Vermont’s Hypocritical Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing

May 18, 2012, by 3 comments

On Wednesday May 16th, 2012 Governor Peter Shumlin signed H. 464 which outlawed hydraulic fracturing in his state.

The governor failed to mention that he was banning a technology which would never have been utilized because Vermont has no oil and gas reserves. He claimed that “this is a job creator” and had his picture taken with a sign that said, “Don’t Frack Vermont,” while being a governor of a state that produces zero oil and gas, and does not have the potential to produce any.

The 8 442 million  cubic feet per year of natural gas consumed by the state is piped in from Canada, a country which has been hydraulically fracturing wells for over 50 years.

The Truth About Chernobyl in One Minute

May 17, 2012, by 1 comment

A horrendous-looking movie called “The Chernobyl Diaries” is coming out on May 25. Which is a good occasion to learn the truth about Chernobyl. Here’s Dr. Jay Lehr on “The Best of Power Hour.”

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The Truth about Chernobyl in One Minute

In this segment, recorded a year ago, Dr. Lehr also predicts that no one will die from radiation at Fukushima. Read this article from The Breakthrough Institute to see if he was right.

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Nuclear Power is the Safest Power — The Best of Power Hour

May 16, 2012, by No comments yet

On this installment of The Best of Power Hour, Dr. Jay Lehr, Science Director of the Heartland Institute (whose conference CIP will be attending next week) cuts through the hysteria and explains why nuclear power is the safest form of power generation ever devised.

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The Cost of Doing Business in America — New Study by Thumbtack.com

May 15, 2012, by No comments yet

One of the great untold stories in modern journalism is how government controls strangle business and productivity. Fortunately, some businesses are starting to fight back. For example, check out this new study by Thumbtack.com, which surveyed small businesses across America about issues such as.

  • Ease of starting a business
  • Hiring costs
  • Regulations
  • Health & safety
  • Employment, labor & hiring
  • Tax code
  • Licensing
  • Environmental
  • Zoning

Here’s one particularly noteworthy fact: “Small businesses care almost twice as much about licensing regulations as they do about tax rates when rating the business-friendliness of their state or local government.” As bad as taxes are, the ability of government to simply keep you out of business or close off your most important options can be even more devastating. Again, check it out.

 

The Fallacy of “Energy Independence” — Robert Bryce on The Best of Power Hour

May 15, 2012, by No comments yet

Robert Bryce is the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence. In this installment of The Best of Power Hour, Bryce explains what’s wrong with the notion of “Energy Independence.”

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Download and Save: The Fallacy of “Energy Independence” with Robert Bryce

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Bryce and Epstein Refute America’s “Addiction to Oil”

May 14, 2012, by 1 comment

The latest installment of The Best of Power Hour features an excerpt from our February 2011 show with Robert Bryce, the leading free-market energy author today. We discuss the difference between trade for oil and “dependence” on foreign oil, and what’s wrong with the expression “addiction to oil.”

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Download and Save: Is America “Addicted” to Oil? The Best of Power Hour

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Understanding the Green Menace: Robert Zubrin’s Merchants of Despair

May 11, 2012, by No comments yet

In his latest Master Resource post, Alex Epstein reviews Robert Zubrin’s newest book, “Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism”.  One of Zubrin’s messages in the book is that it is critical to human progress that we understand the lessons of history. As Alex states:

“If the public understands that today’s “scientific” bullying is a repeat of a deadly pattern, a pattern driven by wrong ideas, the view of the Green movement will change radically. And if we offer a positive alternative, one that exalts the capacity of  the free, individual human mind to solve problems, we will succeed.”

You can listen to Alex interview Zubrin about his book on Power Hour.

How much energy do we use? Robert Bryce on The Best of Power Hour

May 11, 2012, by No comments yet

Did you know that the world uses over 20 Saudi Arabias worth of energy a day? On this installment of “The Best of Power Hour,” Robert Bryce, author of Power Hungry, explains the incredible scale of today’s leading methods of energy production.

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Robert Bryce on Energy Scale

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Debunking “Externalities”

May 10, 2012, by No comments yet

A popular characterization of laissez-faire capitalism is that it leads to unacceptable negative “externalities,” such as pollution by energy producers. On this installment of “The Best of Power Hour,” Pierre Desrochers and I debunk this idea from several angles: political, economic, and historical.

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Download the Best of Power Hour–Debunking Externalities

For more on this issue, see my article “Energy Externality Pseudoscience” and Eric Dennis’s article “What’s in a Price?”

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What exactly are oil reserves? The answer may surprise you

May 9, 2012, by No comments yet

We talk all the time about oil reserves–how much of them America has, how much the rest of the world has–but what are they, exactly? On this installment of “The Best of Power Hour,” oil economist Michael Lynch gives a great introduction to oil terminology.

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