By Robert L. Bradley, Jr. ——Bio and Archives--January 4, 2011
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"Hey America! Are you ready to get wonky on global warming? After a year that started with fallout from the “Climategate” e-mail release, saw the cap-and-trade bill die in Congress, and ended with a gang of Republican climate skeptics winning House and Senate seats, global warming experts are going back to basics." - Darren Samuelsohn, "Climate PR Effort Heats Up," Politico, December 31, 2010.And so we now know. "Environmentalists, scientists and lawmakers have renewed public relations efforts to put global warming plainly before Americans' eyes and also rebut opponents who say nothing is happening."
"Climate is always changing. Climate would always fluctuate without any change of [man-made] climate forcing. The chaotic aspect of climate is an innate characteristic." (1)Things are happening–sure. A lot of nature is at work, probably more than we now know about or can really appreciate. And man's influence on climate? We are trying to figure that out, but why does it have to be all bad? Is nature optimal? Didn't more climate scientists than want to admit it (Steve Schneider, et al.) sound the global cooling alarm several decades back? Why not chill and say that there is good and bad from man's influence on climate, to whatever extent it is happening. But thank goodness it is in the direction of warmer and wetter, not colder and drier…. And thank goodness we have that incredible bread machine called Capitalism to help tame the uncertainties of the future. Julian Simon lives!
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Bradley is CEO and founder of the Institute for Energy Research; an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.; and a visiting fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. Bradley is also a senior research fellow of the Center for Energy Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, among other honorary affiliations.
Bradley’s most recent book is Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy (M&M Scrivener Press), which applies the capitalist worldview to corporate and energy controversies. His website Political Capitalism covers this work and two forthcoming books in his trilogy on political capitalism in the energy industry.
Bradley’s other books are: The Mirage of Oil Protection (1989); Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability (2000); Climate Alarmism Reconsidered (2003); and (with Richard Fulmer) Energy: The Master Resource (2004).