Robert Bryce (writer)

Robert Bryce
Robert Bryce, pictured in 2011
Born	1960
Nationality	American
Education	University of Texas (B.F.A.)
Occupation(s)	Author, journalist, film producer, public speaker
Website	RobertBryce.com

Robert Bryce (born 1960) is an American author and journalist based in Austin, Texas.^[1] His articles on energy, politics, and other topics have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Real Clear Energy, Counterpunch, and National Review.

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I got in my first car accident when I was sixteen. I had just gotten my license and I was driving home when a car pulled into the intersection and bang! It hit me. It had happened that quick. Bang! But when I play that memory back, it doesn't take two seconds. I see the tires of the car rolling through the stop sign, I have time to think, "You know, I think that car is going to hit me." I see the right-hand corner of the hood crumple up like tin foil, I see the red paint flake off and drift off into the air, I can see all of that, like it's happening in slow motion. In my memory, that experience takes ten seconds. But why? Why did that memory play back longer than the actual time it took? This is an interesting phenomenon and it's not just for car accidents, a roller coaster, or a first kiss. These events seem to take longer than they actually take. But why? And when it comes to writing about that experience, how do I get that peculiar feeling across? How do I slow down time as a writer? To get the answer, we have to visit Hollywood. You see, the way filmmakers create slow motion will tell us a lot about how writers can create slow motion. First, let's remember how film works. When the camera turns on, it's not recording motion, it's taking lots and lots of individual pictures. Then when those pictures are played back in the projector, they blend together and create the appearance of motion, like a flip book. So, let's imagine that a camera man needs to film his actress skipping through a field of daisies in regular motion. Ready, action. She skips across the field, he records it, and...cut. Let's say for the sake of easy math that our camera man took 50 pictures, 50 little frames on that length of film. Now, let's take that film and play it back at the rate of 50 frames per 5 seconds. This rate is constant, the projector will always go at the same speed. It's easy, we got 50 frames, so our film takes 5 seconds. She skips across the field... ...and cut! So, then, how do we slow down time in film? How do we create slow motion? Maybe this is a surprise, but we don't take less pictures, we take more pictures. Ready, action! She skips across the field, he records it, and cut. Now we have a lot of film, a long length, let's say 100 frames long. Now, when we play it back, it takes a longer time to get through, and there's the actress in slow motion. Skipping through the field of daisies! Which brings us now to writing. When you're writing a narrative, you may want to use slow motion in one of your scenes. It's a cool effect, just like it is in Hollywood, and it draws the reader's attention to important moments. Well, here's how you do it. You see, when we read, our brain makes the words into pictures and the pictures blend into action. So what we read is what we see in the time it takes us to read it. For example, imagine you're writing a narrative about your game-winning free throw in the championship game. Here's a moment as a writer that you might want to slow down time to really capture the second-by-second tension produced by the scene. You concentrate, you put the pencil to paper, you really want to slow down time, you write, "I shot the ball in the hoop. Time slowed down. Then we won." To read that, takes two seconds; therefore, your reader imagines a scene that takes two seconds. Ball goes up, comes down, done. See, even though you wrote, "time slowed down," you didn't achieve that effect for your reader. Just saying it doesn't make it happen. Now, let's take what we make about film, time slows down with more pictures, and try again. This time write A LOT more. "I bent my knees and held the ball loosely. Letting the ball bounce on the floor once more, I gathered my thoughts. This was the moment. My right arm extended as I released the ball with a gentle flick, it rotated slightly as it arched toward the rim. I held my breath. The ball nudged the back rim, falling through the net with a gentle, satisfying swish. And the crowd exploded from their seats." See, we just slowed down time through our writing. The bottom line is this: there are moments in life that take longer than they actually take. When you're planning out your narrative, think about those moments, those snippets of life that took longer than the watch: the moment of hearing bad news, the moment of hearing good news, the moment of exhilaration when you realize you hit the jump, or the moment when you realize you aren't going to land it. Once you identify these moments in your narrative, you can use this effect of slow motion when you write. Just remember, it's not enough to say, "time slowed down" and it's not enough to throw a couple adjectives in a sentence and call it done either. Descriptive writing is good writing, that's true. But if you want to express the feeling of slow motion in life, you have to actually take up more physical space on the page, use more film so to speak. In doing so, you will create tension and keep your reader interested. And that way, the next time you write, you'll control the camera of your own writing.

Career

Bryce has been writing about the energy business for three decades. He spent twelve years writing for The Austin Chronicle.^[1] From 2006 to 2010, he was the managing editor of the online magazine, Energy Tribune.^[2] From October 2007 to February 2008 he was a fellow at the Institute for Energy Research. From 2010 to 2019 he was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.^[3]

In October 2011 a petition was addressed to The New York Times complaining about Bryce. It asked the paper's public editor, Arthur Brisbane,^[4] to address the issue of how op-ed writers are identified and asked that the paper be more transparent with regard to any financial support the op-ed writers may get from various industries.^[5] On October 29, 2011, Brisbane responding to the petition, writing "I don't think Mr. Bryce is masquerading as anything: experts generally have a point of view". Regarding the issue of funding from energy-related interests, Brisbane wrote that "the Manhattan Institute's dependence on this category of funding is slight – about 2.5 percent of its budget over the past 10 years."^[6]

Other works

Writing on the Energy Industry and Species Protection

Bryce has written frequently about the in-feasibility of the United States becoming energy independent.^[7]^[8]

In March 2009, he testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to discuss the limits inherent in renewable energy, saying "no matter how you do the calculations, renewable energy by itself, can not, will not, be able to replace hydrocarbons over the next two to three decades, and that's a conservative estimate".^[9]

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in March 2009 he denounced the energy policies of former United States President George W. Bush and the current president Barack Obama, claiming their rush for renewable energy will not be sufficient to cover the country's future energy needs.^[10]

Bryce has criticized special exceptions to wildlife protection laws given to renewable energy facilities in the United States. Oil producers and electric utilities have repeatedly been charged and fined under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for killing birds; meanwhile, wind-power companies are not prosecuted despite routine violations of the MBTA. In the Wall Street Journal, he wrote,

Yet there is one group of energy producers that are not being prosecuted for killing birds: wind-power companies. And wind-powered turbines are killing a vast number of birds every year. A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass California, estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds—nearly all protected by the migratory bird act—are being whacked every year at Altamont.

He also wrote about the health problems caused by low-frequency noise emitted from wind turbines.^[11]

In June 2010, in an article for Slate he expressed dismay at the corn ethanol industry's attempts to use the blowout of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico as an basis to pursue more subsidies.^[12]

Bryce is an advocate for increased shale gas consumption in the US. In a June 13, 2011 piece published in the Wall Street Journal he posited that the "shale revolution now underway is the best news for North American energy since the discovery of the East Texas Field in 1930."^[13]

Bryce opposes federal corn subsidies for ethanol, citing high costs.^[14]

He has argued that electric vehicles have failed to date due to the lack of energy density in batteries, safety concerns, and relatively few sales.^[15]

N2N

In 2013, Bryce argued that renewable energy remains unready to meet real-world energy needs at a scale that can save the climate.^[16]

Accordingly, he has long favored "N2N" (natural gas to nuclear), as the logical way forward for energy policy and insurance against the potential risk of climate change.^[17]

Carbon Capture and Sequestration

In May 2010, he published an op-ed in The New York Times that underscored the difficulties associated with large-scale carbon capture and sequestration.^[18] He has recently extended this line of argument in National Review Online^[19]

Writings on Politics and Current Events

George W. Bush

In 1993, Bryce wrote a piece for the Christian Science Monitor about George W. Bush's jump into the Texas gubernatorial race arguing that Bush would "pose a formidable challenge" to then Democratic Governor Ann Richards. Bryce also referred to Karl Rove a "savvy political consultant."^[20]

Bryce predicted that Bush would win the White House in a 1999 piece for The Austin Chronicle,^[21] and was the first journalist to report on how Bush's ownership of the Texas Rangers would become a financial asset.

Bryce also analyzed how Bush and his partners used the power of eminent domain to profit off of land they did not own.^[22]

"I am Sullied-No More"

In 2007, Bryce featured 44-year-old Colonel Theodore S. Westhusing's suicide note in an article for the Texas Observer titled, "I am Sullied-No More." In it he argues that Westhusing chose death over dishonor while faced with the Iraq war's corruption.^[23]

Funeral industry

In 1999, Bryce wrote about corruption in the funeral industry, reporting on how Robert Waltrip, C.E.O of the world's largest death-care company, Service Corporation International "used the [Texas] governor's office and a state senator in an effort to crush an investigation into S.C.I.'s operations."^[24]