Simple Swarbrick

"Mainstream Media reports that the Green Party will campaign on mass electrification for the election, saying the sun, wind, water and geothermal energy 'don’t come through the Strait of Hormuz.'

"Chloe Swarbrick with that wild-eyed enthusiasm that only she is capable of offers a simplistic solution. I use the word 'simplistic' advisedly. She herself says the solution is simple. ... Swarbrick said the Government needed to create a national electrification plan ...starting with improving access to 'cheap, easy loans for solar panels and batteries' ... 'tak[ing] control of our country’s own needs by powering ourselves, with every renewable resource available in abundance around us.' Would that it were so easy. ...

"[T]hink about a few things.;

• Is what Swarbrick proposes really a solution?
• Does she really know what she is talking about?
• Is she aware of the pervasiveness of the petrochemical industry in our day to day lives and how much we depend upon it?
• Have she and the Greens really thought through this policy or is it an easy one to articulate.
• Or in fact are Swarbrick and the Greens speaking and policy making from a position of unawareness or ignorance of the nature of the problem?

"And if the answer to the preceding question is in the affirmative, do they have any business being near the levers of power. ...

"Think about it and ... about the pervasiveness of the petrochemical industry and how much we depend upon it."

~ David Harvey from his post 'Unawareness, Blind Ignorance and a Sense of Unreality'

How the world's climate promises became a new way to keep Africa poor

 

"[The world] today says ... 'Net Zero by 2050. ... 

"Banks sign net-zero pledges and quietly stop funding energy projects in Africa (while continuing to fund the exact same projects in America, Canada, and Norway). The African Energy Chamber has a term for this: financial apartheid.

"Meanwhile, NGOs run campaigns ... to pressure Western financiers out of ... a project Uganda and Tanzania are building to export their own oil. The European Parliament actually passed a resolution against it in September 2022. ... And every quarter, investors publish sustainability reports full of net-zero targets that have almost nothing to do with whether anyone in sub-Saharan Africa can turn on a light. 

"Africa is responsible for about 4% of global CO₂ emissions. Four percent. No serious calculation says that cutting off financing to the continent that contributes the least will change the trajectory of the climate. ...

"Back home, 600 million people on my continent don’t have electricity.

"The WHO estimates that cooking with wood and charcoal kills around 800,000 people a year in Africa from the smoke alone, most of them women and children. 

"The solution is LPG, which comes from natural gas, but building the gas infrastructure to distribute it gets caught in the same net-zero 'logic' that chokes everything else.

"Nigeria sits on some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world yet its power grid collapsed again in February 2026. At Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital in 2025, three ICU patients died during a blackout because the hospital had gone days without power. Twenty-six percent of health facilities across sub-Saharan Africa have no electricity at all. And the people signing those net-zero pledges in London and New York will never know their names.

"No single bank executive decided to keep Africans in the dark. But the world's net-zero pledges created a structure where not funding African fossil fuels became the easy, compliant thing to do, and funding them became a career risk. ...

"I grew up in Senegal, and I remember my grandmother cooking over fire because there was nothing else when the power went out. Cutting off Africa’s energy doesn’t save the planet. It just guarantees that the next generation grows up the same way mine did.

"That’s what I’m working to change through Prosperity Not Poverty — because African nations have the right to use their own resources to build their own futures."

~ Magatte Wade from her post 'The Lie Keeping Africa in the Dark'

Congratulations to Cuba, the world's first Net Zero country

New Zealand, as you will all know by now, has been set by our government with at "target" to be Net Zero of greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., fossil fuels) by 20250.

But you don't need a time machine to see that future for a small island nation like ours..  You can just travel to the small island nation of Cuba,  where "the Trump administration is helping Cuba to achieve Net Zero by preventing oil tankers from landing there."

Only, in the New York Times article about this, it describes it as a bad thing. It has, says the Times, brought Cuba “to its knees.”

In Cuba, people are struggling with frequent blackouts, shortages of gasoline and cooking gas and dwindling supplies of diesel that power the nation’s water pumps. Trash is piling up, food prices are soaring, schools are cancelling classes and hospitals are suspending surgeries...

Wasn't the end of fossil fuels supposed to be a boon to this small island nation? 

Can't they use the "renewable," i.e., unreliable energy, with which Cuba is blessed to replace the fossil fuels so kindly withheld from them by theUS? After all, Cuba already has a bunch of wind farms. So as the Manhattan Contrarian asks, "Why doesn’t it just crank them up to provide the power formerly supplied by the fossil fuels?"

Could it be that a small island nation's power plants, water pumps, transport, food, families, schools and hospitals -- not to mention basic rubbish collection -- all actually depend on the reliable energy of fossil fuels?

Take a closer look at Cuba if you don't want that to be our future.

"The UN has now spent more than three decades issuing countdowns to catastrophe" [updated]

"A recent story on PBS NewsHour, 'UN says world must jointly tackle issues of climate change, pollution, biodiversity and land loss,' by Tammy Webber of the Associated Press (AP), reports on a new UN 'Global Environment Outlook' that repeats the false assertion that the Earth is nearing a global tipping point that can only be avoided through “unprecedented change” and trillions of dollars in new spending to phase out fossil fuels. These assertions are bogus, lacking any basis in data or observable evidence. In fact, the UN has a long track record of failed disaster predictions tied to climate change, going all the way back to 1989 ...

"A history lesson is in order. This is not the first time the UN has announced that 'we’re running out of time.' In 1989, 36 years of global warming ago, the UN Environment Programme’s Noel Brown told the Associated Press that 'entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels' if global warming was not reversed by the year 2000, predicting up to three feet of sea-level rise by then, massive coastal inundation of Bangladesh and Egypt, and a wave of 'eco-refugees.'

"More than three decades later, each of these predictions have proven, not just false, but wildly inaccurate. The 'Climate at a Glance' website’s 'Sea Level Rise' page documents long-term tide-gauge records and NASA satellite data showing global sea level rising at about 1.2 inches per decade, with, at best, a modest acceleration since the nineteenth century. Nor have we seen the millions of 'climate refugees' that the UN forecast. The Maldives are still above water, Bangladesh has more people than ever, and the “10-year window” to avert disaster has been rolled over so many times it could qualify as a wrecked vehicle.

"PBS/AP never mentions this failed track record. Nor does it acknowledge that the UN has now presided over 30 Conferences of the Parties (COPs) without changing the basic trajectory of global emissions or global temperature ...

"The entries at 'Climate at a Glance'’s on 'Deaths from Extreme Weather' and 'Temperature-Related Deaths' highlight a crucial fact PBS never mentions: over the past century, climate-related deaths have plummeted by more than 95 percent, even as global population has quadrupled and temperatures have risen. Independent analyses, such as HumanProgress’ review of disaster mortality, show climate-related deaths falling from about 485,000 per year in the 1920s to fewer than 20,000 per year in the 2010s, a drop of more than 99 percent on a per-capita basis, as seen in their graph below.

"Th[is] is not what 'running out of time' looks like.

"What the article and the UN report completely ignore is the role that affordable, reliable energy, overwhelmingly fossil fuels, has played in making human societies more resilient to environmental hazards. Mechanised agriculture, synthetic fertilisers, modern flood defences, air conditioning, and rapid disaster response all depend on dense, on-demand energy. That is why climate-related deaths as documented by 'Climate at a Glance' have collapsed over the past century. Yet the UN prescription, uncritically endorsed by PBS/AP, is to rapidly phase out the very energy sources that lifted billions from abject poverty, based on a track record of predictions that have repeatedly failed to materialize.

"'Climate Realism' has chronicled this pattern for years. 'UNFCCC Climate Report Lies About Its Own Science' points out how UN political bodies routinely make sweeping claims about 'intensifying destruction' that are not supported by the UN’s own scientific assessments, which identify little or no change in most types of extreme weather events and trends in natural disasters. In 'The IPCC’s 1990 Predictions Were Even Worse Than We Thought,' 'Climate Realism' reviews the early IPCC forecasts of rapid warming and sea-level rise and shows how they overshot reality. Despite this, every new report is marketed as the 'most comprehensive ever' and used to justify more urgent demands for unprecedented, wrenching, transformational remaking of the world’s economy and governing institutions.

"PBS/AP could have told its audience that the UN has now spent more than three decades issuing countdowns to catastrophe ...

"By omitting the long trail of failed UN climate pronouncements, ignoring the dramatic decline in climate-related deaths, and treating speculative model outputs as inevitable futures, PBS and the Associated Press badly mislead their audience concerning the true state of the Earth. A truly public-minded broadcaster would carefully scrutinise the UN’s record and available data rather than uncritically regurgitate its latest false alarm report."

~ Anthony Watts from his post 'Wrong Again PBS, UN Is Pushing Another False Climate Crisis Report'

UPDATE: Bjorn Lomborg writes in the New York Post:

"The main UN model shows that even if all rich countries were to cut their carbon emissions to zero, it would avert less than 0.2°F of projected warming by the end of the century, while imposing massive hits of up to 18% on rich-world GDP by 2050.

"The ever-increasing cost of climate policy is one reason the rich world is cutting back in many other areas, including aid to the world's poorest.

"That, in part, is why philanthropist Bill Gates has called for a strategic pivot on climate.

"He has laid out three tough truths: Climate change is serious but 'will not lead to humanity's demise'; temperature is not the best progress metric; and we should instead focus on boosting human welfare. [bold added; hat tip Gus Van Horn]

"Why are leading institutions so biased against fossil fuels?"

"Why are leading institutions so biased against fossil fuels?

"Because their operating 'anti-impact framework' causes them to view fossil fuels, which are inherently high impact, as intrinsically immoral and inevitably self-destructive.
...

"Our knowledge system’s opposition to fossil fuels while ignoring their enormous benefits can only be explained by it operating on an anti-human moral goal and standard of evaluation that regards benefits to human life as morally unimportant.

"Outside the realm of energy, an example of an anti-human moral goal at work is the scientists who, operating on the anti-human moral goal of animal equality, oppose animal testing for medical research and disregard its life-saving benefits to humans.

"The primary moral goal of our knowledge system that operates on energy issues is the anti-human goal of eliminating human impact on the rest of nature—a widely-held goal that is often disguised as merely eliminating only human-harming impacts.

"Our leading institutions' attempt to disguise their goal of eliminating all human impacts as eliminating only human-harming impacts by using vague terminology such as 'going green,' 'minimising environmental impact,' 'protecting the environment,' and 'saving the planet.'

"The goal of eliminating human impact necessarily drives our knowledge system’s opposition to cost-effective energy because cost-effective energy always significantly impacts nature.
...
"Our knowledge system ignores the benefits of cost-effective energy because on the anti-human standard, it is intrinsically immoral and its benefits are morally irrelevant.

"Our knowledge system catastrophises the negative side-effects of cost-effective energy because it views Earth as a 'delicate nurturer.'

"On the 'delicate nurturer' assumption, Earth naturally exists in a delicate, nurturing balance, with humans as 'parasite-polluters' whose impact can only destroy it ... 

"The 'anti-impact framework' must be replaced by the 'human flourishing framework,' including the goal of advancing human flourishing ..."

~ Alex Epstein from his post 'The root cause of our leading institutions' bias against fossil fuels'

"Suddenly, the race is on to be skeptical." [updated]

"Everywhere countries are saying they care about climate change but doing the opposite. The EU nations are fighting over their 2035 and 2040 emissions targets, Mexico is borrowing up to keep its oil company afloat, Canada scrapped their carbon tax, and is being 'coy' about their 2030 target. Governor Gavin Newsom just boosted oil drilling in California a year after he described the industry as the 'polluted heart of this climate crisis.'

"Now Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Tories in the UK, is promising to dump The Climate Change Act if she gets elected. Suddenly, the race is on to be skeptical."

~ Jo Nova from her post 'Deniers are everywhere. The race is on to be a skeptic now — Kemi Badenoch vows to repeal Climate Change Act'

UPDATE: 

"Kemi Badenoch has now confirmed that she will scrap the Climate Change Act, along with its Net Zero targets.
    "But will her MPs allow her to do it?"

"...Coal Is a Physical Manifestation of Progress"

 

"Southeast Asian nations that include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam ... [are] an economic juggernaut that will drive some of the planet’s largest growth in [the world's] energy demand. ...

"Each of these economic engines demands reliable, affordable electricity that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. ... 2023 witnessed a demand increase of nearly 45 terawatt-hours (TWh), an amount of energy that must be generated, transmitted regionally, and delivered locally on a continual basis. Where did this new power come from? Coal. An astonishing 96% of that new demand was met by coal-fired power plants.

"Let that sink in. Coal, the energy source routinely demonised in Western capitals and at global climate summits, met nearly all the region’s new electricity needs. This reality stands in direct contradiction to rosy predictions of a transition to 'renewables' manufactured by highly compensated executives at elite consulting firms who have spent the better part of a decade selling energy fairy tales to governments and investors.

"Indonesia alone added 11 TWh of coal-generated electricity in 2023, while its electricity demand rose by 17 TWh, with coal meeting two-thirds of this increase. The Philippines generates more than 60% of its electricity from coal, and Malaysia and Vietnam each around 50%. ...

"The wind and solar share across ASEAN remained a pitiful 4.5% in 2023. This minuscule contribution exposes the bankruptcy of consultants’ promises of 'renewables' dominating the regional power mix by mid-2020s. ...

"Oil, natural gas and coal collectively hold the major share of ASEAN’s primary energy mix ... 

"Factories, petrochemicals, shipping, aviation, and agriculture all consume fossil fuels in large quantities. 
ASEAN countries are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to fossil fuel infrastructure that will operate for decades. ... Nineteen projects across Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, and Myanmar hold more than 540 billion cubic meters of recoverable gas. Countries don’t spend billions developing gas fields if they plan to abandon fossil fuels within the next decade. ...

"These nations aren’t chasing arbitrary climate targets; they’re building the infrastructure of their future and prosperity for people."

~ Vijay Jayaraj from his post 'In ASEAN Nations, Coal Is a Physical Manifestation of Progress'

"$7 Trillion dollars of subsidies [sic] in support of fossil fuels"

 

“What about all the subsidies!” [What about] the Guardian headlines hand-wringing over $7 Trillion dollars of subsidies [sic] in support of fossil fuels. The main source of this meme is the IMF ...

"Literally, 80% of the “subsidies” are what they’d like to charge oil and gas companies for things like the imaginary damage that CO2 does on simulated Earths in broken climate models. The IMF calls this 'implicit subsidies.' ... I might call it a brazen fake. ...

"The orange 'subsidies' are the total fantasies here. It really is that bad.

"Unbelievably, other parts of the '80% implicit subsidy block' even include things like the cost of traffic accidents, fatalities, congestion and wear and tear on the roads. Somehow when fossil fuels cause congestion, and we suffer a loss of productivity, that’s an implicit subsidy because the price of fuel was not efficient.

"The outrageous gall of this is so much that even hard-left Vox is uncomfortable and asks if this was a bit misleading of the IMF ... Maybe the IMF will accidentally solve congestion because everyone will give up and move to the country to grow cabbages?"

~ Jo Nova from her post 'The fantasy land of “Fossil Fuel Subsidies” where even a car accident, a traffic jam are a subsidy'

COP28 Climate Summit President: "'no science' that says phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius"

"The president of the COP28 climate summit, Sultan Al Jaber, recently claimed there is 'no science' that says phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, in comments that have alarmed climate scientists and advocates.
    "The future role of fossil fuels is one of the most controversial issues countries are grappling with at the COP28 climate summit. While some are pushing for a 'phase-out,' others are calling for the weaker language of a 'phase-down.' Scientific reports have shown that fossil fuels must be rapidly slashed to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees — the goal of the Paris climate agreement, and a threshold above which scientists warn it will be more difficult for humans and ecosystems to adapt.
    "Al Jaber ... was asked by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and current chair of the Elders Group, an independent group of global leaders, if he would lead on phasing out fossil fuels. In his response, Al Jaber told Robinson, “there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5.” He said he had expected to come to the ... meeting to have a “sober and mature conversation” and was not “signing up to any discussion that is alarmist.”
    "He continued that the 1.5-degree goal was his 'north star,' and a phase-down and phase-out of fossil fuel was 'inevitable' but 'we need to be real, serious and pragmatic about it.
    "In an increasingly fractious series of responses to Robinson pushing him on the point, Al Jaber asked her 'please, help me, show me a roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuels that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves'.”

~ CNN report 'Climate summit leader said there’s ‘no science’ behind need to phase out fossil fuels, alarming scientists'

Cartoon by Alex Gregory, New Yorker (2013)

"The twenty-seven Conferences so far have had no effect on total global emissions. "

Pic from Watts Up With That

"The forthcoming 28th session (COP28) of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ... will convene from 30 November to 12 December in the United Arab Emirates. The ‘Parties’ are UN member states plus some observers. The last one, COP27 at Sharm el Sheik in Egypt, had 12,000 delegates from over 200 countries.
    "There has been one every year since except for 2020. All 27 have warned about the increasingly noxious state of the atmosphere and declaring that something must be done about it before it’s too late. ...
    "The CO2 content of the atmosphere has been measured since 1957 and has risen steadily every year. The twenty-seven Conferences so far have had no effect on total global emissions. Nations have realised their people’s need for electricity had to come first. The cheapest and quickest way to provide that is by way of fossil-fuelled power stations.
    "Leaders of nations may also have wondered at the increasingly manic shouts of: ‘global boiling’; ‘July the warmest in human civilisation’s history’; ‘oceansgrowing hotter … triggering global weather disasters … heat searing enough to knock out mobile phones’; ‘daily temperatures hitting a 100,000 year high’; ‘the September data shows … the planet’s temperature reached its warmest level in modern records and probably in thousands of years.’
    "Advisers to leaders of nations may have pointed out that we have only been measuring daily world-wide temperatures for about 140 years. NASA makes it quite clear that ‘before 1880 there just wasn’t enough data to make accurate calculations.’ The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago; the advisors may have advised that it would therefore seem reasonable to expect that records will be broken, will continue to be broken, and may or may not have anything to do with global warming.
    "There has curiously been very little comment about the willingness of the UN to go on having Conferences calling for actions that don’t [and shouldn't] happen."

~ Ivor Williams, from his post 'Why COPs Should Have No Teeth'

"Those who think the world will soon be doing without fossil fuels need to get real."

"A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), published last week, claims that the world will reach peak demand for oil, coal and gas by 2030. This has been seized on by the likes of the World Economic Forum as proof that we’re about to enter a brave, green future, free of evil fossil fuels.
    "But other developments this month suggest otherwise. At the same time as the IEA and the WEF have been heralding an imminent end to fossil fuels, Germany has been firing up an extra coal facility, energy giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron are doubling down on their fossil-fuel businesses and the wind-power industry has been begging governments for more subsidies and bailouts.
    "It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that those anticipating an imminent decline in fossil-fuel use are indulging in wishful thinking. This is largely because they are ignoring the huge geopolitical changes the world is now undergoing. The fact is that global energy markets have been fundamentally transformed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It means that governments and nations are now putting energy and national security above concerns over climate. ... [In short, g]eopolitical conflict has exposed Net Zero as a fantasy. ...
    "Across the world, there’s little sense that fossil-fuel use will be in decline any time soon. ... Even the most ardent environmental zealot will soon have to reckon with the new geopolitical reality. After all, if Greens in Germany’s governing coalition can be convinced to defend coal plants, there’s every chance American politicians will soon be encouraging fracking and drilling from Alaska to Texas.
    "Those who think the world will soon be doing without fossil fuels need to get real. Far from entering terminal decline, fossil-fuel use is set to scale new heights."

~ Ralph Schoellhammer, from his post 'Why fossil fuels are here to stay'

"Environmentalism is austerity on steroids."

 

"The left claims to hate austerity and yet its eco-dystopia would plunge millions into poverty....
    "We’re against austerity, they insist, and yet then they agitate for an austerity of apocalyptic proportions. This, surely, is the most stark incongruity of the modern left. They rail against every library closure or reform of welfare payments as an intolerable assault on people’s living standards, and then they take to the streets in their thousands in support of a degrowth agenda that would plunge vast swathes of humankind into penury. They’re far meaner than any right-wing penny-pincher they claim to oppose....
    "[T]hese privileged hysterics are determined to drum into the small minds of the polluting masses just how dangerous climate change has become.... if [this eco-leftist movement] were to get its way, if its Malthusian dream of leaving fossil fuels in the ground were ever to be realised, it would make [politicians'] post-2008 austerity programme[s] look like an era of milk and honey. The impact of Just Stop Oil’s Anti-Industrial Revolution, its misanthropic urge to wind back modernity itself, would be truly dire – especially for the working classes.
    "Environmentalism is austerity on steroids. Consider one of Just Stop Oil’s key demands: ‘No new oil or gas.’ This would be – there’s no other word for it – psychotic.... [T]o ‘rapidly eliminate fossil-fuel use’ would make the world an impoverished, dangerous and miserable place for most people. Fossil fuels provide 80 per cent of the world’s energy. Just three per cent comes from solar and wind power, so beloved of green anti-modernists. And even that measly slice of global energy production is ... totally dependent on fossil fuels, especially natural gas, for 24/7 back-up. That is, if the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, we have to crank up the fossil fuels. Ours is a world in which three-billion people still use less electricity than your average American fridge. Agitating for less energy production in such a time is callous beyond belief. It would issue a death sentence on the world’s poor....
    "We are already getting daily tasters of how destructive eco-austerity can be. The Net Zero ideology, embraced by governments across the West, aims to do in slow-motion what Just Stop Oil would do overnight: wean mankind off fossil fuels. And its consequences are awful. Farms closed down, farmers losing their jobs, truckers’ lives being made more difficult, driving being made more expensive, air travel once again becoming the preserve of the rich, power stations going unbuilt… the elites’ unhinged hostility towards fossil fuels has already birthed all of this. Imagine how much worse it would get if Just Stop Oil’s vision of a fossil-free world came to fruition."

~ Brendan O'Neill, from his post 'Environmentalism is austerity on steroids'

Pointing out the "97% Abusers"

"If you've ever expressed the least bit of skepticism about calls to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use to prevent a 'climate crisis,' you’ve probably heard the smug response: '97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and human-caused.'
    "This response is inane....
    "The usual purpose of saying '97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and human-caused' is to make you believe our climate impact is catastrophic—a 'climate crisis.'
    "But neither the statement itself nor the studies it’s based on say our impact is catastrophic....
    "The '97%'... either agree on some unspecified impact or, at most, attribute rising CO2 levels as the leading cause ... of the mild 1°C warming we have experienced to date.
    "But they are abused to claim 97% agreement on catastrophic climate impact.
    "'97% abuser' John Kerry has falsely equated:

“97% of climate scientists have confirmed that climate change is happening and that human activity is responsible.”

With:

“if we continue to go down the same path…the world as we know it will… change dramatically for the worse.”

    "'97% abuser' Barack Obama, in response to a study that said "97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming,” tweeted “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous”—just adding 'dangerous' from nowhere.
    “'97% abuser' Al Gore took a study about papers agreeing with the idea that 'Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities' and misrepresented it to mean 'we’re causing global warming and that it’s a serious problem'—adding 'serious problem' from nowhere....
    "[L]ike many other authors of 'consensus' studies [these 97% Abusers are] clearly motivated by the desire to use insignificant consensus about some climate impact to drive their desired catastrophe narrative and anti-fossil-fuel political outcome....
    "By being coupled with the refrain 'listen to the scientists,' the '97%' claim is designed to make you only look at the climate side-effects of fossil fuels when making policy—ignoring fossil fuels’ benefits....
    "Fossil fuels actually overall make us far safer from climate by providing low-cost energy for the amazing machines that protect us against storms, protect us against extreme temperatures, and alleviate drought. Climate disaster deaths have decreased 98% over the last century... But the '97% consensus' abusers try to avoid the discussion about fossil fuel benefits....
    "Summary: Using '97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and human-caused' to argue against fossil fuels is illogical and unscientific. It:

1. Falsely equates some climate impact with catastrophic climate impact
2. Ignores the huge benefits of fossil fuels

    "If someone tries to intimidate you into opposing fossil fuels by saying '97% of climate scientists agree,' trying asking them:

1. What exactly do they agree about—do they agree there’s a 'climate crisis'?
2. Do you agree we should also factor in the benefits of fossil fuels?" 

~ Alex Epstein, from his post 'The myth that "97% of scientists agree' about a climate crisis' [emphases in the original]

Pointing out the Climate-Mastery Denialists

"'We are typically taught that whatever the benefits of fossil fuels or other forms of energy are, they always come at the expense of our environmental safety and health.
    "'But the history of climate safety shows that fossil-fueled machine labour makes us far safer from climate— a phenomenon I call 'climate mastery....'

 

"What has allowed humanity to reduce climate-related deaths by 98% over the last century is Climate Mastery. '[O]ver the last century, as CO2 emissions have most rapidly increased, the climate disaster death rate fell by an incredible 98 percent. That means the average person is fifty times less likely to die of a climate-related cause than they were in the 1920s.... not only does our knowledge system ignore the massive, life- or- death benefits of fossil fuels [illustrated so well by this one], but it has a track record of being 180 degrees wrong about the supposedly catastrophic side-effect of climate danger — which has dramatically decreased...'

    "'Knowing that our knowledge system consistently denies [this] temperature mastery is crucial context to keep in mind whenever we hear claims about 'catastrophic' temperature changes in the future; there is a very good chance those claims are based on climate mastery denial, and that without such denial catastrophe would be implausible....'
    "'As [climate-mastery denialist Paul] Krugman puts it [for example], 'We can see the damage now, although it’s only a small taste of the horrors that lie ahead.' '
    "'But the idea that climate danger is bad and getting worse, overwhelming our mastery abilities, is completely false....'
    "'[I]f we look at the universally acknowledged history of climate and life on this planet, we inevitably come to the conclusion that rising CO2 levels leading to an unliveable planet is literally impossible — because the planet was incredibly liveable for far less-adaptable organisms, with much in common with us, when CO2 was at levels that we could not come close to even if we wanted to....'
    "Given all of the horrors of nature that humanity has already mastered, humanity can clearly master some more. Yes, we can imagine worst-case scenarios that overwhelm our abilities. Imagination, after all, is infinite. But that doesn’t show that such scenarios are likely enough to worry about.
    "As I’ve argued before, our default should that worst-case scenarios are highly unlikely. After all, humanity already got this far. If specialists with a long track record of hyperbole warn us of doom, we should ignore them. Unless, of course, specialists with a long track record of calm, measured thought chime in, 'For once, the doomsayers are right.' Show me these specialists, and I’ll read them."

~ Alex Epstein, with comments interpolated by Bryan Caplan, from Caplan's post 'The Meaning of Climate Mastery'

“If you think about it, we are transitioning to coal”

“Despite the fanfare surrounding wind and solar, the world’s dependency on fossil fuels is increasing. Last week, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said that the world is now 'transitioning to coal.'
    "Saad al-Kaabi, Qatar‘s energy minister, says: 'Many countries particularly in Europe which had been strong advocates of green energy and carbon-free future have made a sudden and sharp U-turn. Today, coal burning is once again on the rise reaching its highest levels since 2014'....
    "AP says, 'Coal, long treated as a legacy fuel in Europe, is now helping the continent safeguard its power supply and cope with the dramatic rise in natural gas prices caused by the war.' Rather than wind or solar, it is coal that is keeping the lights on in Europe."
          ~ Vijay Jaharaj, from his op-ed 'The World is Transitioning to Fossil Fuels'

 

Is anybody learning a lesson here?

"Over in Europe, and particularly in those countries in the vanguard of the green energy transition, the enormous costs of this folly have begun to hit home. In the UK [for example], average annual consumer energy bills were scheduled to rise as of October 1 to £3549/year, from only £1138/year just a year ago....
    "Anyone with a pair of eyes can see what has happened. They thought they could get rid of fossil fuels just by building lots of wind turbines and solar panels, which don’t work most of the time. Then they suppressed fossil fuel production, because that is the virtuous thing to do. Somehow they lost track of the fact that they needed full backup for the wind and sun, and have no alternative to the suppressed fossil fuels. With supply of fossil fuels intentionally and artificially constrained, prices spiked.
    "And they have not even yet gotten to 50% of electricity, or 15% of final energy consumption, from wind/sun on an annualised basis.
    "Is anybody learning a lesson here?"

~ Francis Menton, from his post 'Cost Of The Green Energy Transition: Who You Gonna Believe, Some Research Assistants From Oxford Or Your Lyin' Eyes?'

The New Green Imperialism: Fossil Fuels for me, but not for thee

"The rich world’s fossil fuel hypocrisy is on full display in its response to the global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the wealthy G7 countries admonish the world’s poor to use only renewables because of climate concerns, Europe and the United States are going begging to Arab nations to expand oil production, Germany is reopening coal power plants, and Spain and Italy are ramping up African gas production. So many European countries have asked Botswana to mine more coal it will have to triple its exports.
    "A single person in the rich world uses more fossil fuel energy than all the energy available to 23 poor Africans. The rich world became wealthy by massively exploiting fossil fuels, which today provide more than three-quarters of its energy. Solar and wind deliver less than three per cent.
    "Yet the rich are choking off funding for any new fossil fuels in the developing world. Most of the world’s poorest four billion people have no meaningful energy access so the rich blithely tell them to 'leapfrog' from no energy to a green nirvana of solar panels and wind turbines. This promised nirvana is a sham consisting of wishful thinking and green marketing. The world’s rich [are showing they] would never accept off-grid, renewable energy themselves — and neither should the world’s poor."

~ Bjorn Lomborg, from his op-ed 'The rich world’s message to the poor: Fossil fuels for me but not for thee'

"The real lesson to be drawn from these not-really-unprecedented heat waves is that it is not the weather that we should fear. The real danger is the prospect of running short of the reliable, low-cost energy we need to protect ourselves from these climate dangers"

"This [northern hemisphere] summer’s heat waves are triggering the predictable hysteria among the climate elites.... The hysteria is replete with the always-reliable Chicken Little hand wringing about “saving the planet from the climate crisis' ... [and lamentations about] people prioritising keeping cool and safe over 'fighting climate change.' [T]he real lesson to be drawn from these not-really-unprecedented heat waves [however] is that it is not the weather that we should fear. The real danger is the prospect of running short of the reliable, low-cost energy we need to protect ourselves from these climate dangers due to the ... long-running War on Fossil Fuels...
    "My mission is and has long been to save humanity from the crusading planet savers. That 'European countries are now backing away from their commitments to meet carbon-neutral goals' may be bad news for climate catastrophists. But it’s actually good news for humans."

~ Mike LaFerrara, from his post 'The Real Danger is Not Too Much Heat, but Too Little Reliable Low-Cost Energy'

Mike LaFerrara's Recommended Related Reading:

• Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less by Alex Epstein
• Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters by Steven E. Koonin
• Fossil Fuels and Climate Change: Remember Life Before Them by Mike LaFerrara
• 'A Humanist Approach To Environmental Issues'—Alex Epstein, Forbes
• The Suicidal Demonisation of Fossil Fuels by Mike LaFerrara
• The Real Reason They Hate Nuclear Is Because It Means We Don't Need Renewables by Michael Shellenberger, Forbes
• Japan's Earthquake Recovery: "Green Energy's" Failed Test by Mike LaFerrara

"The Modern World Can't Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels"

"Modern societies would be impossible without mass-scale production of many man-made materials....
    "Four materials rank highest on the scale of necessity, forming what I have called the four pillars of modern civilisation: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia are needed in larger quantities than are other essential inputs. The world now produces annually about 4.5 billion tons of cement, 1.8 billion tons of steel, nearly 400 million tons of plastics, and 180 million tons of ammonia. But it is ammonia that deserves the top position as our most important material: its synthesis is the basis of all nitrogen fertilisers, and without their applications it would be impossible to feed, at current levels, nearly half of today’s nearly 8 billion people.
    "The dependence is even higher in the world’s most populous country: feeding three out of five Chinese depends on the synthesis of this compound. This dependence easily justifies calling ammonia synthesis the most momentous technical advance in history: other inventions provide our comforts, convenience or wealth or prolong our lives—but without the synthesis of ammonia, we could not ensure the very survival of billions of people alive today and yet to be born....
    "[T]hese four materials, so unlike in their properties and qualities, share three common traits: they are not readily replaceable by other materials (certainly not in the near future or on a global scale); we will need much more of them in the future; and their mass-scale production depends heavily on the combustion of fossil fuels...
    "Fossil fuels remain indispensable for producing all of these materials.
    "Ammonia synthesis uses natural gas both as the source of hydrogen and as the source of energy needed to provide high temperature and pressure. Some 85% of all plastics are based on simple molecules derived from natural gas and crude oil, and hydrocarbons also supply energy for syntheses. Production of primary steel starts with smelting iron ore in blast furnace in the presence of coke made from coal and with the addition of natural gas, and the resulting cast iron is made into steel in large basic oxygen furnaces. And cement is produced by heating ground limestone and clay, shale in large kilns, long inclined metal cylinders, heated with such low-quality fossil fuels as coal dust, petroleum coke and heavy fuel oil.
    "As a result, global production of these four indispensable materials claims about 17 percent of the world’s annual total energy supply, and it generates about 25 percent of all CO2 emissions originating in the combustion of fossil fuels. The pervasiveness of this dependence and its magnitude make the decarbonisation of the four material pillars of modern civilisation uncommonly challenging....
    "Modern economies will always be tied to massive material flows, whether those of ammonia-based fertilisers to feed the still-growing global population; plastics, steel, and cement needed for new tools, machines, structures, and infrastructures; or new inputs required to produce solar cells, wind turbines, electric cars, and storage batteries. And until all energies used to extract and process these materials come from renewable conversions, modern civilisation will remain fundamentally dependent on the fossil fuels used in the production of these indispensable materials. No artificial intelligence designs, no apps, no claims of coming 'dematerialisation' will change that."

~ Vaclav Smil, from his Time article 'The Modern World Can't Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels' -- adapted from his new book How the World Really Works. Hat tip Jo Nova, who comments "Not the kind of article we’d [normally] expect to see in Time magazine. A 100% endorsement of the inescapable need for fossil fuels."

A modern-day fairy tale

"One crisp winter morning in Sweden, a cute little girl named Greta woke up to a perfect world, one where there were no petroleum products ruining the earth. She tossed aside her cotton sheet and wool blanket and stepped out onto a dirt floor covered with willow bark that had been pulverized with rocks. 

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Pulverised willow bark,” replied her fairy godmother.

“What happened to the carpet?” she asked.

“The carpet was nylon, which is made from butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,” came the response.

Greta smiled, acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the planet, and moved to the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a toothbrush, she found a willow, mangled on one end to expose wood fibre bristles.

“Your old toothbrush?” noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”

“Where’s the water?” asked Greta.

“Down the road in the canal,” replied her godmother, ‘Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it”

“Why’s there no running water?” Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.

“Well,” said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, “Where do we begin?” There followed a long monologue about how sink valves need elastomer seats and how copper pipes contain copper, which has to be mined and how it’s impossible to make all-electric earth-moving equipment with no gear lubrication or tyres and how ore has to be smelted to make metal, and that’s tough to do with only electricity as a source of heat, and even if you use only electricity, the wires need insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of Sweden’s energy is produced in an environmentally friendly way because of hydro and nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the whole system, you still need lots of petroleum products like lubricants and nylon and rubber for tires and asphalt for filling potholes and wax and iPhone plastic and elastic to hold your underwear up while operating a copper smelting furnace and . . .

“What’s for breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.

"Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. 

"Mmm," said Greta.

“Raw.”

“How so, raw?” inquired Greta.

“Well, . . .” And once again, Greta was told about the need for petroleum products like transformer oil and scores of petroleum products essential for producing metals for frying pans and in the end was educated about how you can’t have a petroleum-free world and then cook eggs. Unless you rip your front fence up and start a fire and carefully cook your egg in an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that you can find oranges in Sweden anymore.

“But I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta.

“Tilda died this morning,” the godmother explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”

“What?!” interjected Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”

“Not anymore,” explained her godmother “The production of penicillin requires chemical extraction using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know your organic chemistry, is petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying, which is problematic because there’s not an easy way of disposing of the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can’t really burn many bodies, using as fuel Swedish fences and furniture, which are rapidly disappearing - being used on the black market for roasting eggs and staying warm.”

This represents only a fraction of Greta’s day, a day without microphones to exclaim into and a day without much food, and a day without carbon-fibre boats to sail in, but a day that will save the planet.
Tune in tomorrow when Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocain is synthesised."

[Author unknown. Hat tip Louise LaMontagne]