“There’s a long and sad history of efforts by industries and interest groups to reshape the discussion of climate science and undercut the overwhelming evidence that greenhouse gases produced by humans are leading us to global catastrophe.”

– John Schwartz, “How the Riot Ties In with Climate Disinformation.” New York Times, January 13, 2021.

With the election and transfer of power to Biden/Harris, it is climate alarmism galore. The Gods gave us the Pandemic, the landed US hurricanes, and the California wildfires for a reason–to win an election. And the Powers in the sky gave us the Capital riot to help cement the policy momentum of the ‘existential threat.’

Back to the Times‘ Schwartz. “For those of us who cover climate change for a living,” he states,

the blatant lies about election fraud that fed the mob [of January 6, 2021] felt very familiar. A big part of our job is dealing with the disinformation that people and institutions spread to muddy the waters about climate change.

Lies? Disinformation? An optimistic view of future climate has a strong basis in settled science (CO2 fertilization, modest primary warming), just as climate pessimistic has a more speculative basis (as in debated feedback effects to elevate the initial warming).

A Half-century of Exaggeration, Doom

The poor track record of critics of the high-energy, carbon-based economy inspires scepticism towards their sharp turns toward climate alarmism.  Some glaring predictive errors by well-known critics have required substantial, albeit reluctant, revision.[1]

After stating in the 1970s (along with John Holdren) that “it is questionable whether potential resources can be converted into available supplies at economic costs society can pay,” Paul Ehrlich admitted in the 1990s that, “the prices of more raw materials are indeed dropping than are rising.”[2] 

Ehrlich’s conclusion in the 1970s that Los Angeles’s smog problem was incompatible with continued reliance on the internal combustion engine was corrected by his acknowledgement in the 1990s of the “salient success story” of more cars and less pollution.[3] 

Ehrlich’s original concern about global cooling and global warming led to a self-correction that global warming was the apparent problem.[4]

Paul Ehrlich’s protégé, John Holdren, an environmental scientist and energy policy specialist at Harvard University, once feared that the potential death toll from global warming could reach a billion people by 2020.[5]  Yet Holdren recently opined: “That the impacts of global climate disruption may not become the dominant sources of environmental harm to humans for yet a few more decades cannot be a great consolation.”[6] 

In other signs of retreat or, at least, mixed thoughts, Ehrlich and Holdren have respectively warned against rash policy action based on “worst-case prognoses”[7] and acknowledged affordable energy as “the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.”[8]  All of these revisions have been toward energy and climate realism, the battle cry of many of us.

Some have suggested that yesterday’s alarmists were really “whistle-blowers” whose “important early warnings … averted … disasters.”[9]  But society has been fortunate to have tuned out alarmism. 

Fearing coal depletion, William Stanley Jevons warned the UK in 1865, “To allow commerce to proceed until the course of civilization is weakened and overturned is like killing the goose to get the golden egg.”[10]  As it turned out, domestic coal supplies were not depleting but expanding for Jevons lifetime and well thereafter before political problems sent the industry in decline. But the UK enjoyed a half century of economic growth that a Bureau of Coal Supply and Allocation could have arrested.

What if the alarms of Paul Ehrlich or John Holdren had inspired a policy of oil rationing and a phase out of the internal combustion engine in the 1970s?  What if power plant construction in the US had been ordered to “cease immediately … except in special circumstances” as recommended by Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman in 1971?[11]   What if the dream of Holdren and Ehrlich in 1973—“a massive campaign must be launched to . . . de-develop the United States” [12]—had been enacted to control energy usage?  A major decarbonisation plan—all in the name of avoiding catastrophic climate change—poses the same risk for the UK and EU today.

---

[1] For a critical review of the energy pronouncements of Paul Ehrlich, the father of the modern energy Malthusians, see Robert Bradley, Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability (Washington: American Legislative Exchange Council, 2000), pp. 126-49.  A critical review of the energy alarms of Paul Holdren can be found at https://ift.tt/3I8IwLu.

[2] Bradley, Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability, pp. 130-34.

[3] Ibid., p. 136.

[4] Ibid., pp. 144-45.

[5] “As University of California physicist John Holdren has said, it is possible that carbon dioxide-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020.”  Paul Ehrlich, The Machinery of Nature (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), p. 274.

[6] John Holdren, “Memorandum to the President: The Energy-Climate Challenge,” in Donald Kennedy and John Riggs, eds., U.S. Policy and the Global Environment: Memos to the President (Washington: The Aspen Institute, 2000), p. 23.

[7] Bradley, Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability, pp. 118-19.

[8] John Holdren, “Meeting the Energy Challenge,” Science, February 9, 2001, p. 945.

[9] Richard Norgaard, “Optimists, Pessimists, and Science,” BioScience, March 2002, p. 288.  Also see Michael Grubb, “Relying on Manna from Heaven?” Science,  294 (2001), pp. 1285-87.

[10] Jevons, William Stanley, The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal Mines (London: Macmillan and Company, 1865), p. 345.

[11] Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How to Be a Survivor (Rivercity, MA: Rivercity Press, 1971, 1975), p. 72.

[12] John Holdren, Anne Ehrlich, and Paul Ehrlich, Human Ecology:  Problems and Solutions (San Francisco; W.H. Freeman and Company, 1973), p. 279.

I have previously highlighted DeSmog pieces on climate and energy realists to show that simply imparting the subject’s views create good analysis. DeSmog might think they are prima facie hit pieces, but they are the opposite! Back door justice, perhaps….

Note the guilty-as-charged profiles on Robert Bryce, Isaac Orr, Derrick Hollie, John Christy, and myself. Same for DeSmog’s analysis on the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Another thing: DeSmog has done so many profiles that it looks like we are in the majority. And in a sense we are! The public is not buying in with climate catastrophe; one recent poll indicates that climate change is natural and

Enter Vaclav Smil, a truth teller (but a Malthusian nonetheless). Major excerpts of the Smil profile at DeSmog follow:

————————————-

Stance on Climate Change

March 21, 2018

In a profile in Science magazine, Smil constructed his own models of how carbon dioxide emissions might affect climate and found it “wanting.” “I have too much respect for reality,” Smil said. [1]

The Science article writes that Smil “accepts the sobering reality of climate change—though he is dubious of much climate modeling—and believes we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.” Smil, however, is skeptical of a rapid shift to alternative forms of energy. [1]

January 2014

Writing in Global Energy Affairs, Smil said: [7]

“[B]ecause the world is so heavily dependent on fossil fuels the greatest challenge may be the way we will cope with global climate change.”

“Unfortunately, our models of global warming cannot tell us with a high level of confidence how rapid that change will be and how high the temperatures will rise in 50 or 100 years: difference of a single degree of Celsius translate into very different environmental and economic consequences. If we knew what was coming with certainty we could decide which one of the two main courses of action – gradual adaptation or an all-out effort aimed at emission reduction – is the more rational choice. But we do not, and this means that our production and use of energy, and hence our economic and social well-being, will continue to unfold in a world of profound uncertainty. That, too, is one constant that will not change for decades to come.”

July 30, 2010

In a book published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) press entitled “Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate,” writing in a section on natural carbon sequestration, Smil wrote: [5]

“Global warming will […]  lengthen the growing seasons and intensify water cycling—that is, the overall amount of precipitation will increase—in many regions. This combination will result in higher plant productivity, a trend that was already evident throughout most of the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century. But what the long-term effect of such changes will be is not clear. Will the additional productivity be promptly negated by higher rates of respiration in a warmer world? Will most of its increment be stored in long-lived tissues, such as trunks and major roots, or tissues with rapid turnover, such as foliage and fine roots? And, most fundamentally, will global warming eventually convert forests from carbon sinks to carbon sources?”

2008

According to a review of Smil’s book, The Worst Is Yet To Be, he estimates a temperature increase of 2.5 to 3 degrees Celsius over the next hundred years. [8]

While on sea levels, he says that “a cautious conclusion” would be that they will rise about 15 centimeters by 2050—“clearly a noncatastrophic change.”

According to Smil, the dollar impact of moderate global warming would be a “a trivial sum in all affluent countries.” He supports this with research from William Nordhaus.

2000

“[C]limate change resulting from emissions of CO2 (and from releases of other greenhouse gases) will have an indisputably global effect,” Smil wrote in a 2000 report titled “Energy in the Twentieth Century” in Annual Review of Energy and the Environment. [9]

Fracking

“Surely, hydraulic fracturing will not invariably poison the air, will not cause spates of local mini-earthquakes, and will not produce flaming faucets in all nearby areas (the three frightening clichés advanced by its opponents) — but the activity, especially if done in thousands of hurried repetitions and sometimes without careful planning, has the potential to be often unpleasant and disruptive, and sometimes outright damaging,” Smil wrote in an article at the American Enterprise Institute’s publication, The American. [10]

Peak Oil

“Obviously, there will come a time when global oil extraction will reach its peak, but even that point may be of little practical interest as it could be followed by a prolonged, gentle decline or by an extended output plateau at a somewhat lower level than peak production. At the beginning of 2013, there are no signs that the beginning of this new oil era (regardless of its specific course) is imminent, and forecasting its onset remains an exercise in futility. Only one thing is abundantly clear to me: for the past 15 years I have been quite confident that there is no imminent danger of any sharp peak of global oil extraction followed by an inexorable production slide — and early in 2013 that confidence is greatly strengthened by new facts. Is it too much to hope that even some catastrophists and peak-oil cultists will find it impossible to ignore those numbers?” Smil wrote in The American. [11]

Nuclear Energy

“Public unease about safety and problems with costs, liability, and permanent storage do not make a flourishing nuclear industry impossible, but they do demonstrate the enormous influence that mistaken public risk perception can have on government policy and reveal the consistently inept bureaucratic handling of the challenge so far,” Smil wrote at the American Enterprise Institute‘s blog, AEIdeas. [12]

Nuclear energy’s discouraging record is even more unfortunate given that nuclear generation is the only low-carbon-footprint energy option readily available on a gigawatt-level scale. This is why nuclear power should be part of any serious attempt to reduce the rate of global warming. At the same time, it would be naïve to think that nuclear power could be (as some suggest) the single most effective tool for combating climate change in the next ten to 30 years. The best hope is for it to offer a modest contribution.”

Key Quotes

2018

In an interview with UM Today, Smil said: [13]

Interviewer: “Tell me more about what’s happening on the energy front.”

Smil: “We haven’t made a single correct move in energy.” […]

“Hydroelectricity is the best, the most sustainable—I hate that word, sustainable. That’s the best form of renewable energy there is today, right? Because it runs all the time. Wind—well, you know, even in Manitoba, it’s not there 75 per cent of the time…. People feel constrained to be publicly correct to build a wind turbine farm…. Why do we do these stupidities, right? Well, because we feel renewable energy is only solar and wind, right? Not hydro apparently. Most people don’t think that way.”

Interviewer: “You mentioned you dislike the word sustainability.”

Smil: “Yeah, absolutely hate it [the word sustainability] because there is no such thing. Sustainability cannot be defined. Sustainable for what? Over next year? Over 10 years? Over a millennium? On a local basis, on a planetary basis? I mean, there are so many time and space dimensions to it you cannot define what is sustainable. If somebody is boasting that what they are doing is sustainable, it’s a total laugh. There is no sustainable thing.”

March 21, 2018

In an interview with Science magazine, Smil said: [1]

“I have never been wrong on these major energy and environmental issues because I have nothing to sell.”

 “We have been increasing our global dependence on fossil fuels. Not decreasing.”

November 2015

In an article in the OECD Observer, Smil wrote: [14]

“A shift to nuclear energy or to modern conversions of renewable energy flows was always inevitable. If fuel resources and technical abilities to recover them at affordable price were the only limitations, we could anticipate at least another century or more of coal, oil and gas. Global warming has made the transition to non-carbon energies a matter of some urgency, but we must nevertheless be realistic about the size and speed of such a shift.”

“A combination of subsidy changes–removing them from fossil fuels, enhancing them for new renewables–mandated production targets and intensified R&D could accelerate the transition to renewables, but it is unlikely to displace all fossil fuels in a few decades, particularly as many low income countries will rely on them for their development.”

“We should not forget that the environmentally least disruptive action is not to turn to new technical solutions to produce more energy in different ways, but simply to do with less. ‘Less is more’ has never been more desirable than in the case of tackling the rising levels of atmospheric CO2.

September 13, 2010

Writing at the American Enterprise Institute‘s blog, AEIdeas: [15]

“The myth that the future belongs to electric cars is one of the original misconceptions of the modern energy era, dating back to the introduction of the very first passenger vehicles.”

“’Flipping the switch’ and going electric will not solve America’s automotive dependence on imported oil, either in the near- or long-term. A far better use of resources would be to focus on the development of more efficient gasoline-powered engines; there is no reason the U.S. fleet should not average 50 mpg rather than today’s average of less than 25 mpg.”

September 8, 2010

Writing at the American Enterprise Institute’s blog, AEIdeas: [16]

“A new energy myth was created by the country’s most famous Nobel Prize-winner in July 2008 when former Vice President Al Gore claimed that America’s entire thermal electricity generation industry could be replaced by ‘green’ alternatives in a single decade: ‘Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable, and transformative.’ Transformative it would be, but it would certainly not be affordable, and, even if it were, it could never be accomplished in such a short period of time.”

July 30, 2010

In ”Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate” Smil wrote that judgements about coal as an energy source have been “unfair”: [5]

“While fossil fuels remain the very foundation of modern economic growth, spreading prosperity and a decent quality of life, they are no longer seen in that light. Rather, they are perceived as undesirable, outright dangerous, or even immoral, since their continuing use is thought to pose an unprecedented threat to the survival of modern civilization. Growing fears about rapid global warming caused by emissions of CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels are behind this increasingly stringent judgment, and these fears feed (mostly unrealistic) visions of an accelerated global transition to nonfossil energies.”

“Coal has always been more polluting in terms of particulate matter and sulfur oxide emissions than other hydrocarbons, and because it also has the highest CO2 emissions per unit of released energy, it is seen as the most undesirable choice. A closer look at coal’s attributes and the history of its use shows that this judgment is unfair and suggests that if the fuel’s conversion were done with the most efficient techniques available today, we would have no reason to view it so negatively.  Crude oil—largely because of the continuing indispensability of refined fuels for the entire transportation sector occupies a more exalted place than coal. Although its considerable environmental impact is a concern, the main worry about oil is that its global extraction may peak in the very near future, and that this peak will not be followed by a prolonged production plateau but, rather, by a steep decline that will bring a multitude of economic and social hardships—in the most extreme versions, the end of modern civilization. That is why the first myth I debunk in this part of the book is the peak  oil myth.”

November 19, 2008

“To think that the United States can install in 10 years wind and solar generating capacity equivalent to that of thermal power plants that took nearly 60 years to construct is delusional,” Smil wrote in The American. [17]

May 8, 2008

In a letter to Nature, Smil said he largely agreed with a Nature commentary by Roger Pielke Jr. and others about stabilizing carbon emissions: [18], [19]

“I largely agree with the overall conclusion of Pielke et al. that the IPCC assessment is overly optimistic,” Smil wrote. “But I fear that the situation is even worse than the authors imply.”

“The speed of transition from a predominantly fossil-fuelled world to conversions of renewable flows is being grossly overestimated: all energy transitions are multigenerational affairs with their complex infrastructural and learning needs. Their progress cannot substantially be accelerated either by wishful thinking or by government ministers’ fiats.”

Key Deeds

June 28, 2012

Smil wrote an article at IEEE Spectrum titled “A Skeptic Looks at Alternative Energy.” In the article, Smil contends that in “the world of new renewable energies […] subsidies rule—and consumers pay.” Smil argues that reducing emissions in the Western world would be “utterly swamped” by increases in coal use in China and India: [20]

“The ultimate justification for alternative energy centers on its mitigation of global warming: Using wind, solar, and biomass sources of energy adds less greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. But because greenhouse gases have global effects, the efficacy of this substitution must be judged on a global scale. And then we have to face the fact that the Western world’s wind and solar contributions to the reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions are being utterly swamped by the increased burning of coal in China and India.”

November 15, 2011

Writing at The American—the journal of the industry-funded American Enterprise Institute—Smil argued against delaying the Keystone XL pipeline. He wrote: “Obama’s delaying consideration of the Keystone XL pipeline is what is called a spherically perfect decision, because no matter from which angle you look at it, it looks perfectly the same: wrong.” [6]

Smil writes that CO2 emissions from the Keystone KL pipeline would be dwarfed by emissions from China, using this as an argument for why the pipeline would have little impact on climate change. He wrote: “If there would be no oil-sand oil produced in Alberta to feed the XL pipeline and then refined in the United States and the products burned in American vehicles, then the Chinese would generate an additional mass of CO2 equivalent to that prevented burden in less than two weeks.”

He concluded: “By preventing the oil flow from Canada, the United States will thus deliberately deprive itself of new manufacturing and construction jobs; it will not slow down the increase of global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion (OK, by two weeks, perhaps); it will almost certainly empower China; and it will make itself strategically even more vulnerable by becoming further dependent on declining, unstable, and contested overseas crude oil supplies. That is what is called a spherically perfect decision, because no matter from which angle you look at it, it looks perfectly the same: wrong.”

July 30, 2010

Smil wrote a book published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) press entitled “Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate.” [5]

In the book, Smil outlines a number of “myths.” The first supposed myth is regarding electric vehicles: “The myth that the future belongs to electric vehicles is one of the original misconceptions of the modern energy era, going back to the very introduction of the first practical passenger cars,” Smil wrote. “[I]t will be decades, rather than years, before we can judge to what extent electric cars offer a real substitute for vehicles powered by internal combustion engines and contribute to more efficient personal transportation in the United States.”

He describes nuclear energy as a “successful failure.” According to Smil: “Nuclear power should be part of any serious attempt to reduce the rate of global warming; at the same time, it would be naïve to think that it could be (as some suggest) the single most effective component of this challenge during the next ten to thirty years. The best hope is for it to offer a modest contribution.”

——————————-

Vaclav Smil is basically right. Climate alarm is much less certain than energy density, and energy density runs the world.

“I’ve never felt more hopeful. We really can achieve a goal as bold as a trillion trees,” said Jad Daley, president of American Forests, which will lead the push. “I’ve never seen a convergence of interest and support from such a diverse coalition.”

– Politico Morning Energy, August 27, 2020.

Cronyism can take many forms. It most commonly is when a corporation teams with government for a special favor. It can also take place when a nonprofit teams with corporations with government favor in the background.

TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF: Several dozen major U.S. companies, nonprofit groups and local governments announced today a commitment to plant and conserve 855 million trees by 2030, in a step toward fulfilling the global Trillion Tree Initiative that the president backed in January.

The pledges, which are anticipated to cover 2.8 million acres with trees, build on the political effort to restore forests as a way to fight climate change and create jobs in rural and low-income areas to help the country recover from recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Pro’s Anthony Adragna reports.

“I’ve never felt more hopeful. We really can achieve a goal as bold as a trillion trees,” said Jad Daley, president of American Forests, which will lead the push. “I’ve never seen a convergence of interest and support from such a diverse coalition.”

Among those offering pledges are large corporations, such as Salesforce, Mastercard and ACRE Investment Management, as well as major nonprofits, such as Arbor Day Foundation and the National Forest Foundation, and the city governments of Dallas, Boise and Detroit.

The pledges will take a number of forms. While some companies are committing to a specific number of physical trees, others are pledging financial backing or combining tree planting with activities like nursery expansion and workforce development. Bank of America, for example, will commit $300 billion “to mobilize capital and develop solutions to climate change” that in part would help develop a voluntary carbon offset market to leverage into more planting and restoration projects.

It starts with exaggeration, continues with alarmism, and ends with totalitarianism. The “existential crisis” of man-made climate change.

“The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.” (James Hansen, Guardian, February 14, 2009)

Totalitarianism

“When governments are confronted by collapse, they too often resort to totalitarian methods to keep order in the face of chaos. Given the increasingly precarious state of our climate, it is not hard to foresee governments resorting to permanent states of martial law. And it is not hard to imagine a short-term state of emergency morphing into a long-term state of siege.” (Ross Gelbspan, GRIST, April 27, 2010)

“If we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate change, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership.”

“To engage with these challenges, we need to do more than upgrade the powerlines or stage a public takeover of the utility companies. We need to rethink the ideologies that govern how we plan and build our homes.”

“The valorizing of homeownership and property rights results not only in increased exposure to climate-change-fueled fires, but also in our inadequate responses to them…. There is hardly any emphasis on more collective action or larger-scale spatial planning, except for reassessing traffic flow for evacuations. Any suggestion that we might discourage rebuilding on privately owned land is promptly tamped down.”

Discussions have surged over the last two years about the need for coastal communities to retreat further inland as they face rising sea levels—a seemingly more imminent threat. How should we broach the more uncertain risks of fire?”

“This is not an indictment of individual homeowners, who are only trying to find stability through the sole system that has been offered to them.”

“The vulnerable affluence of Porter Ranch and Granada Hills, and the exposed tranquility of Paradise, are two representations of the same westward-expansionist frontier thinking that underlies modern life in the United States. This is the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal, transmuted through the urban, petrochemical century.

“Cheap energy—both the monetary price of subsidized gasoline and the hidden costs of fossil fuels—and the idealization of individual homeownership have created the scorching landscapes we face today.”

“Cheap energy is untenable in the face of climate emergency. And individual homeownership should be seriously questioned.”

“If we can reframe debates about the future of cities beyond rote acceptance of property ownership, it will free up space for us to think about new, more just, and climate-attuned modes of urban living. Responding to climate change in just ways entails radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions, protecting against or adapting to climate change impacts, and doing all of it without further marginalizing oppressed groups of people.”

“Given the scope and scale of the climate crisis, it is shocking that we are being presented with so few serious, comprehensive alternatives for how to live. We need another kind of escape route—away from our ideologies of ownership and property, and toward more collective, healthy, and just cities.”

– Kian Goh, “California’s Fires Prove the American Dream Is Flammable.” The Nation, December 23, 2019.