“If ‘some humans survive’ is the only thing we care about, then climate change is a non-issue. I think it’s certain that ‘some’ humans will survive almost any climate change. They may be living short, hard lives of poverty, but they’ll be alive.”

“Future humans, as they live in a climate dystopia: ‘I thought he cared about the environment’.”

“I find the path we’re on now — the rich world survives (if lucky), but abandons everyone else — to be morally problematic.”

Professor Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M is the alarmist’s alarmist. At a lunch some years ago, he remarked to me (and his more moderate colleague Gerald North) that humankind would have to live underground because of anthropogenic warming. And he stated that fossil fuels had made us slaves, a deep-ecology argument that has been ably turned around by Matt Ridley).…

“We are old climate veterans who have tried to do our part, in every way we know how, to keep our fossil-fuel addicted civilization from driving off a cliff. Are we tired? Sure. Discouraged? Absolutely. Pissed off? Yep. Sad? Call it broken-hearted.”

– Kathleen Dean Moore and SueEllen Campbell, Why We Won’t Quite the Climate Fight, Earth Island Journal, January 28, 2019.

“The admittedly ‘tired … discouraged … pissed off … broken-hearted’ deep ecologists can either live in gloom and despair or check their premises to entertain happiness…. Don’t quit–study. Consider Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource 2 for starters. And live joyfully.” (below)

It is a fossil-fuel world for as far as the eye can see. Abundant, affordable, and reliable, mineral energies are the ones that consumers voluntarily purchase.…

“The Trump folks seem to believe that anything that has Obama’s fingerprints on it, no matter how sensible, they’re going to rescind, revoke and demolish, and it makes no sense at all.”

“[The climate conundrum] is scary and I’m not sure we’re gonna be able to turn it around.”

– John Holdren, December 2017.

This is Part II of a transcribed interview with John Holdren, leader of the energy/climate Malthusian school, by Climate One. Yesterday’s post critically assessed Holdren’s views on federal energy research and development, the Paris withdrawal, and China’s energy policy. Today’s post looks at his views on most other issues in the “energy sustainability” debate.

Holdren quotations are below in red, followed by my rebuttal comments indented in black (subtitles added).

Technology Boom in Renewable Energies

“… there have been huge improvement in battery technology.…

“Very few scientists dispute a link between man-made CO2 and global warming. Where it gets fuzzy is the extent and time frame of the effect. One crucial point of contention is climate ‘sensitivity’—the mathematical formula that translates changes in CO2 production to changes in temperature. In addition, scientists are not sure how to explain a slowdown in the rise of global temperatures that began about a decade ago.”

– Stefan Theil, “The Backlash Against Climate Scientists,” Newsweek, May 27, 2010.

An article in Newsweek eight years ago, “The Backlash Against Climate Scientists,” rings true today–if not more so.

When seen from today’s perspective, Theil’s 450-word piece underscores how slowly climate science is really moving, where the more you know, the more you find out you don’t know.…