By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Get off your high horse, all of us are ‘pro climate’, you just have a different view on how to achieve that. Mr. Bradley interacts with anyone who challenges his statements. As far as your charge that he, “declare a position”? He does so every day. Catch up….” Mark Rohrbacher to Thomas Ortman (below)
Social media exchanges between free market and government energy/climate proponents are an excellent way to understand the arguments, politics, and motivations of all involved. Cancel culture not, may the best ideas win. Here is a LinkedIn exchange of note, where I (and others) rebut a familiar ad hominem. In this case, one Thomas Ortman just … disappeared.
The exchange occurred with a post by Gavin Mooney, self-described “energy transition optimist.”. “Batteries have taken a huge leap forward in California this spring, soaking up solar during the day and discharging it when it’s needed in the evening” he wrote. I responded:
Sure, but at what cost, economically and ecologically? Resources are scarce….. Government does not create but redistributes from the many to the political elite.
A discussion followed from both sides (167 comments in the last week), including this ad hominem.
Geoffrey Lakings: what needs to be understood in regards to IER & their bias can be summarized in this one statement, “The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a nonprofit ‘partner’ organization of the American Energy Alliance, which is a 501(c)(4) grassroots organization designed to communicate IER’s policies to voters. The groups are run by Tom Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries.”
Mark Rohrbacher: All non profits have their benefactors, Greenpeace, Tides Foundation, Rockefeller, etc. Is it really necessary for us to “tit for tat” Soros and company vs. “ The Koch Brothers”?
I am so sick of “green advocates” painting their opposition as “evil” or posting with a ulterior motive just because of the organization that they belong to. It’s repeated over and over on LinkedIn and cheapens the level of discourse.
Rob Bradley: Geoffrey S Lakings Classical liberal on the education and public policy advocacy sides. Pro consumer, taxpayer, freedom, and environment. What is your beef? Our several thousand supporters want to know.
The idea that wind, solar, and batteries are ecological and that government should override consenting adults with their energy choices put the burden of proof on you.
Thomas Ortman: Thank You Geoffrey S Lakings. This makes all the sense in the world having watched Rob Bradley tossing hand grenades into any clean energy/ clean tech discussion for years. It was clear that there was a major bias, but I did not know the backstory.
Rob, we all have biases. Mine is strongly pro-climate and I am not paid to promote what I believe to be true and ethical. The difference is that you are clearly well informed on the subject and yet often toss out misinformation/disinformation which I find to be very disingenuous. It appears you take pleasure in tossing out an ounce of malcontent and generating five pounds of response. I suppose that as yours is a paid position, it would be reasonable to ask for you to declare your position and to come out in favor of *something*, ( as opposed to your constant brush fires with nothing constructive to offer).
If your bias/employer is to support oil and gas – fine, have sufficient integrity to claim as much. Then we can have an honest discussion regarding all of the critical areas that the O&G sector can provide critical and profitable contributions.
Mark Rohrbacher: “If your bias/employer is to support oil and gas … have sufficient integrity to claim as much.” He hides nothing. Get off your high horse, all of us are “pro climate”, you just have a different view on how to achieve that. Mr. Bradley interacts with anyone who challenges his statements. As far as your charge that he, “declare a position”? He does so every day. Catch up…
Rob Bradley: Thomas Ortman Wrong. You have reversed the causality. Beliefs first, funding last. And no, I do not carry the water for any company or industry but for consumers, taxpayers, freedom, and … the environment against wind, solar, and batteries.
I have been classical liberal since high school and through a corporate career where I challenged my Enron superiors who were pushing climate alarmism and promoting government subsidies for their wind and solar investments.
Read the emails here to judge for yourself.
Rob Bradley: Thomas Ortman Your business profile includes “Goal of expanding this base into related areas of … clean energy products, including; Solar Energy, Solid State Lighting, Energy, Energy Storage and Clean Technologies led to a merger with Voltabox of Texas, Inc.”
So note that I do not use ad hominem against you for your bread-and-butter. In fact, I never do so except in certain instances, such as the conflict of interest with Chris Tomlinson, business editorialist at the Houston Chronicle here.
————————–
And Thomas Ortman disappeared ….
I am very pro environment. I totally oppose automobiles, unfiltered coal stacks, sludge from coal and pigs, windmills, solar, etc. But CO2 is GOOD for the environment
But you are happy with the much greater amount of sludge created by producing minerals to build renewables?
If coal is washed, then you will get something like 6 to 10% of the mined coal left as tailings. The from the product coal you will get 5% to low 20s% (20s% from coal that is not washed) of fly ash.
So you are left with maybe 20% of the coal needing to be stored as fine material in tailings ponds, assuming that none of the fly ash is used for cement.
With renewables you are talking about ores which are typically around 1 to 2 percent the material you need. to release this the entire ore is ground to a particle size measured in microns.
It is at least an order of magnitude more tailings generated to make renewables.
Those open pit copper mines are gigantic.
His position was against solar and wind.
How is your donkey?
Probably lives in a big city, so uses “clean” public transport. While stepping over drug addicts and human feces on his way to work.
‘Environment’ is an abstraction. For most people it is: are the streets in good repair, are the bins emptied regularly, do the drains run freely, is it noisy, what are the neighbours like, do I have clean water and functioning sanitation, are there shops nearby, schools, etc?
That’s what is important to citizens, not rain forests thousands of miles away, not bonobo apes up the Congo, not fretting there are only 12 snow leopards left in the Himalayas.
Environment is the circumstances that surround us, not a Neo-Pagan religion and worship of the gods of the animals, forests, rivers, seas, skies and elements to which we must make sacrifice and stone for wanting to live our lives in prosperity and have fun.
And that kills us, because in the end we are 100% dependend on the eco-system. That has nothing to do with Neo-Pagan religion, it’s just hybris to think we can pollute and destroy all we want without paying the bill.
Who the hell wants that? You are seriously deluded. If you don’t want to damage the planet, pay attention to what mining all those minerals/ores will do to the planet, to save it.
Do you still not understand that constructing PV and wind energy systems requires large amounts of coal?
Manufacturing renewables, including strip mining the raw materials, is horrible for the ecosystem. Just because the emissions happen elsewhere you think, gee, that’s SO clean!
You’re confused. Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant.
There you go again!
Name one person on this website who thinks it’s ok to pollute and destroy all we want.
I actively support looking after the environment, nature, whales, recycling, etc.
What I don’t support is the agenda drive narrative that CO2 is evil. There is plenty of available data to support that CO2 is good for the environment and not the driver of climate change.
If you did your homework, read more and stopped looking at propaganda websites you’d realise this.
The US pays a huge amount in lost productivity in order to not pollute.
The idea that there is anyone out there just polluting willy-nilly is the kind of nonsense that permeates the left these days.
The real hubris or hybris is the EPA declaring that the life gas is a pollutant so that wing nuts can respond.
Well that was a load of gibberish and BS !!
You have out-done even yourself. !
One thing about the eco-system, is that it is very robust.
That and the fact that more CO2 is good for the eco-system.
Oh, those bonobos are cool- they have sex like humans- er, uh… face to face, unlike most other animals- and all other ways too, with all sexes. Free love on steroids!
Why oppose autos? Of course, that’s your right to believe that and not own one as long as you don’t try to take away OUR right to own them.
He did not espouse taking them away. He only stated he opposed them.
When enough people oppose something- soon it becomes a movement. But he probably has one.
I am not sure about that supposition.
Jimmy,
While I disagree with you on several points, I will defend your right to speak.
We need conversations, not rhetoric and ideologies.
Each of the items listed have valid reasons for opposition, but also valid reasons for approval. It is not binary. It is not yes or no. It is an honest discussion about what is the greatest good for the greatest number, and that also includes the planet.
Why would any sane person be opposed to personal transportation that works?
LinkedIn is getting very interesting in the discussions on renewables/EVs/Nuclear.
There are lots of people calling out the alarmists and challenging their cherry picking of good news.
There are so many comments and critiques from energy professionals and plain truths from average “guys”, it is really quite refreshing, especially since LinkedIn doesn’t seem to want to intervene.
It’s definitely worth having a look and challenging the greens where they can’t hide.
Thank you. I had not ventured in there. I will now.
So true. A great forum for ideas. And the non-alarmists and free market types are doing quite well, educating the other side that … they should dial back ‘climate anxiety’ and think about the eco-sins of wind, solar, and batteries.
I am so sick of “green advocates” painting their opposition as “evil”
That’s how religious belief works.
The great advances of science came when it used reality as a yardstick instead of morality.
A clever little aphorism, until you consider that medical science and agriculture, e.g., were motivated by the moral impulse to alleviate suffering, while eugenics was a triumph of reality over morality!
Not the impulse to survive, then?
Eugenics is playing God… much like environmentalism.
Keeping your house clean is fine, keeping the environment clean is playing god?
Is anyone saying to ruin the environment? The environment is just fine, right now.
If it’s fine, thank environmentalism.
To some extent- but not entirely since like every other group of humans, there are excesses. Over reach. And just plain wrong thinking. No group, political party, religion or any other human grouping has all the answers.
No, thank capitalism… Once a society reaches a certain level of prosperity, it can afford to take more notice of the environment.
The so-called “environmentalists are the ones currently causing all the environmental degradation.
chopping down forests, taking productive land etc for wind turbines, solar farms, and all the mining associated with them.
And not only don’t the environmentalists NOT CARE.
They actually CONDONE it !
So in your mind, if a little environmentalism is good, more is always better?
Is there any end to you desire to clean the world?
My issue is that Greens use “clean” in the sense of ritually consistent with their beliefs. Wind turbines are butt ugly and kill birds and bats, but they are “clean”. Nuclear power plants with no emissions scare Luddites and LNT cultists, so they are “unclean”.
Good point- ritual cleansing.
The problem is the definition of “keeping the environment clean.”
To keep the environment clean, humans must return to living in the trees.
Walking upright across the ground is what pollutes the environment.
KIlling off those you don’t deem worthy, is just keeping your house clean?
There are no mirrors in hell.
Too hot? Glass melts?
If you don’t believe MY religion, you are Satanic! /s
Of the dozen or more climate and energy articles I read every morning, the Rob Bradley “debates” are my only source of the latest views of ordinary leftists
Article by leftists are a fact checking nightmare — and they make me nauseous
My conclusion:
CO2 is the staff of life
Leftists are the real carbon pollution
I check Bradley’s website for good articles every morning:
Master Resource – A Free-Market Energy Blog
Many thanks sir. And note that MasterResource has published pieces by several hundred different authors–yes, that many!
The ‘talented amateurs’ on our side (many here at WUWT) are a real source of correction to the mainstream narrative, ‘expert failure’. Thanks to all of you, and feel free to send a potential post to robbradley58@gmail.com. May the best data and arguments win!
From the article: “Mark Rohrbacher: All non profits have their benefactors, Greenpeace, Tides Foundation, Rockefeller, etc. Is it really necessary for us to “tit for tat” Soros and company vs. “ The Koch Brothers”?
I am so sick of “green advocates” painting their opposition as “evil” or posting with a ulterior motive just because of the organization that they belong to. It’s repeated over and over on LinkedIn and cheapens the level of discourse.”
Attacking the messenger is Standard Opeating Procedure for leftists who have no other argument. When they don’t have a good argument to use, which is most of the time, then they resort to character assasination.
The leftwing method of argument is Appeals to Authority, and Character Assasination.
Correct!
most of the time I’ve found any exchange on LinkedIn that even barely creeps into politics shutdown with “do we really want that here ?”
I want to keep my professional life (LinkedIn) separate from my politics. The left loves to cancel people.
Like with Bud light 😛
They cancelled themselves. !!
There’s a big difference between deciding against buying a product and demanding that someone be fired because you disagree with something they said.
David Koch died in August 2019.
To dismissively speak of the Koch Brothers is to imply unkind things of the dead.
“De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est” [to Chilon of Sparta] I searched it up.
As your mother likely said: It is socially inappropriate for the living to speak ill of the dead who cannot defend or justify themselves.
Are there any exceptions? For example Adolf Hitler?
Just for the record, I agree with your comment wrt the Koch Brothers.
Anyone who speaks encouragingly or dismissively about the dead must believe in the Hereafter. Otherwise, whats the point?
You know, that spiritual plane either good or bad located somewhere in the universe that dead people’s conciousness goes to.
Alarm as German climate activists charged with ‘forming a criminal organisation’
Action against Letzte Generation could have ‘immense chilling effect’ on climate protest, campaigners say
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/23/alarm-as-german-climate-activists-charged-with-forming-a-criminal-organisation
Five members of Letzte Generation, Germany’s equivalent to Just Stop Oil, have been charged with “forming a criminal organisation”, a move civil rights campaigners say could in effect criminalise future support for the climate campaign.
Mirjam Herrmann, 27, Henning Jeschke, 22, Edmund Schulz, 60, Lukas Popp, 25, and Jakob Beyer, 30, were charged under section 129 of the German criminal code. It is believed to be the first time the law has been applied to a non-violent protest group.
According to prosecutors in the state of Brandenburg, the charges relate to more than a dozen “attacks” against oil refineries, the Berlin-Brandenburg airport and the Museum Barberini, in Potsdam, between April 2022 and May 2023.