All Posts Tagged With: "fossil fuels"

A Free-Market Energy Vision

Energy is the master resource. Without it other resources could not be produced or consumed. Even energy requires energy: There would not be usable oil, gas, or coal without the energy to manufacture and power the requisite tools and machinery. Nor would there be wind turbines or solar panels, which are monuments to embedded fossil-fuel [...]

29Jun2010 | Robert L. Bradley Jr. | 5 comments | Continued

Government Moonshine

From its minor role as an oxygenate additive for gasoline, ethanol has become the darling of Washington. Politicians embrace ethanol as a miracle elixir. All the fashionable energy buzzwords can be applied to it. It is “green power”; it’s “renewable” and will provide “energy independence” for America. Legislation has been promoting ethanol nonstop. The Energy [...]

24Mar2010 | Michael Heberling | 4 comments | Continued

How Dense Can They Get?

When it comes to power, energy density is the key. Solar power, wind power, and ethanol are so expensive because they are derived from very diffuse energy sources. It takes a lot of energy collectors such as solar cells, wind turbines, or corn stalks covering many square miles to produce the same amount of power [...]

5Jan2010 | Richard W. Fulmer | 12 comments | Continued

The Green-Economy Mirage

If you got an email offering you the chance to invest in a business that would create new profitable industries, employ millions of people, reduce energy consumption without reducing quality of life, and improve environmental quality, would you be skeptical? And if the email went on to claim that the technologies to do all this [...]

5Jan2010 | Andrew P. Morriss | 15 comments | Continued

Land-Use Controllers Never Quit

I have more than a small suspicion that those who promote urbanization will do so no matter what it does for the climate. The answer for them is always the same: more urbanization. Don’t worry about the exact question.

21May2009 | Steven Greenhut | 0 comments | Continued

Global Warming and the Layman

Global warming is a divisive issue. People are either believers or skeptics, with each side viewing the other with apprehension. I’ve sided firmly with the skeptics, but lately I have had a nagging concern. Like most people, I am not an atmospheric scientist. I have no firsthand way to evaluate a scientifically based argument for [...]

1Jan2007 | Sheldon Richman | 5 comments | Continued

Mandating Renewable Energy: It’s Not Easy Being Green

Environmentalists abhor all fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum) and nuclear energy. They collectively refer to this type of energy as “brown” power. Along with a bipartisan collection of Washington politicians, they instead advocate “green,” or “renewable,” power. This earth-friendly alternative energy includes geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass, solar, and wind. While we all know that [...]

1Oct2006 | Michael Heberling | 5 comments | Continued

Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media

Climatologist Patrick Michaels gives us a nontechnical and readable exposé of the “myths and facts” surrounding global warming. For skeptics of the mainstream global-warming hypothesis, that is, that dramatic, human-induced warming is occurring and will have cataclysmic effects if not checked by lifestyle-altering public policies, this book is a great read and an indispensable reference. [...]

14Dec2005 | Roy Cordato | 0 comments | Continued

The Growing Abundance of Fossil Fuels

Only two decades ago nearly all academics, businessmen, oilmen, and policymakers agreed that the age of energy scarcity was upon us and that the depletion of fossil fuels was imminent. While some observers still cling to that view today, the intellectual tide has turned against doom and gloom on the energy front. Nearly all resource [...]

1Nov1999 | Robert L. Bradley Jr. | 1 comment | Continued

Energy: Ending the Never-Ending Crisis

Jerry Ellig is a professor of economics at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. This highly readable book undermines both the economic and constitutional rationales for federal regulation of energy markets. The truly amazing thing is the sheer amount of information the author packs into 125 pages. The economics of energy regulation take up just a [...]

1Oct1998 | Jerry Ellig | 1 comment | Continued

Should There Be a Carbon Subsidy?

The Clinton administration has committed the United States to a massive reduction in the use of energy. That is the implication of its signing the United Nations Global Climate Treaty in Kyoto, Japan. If the Senate approves, we will have to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions drastically CO2 is emitted naturally, of course, by everything [...]

1Jul1998 | Roy Cordato | 0 comments | Continued

Global Warming: Hot Problem or Hot Air?

Jonathan Adler is director of environmental studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C., and the editor of The Costs of Kyoto: Climate Change Policy and Its Implications (1997), from which portions of this essay are adapted. El Niño is the overhyped weather event of the decade. It has even made CNN’s “Larry King [...]

1Apr1998 | Jonathan H. Adler | 6 comments | Continued

Nuclear Power: Our Best Option

Mr. Oliver is a retired engineer living in Carson City, Nevada. Dr. Hospers, this month’s guest editor, is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Southern California, and is the author of numerous books such as Understanding the Arts, Human Conduct, and Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. He was the first Libertarian Party candidate for [...]

1Jan1995 | Mike Oliver | 1 comment | Continued

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