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Political leaders must admit that, short of a technological breakthrough, the world will need an ample supply of carbon fuel for decades to remain prosperous and free

Wall Street Journal Editorial, July 18, 2022

Soaring oil and natural gas prices. Electricity grids on the brink of failure. Energy shortages in Europe, with worse to come. The free world’s growing strategic vulnerability to Vladimir Putin and other dictators. These are some of the unfolding results in the last year caused by the West’s utopian dream to punish fossil fuels and sprint to a world driven solely by renewable energy.

It’s time for political leaders to recognize this manifest debacle and admit that, short of a technological breakthrough, the world will need an ample supply of carbon fuel for decades to remain prosperous and free.
Consider the costly consequences of misguided climate regulation, subsidies and mandates:

Generating electricity and operating buildings are responsible for half of global energy demand and CO2 emissions. Nuclear power can be the cheapest, fastest way to provide reliable heat and power and to halve emissions

By Robert Har­graves, July 14, 2022, Wall Street Journal

The rising cost of energy makes winter expensive. The price of heating oil in New England rose from $3 a gallon to $5 last winter, with $6 possible this year in some areas as the war in Ukraine disrupts energy markets. Natural-gas prices may more than double heating costs this winter. Nuclear power offers a solution.

Nuclear plants heat water, producing steam that spins turbine generators. The turbines convert about a third of the steam’s heat into electricity. The other two-thirds is wasted, typically absorbed by flowing river or ocean water or cooling towers.

Cogeneration is a way to use rejected heat in buildings. Pipes circulate hot water or steam in district heating systems such as those at Columbia and New York universities. Consolidated Edison, in New York City, operates the world’s largest district heating system.

Canadians must understand that ‘net-zero’ policies mean decay and decline, not deliverance

By Kenneth P. Green, Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

A new (and profoundly bad) policy idea has gripped the world’s climate-obsessed leaders to address scenarios mostly generated by their own imaginative (and often wrong) predictive climate models. Basically, economic development must stop in 2050, and then decline as rapidly as possible afterward. This is the big “net-zero” crusade of the World Economic Forum, and naturally the Trudeau government is onboard.

Of course, the stated goal is to get to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, preparatory to a hard phase-down to zero total emissions as quickly as humanly possible. But since under all current and known technology, GHG emissions are inextricably bound to energy use, stopping growth in GHG emissions is simply stopping growth. It has to be. We can maybe use some animal cleverness to soften the impacts, but the destination is the same.

Despite the current hysteria, we have arguably never been less vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the climate

By Derek Burney, August 20, 2022

Record heat waves in North America, Europe and elsewhere gave new life to climate change crusaders who get headlines predicting apocalypse tomorrow. Global temperatures might be rising but that is not creating a dangerous, more cataclysmic world because, thanks to economic growth and material development, human societies are more resilient and more adaptable. Moreover, politicians who focus singularly on climate change ignore the fact that people today are more concerned about inflation, especially rising food and energy prices.

As Michael Shellenberger noted in his book Apocalypse Never, there has been a 92 per cent decline in the decadal death toll from natural disasters since its peak in the 1920s. Despite the current hysteria, we have arguably never been less vulnerable and better able to cope with the vicissitudes of the climate.

Western societies are becoming richer but, as Spiked columnist Tim Black writes, they “were also increasingly lacking both moral and cultural belief in themselves. … The future itself was starting to loom up before them as a series of potential threats, from pandemics and nuclear wars to ecological collapse.” Apocalyptic imagination is stimulated by fear of the future.

Corporations and utopians are offering authoritarian solutions to crises only democracy and free markets can solve

By Jordan Peterson, August 15, 2022, The Telegraph

Deloitte is the largest “professional services network” in the world. Headquartered in London, it is also one of the big four global accounting companies, offering audit, consulting, risk advisory, tax and legal services to corporate clients.

With a third of a million professionals operating on those fronts worldwide, and as the third-largest privately owned company in the US, Deloitte is a behemoth with numerous and far-reaching tentacles.

In short: it is an entity we should all know about, not least because such enterprises no longer limit themselves to their proper bailiwick (profit-centred business strategising, say), but – consciously or not – have assumed the role as councillors to believers in unchecked globalisation whose policies have sparked considerable unrest around the world.

To meet the 2040 objective at least eight more projects the size of Site C and Muskrat Falls are required. How likely is that?

By Kent Zehr, May 13, 2019

This article first appeared on the Friends of Science website and has been slightly edited. For the original article, click here.

The Canadian government under Justin Trudeau has stated that by 2040 all vehicles sold in Canada will be zero emission vehicles, generally meaning rechargeable electric vehicles.

While projecting the usage and mileage of such vehicles is difficult and subject to interpretation and speculation, the amount of energy being expended by that sector of the economy today is measured and reported, which means we can have some idea of the conditions that must exist for all vehicles in Canada to be electric in 2040.

At perfect efficiency (which is impossible), more than 10,000 megawatts of additional electrical generation capacity are required for Canada to be 100% electric passenger cars by 2040.

A political solution to acid rain, pollution, and the ozone layer, was possible because these solutions cost much less than abandoning fossil fuels

By Ross McKitrick, July 26, 2022

Twitter recently decided I needed to see an exchange between some angry greens and snide conservatives that went something like this:

Snide conservative: Greens have been telling us for decades to panic about overpopulation, acid rain, pollution, the ozone layer and now climate change. Yawn. Angry greens: Yeah, but that’s because we took action and fixed all those issues, but now we’re ignoring the climate crisis because the good conservatives who used to care are all gone and now all we have are bad conservatives who hate the planet (and are stupid).

Twitter is a factory of sloganeering, insults and cheap shots, but unfortunately it also seems to be the place where a lot of journalists form their views on things, so it’s worthwhile to talk this spat through. For context, while the above exchange was happening the news from Reuters was “Global 2021 coal-fired electricity generation surges to record high.”

Is that because stupid planet-hating conservatives are in charge everywhere? Hardly.

Climate change has become a religious movement, based on dogmatic belief rather than scientific facts. 

by Michael Blair, August 8, 2022

Climate alarmism has captured the minds of political leaders across the globe. But why is this alarmism accepted so easily by scientists, the media and the public in the face of so little actual scientific evidence?

Millions of people share a common belief. This belief is backed by intellectuals who claim to have deep understanding of the issues facing mankind. The intellectuals have published erudite papers reviewed and adopted by their peers. Their papers are collected and published in comprehensive outpourings of their writings.

They are concerned that humanity may suffer if the issues they see are not dealt with. They have prescriptive remedies and are intolerant of any dissent from their closely held beliefs. Many of them occupy positions of great status and power in society.