From MasterResource

By Robert Bradley Jr. — September 30, 2021

“I realize lots of people don’t like government regulation, but the alternative is an out-of-control climate.” (A. Dessler: March 23, 2019)

Andrew Dessler, the climate alarmist’s alarmist and Michael Mann ally, is shifting from (highly uncertain) physical climate science to climate economics and policy analysis.

Dessler’s web page states:

My work has shifted towards the intersection of climate change and human society, with the goal of helping us better cope with the impacts of climate change. This includes work quantifying climate extremes and how climate change can alter them, as well as analyzing how climate change will stress crucial energy, water, and other infrastructure and human systems. This is a new area for me, so my ideas are still evolving.

Mark my words: this professor is eager to model the most extreme scenarios in his scare campaign. And don’t expect him to model the benefits of the human influence on climate (warmer nights, warmer winters, longer growing seasons, CO2 fertilization, etc.). It’s all costs, no benefits, from the human influence on climate–the deep ecology view that nature is optimal and we humans cannot think and plan for ourselves in the face of climate change. (People are just not buying the alarm, another story.)

Dessler fancies himself as an expert on energy choices (see here and here). He rejects the fundamental notion that energy density is game, set, and match for mineral energies relative to dilute, intermittent ones. (Just assume that cost does not matter, and he is half right.)

So, not surprisingly, Professor Dessler on Twitter announced he was going to teach the economics side of the climate-change debate and was looking for a free market economist to guest lecture on Zoom. He linked to a site that alleged that Milton Friedman “endorsed” a price on carbon dioxide (CO2).

I jumped on this in an email sent to Dessler (and John Nielsen-Gammon, his colleague at Texas A&M) on July 29, 2021.:

This interpretation [of Milton Friedman] is wrong.

Milton Friedman did not ever consider CO2 to be a pollutant. It is an emission, but not a pollutant causing demonstrable damage in a tort situation. https://www.masterresource.org/friedman-milton/milton-friedman-climate-realist/

Also, even when Friedman did not talk about CO2 or energy, his worldview worked against the whole climate agenda. I have a live post on this here:

It is interesting that you are branching out into free market economics and public policy. Keep an open mind!   I think the more you study it, the more you will realize the limits to government planning and the importance of market forces and civil society. In fact, I think the continuing, open-ended boom in each of the fossil fuels makes adaptation, not mitigation, the easy choice for the climate dollar.

P.S. I cover Friedman’s energy views here (all of my MF posts are here. He endorsed my co-authored book Energy: The Master Resource with the back cover blurb: “This splendid book effectively debunks the widespread predictions of energy doom. Its factual base is comprehensive, its exposition clear and straightforward, and its economic reasoning sound.”

He and I also exchanged emails that I summarize here.

Final Comment

Professor Dessler did not respond to my email. I am part of his ‘cancel culture,’ no surprise there.

He knows he cannot win a debate with a reasoned critic of climate alarmism/forced energy transformation. Even E-mail exchanges with me leave him vulnerable.

“Angry Andy” stoops low to discredit his intellectual opponents, from physical climate science to climate economics to public policy (see here). I will continue to report, and let you decide.

———————–

My previous posts on Andrew Dessler can be found here.

Related