Pessimism seems an essential part of virtue signaling on the left. Climate doomsaying is thus of a piece with Critical Race Theory’s refusal to acknowledge our tremendous (though still incomplete) progress toward racial equality.
What does pessimism have such appeal on the Left? What do they get out of it? It’s as if they think they can scold and shame Americans to voting for them.
Except that climate is a real, exogenous, pressing crisis. To dismiss climate issues as a mere matter of lefty pessimism is to act like the people in Arizona who don't want to be told that their ground water is running out. It will happen. The question is whether we (nationally and globally) take what actions can still be taken to slow and moderate it. An ostrich approach will guarantee that all of our problems become vastly worse by 2050.
One of the big issues I have with accepting the “climate crisis” is that the people pushing it ignore the biggest solution to their crisis “nuclear energy “. If it is such a crisis then nuclear was and is the single biggest arrow we have. But no not one mainstream national democrat politician pushes this. So the entire crisis loses a lot of credibility.
I agree about nuclear as an essential part of the answer, but the anti-nuclear strand is not the same as the focs on climate, and is in any case receding with more and more in the area accepting the need for nuclear, at least in the medium term; which is why the plans of Bill Gates and others for new-generation, smaller nuclear power plants are so important. Even the Germans (on the whole) recognize that Frau Merkel made a huge mistake in rejecting nuclear power.
Sadly, the tide has turned and the fringe has become the center on this and too many other issues. Unless their grandkids go to Mars with Elon Musk, they'll be among those whose suffering can be laid at the feet of arrogant climate revisionists.
Glad you find my comments reasonable, as they are intended to be. Not sure about the "robot-like", but I am a real person, responding to what seemed to be a dialogue in debate. As to "disingenuously", I have no interest in this other than concern for what my grandchildren may face in the year 2100. If that is disingenuous, so be it.
This is so common sense I am just shocked that everyone can’t see it. The only realistic way for the environmentalists to get to net zero is through nuclear energy because people demand abundant,reliable and cheap energy. Maybe somewhere several hundred years from now we will have the technology to get this from wind, water and solar but it is not happening by 2050. I use to donate to environmental groups but for the most part they have gone a bit loony. There are ways to move forward to address global warming but the Democrats don’t have it.
Wind, water, solar and nuclear can take up a very substantial part of the burden. It's not a matter of hundreds of years. It's a matter of political and economic will.
Only a few reject nuclear and hydro. Many accept (or have come to accept) nuclear and hydro, at least for the minimum term. That's a matter of real "realism".
"Many accept (or have come to accept) nuclear and hydro"
Who exactly are these "many" people that have come to accept nuclear and hydro? They sure as hell don't work for the EPA or however many dozen government agencies that are responsible for the current regulatory environment.
I certainly would not know that only a few resist nuclear from any main stream news or what liberal politicians say. I don’t think I have ever heard even one of the top Democrat national politicians say anything significant about nuclear
Rather too many although yes it is changing that nuclear and hydro are gaining reluctant acceptance.
But in my experience too much of that acceptance is weighted down with enough Yes Butism and Purity Pony agenda that it's not really acceptance that there is real crisis.
Yes quite right - a mix of Wind, Hydro, Solar, Geo and Nuclear is very feasible - if one is investing in the infra as well
It is not hundreds of years or even 50 years away but that does mean one has to go absolute Real Priority to building the energy infra, and not letting Business As Usual 8 Million Check boxes get in the way. The birdies etc are gonna suffer rather more from out-of-control warming than wind farms nor transmission lines.
My Iberian friends and colleagues in Spain, Portugal have shot up to overall grid at 60-75% avg on RE production (solar, wind, hydro) and Portugal is regularly hitting 90% grid.
They do need nuclear base add in, with expanded French interconnect and more storage
Of course there is also industrial power that still needs significant investment to electrify - but general grid add in for Iberia has occured over 10-15 years and continues.
It does mean one has to streamline permitting, and one has to invest like it's a real priority, not just an add on to the Everything Policy Bagel.
First both Spain and Portugal are mostly moderate climates. Secondly again one needs abundant,cheap and reliable. Look at what has happened to Germany and other nations where cheap and reliable are just not there. Look at how expensive electric cars are and their upkeep. This is not just a transitional issue. And yes it will take decades to get cheap, abundant and reliable for areas that need consistent and high amounts of energy. If it was going to happen faster we would be seeing a very different reality right now. Three years after congress passes a huge infusion of cash to push this agenda we would be seeing a lot more then we are if this was going to happen quickly. I think this unrealistic understanding of what it will really take is at the heart of the lack of support for nuclear energy
This is mere hand waving (and not particuarly well informed) - my litreal day job is investing for profit at utility scale in energy infra - so the reality is something I know inside and out my friend.
Supposed Iberian climate moderation (supposed, as Iberia is not all Med coast...) has precisely nothing to do with their success in RE generation (one can point to Norway and Sweden if you want snowy places and Denmark for less snowy but bracing cold).
German problems are due to German incoherence in policy - and frankly as Germany shut down nuclear plants and got... rebound in coal generation - their generation base is not in fact utility scale RE, it's crunch Granola Green solar PV on balconies and ... Coal plants. They are the picture of screwing up via Magical Thinking and incoherence (and not the picture of RE which they actually are not doing well at in utility scale - unlike the Iberians, unlike the Nordics).
Electric cars is ... well that is not RE generation but in fact they're not expensive to maintain and if one does not insist Mega American SUVs, quite actionable, the Chinese and the Turks are building some quite decent ones and now the French via the Dacia brand.
That said electric cars are an Everything Bagel thing - and not really frankly the key thing, utility scale RE power is.
So no, it will not take decades unless of course one insists on doing things wrong-headedly - as like US and Biden's Everything Bagel with Zero permitting reform
The problem you have is not RE, it is not reforming and ramming through energy infra and instead letting every crunch granola enviro-Left (and climate denialist righty loony tune) obstruction delay.
Iberians, Nordics have demontrated with actual speedy execution it is feasible. But one has to actually grapple with speeding permitting, and not merely use the word crisis and not actually mean it.
Such a great post, so much common sense. I don’t understand why Teixeira still aligns himself with the democrats; not saying that he should become a GOPer, but he just doesn’t belong with the current, defective, batch of democrats. We really do need a 3rd alternative.
The only criticism I have of this post is that it did not go far enough. Climate theology interlaces not just with energy, but with our safety, security, health, food supply, Malthusian population limits, and our civilizational concepts of freedom and opportunity, and how we would want to live, if given a choice.
If the climate change gods had their way, most of us would wind up living in an upgraded version of medieval feudalism; but with the internet, social media, and lots of censorship and surveillance - housing units would be very small, our horizons would be bounded by a 15 minute bike ride, and we would need to get reproduction permits.
If Greta had been around in 1492, her followers would have probably killed Columbus, and burned his three ships.
Because being a Democrat, being Left, is not about environmentalism. It's about fairness and economic redistribution. Unfortunately Democrats have gotten sidetracked to environmentalism and other luxury issues.
While some advocates may go off on damaging tangents, the basic focus of the climate issue is maintaining our "civilizational concepts of freedom and opportunity, and how we would want to live, if given a choice." There is no way to maintain anything like our present standards of living unless the climate issue is addressed effectively.
Clean energy isn't. Child cobalt miners in Africa would like to have a word with you. Have you ever seen a lithium mine? Have you ever seen the enormous trucks necessary to transport wind turbine blades to where they will be deployed? What happens to all the solar panels and wind turbines when they reach the end of their service lives? How many miles of transmission lines are needed to get electricity to the charging stations for electric cars.
All of which is quite irrelevant to the imminence of the climate problem. Those are problems that can be addressed separately (and should especially the child cobalt miners). But this comment seems to be wishing away the fundamental problem by pointing out ancillary issues.
Welcome to the real world - everything is about trade offs (not the Democratic Republic of Congo's messed up nastiness has any real connection to clean energy since if not cobalt then its child mining of gold, or diamonds etc - DRC being screwed is DRC)
RE is about decarbonisation to reduce carbon emissions for energy generation.
"clean" in some Immaculate Conceptioin sense is Green Left NGO magical thinking and nothing really to do with any modern industrial economy reality of any nature.
If there's a hoax here, it's in point 4. Ice in the Arctic has decreased radically over the past 20 years and is continuing to do so. There is a vast literature on this (among other things, it's why Putin and Trump are so interested in the Arctic sea passage.
Man made climate change is absolute real - carbon emissions are what they are - which is not particularly new science as the geo-climate record already tells us what carbon dioxice parts per million in atmosphere does to the climate as we have the chemical and geological record over a couple billion years to tell us.
That humans are dumping back carbon dioxide that was locked up in the earth for the past couple hundred million years is simply mechanics.
Climate panic painting this as humans destroying the planet is of course stupid - as the planet will as in the past be quite fine - planetary ecosystems adjusted in the past to massive emmissions (of course those were more by mass volcanic action but mere mechanic there) - however human agriculture friendly ecosystem, now that's another matter
The problem with both Righty 'climate hoaxism" and Lefty "oh we're destroying the planet" is the blindness that the impact is on human economy, not on the planet
Thank you for this piece. I have to say as a member of the tribe, an academic, I'm simply exhausted by the endless moralism, the sacrifice my cohort demands that I make in the interests of the environment. I'm pretty good on the environment. I do all local errands by bike, including grocery shopping, when I pack my groceries in my backpack. I don't buy a lot of stuff and have never owned a new car. But nothing is good enough. A pal has read _The World Without Us_ and is cheered by the prospect of the human race dying out so that Nature can come back. I am not. Why this self-hatred and endless calls for self-sacrifice for the sake of Nature--red in tooth and claw?
Not mentioned in this article, and seldom mentioned anywhere in generally-available media, is that CO2 is plant food and the earth has seen a significant amount of increasing vegetation because of it. In some recent research on this subject, I ran across these facts: Commercial greenhouse operations increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere to very high levels, not sure how high but at least 1000 ppm and above, to enhance plant growth. One of the sites that provides equipment to growers to do this mentioned that plant growth stops below about 250 to 300 ppm. On another site, NOAA was panicking about - the horror! - a current atmospheric CO2 level of 427 PPM!!! Not far above plant starvation level!! To feed the population and maintain the environment we need more CO2, not less. Further, there are very complex feedback loops in the environment for CO2 emissions and sinks that we do not understand and are not included in the climate models. By the way, when you look at the real temperature data, that not contaminated by thermometers now in the city (much warmer) that used to be out in the country (more accurate readings), there has been very little to no observable warming in the last 20 years, while the models show runaway increases that diverge sharply from reality. It is very easy to manipulate computer models to show what you want them to show, and for about 30 years research grants have paid for climate catastrophe models, not reality. The funders are getting what they have paid for. However, with a little digging, you will find a huge amount of hard evidence out there that the current climate, warming from the Little Ice Age, is a completely normal variation that has happened several times in the last 3000 years. We should be getting warmer, that's the climate phase we are in.
The other thing the climate alarmists never talk about is what the optimal temperature for Earth actually is. Nobody knows but it has clearly been much warmer even in recorded history.
What if it just happens to be true that fairly drastic action is needed to avoid irreversible climate damage and that the very bad case scenarios happen to be correct? Should we just accept that disaster because working class voters don't like to accept that conclusion? The whole logic of this argument is that the Democrats should dump their views to please the working class whether they are right or wrong. Is that really what you think?
We don’t live in a world where the working class won’t have a huge say in what happens. So with that what is your proposal. You can’t force it down their throats so you need a plan B. Sticking your head in the sand as you seem to think they are doing doesn’t work. You need a plan B. That is what this article is saying
I am not sure we disagree. Obviously, fear of climate change is not moving sufficient voters to win enough elections. So something has to change. One thing would be to just do whatever we think will win elections which seems to be the unstated premise of the article. I don't think that would actually win elections on this issue because adopting the position advocated would probably lose many more votes from those concerned about climate change than it would win from the middle class. But leaving that quibble aside, are there new approaches that would win elections that don't compromise the environment? That is what we need and cannot be found just by reading polls.
Once again, falling into the trap of denigrating climate concern with the scornful "climate catastrophism", if this is "climate realism" it once again refuses to acknowledge the reality and imminence of the climate crisis. Climate is not an issue on which polling is very relevant; it's not a matter of evaluating people's preferences for spending money on day care or whatever; it's a matter of facing a real, exogenous challenge. Focusing on the polls and using the minimizing rhetoric is irresponsible and ultimately damaging. What is needed is some kind of leadership to dig back into a clear-eyed climate approach that gets past the "drill, baby drill" absurdities of Trumpism (appealing though they seem to be to a lot of people) and defines policies with some hope of addressing the issue before it is too late. People don't like complexity, which is one of Trump's strengths, but they need to be led to see the real dangers we face (including floods of climate migration, already beginning). True "climate realism" would acknowledge the trade-offs, accept the need for fossil fuels during the transition, accept nuclear power, focus on ways of avoiding impoverishing social and economic damage (which should, in fact, be entirely feasible), stress the urgency of the problem and the investment required, but not fall into the implicit denialism of "realism" as defined in this article.
That may be true to some degree, but future floods will be driven in large part by climate change making life intolerable in tropical countries. It's already starting in Central America to some extent, but will get massively worse.
Tropical countries are already hot, by definition. Drought or flood can push people out but the water cycle is closed. It can change form-liquid, ice or vapor, fresh or salt- but there is always the same amount. Global warming has the potential to move it around but nobody knows quite how. In the Roman Warm period, North Africa was the granary of Rome because it was wetter than today. This may or may not recur. Mayan and Ancestral Puebloan civilizations collapsed because of prolonged drought (probably) which means they must have been adapted to wetter conditions.
That's all true but does not address the issues of (a) how hot is hot, and several tropical places have already come to the verges of uninhabitability (e.g. Northern India: always very hot in the summer, now dangerously so), and how comparable that is to the Roman Warm, etc. and (b) the sizes of the affected populations (probably much larger than the periods cited). The speed of change and the ability of populations to migrate now will also very much affect the outcome, of course.
N India isn't the tropics. It is subtropical of the continental variety. It is a far north as N. Africa which is also very hot in the summer and rather cold in the winter. Presumeably warmer, if wetter during the Roman warm period. Pretty much every winter thousands die in cold snaps in Delhi.
Be that as it may, Northern India is one of the many places that seem analytically destined for radical heat and environmental degradation, in the "global South", whether technically tropical or not. Cold snaps in the winter are irrelevant, and may reflect more extreme weather events. None of this in any way justifies ignoring the climate crisis or pretending it will go way, including the predictable migration effects.
As an actual energy investor with renewable energy focus (and so boht professionally and financially highly motivated for RE or broadly really non-hydrocarbon based energy generation), I think it's overdrawn to jump to "dump net zero" BUT correct to highlight the profound unrealism of the Democrat's net zero magical thinking and mandate-sans-reform goals. Net zero on a market basis (although not on the hard diktat timeline goals of the Eco-Left that really is seeking anti-capitalist de-growth objectives) with a strong eye to energy costing (i.e. not at any cost as this will wreck RE support) is a valid goal.
Not much comment above is made on also the Democrats "Everything Bagelism" Lefty policies into every policy which is loading on decarbonisation all kinds of extraneous agenda items that load up cost and casue delays - this though aligns with the Liberal Patriot's overall critics. Just as an example on my own professional front, in interaction with USGov people on RE initiative in overseas RE backing, among the things they inserted into conditions for them was extraneous engagements like "employing the handicapped" (ummm okay... very relevant to doing utility scale solar plant installations at low cost and in tight time frame). We skipped of course as cost, as time delays.... If it is an energy crisis - then treat it like a crisis in reality and not load every initiative with every Progressive societal transformation agenda item - which may be very worthwhile on their own but loading everything onto every policy - well it's like adding mass to a rocket, you weight it down and escalate what's needed to get it off the ground. too many things at once you end up with Sporks and not proper tools.
The Fail of Biden admin on IRA seems to me to be this - loading everything down with multiple agendas at once and so delay, cost, and then Not Getting Done.
The purism (and capitivism to the Activist Groups that oppose any dirty compromises) that led them not to grab the opportunity for energy project permitting reform to accelerate utility scale investment especially in energy distribution infra as otherwise we're looking at a total trainwreck of
Another area of muddiness is allowing the "progressive" fraction drive anti-market hidden agendas that undercut doing scale energy investment (and of course magical thinking on what's energy costing - one thing I see is bait-and-switch between Levelized Cost for RE that is for Utility Scale projects (i.e. with economies of scale) and then going after crunchy-granola agendas like community solar and individual energy [which is fine so long as you understand it's not the same levelized cost and one is not pretending that this means one doesn't have to do scale investment, doesn't have to do uncomfortable Infra investment in large scale grid expansion which might run through someone's bunnies patch, etc].
I'm writing from an energy exporting ally (and potential competitor in energy export markets) of the USA. I'm also a shareholder in a global LNG exporter with emerging interests in LNG production and export in the US.
This is probably one of the most important pieces from you that I've seen, yet.
Pessimism seems an essential part of virtue signaling on the left. Climate doomsaying is thus of a piece with Critical Race Theory’s refusal to acknowledge our tremendous (though still incomplete) progress toward racial equality.
What does pessimism have such appeal on the Left? What do they get out of it? It’s as if they think they can scold and shame Americans to voting for them.
I
Except that climate is a real, exogenous, pressing crisis. To dismiss climate issues as a mere matter of lefty pessimism is to act like the people in Arizona who don't want to be told that their ground water is running out. It will happen. The question is whether we (nationally and globally) take what actions can still be taken to slow and moderate it. An ostrich approach will guarantee that all of our problems become vastly worse by 2050.
One of the big issues I have with accepting the “climate crisis” is that the people pushing it ignore the biggest solution to their crisis “nuclear energy “. If it is such a crisis then nuclear was and is the single biggest arrow we have. But no not one mainstream national democrat politician pushes this. So the entire crisis loses a lot of credibility.
I agree about nuclear as an essential part of the answer, but the anti-nuclear strand is not the same as the focs on climate, and is in any case receding with more and more in the area accepting the need for nuclear, at least in the medium term; which is why the plans of Bill Gates and others for new-generation, smaller nuclear power plants are so important. Even the Germans (on the whole) recognize that Frau Merkel made a huge mistake in rejecting nuclear power.
Excellent thinking! You lefties just keep pushing “pressing crisis” rhetoric and we reasonable people will just keep winning.
To clarify: I don’t dismiss concern about climate change as “lefty pessimism.” I’m talking about climate doomsaying
Sadly, the tide has turned and the fringe has become the center on this and too many other issues. Unless their grandkids go to Mars with Elon Musk, they'll be among those whose suffering can be laid at the feet of arrogant climate revisionists.
Glad you find my comments reasonable, as they are intended to be. Not sure about the "robot-like", but I am a real person, responding to what seemed to be a dialogue in debate. As to "disingenuously", I have no interest in this other than concern for what my grandchildren may face in the year 2100. If that is disingenuous, so be it.
This is so common sense I am just shocked that everyone can’t see it. The only realistic way for the environmentalists to get to net zero is through nuclear energy because people demand abundant,reliable and cheap energy. Maybe somewhere several hundred years from now we will have the technology to get this from wind, water and solar but it is not happening by 2050. I use to donate to environmental groups but for the most part they have gone a bit loony. There are ways to move forward to address global warming but the Democrats don’t have it.
Wind, water, solar and nuclear can take up a very substantial part of the burden. It's not a matter of hundreds of years. It's a matter of political and economic will.
If the climate alarmists were really alarmed, they wouldn't oppose nuclear and hydro
Only a few reject nuclear and hydro. Many accept (or have come to accept) nuclear and hydro, at least for the minimum term. That's a matter of real "realism".
You don't even know what goes on your own bubble.
"Many accept (or have come to accept) nuclear and hydro"
Who exactly are these "many" people that have come to accept nuclear and hydro? They sure as hell don't work for the EPA or however many dozen government agencies that are responsible for the current regulatory environment.
I certainly would not know that only a few resist nuclear from any main stream news or what liberal politicians say. I don’t think I have ever heard even one of the top Democrat national politicians say anything significant about nuclear
Hardly only a few.
Rather too many although yes it is changing that nuclear and hydro are gaining reluctant acceptance.
But in my experience too much of that acceptance is weighted down with enough Yes Butism and Purity Pony agenda that it's not really acceptance that there is real crisis.
Yes quite right - a mix of Wind, Hydro, Solar, Geo and Nuclear is very feasible - if one is investing in the infra as well
It is not hundreds of years or even 50 years away but that does mean one has to go absolute Real Priority to building the energy infra, and not letting Business As Usual 8 Million Check boxes get in the way. The birdies etc are gonna suffer rather more from out-of-control warming than wind farms nor transmission lines.
Abundant, cheap and reliable. No it is going to take many decades for wind and solar to meet this. Maybe I exaggerated a bit but not a lot
No not decades.
My Iberian friends and colleagues in Spain, Portugal have shot up to overall grid at 60-75% avg on RE production (solar, wind, hydro) and Portugal is regularly hitting 90% grid.
They do need nuclear base add in, with expanded French interconnect and more storage
Of course there is also industrial power that still needs significant investment to electrify - but general grid add in for Iberia has occured over 10-15 years and continues.
It does mean one has to streamline permitting, and one has to invest like it's a real priority, not just an add on to the Everything Policy Bagel.
(it also means major private investment)
First both Spain and Portugal are mostly moderate climates. Secondly again one needs abundant,cheap and reliable. Look at what has happened to Germany and other nations where cheap and reliable are just not there. Look at how expensive electric cars are and their upkeep. This is not just a transitional issue. And yes it will take decades to get cheap, abundant and reliable for areas that need consistent and high amounts of energy. If it was going to happen faster we would be seeing a very different reality right now. Three years after congress passes a huge infusion of cash to push this agenda we would be seeing a lot more then we are if this was going to happen quickly. I think this unrealistic understanding of what it will really take is at the heart of the lack of support for nuclear energy
This is mere hand waving (and not particuarly well informed) - my litreal day job is investing for profit at utility scale in energy infra - so the reality is something I know inside and out my friend.
Supposed Iberian climate moderation (supposed, as Iberia is not all Med coast...) has precisely nothing to do with their success in RE generation (one can point to Norway and Sweden if you want snowy places and Denmark for less snowy but bracing cold).
German problems are due to German incoherence in policy - and frankly as Germany shut down nuclear plants and got... rebound in coal generation - their generation base is not in fact utility scale RE, it's crunch Granola Green solar PV on balconies and ... Coal plants. They are the picture of screwing up via Magical Thinking and incoherence (and not the picture of RE which they actually are not doing well at in utility scale - unlike the Iberians, unlike the Nordics).
Electric cars is ... well that is not RE generation but in fact they're not expensive to maintain and if one does not insist Mega American SUVs, quite actionable, the Chinese and the Turks are building some quite decent ones and now the French via the Dacia brand.
That said electric cars are an Everything Bagel thing - and not really frankly the key thing, utility scale RE power is.
So no, it will not take decades unless of course one insists on doing things wrong-headedly - as like US and Biden's Everything Bagel with Zero permitting reform
The problem you have is not RE, it is not reforming and ramming through energy infra and instead letting every crunch granola enviro-Left (and climate denialist righty loony tune) obstruction delay.
Iberians, Nordics have demontrated with actual speedy execution it is feasible. But one has to actually grapple with speeding permitting, and not merely use the word crisis and not actually mean it.
Such a great post, so much common sense. I don’t understand why Teixeira still aligns himself with the democrats; not saying that he should become a GOPer, but he just doesn’t belong with the current, defective, batch of democrats. We really do need a 3rd alternative.
The only criticism I have of this post is that it did not go far enough. Climate theology interlaces not just with energy, but with our safety, security, health, food supply, Malthusian population limits, and our civilizational concepts of freedom and opportunity, and how we would want to live, if given a choice.
If the climate change gods had their way, most of us would wind up living in an upgraded version of medieval feudalism; but with the internet, social media, and lots of censorship and surveillance - housing units would be very small, our horizons would be bounded by a 15 minute bike ride, and we would need to get reproduction permits.
If Greta had been around in 1492, her followers would have probably killed Columbus, and burned his three ships.
Because being a Democrat, being Left, is not about environmentalism. It's about fairness and economic redistribution. Unfortunately Democrats have gotten sidetracked to environmentalism and other luxury issues.
While some advocates may go off on damaging tangents, the basic focus of the climate issue is maintaining our "civilizational concepts of freedom and opportunity, and how we would want to live, if given a choice." There is no way to maintain anything like our present standards of living unless the climate issue is addressed effectively.
Clean energy isn't. Child cobalt miners in Africa would like to have a word with you. Have you ever seen a lithium mine? Have you ever seen the enormous trucks necessary to transport wind turbine blades to where they will be deployed? What happens to all the solar panels and wind turbines when they reach the end of their service lives? How many miles of transmission lines are needed to get electricity to the charging stations for electric cars.
All of which is quite irrelevant to the imminence of the climate problem. Those are problems that can be addressed separately (and should especially the child cobalt miners). But this comment seems to be wishing away the fundamental problem by pointing out ancillary issues.
Tell it to Ruy
I am agreeing with him and adding additional information.
You're not actually agreeing with him, you're engaging in a red herring - and the additional information is basically fallacious as to its goal.
Welcome to the real world - everything is about trade offs (not the Democratic Republic of Congo's messed up nastiness has any real connection to clean energy since if not cobalt then its child mining of gold, or diamonds etc - DRC being screwed is DRC)
RE is about decarbonisation to reduce carbon emissions for energy generation.
"clean" in some Immaculate Conceptioin sense is Green Left NGO magical thinking and nothing really to do with any modern industrial economy reality of any nature.
1. Climate change is real. It has been for thousands of years.
2. Man-made climate change is not.
3. I like Wright, but he is wrong on this, as are the radical Democrats.
4. Ice is increasing in the Arctic; sea temps are falling. Real energy realism will admit this and do away with the climate hoax once and for all.
If there's a hoax here, it's in point 4. Ice in the Arctic has decreased radically over the past 20 years and is continuing to do so. There is a vast literature on this (among other things, it's why Putin and Trump are so interested in the Arctic sea passage.
Childish. The only hoax is denialism on change
Man made climate change is absolute real - carbon emissions are what they are - which is not particularly new science as the geo-climate record already tells us what carbon dioxice parts per million in atmosphere does to the climate as we have the chemical and geological record over a couple billion years to tell us.
That humans are dumping back carbon dioxide that was locked up in the earth for the past couple hundred million years is simply mechanics.
Climate panic painting this as humans destroying the planet is of course stupid - as the planet will as in the past be quite fine - planetary ecosystems adjusted in the past to massive emmissions (of course those were more by mass volcanic action but mere mechanic there) - however human agriculture friendly ecosystem, now that's another matter
The problem with both Righty 'climate hoaxism" and Lefty "oh we're destroying the planet" is the blindness that the impact is on human economy, not on the planet
Thank you for this piece. I have to say as a member of the tribe, an academic, I'm simply exhausted by the endless moralism, the sacrifice my cohort demands that I make in the interests of the environment. I'm pretty good on the environment. I do all local errands by bike, including grocery shopping, when I pack my groceries in my backpack. I don't buy a lot of stuff and have never owned a new car. But nothing is good enough. A pal has read _The World Without Us_ and is cheered by the prospect of the human race dying out so that Nature can come back. I am not. Why this self-hatred and endless calls for self-sacrifice for the sake of Nature--red in tooth and claw?
Not mentioned in this article, and seldom mentioned anywhere in generally-available media, is that CO2 is plant food and the earth has seen a significant amount of increasing vegetation because of it. In some recent research on this subject, I ran across these facts: Commercial greenhouse operations increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere to very high levels, not sure how high but at least 1000 ppm and above, to enhance plant growth. One of the sites that provides equipment to growers to do this mentioned that plant growth stops below about 250 to 300 ppm. On another site, NOAA was panicking about - the horror! - a current atmospheric CO2 level of 427 PPM!!! Not far above plant starvation level!! To feed the population and maintain the environment we need more CO2, not less. Further, there are very complex feedback loops in the environment for CO2 emissions and sinks that we do not understand and are not included in the climate models. By the way, when you look at the real temperature data, that not contaminated by thermometers now in the city (much warmer) that used to be out in the country (more accurate readings), there has been very little to no observable warming in the last 20 years, while the models show runaway increases that diverge sharply from reality. It is very easy to manipulate computer models to show what you want them to show, and for about 30 years research grants have paid for climate catastrophe models, not reality. The funders are getting what they have paid for. However, with a little digging, you will find a huge amount of hard evidence out there that the current climate, warming from the Little Ice Age, is a completely normal variation that has happened several times in the last 3000 years. We should be getting warmer, that's the climate phase we are in.
The other thing the climate alarmists never talk about is what the optimal temperature for Earth actually is. Nobody knows but it has clearly been much warmer even in recorded history.
Very true
What if it just happens to be true that fairly drastic action is needed to avoid irreversible climate damage and that the very bad case scenarios happen to be correct? Should we just accept that disaster because working class voters don't like to accept that conclusion? The whole logic of this argument is that the Democrats should dump their views to please the working class whether they are right or wrong. Is that really what you think?
We don’t live in a world where the working class won’t have a huge say in what happens. So with that what is your proposal. You can’t force it down their throats so you need a plan B. Sticking your head in the sand as you seem to think they are doing doesn’t work. You need a plan B. That is what this article is saying
I am not sure we disagree. Obviously, fear of climate change is not moving sufficient voters to win enough elections. So something has to change. One thing would be to just do whatever we think will win elections which seems to be the unstated premise of the article. I don't think that would actually win elections on this issue because adopting the position advocated would probably lose many more votes from those concerned about climate change than it would win from the middle class. But leaving that quibble aside, are there new approaches that would win elections that don't compromise the environment? That is what we need and cannot be found just by reading polls.
Once again, falling into the trap of denigrating climate concern with the scornful "climate catastrophism", if this is "climate realism" it once again refuses to acknowledge the reality and imminence of the climate crisis. Climate is not an issue on which polling is very relevant; it's not a matter of evaluating people's preferences for spending money on day care or whatever; it's a matter of facing a real, exogenous challenge. Focusing on the polls and using the minimizing rhetoric is irresponsible and ultimately damaging. What is needed is some kind of leadership to dig back into a clear-eyed climate approach that gets past the "drill, baby drill" absurdities of Trumpism (appealing though they seem to be to a lot of people) and defines policies with some hope of addressing the issue before it is too late. People don't like complexity, which is one of Trump's strengths, but they need to be led to see the real dangers we face (including floods of climate migration, already beginning). True "climate realism" would acknowledge the trade-offs, accept the need for fossil fuels during the transition, accept nuclear power, focus on ways of avoiding impoverishing social and economic damage (which should, in fact, be entirely feasible), stress the urgency of the problem and the investment required, but not fall into the implicit denialism of "realism" as defined in this article.
The floods of migration have much more to do with the Forever Wars and the generous welfare states in the developed countries.
That may be true to some degree, but future floods will be driven in large part by climate change making life intolerable in tropical countries. It's already starting in Central America to some extent, but will get massively worse.
Tropical countries are already hot, by definition. Drought or flood can push people out but the water cycle is closed. It can change form-liquid, ice or vapor, fresh or salt- but there is always the same amount. Global warming has the potential to move it around but nobody knows quite how. In the Roman Warm period, North Africa was the granary of Rome because it was wetter than today. This may or may not recur. Mayan and Ancestral Puebloan civilizations collapsed because of prolonged drought (probably) which means they must have been adapted to wetter conditions.
That's all true but does not address the issues of (a) how hot is hot, and several tropical places have already come to the verges of uninhabitability (e.g. Northern India: always very hot in the summer, now dangerously so), and how comparable that is to the Roman Warm, etc. and (b) the sizes of the affected populations (probably much larger than the periods cited). The speed of change and the ability of populations to migrate now will also very much affect the outcome, of course.
N India isn't the tropics. It is subtropical of the continental variety. It is a far north as N. Africa which is also very hot in the summer and rather cold in the winter. Presumeably warmer, if wetter during the Roman warm period. Pretty much every winter thousands die in cold snaps in Delhi.
Be that as it may, Northern India is one of the many places that seem analytically destined for radical heat and environmental degradation, in the "global South", whether technically tropical or not. Cold snaps in the winter are irrelevant, and may reflect more extreme weather events. None of this in any way justifies ignoring the climate crisis or pretending it will go way, including the predictable migration effects.
As an actual energy investor with renewable energy focus (and so boht professionally and financially highly motivated for RE or broadly really non-hydrocarbon based energy generation), I think it's overdrawn to jump to "dump net zero" BUT correct to highlight the profound unrealism of the Democrat's net zero magical thinking and mandate-sans-reform goals. Net zero on a market basis (although not on the hard diktat timeline goals of the Eco-Left that really is seeking anti-capitalist de-growth objectives) with a strong eye to energy costing (i.e. not at any cost as this will wreck RE support) is a valid goal.
Not much comment above is made on also the Democrats "Everything Bagelism" Lefty policies into every policy which is loading on decarbonisation all kinds of extraneous agenda items that load up cost and casue delays - this though aligns with the Liberal Patriot's overall critics. Just as an example on my own professional front, in interaction with USGov people on RE initiative in overseas RE backing, among the things they inserted into conditions for them was extraneous engagements like "employing the handicapped" (ummm okay... very relevant to doing utility scale solar plant installations at low cost and in tight time frame). We skipped of course as cost, as time delays.... If it is an energy crisis - then treat it like a crisis in reality and not load every initiative with every Progressive societal transformation agenda item - which may be very worthwhile on their own but loading everything onto every policy - well it's like adding mass to a rocket, you weight it down and escalate what's needed to get it off the ground. too many things at once you end up with Sporks and not proper tools.
The Fail of Biden admin on IRA seems to me to be this - loading everything down with multiple agendas at once and so delay, cost, and then Not Getting Done.
The purism (and capitivism to the Activist Groups that oppose any dirty compromises) that led them not to grab the opportunity for energy project permitting reform to accelerate utility scale investment especially in energy distribution infra as otherwise we're looking at a total trainwreck of
Another area of muddiness is allowing the "progressive" fraction drive anti-market hidden agendas that undercut doing scale energy investment (and of course magical thinking on what's energy costing - one thing I see is bait-and-switch between Levelized Cost for RE that is for Utility Scale projects (i.e. with economies of scale) and then going after crunchy-granola agendas like community solar and individual energy [which is fine so long as you understand it's not the same levelized cost and one is not pretending that this means one doesn't have to do scale investment, doesn't have to do uncomfortable Infra investment in large scale grid expansion which might run through someone's bunnies patch, etc].
Ruy
I'm writing from an energy exporting ally (and potential competitor in energy export markets) of the USA. I'm also a shareholder in a global LNG exporter with emerging interests in LNG production and export in the US.
This is probably one of the most important pieces from you that I've seen, yet.
Please do not stop, nor hide your light.
Jessica Williams
10Jan2025