Manhattan Contrarian Announces The Arrival Of "Peak Oil-Hysteria"

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Manhattan Contrarian Announces The Arrival Of "Peak Oil-Hysteria"

  • Do you remember the “peak oil” scare? That was the claim, heard everywhere in the early 2000s, that nearly all the world’s discoverable oil had already been found, and we would shortly enter a time of inexorably declining production and rapidly escalating prices. This 2018 article in Forbes by Michael Lynch traces the “modern” version of the “peak oil” scare to a 1997 piece in the Oil & Gas Journal by a guy named Colin Campbell. Campbell argued that oil reserves were “rapidly depleting,” that there was “comparatively little left to find,” and that “the world's economic and political stability, which relies on an abundant supply of cheap oil, is in serious jeopardy.”

  • Oil production isn’t at a peak, and never was. But here’s something closely related that really is at or near a peak from which rapid decline should be expected: Oil-Hysteria. Oil-Hysteria is the delirium that holds that the production and use of oil (and for that matter other fossil fuels) for the benefit and happiness of humanity are grave sins and are destroying the planet.

  • And thus today, after reviewing the evidence, the Manhattan Contrarian has announced the arrival of “Peak Oil-Hysteria.” It is here. Not 2050. Not 2030. Now.

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COP26 And The Hubris Of Our Political Overlords

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COP26 And The Hubris Of Our Political Overlords

  • There is a very reasonable argument to be made that the climate-related Conferences of Parties (COPs) that occur annually under UN auspices are terrible things. They cost (i.e., waste) enormous resources, and they have the potential to do great damage to the world economy and the well-being of the people.

  • Fair enough. But on balance, my view is that it’s a good thing we have them.

  • I can think of no other comparable activities that put on such dramatic and widely-viewed display the immeasurable foolishness and hubris of our political overlords.

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"The Climate Is Changing, And Human Activities Are The Cause": How, Exactly, Do We Know That?

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  • “The climate is changing, and we are the cause.” That is a statement that is so often-repeated and affirmed that it goes way beyond mere conventional wisdom. Probably, you encounter some version or another of that statement multiple times per week; maybe dozens of times. Everybody knows that it is true!

  • And to express disagreement with that statement, probably more so than with any other element of current progressive orthodoxy, is a sure way to get yourself labeled a “science denier,” fired from an academic job, or even banished from the internet.

  • The UN IPCC’s recent Sixth Assessment Report on the climate is chock full of one version after another of the iconic statement, in each instance of course emphasizing that the human-caused climate changes are deleterious and even catastrophic.

  • Over and over, it’s that we have “high confidence” that human influence is the cause, or that events would have been “extremely unlikely” without human influence.

  • But how, really, do we know that? What is the proof?

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Progressive Craziness Of The Day: SEC Obsesses Over "Climate" Risk Disclosures

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Progressive Craziness Of The Day: SEC Obsesses Over "Climate" Risk Disclosures

  • This makes three posts in a row on the subject of a “progressive craziness of the day.” But then, there’s enough progressive craziness to have such a post every day; or, really, multiple. There is an endless supply.

  • As a reader of this blog, you may rarely pay much attention to what comes out of the Securities & Exchange Commission. If you should ever look, it probably all seems like a lot of inside baseball mumbo jumbo. On the other hand, if you are a senior executive or board member at a public company, or maybe a corporate lawyer at one of the big law firms, you must pay close attention to everything the SEC does. The Commission wields oodles of arbitrary and unaccountable power. When the SEC says “jump,” corporate America responds, “how high?”

  • Needless to say, the SEC is one of those government places filled with seemingly “smart” people with no practical sense or knowledge about how the world actually works. But they think that with their brilliance they can bring about perfection and utopia in the world with just a few more regulations and micromanagement of the little people.

  • Then — as has happened in the past few months — the real world intervenes, and shows what dopes these people are.

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Progressive Craziness Of The Day: Critical Race Theory In K-12 Schools And Corporations

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Progressive Craziness Of The Day: Critical Race Theory In K-12 Schools And Corporations

  • Yesterday I attended an in-person program at the Manhattan Institute with the title “Deconstructing Wokeness in K-12 and Corporate America.” There were two panels and a speech totaling close to three hours.

  • Presenters included something of a who’s who of the movement opposing the spreading cancer of Critical Race Theory in schools and corporations: Christopher Rufo and Jim Copland of the Manhattan Institute, Vivek Ramaswamy (author of the new book Woke, Inc.), Paul Rossi (the guy who blew the whistle on CRT at Grace Church School, who is currently affiliated with the Educational Liberty Alliance), and Asra Nomani (Vice President of Parents Defending Education).

  • Finally, after more than a year and a half in virtual purgatory, we have resumed in-person events to discuss issues of public policy.

  • The huge difference between in-person and virtual events is that at in-person events you get to meet the people who take important roles in contesting these issues. In addition to the presenters, several other notable participants in recent events showed up at yesterday’s event, for example Andrew Gutmann (the parent who blew the whistle on CRT at the super-snooty all-girls Brearly School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side) and Maud Maron (mother of four kids in New York City public schools, who spoke out against CRT and for her trouble has been ostracized at her job defending indigent criminal defendants at the Legal Aid Society).

  • But for today I’d like to highlight the work of Rufo.

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Progressive Craziness Of The Day: Transgender Orthodoxy

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  • Perhaps I’m slow on the uptake. But somehow I’m just catching on that the latest tactic of the Left in the culture wars is to indoctrinate all the kids from K-20 in the latest insane piece of orthodoxy before letting the outside world, most particularly the parents, know what is going on.

  • So, to use the example of the new racism going by the name “anti-racism” or Critical Race Theory, by the time you find Ibram Kendi’s “How To Be an Antiracist” on the shelf at your local bookstore, your kid has already without your knowledge undergone multiple years of instruction (if white) that s/he is an “oppressor” and a “systemic racist,” or (if black) that s/he is “oppressed” and a “victim.”

  • Is the same tactic pervasive in other areas? I had had some inklings that the ideology of transgenderism may be another such area, but I must admit that I hadn’t been paying that much attention.

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