“To many of us, our current spending of fossil fuels appears as morally correct as did human slavery to the Romans or the Atlantic slave trade to seventeenth-century British businessmen.”
– Andrew Nikiforuk, The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2012), p. xi.
A ran across a 2012 book by Andrew Nikiforuk, The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude, sponsored by the David Suzuki Foundation and published by Greystone Books.
In it, I encountered a unique (okay, strange) application of Malthusianism to energy. And I found the author taking the present author head on. I like that, good or bad.
The thesis of Nikiforuk’s book is that yes, fossil fuels (and oil in particular) has greatly enabled mankind in a multitude of tasks.…
“Species are disappearing. Coral reefs are bleaching. Their life is disappearing. Droughts become stronger and fires are raging, driving refugees and increasing conflict among people. Storms become stronger and floods more devastating. Ice sheets are melting. We debate whether we will lose coastal cities in 150 years, or 100 years or 50 years. Do adults wonder why young people have increased anxiety today?”
James Hansen’s granddaughter. Presentation at COP-23 in Bonn, Germany, 6 November 2017.
The Church of Climate knows few bounds. Serial exaggerator climate scientist James Hansen has introduced his own with the fronting of a grand-daughter (her name is not important here) who speaks his words with his conviction. Never mind that even among climate alarmists, James Hansen is an outlier. Never mind that the warming and sea level rise he has long predicted is significantly overstated.…
“A major new variable to estimate the social cost of carbon [SCC] is the positive side of CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations, which promote plant growth and economic activity…. A negative value for the SCC creates a new, better term: SBC, or social benefit of carbon.”
“Will RFF hold an open debate with critics of Obama’s SCC in the months ahead? Or will RFF continue to circle the wagons? Scholarly integrity demands the former, while persuading its funders to be realistic toward the tiring Malthusianism of catastrophic climate change.”
Resources for the Future (RFF) has launched a project to (re)estimate, post-Obama, the social cost of carbon (SCC), defined as “an economic tool used to quantify the societal benefits of reducing —or conversely the damages of emitting—one ton of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere.”…