“The popular climate discussion … looks at man as a destructive force for climate livability … because we use fossil fuels. In fact, the truth is the exact opposite; we don’t take a safe climate and make it dangerous; we take a dangerous climate and make it safe. High-energy civilization, not climate, is the driver of climate livability.” (Alex Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, pp. 126–127).

The Houston Chronicle‘s favorite climate scientist, Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, a leading climate alarmist (see Part I yesterday) fancies himself as an energy and public policy expert. And so the Chronicle takes Dessler at face value well outside of his areas of expertise.

Dessler’s Latest

Here is Dessler’s latest Opinion piece for the Houston Chronicle, A Just Transition from Fracking to Renewable Energy is Possible [February 28, 2020] His op-ed (in yellow) is interspersed with my critical comments.…

Julian Simon (1932–1998) died 22 years ago this week, just short of his 66th birthday, too young by today’s standards. But Simon Lives! moments are common, with the most recent being the President of the United States telling the world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos:

“[W]e must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse. They are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune-tellers — and I have them and you have them, and we all have them, and they want to see us do badly…. They predicted an overpopulation crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the ’70s, and an end of oil in the 1990s. These alarmists always demand the same thing: absolute power to dominate, transform, and control every aspect of our lives.”

“Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an ‘existential threat’ to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real…. And as I watched the deniers make their arguments [against Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade], I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.” (Paul Krugman, New York Times, 2009)

“Republican climate denial is even scarier than Trumpism.” (Paul Krugman, New York Times, 2019)

A full decade apart, Paul Krugman is all-in with climate hyperbole and angst. Joe Romm might have thrown in the towel at Climate Progress, but Krugman is flaming in the New York Times.

Talk about riding the wrong horse.…

“The multitude of smoking guns in the Climategate emails made it a war zone. And the ‘missing heat’ raised by Climategater Kevin Trenberth plagues high-sensitivity warmists today.”

“You can be happy and optimistic…. The dense (mineral) energy era (fossil fuels) has been a boom to you, me, and virtually everyone. CO2 is greening the ecosphere while climate-related deaths plummet. And the Paris Climate Accord is failing–a good political outcome for the developing countries in particular.”

A recent post at DesmogUK, titled Why the Climategate Hack was More than an Attack on Science, caught my eye. Funny how the apologists have to defend an event that happened a decade ago! They would love to just ignore it and move on. But in clear words, sentences, and in English, science was tortured in the name of a cause.…