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March 31, 2025
Economics and Politics of Tariffs
In recent years, when teaching my senior policy capstone course I would often pivot the course on short notice to discuss current events, updating the readings on the syllabus, and often inviting guest lectures from relevant experts. Among such pivots were Covid-19, Russia-Ukraine, the U.S. elections, October 7th, and more. Part of my motivation of…
March 31, 2025
“Drill, Baby, Drill” is Nothing Short of a Myth and Populist Rallying Cry
Who uttered the quote that is the title of this post? A prominent climate activist, perhaps? Or maybe, a progressive Democratic member of Congress? No and no. The quote comes from a representative of a Texas-based oil and gas production firm last week to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in its March Energy Survey. Here…
March 27, 2025
Global Energy Demand Set to Accelerate
The International Energy Agency has just published its Global Energy Review 2025. In this post I share the five most important take-aways I see in the report. I encourage you to have a look at the full report for IEA’s interpretation of its top conclusions. Let’s jump right in . . . Have a look at the figure…
March 12, 2025
How To Get Rid of a Tenured Professor
I was a tenured full professor at the University of Colorado Boulder for almost 24 years. At the end of 2024, I left. Officially, it was a voluntary departure. But I sure felt like I’d been pushed out. My story started in 2015, when Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D–Ariz.) asked the university to investigate me. He alleged that…
March 11, 2025
Welcome to the Era of Energy Realism
Every year for the past 15 years, JP Morgan publishes an outstanding annual energy report by Michael Cembalest. Last week JP Morgan published its 2025 edition and today I share five important figures from the many in the report, which I highly recommend. Cembalest’s top line: [A]fter $9 trillion globally over the last decade spent on wind, solar,…
March 3, 2025
Thinking About Tanks
Speaking yesterday on Fox News, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick indicated that official data for U.S. GDP would now separate out government spending from the rest of the nation’s overall economic tally. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP. They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two…
February 10, 2025
Hits and Misses
The term “scenario” was introduced by a group of researchers at the RAND Corporation in the 1960s. Herman Kahn explained its origin in 1979: “We deliberately chose the word [scenario] to deglamorize the concept . . . There is no a priori concept that a scenario should be taken seriously or that it is intended to reflect aspects…
January 21, 2025
California’s Insurance Crisis
Dave Jones, California’s insurance commissioner from 2011 to 2018, explained California’s growing insurance crisis in 2023: Due to the failure to substantially reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S. and globally, we are marching steadily to an uninsurable future. Jones sentiment is widely shared — Climate change is causing more and more intense extreme events, which are…
December 16, 2024
How to Get Rid of a Tenured Professor
I am the answer to a trivia question. Who is the only person to appear in the leaked 2009 Climategate emails and in the 2016 Hillary Clinton Wikileaks emails? That’d be me. At the time, in both cases the leaks revealed efforts to censor my research and damage my career. In both cases I thought…
November 19, 2024
Energy Realism and Climate Pragmatism at the Department of Energy
He’s a climate denier! That is the standard reaction of many in the climate lobby when encountering views on climate and energy deviating from the monomaniacal view that climate is the world’s single-most important issue. Reactions from climate advocates to the nomination of Chris Wright,1 CEO of Liberty Energy, to serve in Donald Trump’s cabinet as Secretary…