Human Flourishing Requires More Fossil Fuel Use, Not Less

To raise up the global population from poverty, disease, illiteracy and other ills, now is the time to double down on fossil fuels.
Epstein’s ‘Fossil Future’
Guest Blogger
“Epstein focuses on the ‘big picture’ facts of how fossil fuels are helping the world’s populations to live longer, better, safer lives, while managing the side-effects of increasing CO2 emissions.”
The result is a reframed energy/climate discussion in his 430-page tome, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas – Not Less . . .

. . . What does the future hold? In Fossil Future, Epstein, applying his distinctive “human flourishing framework” to the latest evidence, comes to the shocking conclusion that the benefits of fossil fuels will continue to far outweigh their side effects—including climate impacts—for generations to come. The path to global human flourishing, Epstein argues, is a combination of using more fossil fuels, getting better at “climate mastery,” and establishing “energy freedom” policies that allow nuclear and other truly promising alternatives to reach their full long-term potential.

Today’s pervasive claims of imminent climate catastrophe and imminent renewable energy dominance, Epstein shows, are based on what he calls the “anti-impact framework”—a set of faulty methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values that have caused the media’s designated experts to make wildly wrong predictions about fossil fuels, climate, and renewables for the last fifty years. Deeply researched and wide-ranging, this book will cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about the future of our energy use, our environment, and our climate.

 

An alternative perspective:

There's a Way to End Energy Poverty—And It Has the Side Effect of Making Fossil Fuels Obsolete



Almost half of the [African] continent’s 1.3 billion population live without electricity, which destroys opportunities for education, jobs and adequate medical care. That’s why the U.N. has set the global goal of providing electricity by 2030 to 600 million people who are currently without it. Achieving that target will require the participation of a range of players: large organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation; development institutions like the World Bank; the governments of African countries; and entrepreneurial minigrid utility companies like Energicity. Together, building on successes of recent years, we should aim to provide 6 million additional people with sustainable electricity in 2022, to put us on a pathway to reaching 600 million by 2030. To do so, all participants need to embrace new strategies over the next 12 months.

The results of fossil-fuel-based, centralized, power-plant strategies of the past 50 years speak for themselves: high levels of pollution and slow rollouts due to high construction and fuel costs. Instead, we need to focus on minigrid-based electricity powered by solar power and batteries, which can provide 24-hour clean energy. And because they are decentralized—with the electricity that each community needs provided by solar farms in the area...

 

Having actually lived in Africa for twelve years, I can say with confidence that this alternative has no chance to succeed.

 

Unlike the smashing success of the fossil fuel initiatives?

 

The build-out of cellular telephone networks, very much a smashing success, would be the model.

 

Sure - and why can't smaller substations in suitable instances be powered on site by solar? Saves carting around diesel everywhere.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.es...rs-to-connect-10-million-people-in-drc/?amp=1

 

Most basically because the solar panels will be stolen, as will the works of the smaller substations.

 

Yes, but so too would a diesel engine.

 

But not a large natural gas or coal-fired power plant. And with large power plant operations comes the revenue to support security for facilities.

 

I'll partially agree.

I still think it's worth pursuing. Renewables power around 3-4% of sub-saharan Africa. That may not sound like much but I bet there are a lot of schools and that are grateful, even if they have intermittent problems, such as theft. Corruption affects everything in Africa. Also, renewables can also be built on a large scale, which is more difficult to steal.

 

Fair enough.

 

Here's an excellent video presentation.
Energy Crisis LIES And SOLUTIONS | Alex Epstein
Charles Rotter
Alex Epstein joins the show to discuss his new book Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less.

 

Problem is, power can't be broadcast, so distribution grids are vulnerable to theft of cables. It's very hard to get anything done when you can't count on anything you need to use still being there the next day, and people consider it reasonable to inflict $1M in property damage to secure $10 worth of loot. Sadly, African economic development might have to await low-cost AI-based security systems.

 

How do you think the USA became the greatest country on Earth? It wasn't because of wind and solar.............

 

The purpose of the climate agenda is to stifle human productivity, reduce prosperity and increase individual dependence so we're easier to control.

 

The beauty of cellphones in Africa is that there's nothing to steal.

 

Other than the phones themselves, of course.

 

Owners carry them all the time, and many are pay-as-you-go. Not really a problem in my experience. Not like analog telephone lines stolen for the copper.

 

As we learned from Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does."

On To The Great Future Of Offshore Wind Power
December 19, 2022/ Francis Menton

• 
  
  Today was a big day on the way to New York’s energy future: Our “Climate Action Council” voted to approve the final “Scoping Plan,” telling us all how we are going to achieve, among other goals, 70% of statewide electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030 and a zero-emission electricity system by 2040. The press release has the headline “New York State Climate Action Council Finalizes Scoping Plan to Advance Nation-Leading Climate Law.” Here also is a link to the Scoping Plan itself.
  
  
• Taking a look at the Scoping Plan and its Executive Summary, I find that the two biggest elements in getting to this zero-emissions electricity system are supposedly going to be offshore wind turbines and energy storage. I’ve covered the energy storage issues extensively here.
  
  
• But how about this offshore wind thing? Surely, to commit New York to transitioning to using offshore wind as the primary source of electricity only seven years from now, they must have a very solid game plan for how it is going to happen.
  
  
• Actually, as with everything else here, they have no idea.
  

READ MORE

 

Bring On The Electricity Cost Crisis!
December 24, 2022/ Francis Menton

• 
  In a post earlier this week, I celebrated the adoption by New York State of its Scoping Plan that tells us how we are going to accomplish the great transition to 70% “renewable” electricity by 2030 and zero-emissions electricity by 2040.
  
  
• The summary is: “just build a lot of offshore wind turbines and batteries.” Unfortunately, nobody seems to have done the basic arithmetic to see whether the prospective facilities will suffice to supply enough electricity to meet demand at all times. But then, this Scoping Plan is the product of the Important People, and why do the Important People need to trouble themselves with such minutiae? After all, they have a planet to save.
  
  
• What that prior post did not consider was the likely cost to New York consumers of trying to buy electricity in a future at times when the wind is calm, the sun is dark, and fossil fuels have been suppressed.
  
  
• How high might the cost go when everybody has to bid at the same time for the small amounts of hydro or nuclear that may remain?
  

READ MORE

 

I totally agree. In fact I think the economic impact from moving away from fossil fuels will put many middle class people into poverty

 

And stop many poor people from leaving it. At least China and India are not buying into the anti-fossil-fuel nonsense.

 

But on the flip side. If we leave fissile fuels for a more condensed and cheaper energy such as nuclear fusion I blue e it will bring people out of poverty faster. The problem is it’s not possible to use it on a large scale yet. But, at least nuclear fusion has been achieved.

 

US Grid Needs Fossil Fuels, Not Wind
Guest Blogger
This destroys the idea that the wind is always blowing somewhere, and that all you have to do is distribute surplus power around the country in order to meet demand. . . .

 

Keep in mind you are arguing against misanthropes. They despise humanity.