Years back, when I was checking on my understanding of the renewable energy transition, and the claims and realities of the transition, I came across Robert Bryce. It was on Medium, I believe, although he’s now on Substack, including his latest piece, “Bill McKibben’s China Syndrome—The huckster’s new book about solar energy ignores China’s slavery-ridden supply chain, land use conflicts, and the pesky problem of scale,” published on September 5, 2025.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. It sure as heck looks like Mr. Bryce is what could be the definition of a shill for the fossil fuel industry. In fact, there’s another recent anti-McKibben/anti-solar hit piece, this time not by Bryce, that I wrote about recently in “New Atlantis is a Fossil Fuel Shill Factory,” posted on August 23, 2025. Here’s how that recent post of mine starts:

There I am, reviewing the daily Google News headlines, and there’s one titled “How Bill McKibben Lost the Plot,” and I guess this is Google News headline worthy because McKibben’s new book, Here Comes the Sun, is coming out soon and Sun Day events nationwide are happening on September 21, and McKibben has been in the news more than usual, and that’s saying something.

I wanted to see what this intriguingly titled article in New Atlantis had to say.

An attack on Bill McKibben in New Atlantis deserved to be checked out, and the finding is that the magazine is a fossil fuel shill factory.

I quickly ascertained that the critiques leveled against Bill McKibben’s pro-solar views had a familiar ring, with those bells rang for the fossil fuel industry in well-worn anti-solar talking points. After going through a veritable checklist of the fossil fuel industry’s tried-and-false arguments I became curious. What is New Atlantis?

I ran an AI analysis on the masthead and contributors and found more than enough connections between the magazine and fossil fuel interests to declare: SHILL FACTORY! My AI report, “A Web of Influence: An Investigative Analysis of the New Atlantis Masthead and its Connections to the Fossil Fuel-linked Funding Network,” is eye-opening.

Bryce’s most recent attack on McKibben is hardly his first.  But let’s look at how he starts this latest hit-piece:

Bill McKibben may be the highest-profile climate activist in America. For more than a decade, he has been campaigning against the hydrocarbon industry and proclaiming that the world doesn’t need — and shouldn’t use — coal, oil, and natural gas. He has also repeatedly claimed that the global economy can be fueled solely by wind and solar, if only there were sufficient political will to make that happen. He’s also declared that we should slash our use of coal, oil, and natural gas by a factor of 20, a move that would plunge the entire world into energy poverty.

How f—king stupid is this statement by Bryce?

Pretty f—king stupid.

Bryce seems happy to sum up the whole of Bill McKibben’s thinking into simplistic single sentences and then accuse McKibben of thinking simplistically. I don’t personally know McKibben, although I’ve heard him speak and I’ve worked with people who have worked with him and I’ve read many of his writings (and I’m a member of 350Mass.org’s Berkshire Node). But I’d bet anyone a dollar that McKibben is not interested in slashing “our use of coal, oil, and natural gas by a factor of 20” in any way that would lead to the immiserating of mankind or subset thereof, or “plunge the entire world into energy poverty.” In fact, what McKibben argues is that energy poverty can be countered in ways less costly than the further expansion of fossil fuel generation systems, and more widely and more quickly, if we turn to solar, wind, and battery generation systems. And, oh yeah, this turn to renewables would also help current and future generations avoid the worst of climate change consequences that will plunge so many into both energy poverty and every other type of poverty, at for those without resources to escape the most dire effects of living in the wrong spots on an over-heated world.

Unfortunately, Bryce seems never to have met a rhetorical device he can resist, never mind any utility for presenting true and useful content. Last year I wrote a post, “Bryce and His Snow Job: Apparently, Climate Change Action is the Work of Anti-Math Nincompoops and Elite Conspiracists,” that particularly annoyed me with his high-handed repeat of a truly vapid argument that gets used by anti-renewable rabble-rousers. That argument is, basically, that all of us English Majors and macramé weavers are too stupid or ignorant to figure out anything involving math or—and this is a particular and frequent species of this category—The Laws of Thermodynamics.

Here is how this post of mine begins:

Oops, he did it again.

I’m referring to Robert Bryce, who writes a Susbstack about energy and economic fairness—a great topic, by the way, if only he would actually address the subject. Instead, he insists on a perspective that focuses on cultural issues and a frankly weird obsession with what he likes to call the “NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex.”

So, here, in an effort not to bury the lede, is my take on Bryce’s writings: Excessively volatile and rhetorically dismissive, fictionalizing the state of the play and players seeking the clean energy transition in order to suggest malfeasance on their part. Issues of fairness around energy economics is what Bryce claims to care about, but he mainly attacks current efforts toward climate progress, and he loves pointing out science-illiterate elites are the enemy to the common man. He doesn’t bother to offer solutions, and that’s simply not helpful. On the other hand, his rhetoric is so flamboyant as to be entertaining.

But let’s get back to the recent AI analysis I did on Robert Bryce’s fossil fuel industry’s influences, titled “An Analytical Report on the Professional and Financial Network of Robert Bryce.” Here is that report’s executive summary:

Executive Summary

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the professional and financial connections of Robert Bryce to fossil fuel companies, advocacy groups, and related publications. Based on a detailed examination of the provided research material, the analysis reveals that Bryce’s professional network extends well beyond the profile of an independent reporter, author, and filmmaker. His connections are multifaceted, encompassing direct employment, long-term affiliations with influential think tanks, and participation in a communications ecosystem that includes sponsored content and advocacy groups with documented ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Key findings indicate a clear pattern of alignment. Bryce’s professional trajectory includes direct employment and fellowship roles at organizations with stated missions to advance free-market energy policies and documented funding from major fossil fuel corporations and allied conservative foundations. The analysis of his content production and public speaking engagements further demonstrates a cohesive and mutually reinforcing relationship with platforms that are sponsored by or ideologically aligned with the fossil fuel and broader energy industries.

The central conclusion of this report is that Robert Bryce’s work, while framed publicly as a form of “energy realism,” is inextricably linked to a well-funded network of organizations, publications, and platforms that promote the continued dominance of fossil fuels and are critical of renewable energy. The documented connections suggest that his professional and creative output is a component of a larger, coordinated advocacy effort rather than a purely independent journalistic pursuit.

What more needs be said? Details are reported in the AI report linked above and in the image caption to the right.

Not that I can’t think of other things to say. For instance, one of my favorite “Brycisms” is his wonderful conspiracy stories about pro-solar NGOs. Well, let’s have the title of my May 24, 2024 post speak for itself: “Robert Bryce’s Anti-Environmental Pro-Renewable Energy Transition NGOs Argument is a No Go Argument.”

This post of mine starts this way:

“Environmentalism in America is dead. It has been replaced by climatism and renewable energy fetishism.” So says Robert Bryce, supposed climate change realist, in a recent Substack piece titled “Environmentalism In America Is Dead,” published on May 24, 2024.

Okay, let’s parse this statement. First, I’m pretty darn sure that environmentalism in America is NOT dead. [Reader: Please note that this was written in May 2024, well-before Trump ravaged the EPA and other like Federal agencies, but nonetheless, the climate fight lives.] There are large numbers of Americans who count themselves among the ranks of environmentalists, and the EPA still enforces the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, two major environmental instruments we can take pride in, and there is a whole bunch of other rules and regulations and people protecting the environment. Second, there is no necessary contradiction between environmentalism and “climatism and renewable energy fetishism,” to use Bryce’s phrase, and if you think that his phrasing doesn’t tip Bryce’s rhetorical hand, don’t bother reading further.

I can thank Bryce (among others) for pointing me to the topics of EROI, or energy return on investment, and LCOE, or levelized cost of energy. The arguments he and far too many others in the fossil fuels uber alles camp make is that renewables are weak sisters and fossil fuels—and especially natural gas—are the current “good” sources of energy. The arguments don’t add up and indeed rely on decade-plus old data, but a recent AI analysis I undertook on the subjects of EROI and LCOE confirmed my suspicions that many of the Solar EROI studies out there are cherry-picking negative data. This led to another of my recent posts, this one titled “My Report About EROI, Written by AI.”

Here’s how this post of mine begins:

When you read widely about climate change and renewable energy you come across a bunch of articles about what’s wrong with very concept of the renewable energy transition. Often, such arguments claim the mantle of science, offering a plethora of charts or references to the Laws of Thermodynamics or arguments by authority.

You might sense that there’s something off about those arguments. It is easy enough to refute some arguments against climate change such as “Plants need carbon dioxide.” Yes, that claim is indisputable, but that’s hardly proof that climate change is a hoax.

But some anti-renewable energy transition arguments give pause, especially when math or physics or the above-referenced Laws of Thermodynamics get cited. I remember reading about EROI, or Energy Return on Investment, which compares how much energy you get from various energy systems, such as natural gas and solar, relative to the cost. You’ll find many articles claiming the energy output of natural gas is so much better than solar (and battery, to equalize for intermittency) when normalized around costs. It turns out that if you cherry pick your data sources (including information a decade or two old), or if you look only at fossil fuel’s intrinsic energy at the well head, and ignore that only 30-40% of that energy ends up producing electricity, the argument in favor of fossil fuels relative to solar can seem such a no brainer as to make the concept of solar as a serious energy contender seem absurd.

If you read the above referenced AI-generated report on solar vs. fossil fuels EROI, you’ll learn that solar energy actually is a very serious contender.

One of the earliest of my posts that addressed the misleading and absurd rhetoric of Bryce (And others! Honest, I’m not always posting about Bryce!) carries one of my favorite titles, “Who is Lying? Those Who Say Fossil Fuel Companies Engage in Misinformation and Influence Campaigns against Renewable Energy, or Those Who Say Renewable Energy Advocates Have Pants on Fire?”

This posted on November 2, 2023, and started this way:

Let me answer this obviously rhetorical question right up front: it is the fossil fuels industry that is a goddam liar.

Yes, I’ll confess, Robert Bryce does get some ink in this post, too, and largely in relation to his attack on a The New Yorker article by Bill McKibben, December 27, 2022, “From Climate Exhortation to Climate Execution: The Inflation Reduction Act finally offers a chance for widespread change.”

There are a couple of other posts not here mentioned that involve reactions to something or other that Bryce had written. He’d been a good foil for me to test out so-called weaknesses in the renewable energy transition, but I’ve got his number. That number does not add up to useful and objective content, but I’ve got it.

What I don’t have is a subscription to Bryce’s Substack, not any more, and so, in full disclosure, I’m letting you know that I’d only read the free portion of his latest attack on McKibben.

Believe me, it was plenty enough.