Source; SNGLR
Carl Jung once said: “Everybody acts out a myth, but very few people know what their myth is. And you should know what your myth is because it might be a tragedy, and maybe you don’t want it to be.”
Myth: The UN's COP 28 climate conference must lead to far more “climate action.”
Truth: These conferences are immoral because they deprive billions of the energy they need to prosper.
The lead-up to the COP 28 climate conference has had a consistent theme: previous COPs called for restricting fossil fuels in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but this one needs to restrict fossil fuel use far faster so as to reach net-zero by 2050. This is wrong!
COP 28’s net-zero agenda—i.e., rapid elimination of fossil fuels—is unnecessary, and pursuing it faster would be catastrophic because:
1. Fossil fuels are making us far safer from climate.
2. Even barely implementing COP’s net-zero agenda has been disastrous.
One huge benefit we get from fossil fuels is the ability to master climate danger—e.g., fossil-fueled cooling, heating, irrigation—which can potentially neutralize fossil fuels’ negative climate impacts. Even though we obviously need to factor in fossil fuels’ climate mastery benefits, our designated experts totally fail to do this. E.g., the UN IPCC’s multi-thousand-page reports totally omit fossil-fueled climate mastery! That’s like a polio report omitting the polio vaccine.
With rising greenhouse gases we must be even-handed, considering both negatives (more heatwaves) and positives (fewer cold deaths). And we must be precise, not equating some conjured up impact with a corresponding huge impact. Every report you hear about fossil fuels having made climate more dangerous commits at least one of 2 fallacies: ignoring the enormous climate mastery benefits of fossil fuels or wildly exaggerating negative climate side-effects of fossil fuels. The IPCC does both.
Myth: We are more endangered than ever by climate because of fossil fuels' CO2 emissions.
Truth: We have a 98% decline in climate disaster deaths due to our enormous fossil-fueled climate mastery abilities: heating and cooling, infrastructure-building, irrigation, crop transport.
Myth: Climate-related disaster X shows that fossil fuels are making climate unlivable.
Truth: If we look at trends, not anecdotes, the drastic decline in extreme weather deaths shows that fossil fuels have made our naturally dangerous climate more livable than ever.
Myth: Even if climate-related disaster deaths are down, climate-related damages are way up, pointing to a bankrupting climate future.
Truth: Even though there are many incentives for climate damages to go up—subsidies for riskier areas, government bailouts—GDP-adjusted damages are flat.
Myth: Even if we're safe from climate now, we can expect future emissions to lead to disaster.
Truth: Since today's unprecedented safety exists after over 100 years of rising CO2, and with ~1° C warming, we should be skeptical that further CO2 rises will somehow overwhelm us.
Myth: left-wing science shows that rising CO2 is an “existential threat” that will soon cause global catastrophe and then apocalypse.
Truth: science shows that rising CO2 levels will lead to levels of warming and other changes that we can master and flourish with.
Myth: Future warming is ominous because heat-related death is already such a catastrophic problem.
Truth: Even though Earth has gotten 1°C warmer, far more people still die from cold than heat (even in India)! Near-term warming is expected to decrease temperature-related mortality.
Myth: Future warming is ominous because it will be worst in hot areas.
Truth: The mainstream view in climate science is that more warming will be concentrated in colder places (Northern latitudes) and at colder times (nighttime) and during colder seasons (winter). Good news.
Myth: Future warming will accelerate as CO2 levels rise.
Truth: Mainstream science is unanimous that the “greenhouse effect” is a diminishing effect, with additional CO2 leading to less warning. Even IPCC's most extreme, far-fetched scenarios show warming leveling off.
Myth: We face catastrophically rapid sea level rises, which will destroy and submerge coastal cities.
Truth: Extreme UN sea level rise projections are just 3 feet in 100 years. Future generations can master that. (We already have 100 million people living below high-tide sea level.)
Myth: Hurricane intensity is expected to get catastrophically higher as temperatures rise.
Truth: Mainstream estimates say hurricanes will be less frequent and between 1-10% more intense at 2° C warming. This is not at all catastrophic if we continue our fossil-fueled climate mastery.
Myth: left-wing science says that if we hit 1.5 or 2° C warming since the 1800s we face catastrophe followed by apocalypse.
Truth: The 1.5-2° C number is activist fiction. The mastery abilities that have made life far better through 1° C warming will continue to keep us safe.
While COP 28 leaders bemoan how slow their restriction of fossil fuel use in pursuit of net-zero has been, even “slow” restriction has caused a global energy crisis. “Aggressive climate action” = global catastrophe.
Myth: Net-zero policies are new and exciting.
Truth: Net-zero policies have caused catastrophic energy shortages even with minuscule implementation. Just by slowing the growth of fossil fuel use, not even reducing it, they’d caused global energy shortages.
Scary fact: the “net-zero” movement has caused an energy crisis just by achieving a tiny fraction of its goals. While it has advocated rapidly reducing fossil fuel use, it has only succeeded globally at slowing the growth of fossil fuel use. And even that is catastrophic. If just restricting the growth of fossil fuels in a world that needs far more energy is catastrophic, what would it mean to reduce CO2 emissions by the 50% many “climate emergency” advocates want by 2030 and the 100% they want by 2050?
Minuscule net-zero policies causing huge problems:
-US: frequent power shortages (and some disastrous blackouts) after shutting down fossil fuel power plants. E.g., CA
-EU: deadly fossil fuel dependence after restricting their fossil fuel industry
-Poor nations: can't afford fuel due to global restrictions. ⅓ of the world uses wood and animal dung for heating and cooking. 3 billion use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator. Only fossil fuels can provide the energy they need to develop. The reason is that development requires energy, and fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective, including scalable, source of energy.
The “net-zero” movement, led by UN COPs, is the root cause of today's energy crisis because it is:
-Suppressing fossil fuel investment: For fossil fuel energy to remain low-cost requires sufficient investment. But the COP-led net-zero movement has used government and private entities, often under the banner of “ESG,” to punish and suppress it—meaning less fossil fuel supply.
-Suppressing fossil fuel production: For fossil fuel energy to remain low-cost for billions of people requires that producers be free to produce it all around the world. The COP-led net-zero movement has opposed it throughout the world, often successfully, increasing prices.
-Suppressing fossil fuel transport: For fossil fuels to remain low-cost for billions of people we need to be able to easily transport them from where they are produced to where they are used. But the COP-led net-zero movement has opposed transportation around the world.
The “net-zero” movement has rationalized its opposition to fossil fuel investment, production, and transport with claims that solar and wind could rapidly replace fossil fuels. This has obviously not happened. Despite huge solar and wind subsidies fossil fuel demand has increased. There was never any reason to expect solar and wind to replace fossil fuels. The world needs far more energy—3 billion people still use less electricity than a US refrigerator—so there’s no reason to expect lower demand for any form of cost-effective energy, let alone ultra-versatile fossil fuels. Despite claims that solar and wind are rapidly replacing fossil fuels, they provide less than 5% of world energy—only electricity, ⅕ of energy—and, crucially, even that small percentage depends on huge subsidies and reliable (mostly fossil-fueled) power plants. Solar and wind’s basic problem is unreliability, to the point they can go near zero at any time. Thus they don’t replace reliable power, they parasitize it. This is why they need huge subsidies and why no grid is near 50% solar and wind without parasitism on reliable neighbors. The left-wing idea that we can use mostly or only solar and wind with sufficient battery backup is not being tried anywhere because it’s absurd. Batteries are so expensive that just 3 days of global backup using Musk’s Mega-packs would cost $570 trillion, about 6X global GDP!
Fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective source of energy, providing energy that’s low-cost, reliable, versatile, and scalable to billions of people. that's why overall fossil fuel use is growing. E.g., China, despite its “net-zero” pledges, has 300 new coal plants in the pipeline.
Energy freedom policies are more likely to lead to long-term emissions reductions, because they accelerate the rate at which nuclear and other alternatives become globally cost-competitive. the only moral and practical way to reduce global emissions. The 2 biggest instances of CO2 reduction have come from energy freedom policies:
-Nuclear: Freedom led to cost-effective and scalable nuclear power until the “green” movement virtually criminalized it.
-Gas: Freedom led to significant substitution of gas vs. coal.
Alternative energy policy has been dominated by the “green energy” movement, which is an outgrowth of the anti-development green movement. This movement is hostile to all development because of development’s impact on nature, and therefore is hostile to every form of cost-effective energy.
COP' leaders’ enthusiastic support for solar and wind is phony. Just as they oppose fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro for their impact, in practice they oppose the massive mining, construction, and transmission-line-building “green energy” requires.
The obvious path forward for the world is energy freedom: the freedom to produce and use all cost-effective sources of energy—including, essentially, fossil fuels—which means rejecting all net-zero targets.
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