Forum

• Undeniable energy fact 1: Cost-effective energy is essential to human flourishing
Cost-effective energy—affordable, reliable, versatile, scalable energy—is essential to human flourishing, it provides the ability to use machines to be productive and prosperous.

• Undeniable energy fact 2: The world needs much more energy
Billions of people lack the cost-effective energy they need to flourish. 3 billion use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator. 1/3 of the world uses wood/dung for heating/cooking. Much more energy is needed.

• Undeniable energy fact 3: Fossil fuels are uniquely cost-effective
Fossil fuels provide 80%+ of the world’s energy and they are still growing—especially in the countries most concerned with cost-effective energy. E.g., China.

Despite claims solar + wind provide < 5% of world energy—only electricity, ⅕ of energy and even that depends on huge subsidies and reliable fossil-fueled power plants.

• Undeniable energy fact 5: Fossil fuel energy gives incredible climate mastery ability
Fossil fuels helped drive down climate disaster deaths by 98% over the last century, powering machines that protect us against storms, extreme temperatures, and drought.

• Myth: The TX winter blackouts were a failure of fossil fuels, especially natural gas.
Truth: Fossil fuels perform beautifully in far worse winter weather than Texas had in February 2021. TX blackouts were caused by defunding reliable/resilient power in favor of unreliable solar/wind.

• Myth: Replacing fossil fuels with solar/wind will make us more secure because we'll depend less on hostile countries.
Truth: Not only are solar/wind incapable of replacing fossil fuels, but the control of their supply by China dwarfs any nation's influence over fossil fuels.

• Myth: Continued CO2 emissions will cause “irreversible” climate change.
Truth: Future technologies will enable us to reverse the rise in CO2 levels if we want. But nothing can reverse mass-death caused by trying to rapidly eliminate CO2 emissions.

• Myth: Fossil fuels “kill” millions of people a year via air pollution.
Truth: This claim:
1. Ignores how fossil fuels extend every life on Earth
2. Uses pseudoscientific speculation about pollution deaths.
3. Ignores the fact that fossil fuels can be burned very cleanly.

• Myth: The anti-fossil-fuel movement is leading to better sources of energy.
Truth: Anti-fossil-fuel activists are responsible for artificially restricting the supply of fossil fuels and thereby causing a deadly, worsening global energy crisis.

Some big-picture facts about energy and climate:

Fossil fuel energy gives us an incredible climate mastery ability

• Undeniable climate fact: CO2 emissions correlate with 1°C warming, + greening
The warming of the last 170 years has been mild and manageable, about 1° C. 

• Undeniable climate fact: Deaths from cold far exceed deaths from heat. While liberal institutions portray a world as increasingly riddled with heat-related death, the fact is that as Earth has gotten 1°C warmer far more people die from cold than heat (even in India!).

• Undeniable climate fact: Warming from CO2 occurs more in colder places. The view in climate science is that more warming will be concentrated in colder places (Northern latitudes) at colder times (nighttime) during colder seasons (winter). This is good news!

• Undeniable climate fact: CO2 has a diminishing effect. Rising CO2 leads to diminishing warming. Yet liberal climate science is unanimous that the public is shamefully not made aware of this actual “greenhouse effect.” 

 

 

• Myth: We can rapidly reduce fossil fuels at very low cost.
Truth: Fossil fuels are uniquely cost-effective, why they are 80% of global energy and growing. Rapidly reducing fossil fuels, in a world that needs more energy, is catastrophic.

• Myth: Solar and wind are cheap.
Truth: Solar and wind are unreliable, parasitical sources of energy that add costs to the grid. Claims of “cheapness” are based on ignoring the full costs of solar + wind—above all the cost of a reliable grid that gives them 24/7 life support.

• Myth: Solar/wind is cheaper than fossil fuels because Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is lower for solar/wind.
Truth: LCOE, by Lazard’s own admission, doesn’t include many costs of solar/wind—above all the cost of a reliable grid needed for 24/7 life support.

• Myth: Solar and wind are “winning in the marketplace,” outcompeting fossil fuels and nuclear with superior economics.
Truth: Unreliable, parasitical solar and wind are only “winning” when given massive preferences—mandates, subsidies, and no penalty for unreliability.

• Myth: Nuclear is too expensive, so we should use solar/wind instead.
Truth: Solar/wind aren’t reliable; nuclear is.Nuclear is only expensive because it has, with the lies of “green” activists, been falsely labeled unsafe and effectively criminalized.

• Myth: Just a small area of solar panels plus storage can power the world.

Truth: Storing just 3 days of global energy would cost $590 trillion at Elon Musk’s current prices. And the panels would take up more space than all the world’s cities, towns, and villages combined. Musk says that “to power the whole Earth” we need just solar panels and “some batteries.” What is “some batteries”? To store a mere 3 days of world energy, to be prepared for weeks (let alone seasons) with lower-than-usual sunlight, takes >1,350 terawatt-hours in batteries. The world uses over 165k TWh of energy annually, or ~1.36 billion MWh in 3 days. 1000 Tesla Megapacks (3916 MWh of storage) have a price over >$1.7 billion. This would mean 3 days of storage using Tesla batteries would cost >$590 trillion. That's 6X world GDP! Arguing that solar panels and batteries can provide energy to 8 billion people using modest space is like arguing that Rolls-Royces can transport 8 billion people using modest space.Yes, there’s space for 8 billion Rolls-Royces—but the human time it would take to produce them is cost-prohibitive. The main lie of “Just a small area of solar panels can power the world” is that it ignores the insane cost of the necessary batteries. But it also drastically underestimates how much space solar panels require. For example, a viral Twitter post underestimates area by some 25 times. If 1.8 million square km of solar panels doesn’t seem like much, note that it is more than all cities, towns, villages, and human infrastructure combined (~1.5 million sq km). This excludes the huge footprints of solar and battery mining, manufacturing, and transmission.

Myth: We can be like other countries who have 80% “clean electricity”
• The most persuasive argument for biden regime’s radical policy of 80% “clean electricity” by 2030 is that other countries are already at 80%. But this is BS because those countries, unlike us, can use huge amounts of 1) nuclear, 2) hydro, or 3) imported power. 80% “clean electricity” by 2030—from 30% today—will cause reliability problems, yet a group of prominent green electricity advocates recently claimed, with flawed logic, in an open letter, that “reliability can be preserved and enhanced.” The most compelling argument given for reliable 80% "clean electricity" by 2030 is that other places, such as France and Ontario, have achieved this. But this is a deeply dishonest lie because those places can, unlike us, use huge amounts of nuclear and hydro. France gets 2/3 of its electricity from reliable nuclear power. Ontario gets a combined 80% of its electricity from nuclear power and hydropower. By contrast, the US gets 20% of electricity from nuclear and <7% from hydro--neither of which can meaningfully increase by 2030. There is NO place in the world that gets a large share of its electricity from solar and wind without huge imports from its neighbors’ reliable fossil fuel power plants. And yet the US, which cannot import most of its needed electricity, is considering 50%+ solar and wind!
• Myth: The world is experiencing unprecedented danger from extreme weather thanks to fossil fuels.

Truth: The world is experiencing unprecedented safety from extreme weather due to fossil fuels—because fossil fuels' climate mastery benefits overwhelm any negative climate side-effects.

• Myth: We don't need fossil fuels to protect ourselves from extreme weather—we can just use alternatives.
Truth: As Europe is illustrating, there is no near-term replacement for fossil fuels for the 1/4 of the world that uses abundant energy—let alone the 3/4 of the world that doesn't.

• Myth: Media claims about increasing hurricane frequency are accurate.
Truth: liberal media has deliberately misrepresented the flat long-term hurricane trend. E.g., the ny times cherry-picking a starting point—the low point of 1980—to make a flat trend seem upward. If you believe The ny times or other liberal sources would you have any idea that the data looked like this?

Truth: Mainstream estimates say hurricanes will be less frequent and between 1-10% more intense. This is not catastrophic if we continue our fossil-fueled climate mastery.

ESG
The preposterous financial pretense of “ESG investing” is that the promoters of it have so accurately identified universal norms of long-term value creation--Environmental, Social, and Governance norms—that imposing those norms on every company is justified. 

Truth: ESG was a movement cooked up at the UN—not exactly a leading unbiased expert in anything—to impose moral and political agendas, largely left-wing ones, on institutions that would not adopt them if left to their own devices. The number one practical policy advocated by the ESG movement today is: divest from fossil fuels in every way possible, and associate yourself with “renewable” solar and wind in every way possible. This policy is helping destroy energy production around the world. The most egregious immorality of the ESG movement, led by larry fink's blackrock, is its effort to destroy vital fossil fuel projects in poor places that desperately need them, which is guaranteed to perpetuate poverty. Example: South Korea canceled coal plants in South Africa and the Philippines after “Global investors including Blackrock...warned the South Korean utility to drop coal power projects.”