By Robert Bradley Jr.
Ed. Note: Today’s post provides the background and significance of Robert Bradley’s recent op-ed in The Houston Chronicle, “World Should be Optimistic About Our Fossil Fuel Future.”
For more than a decade, my once regular site for climate/energy opinion-page editorials has been off limits, with only a few letters-to-the-editor published. Examples from the good-old-days:
- “ExxonMobil on Right Path” (June 14, 2009)
- “Climate-Change Alarmism Runs into a Reality Check” (January 9, 2009)
- “False Alarms and Climate Change” (March 30, 2008)
- “Al Gore’s Telling Whoppers Again” (June 4, 2006)
- “Shoppers: There is a Bright Side to Rising Gas Prices” (April 18, 2002)
- “President is Correct to Ignore Climate Alarmists” (May 14, 2001)
- “Fear Not: The Energy Malthusians Are Wrong” ( April 21, 2000)
That changed completely when the well-monied Progressive Left captured the Chronicle, probably via grants from Big Green nonprofits that ensured that pro-wind, pro-solar, pro-“energy transformation” reporting was the regular fare–and contrary articles such as my mine kept out (with nary an explanation, much less simple acknowledgement of receipt and/or consideration).
Perhaps I should thank energy reality and Donald Trump’s energy/climate policy for bringing me back from the graveyard of the politically incorrect.
The Blackout
My banishment began soon after the Trump was first elected where “Resist” seemed to be the order of the day. I emailed the-then-editor asking for an editorial-board meeting where I could explain and defend free-market energy/climate policy (I had done such before). First came no answer. I sent it again only to receive the reply that “we cannot accommodate all comers.” Insult me twice, sir.
I had reason to both request and to be invited. I had had previous editorial board meetings–three to my recollection. I had energy tomes to my credit. And I was a lifelong Houstonian who founded the Institute for Energy Research, and IER’s president Tom Pyle had been chosen as the transition leader for Trump’s U.S. Department of Energy. Houstonians should hear my views, right?
At MasterResource, I brought attention to the extreme bias of the Chronicle in fossil-fuel-capital Houston, Texas. I particularly criticized business editorialist Chris Tomlinson, whose rants against fossil fuels doubled as PR for his wife’s multi-million-dollar income as an originator of renewable energy projects. Tomlinson statements (here and here) such as
Looming over the industry and the congress is the question of the long-term viability of fossil fuels as climate change becomes a greater threat to humanity.
…by 2025, electric and autonomous vehicles will be in full production, and many energy companies question whether demand for crude will remain at current levels, thus making such investment worthwhile.
They [oil executives] don’t want to discuss winding down their industry, even if that is the only sustainable and efficient future for the planet.
Humanity, though, needs visionary business leaders committed to supplying reliable, affordable and clean energy. We don’t need unimaginative hacks looking for ways to keep pumping oil and gas with bolt-on technologies that benefit their business plans but not the planet.
We fundamentally have to transform our economy in ways that are unimaginable to people who are over 40. We have to cooperate, innovate and compromise, and most of all, we have to set aside our pride.’
were too much to bear.
Published!
My Houston Chronicle op-ed came out in the Print edition last Sunday. This breaks a decade-plus-long drought when the Progressive Left Chronicle ignored my submissions.
A new editor with a more inclusive editorial policy (thank you Trump Nation), Evan Mintz, reached out to me after seeing my MasterResource posts critical of the paper’s bias and my documentation of the conflicted business editorialist Chris Tomlison (see Appendix B). In any case, I was published online and in print.
I plan to write future opinion-page editorials for the Houston Chronicle–stay tuned.
Appendix A: Houston Chronicle Energy/Climate Bias
Remembering Fair Reporting on Climate: Houston Chronicle (circa 2010) (September 23, 2020)
Houston Chronicle vs. Petroleum: The Latest (May 6, 2020)
On the Houston Chronicle’s Editorial Crusade Against Fossil Fuels (September 10, 2019)
Appendix B: Chris Tomlinson Conflict/Bias
CERA Misreport: Chris Tomlinson Goes Sarcastic (March 20, 2025)
Tomlinson’s Narrative on the (Wounded) Texas Grid: More Misdirection from the Houston Chronicle (July 13, 2023)
Chris Tomlinson Confesses Conflict of Interest (June 2, 2023)
Tomlinson on Texas Electricity: Houston Chronicle Editorialist in the Wrong Paradigm (May 25, 2023)
Chris Tomlinson in the Church of Climate (February 23, 2023)
Chris Tomlinson Gets Ugly against Petroleum (December 9, 2021)
Business Columnist vs. Fossil Fuels & Capitalism (Charles Battig: March 5, 2019)
Well, it is Houston. If you can’t get published in the local press, you won’t get it anywhere. Glad to see you’ve broken through to the other side. 🙂
Now, let’s see if you can get published in the NYT and the like- such as the Boston Globe! If you get an article in the Globe, I’ll make sure everyone in this rotten, corrupt, green wannabe state knows about it. If I just told people here about an article in the Houston Chronicle, no way they’d read it.
The Houston Post went full woke retard, and now no one can get anything published in it.
Funny ’cause we New Englanders think everyone in Texas (outside of Austin of course) is a right wing cowboy or oil driller and that the media there are the same. The media must have been bought out by wealthy lefties.
Pretty much.
When I resided in Houston, I didn’t realize how prevalent was the leftist propaganda.
Wasn’t Houston the city where a former mayor demanded that all pastors send her a text of their sermons so that they could be pre-approved?
If I were a pastor in such a situation, my sermon would have been two words.
New, er, England?
Where MIT is being slowly taken over by the humanities.
Democratic Socialists of America Honor the MIT Election Lab – BB
The MIT Intercultural Engagement Center is thrilled to announce its upcoming Cultural Organization Executive Board Luncheon. This annual event brings together the leadership of MIT’s 70-plus cultural organizations for an afternoon of catered validation, strategic nourishment, and the ceremonial appreciation of intersecting identities struggling to overcome historical oppression.
I stopped wearing my Brass Rat about 2 decades ago. The Institute had gone way to woke for me.
The Houston post printed it’s final edition on April 18th 1995
The Houston Post was a conservative Paper and their subscribers were aging. They had heavy competition from the younger generation begining in the late 60″s.
If conservative newspaper writers retired at about 65 in 1995, they were bearers of WW2-era sensibilities.
If today’s prevailing liberal newspaper writers are bearers of Vietnam-era sensibilities, they are now at retirement age.
Those two US media generations had different characteristics defined by political events. What exemplifies the next US media generation’s sensibilities? The next sensebility might be emerging now as the 1970’s enviro-globalists recede.
If media were still male-dominated I think it would reflect a lot of hours logged on Atari, Nintendo and Sega. Instead I have to wonder “What world view was formative to the thought processes of college-bound young ladies around 2010?” Now those young ladies are middle-aged editors deciding what gets published in “the media”.
Walter Cronkite was willing to lie about what was happening in Vietnam. In order to undercut his own country.
What will the new kids choose to lie about?
On the online version, I see a photo of oil pumps and wind machines. Under the photo it says, “Pumpjacks operate next to large wind turbines Friday, July 8, 2022, near Midland.” I wonder if the wind machines are providing all the necessary energy to run the pumpjacks? Or maybe the other way around. 🙂
Don’t be silly. The pumpjacks need to run continuously, not just when the wind blows. 😉
I would say that Bill Gates did his bit to break the ice – no pun intended. How they wailed and gnashed their teeth at the apparent betrayal of the [Mannian] cause. CNN were, in their own words, stunned…
In a stunning and significant pushback to the “doomsday” climate activist community, Bill Gates, a leading proponent for carbon emissions reductions, published a remarkable essay Tuesday that argued resources must be shifted away from the battle against climate change.
Instead, Gates argues, the world’s philanthropists must increase their investment in other efforts aimed at preventing disease and hunger. – CNN
Maybe there is some kind of domino effect?
Did a lot more harm first though
Yes, this is an important data point in the retreat/reversal.
Somewhere Bjorn Lomberg was laughing.
I Googled “luke warmer scandinavian climate change” to remember Bjorn’s name.
Off topic, sorry. Anyone else getting large gray crosses covering the user comments? Macbook and Google browser. TIA
No. Do you have any Holy Water handy? 🙂
Wrong paradigm… should now be:
“No. Do you have any Tomato Soup handy?”
FYI: Fellow Macbook user, no problems here.
No, but what I was getting: constant popups asking me to sign up to email something or other. So often it was making the site unreadable. So I blocked these, as you do, and now I no longer get these, but every now and then, once or twice in a reading, I now get a black overlay covering the whole page. Click on it, and it goes away. Have to figure out how to block this too. I didn’t mind being asked a few times whether I wanted the email whatever, but not over and over again after having said no half a dozen times, and I cannot imagine what the point of the black overlay is.
Easy solution. Use Google for nothing. Duck DuckGo for the win!
It’s all the doomster tipping points that’s getting to them-
Time to end the biomass scam: Drax, Britain’s largest carbon emitter, received £1bn in subsidies
Why are my treclicity bills so high and they’re getting all the tips?
Drax get waste wood from the southern US for making wood pellets which are shipped to the UK in cargo ships with big marine engines. The pellets actually have a large carbon foot print because much heavy machinery is used in forestry operations. After the pellets arrive in the UK, they to transported to power plant by trucks with big Diesel engines.
One would think..uh.. no, I guess not.
The power plant used cheap coal from the near by mines.
Which they should switch back to. And build replacements for the ones the idiots celebrated the demolition of.
The smart people will celebrate the demolition of “wind farms” and “solar farms.”
I’m pretty sure they are shipped from the New World via Viking Longships, from there by oxcart to the oven.
Next they can squeeze the oil out of all those whales washing up on the beach and we can go back to whale oil lamps. Who needs ‘lectricity?
US gets carbon credit for growing trees, Britain gets penalized for burning them?
First they ignore you, then they insult you, and then you win.
First the Clintons ignore you,
then they fight you
and then you commit suicide.
Seth Rich
It’s called a “conspiracy theory” when mentioned that the MSM has been bought by Marxists yet time after time the MSM repeats the same, identical, wording on all their news feeds when attacking anything. Coincidence?
Media companies get bought and spout propaganda LEFT and RIGHT.
It doesn’t matter what your actual point of view about anything actually is.
Then there is the issue of those who have the cash to play both teams and withdraw the funds the moment it threatens to upend the desired direction. You know fine well who i’m talking about here, right?
If you only criticize one side you are by definition heavily biased. I can spot it from a mile away. All the flags are there.
Well, F U, i’m going to be on team sensible.
Follow the money is STILL the sensible approach. In the US that corruption is systemic. Im not naming names here for otherwise the loons will start hammering ( again).It is enough to realise how the game is played and who gets the spoils.
It is not you and me.
That’s only true if you are one of those people who consider socialism to be a form of conservatism.
You don’t get it..
It’s all part of the plan. “They” do not want you to think. “They” want to control you.
Resistance is futile. You wll be assimilated.
— The Trans-Reality Borg
Yes, they want to control you. All you need to ask is: who?
Then look at all media channels. Who owns what and what do they want you to think? Just consider it All propaganda and use yr skeptical brain.
Follow the money..
Just start with Fox for starters.That’s an easy one..
Well, the majority of MSM wants you to think left.
The Bias is so obvious in the lefts favor that even you’d realise it.
By ignoring this very fact you spoil your very message.
You’ ve also missed to Add the necessary content.
In this case the telecommunication act of 1997 (and Hilary was supposed to be rewarded a presidency in return) to monopolize the US MSM.
(that’s the reason why 40% of all US intervention happened since 1999 – when the monopolisation process finished and no real opposition against war-narrative existed).
It’s officially a Hexapol, a Monopol in terms of Ownership ( a look at the CEO’s of the 6 corporations since 2000 may confirm) but a Duopol in fact.
The globalist faction on one side(that fasttracked illegally Soros buying Dozens of Radio Stations)that wants to run everything via UN- CBDC’s and co2 tax,
and the PNAC that wants to run everything as US hegemon and a Petrodollar- cryptoscheme down to an individual level.
Oh, i don’t disagree that the large majority of the msm are on the (far)left and are funded by dubious actors. And yes, Hilarybus a total crook and bad actor.
But i was trying to point out the equally strong actors on the (far)right with deep pockets, specifically those who support a certain country in west- asia who’s government runs on an ideology supported by ideologues in the US and who happen(!) to fund the current President of the US, together w the tech companies who are on the same team and building the control grid to take away people’s freedom. That’s why i pointed at Fox ‘News’ and hence the downvotes. It is not even a blindspot. It is pure evil.
I also pointed out those who play the 2 sides.
Furthermore, if you think CBDCs are bad you should take a look at the privately owned Stablecoin system Trump has introduced.
Obviously you refused the take home message, not uncommon on this channel.
“Media companies get bought and spout propaganda LEFT and RIGHT.” How many MSM companies are Right out of all of them? Name them.
As I said before, there are people who believe that right wing, is anyone to the right of them. Communists calling socialists right wing.
I am only using Left and Right because people here ALWAYS talk about lefties doing evil shit. Id rather frame it differently but people are so thick sculled and propagandised to think binary which is the result of making people believe in and forcing them into 2 teams. And that is deliberate. It’s devide and rule.
The political and media system is set up that way and you all fall for it. Be critical of team A that means you are on team B.
Many thought Trump would break that system, the Swamp if you will. But he is the Swamp King now, being played by evil manipulators, too stupid to realise it and quite possibly blackmailed. Stroke his Ego enough and he becomes our Lord and Saviour. This has lost him at least 75% of his support.
The ONLY ones holding him up are totally corrupt zionists who have been bought and vote accordingly in Congress. Trump will do his utmost to do damage before he is forced to retreat by the results of the mid term elections. Even diehard corrupt Democrats supporting Israel are scratching behind their ears now. That should tell you something.
But hey, 3 monkees, right?
Is Master Resource blocking my comment?? Can’t tell.
Earth is cooler with the atmosphere/water vapor/30% albedo not warmer. Near Earth outer space is 394 K, 121 C, 250 F. 288 K w – 255 K w/o = 33 C cooler -18 C Earth is just flat wrong. Dividing 1,368 by 4 to average 342 over Spherical ToA is wrong.
Ubiquitous GHE heat balance graphics don’t balance and violate LoT. Refer to TFK_bams09.
Solar balance 1: 160 in = 17 + 80 + 63 out. Balance complete.
Calculated balance 2: 396 S-B BB at 16 C / 333 “back” radiation cold to warm w/o work violates Lot 2. 63 LWIR net duplicates balance 1 violating GAAP.
Kinetic heat transfer processes of contiguous atmospheric molecules render surface BB impossible. By definition all energy entering and leaving a BB must do so by radiation. Entering: 30% albedo = not BB. OLR: 17sensible & 80 latent = not BB. TFK_bams09: 97 out of 160 leave by kinetic processes, 63 by LWIR = not BB. As demonstrated by experiment, the gold standard of classical science.
For the experimental write up see:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
Search: Bruges group “boiling water pot” Schroeder
RGHE theory is as much a failure as caloric, phlogiston, luminiferous ether, spontaneous generation and several others.
When GHE fails the entire CAGW house of cards implodes like the Titan submersible.
Comment is good but might not go with a story about the Houston Chronicle’s editorial policy. This could be an instance of “Get your own f$%& blog”. Crude but probably a real problem for all comment-enabling sites that gather high traffic.
Ever heard of “On-topic commenting”?
Nicholas, please stop.
We first moved to Houston in 1984, when the USAF had plans for a West-coast launched ‘Blue Shuttle.” We’ve had 40+ years (with intervals spent in other climes) of watching Houston get bluer, dumber (e.g., the state took over Houston Independent School District [HISD] in 2023 due to so many schools failing standardized assessment tests, and won’t restore local control until at least 2027), and woker. The Chronicle wasn’t the leader in that decay, they mostly reflected it. Most recently, they reported on City Council’s new ordinance to “limit” coordination with ICE. As is the case with most blue-run cities, the Dems in charge prefer illegal gimmiegrant criminals on the street to coordinating with anything even remotely related to Trump policies. The Chronicle actually reported on that accurately without the usual editorial insertions about abuses, violence, ICE-is-criminal, etc.
While I have not been watching closely, I can say that this editorial is a sign that the ice may be breaking up (multiple puns intended)..
Finally, while I agree this is an encouraging sign, remember you can draw an infinite number of lines thru a single point. I’ll wait for a few more data points before getting actually hopeful.
Gratz. Keep it up!
Good.
Right there in US center of oil patch technology.
(In Canada is Calgary including because of financing, AB/BC oil patch is north from Edmonton.)
Just don’t expect an apology, explanation, or naming of names from the bad years and the same explanation gap goes for Wall Street and thousands of institutions and foundations. Add it to the Wuhan Lab files and CCP gulag prison files in western China.
I chuckle when I see compact cars with both “Resist” and “Coexist” stickers next to each other on the back. Message says to me “I believe very strongly in something, I just haven’t worked out what it is over the past 10 years.”
I add it to list of all the unwanted advertising in the world, which seems to be a trait of the human species or at least the liberal subspecies. I try not to let it anger me because such unwanted interactions permeate the world