energy Security Trust, Pickens responded: That starts to talk about a plan. He’s going to fund something to start something…. Make a plan … and do something different. And low and behold, Pickens is crusading with yet another energy plan, his third in the last six years. As before, his animus is against Big Oil (see Appendix) and his fondness for... Read More

By jdroz The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using real science. Instead of a science-based approach, our energy and environmental policies are typically written by those who stand to economically or politically profit from them. As a result, anything... Read More

By dnorman “There is no evidence that government scientists and engineers are better at forecasting the future and know how the future will play out better than the scientists and engineers in private companies. Technocrats ignore the fact that private companies also hire scientists and engineers, (not to mention MBA’s and economists) and make investments based on their outlook for the future.” The technocracy movement that arose in the early part of twentieth century advocated... Read More

By rmckitrick “The claim that Ontario’s Green Energy and Green Economy Act of 2009 would create 50,000 jobs was a guess without any basis in formal analysis. The Province has since admitted both that the vast majority of these jobs will be temporary, and that the figure of 50,000 does not account for offsetting permanent job losses caused by related increases in the price of electricity.“ The Ontario Green Energy and Green Economy Act (GEA) was passed in May 2009 with the... Read More

By cknappenberger “No matter whose carbon dioxide emissions estimate is used, the climate impact of the oil transported by the pipeline is too small to measure or carry any physical significance. In deciding the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline, it is important not to let symbolism cloud these facts.” For the past 25 years, I’ve conducted research on climate and climate change including working to quantify potential human influences upon it. [1] Climate change results from a... Read More

By rpeltier “The ‘bait’ for legislators is each gets to ‘bring home the bacon’ in the form of rebate checks to voters and huge new tax revenues for the federal government…. The ‘switch’ … is to propose baby steps for the first 10 years [versus what will be necessary] … in the out years.” The “Climate Protection Act” (House) and Sustainable Energy Act” (Senate), are the latest, and perhaps the most onerous, in a series of... Read More

By rbradley “From all signs, the wind-energy field has reached that all-important turning point.” - C. Flavin, Wind Power: A Turning Point (Worldwatch Institute: July 1981), p. 47. Christopher Flavin, long associated with the Washington, DC-based Worldwatch Institute (see appendix below), was among the most thoughtful and prolific energy writer in the neo-Malthusian energy/environmentalist camp. His tone was positive, his writing clear, and his research well documented.... Read More

By jdelong “The tax will not be implemented in the politically aseptic world of academic modelers, but in the real world of intense  political pressures. Its assumed purity will not survive the onslaught [as demonstrated by] … Sanders-Boxer [where] the carbon tax is treated as a huge honeypot for allocating money to powerful groups, including overseas interests.” The carbon tax, a serious proposal supported by some thoughtful people, deserves careful consideration... Read More

By pgrossman [Ed. note: Dr. Grossman is author of the just-released U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure, an important and sobering tome with much insight about today's debate.] The U.S. government has claimed over the years one and one reason only for government intrusion into markets: Market failure. As a Carter administration document put it: The first assumption for any commercialization activity by the government is that the market either has failed or will fail to make the... Read More

By rbradley “We were motivated by the public and political controversy fostered by alarming predictions of impending catastrophic anthropogenic global warming [at] NASA …. Many of us felt these alarming and premature predictions … would eventually damage NASA’s reputation for excellent and objective science and engineering achievement.” The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established in 1990 in order to “assist the nation and the world to... Read More

By dsimmons “The energy and economic welfare of the United States and Mexico are intertwined by our shared geography, geology, and peoples. The Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement will help to tie our countries together and grow our economies.” - Daniel Simmons, Testimony before House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, “U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement and Steps Needed for Implementation,” April 25, 2013. Mexico is America’s third... Read More