The Green New Deal Scam is exposed. The idea that dilute, intermittent, fragile energies could do anything but wound an electricity grid–long recognized by critics–is mainstream thought. Only outliers claim that renewables decrease rates, with esoteric studies and neglect of the taxpayer cost. James Hansen, the father of the climate alarm, said it well a long time ago.
Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
Virtually all the news is that climate alarm is becoming unpopular and counterproductive (to the cause) and that wind, solar, and batteries are losing with less government support. But an ‘in denial’ counter-movement has sprung up in the face of growing defeat.
Tortoise’ Transition?
The latest comes from David Roberts in Volts, a climate alarm/forced energy transition site, which featured the views of Michael Liebreich on a “pragmatic climate reset”.
“Lately,’ Roberts opens, “everyone from Tony Blair to Daniel Yergin is calling for a ‘climate reset,’ so I brought on clean-energy analyst Michael Liebreich to discuss his own, very different version. While others push expensive distractions, Liebreich argues that the inexorable growth of cheap renewables is already on track to displace fossil fuels, a ‘tortoise’ strategy that will win without the need for crisis politics.” The exchange begins:
David Roberts: But, Michael [Liebreich], they’re not tweeting. They’re running the country. The people running the country think solar is a myth. They think wind causes cancer. They’re canceling almost-built offshore wind projects. These are irrational, crazy people. They’re not some fringe. They’re running things. They are on your TV.
Michael Liebreich: Who voted for them? Everybody who voted for them is as crazy as that? Every single 50%?
Roberts: Not all of them. I’d say probably 30% of the US is full of crazy people who are not going to be calmed by your slow rational process. I would say what those people are responding to is not us. They are never exposed to us. What they hear is a caricature of us delivered by Fox News. We can say whatever we want. Fox News is still going to tell them that we’re crazy.
Liebreich: Sorry, David. Millions of people have had their commutes disrupted by Just Stop Oil.
Roberts: Millions?
Liebreich: Millions, yes, because they keep on doing it over a period of years. Literally millions of people have been disrupted. Those are the people you then want to go and buy an EV or buy a heat pump. They’re predisposed by that experience to believe that all that stuff is crap and doesn’t work. They’ll believe any stupid stuff that’s propagated by the contrarians because you’ve annoyed them.
Roberts: We’re going to have to leave it there with Michael being wrong about this.
Liebreich: Now we’re just negotiating who we’re going to talk to. What you’re saying is that there is 20% of the country that is some swing, and they can be either alienated by you — but that’s the swing constituency. My point is you’re not going to — whether it’s 30% or 10% — that you’ll never, ever persuade — but there is a big chunk that takes cues from our messaging, from our behavior. That’s part of my thing. The reason I started in my piece, number one, is fix the politics because we have agency in the amount of opposition and the followership of the more contrarian brigade.
Roberts: I would say what those people are responding to is not us. They are never exposed to us. What they hear is a caricature of us delivered by Fox News. We can say whatever we want. Fox News is still going to tell them that we’re crazy.
Liebreich:
Here are some excerpts from the rest of the Liebreich interview.
I got scooped by Tony Blair who came up with this climate reset and he said, “We got to be pragmatic. We got to do direct air capture, just like Climeworks is doing in Iceland, and we got to do lots of nuclear SMRs and we got to do post-combustion CC.” I’m saying, “This is bullshit.”
I had to do my reset then in the wake of Tony Blair. But why is it that there’s this spate of resets? I think that the society’s response, the zeitgeist, “What do we think of climate?” is suddenly up for grabs in a way that it hasn’t been for, I’m going to say, five or seven years. There’s been a … fairly stultifying consensus, very conventional. It’s been very transgressive to disagree with it. Then suddenly you could say Trump’s election enabled a lot of people, by the way on the fossil side, to say, “We need a reset. The transition isn’t working. The grown-ups always knew it wouldn’t work and now we got to stop doing this silly stuff.” Everybody has a reset going, including me.
I don’t think [the reset suggested by] Tony Blair is being directly paid by a bunch of oil and gas companies. I don’t think it’s as simple as that. First of all, in terms of wind and solar being big businesses, on the technology side, they may be big businesses in China. There are almost no big manufacturers — none of solar, none of batteries — in the West, there are a few decent-sized wind companies in Vestas and Siemens Gamesa….
… I’ve met a lot of climate contrarians and they’re not ignorant, they’re very knowledgeable, they know their stuff, and they’re not inattentive. They’re very concerned.
There is this idea amongst the Kumbaya crowd … that says, “If only we could get these people the right information, they would somehow be cured.” It’s a complete misreading of what they’re doing, what their role is, what they’re concerned about, how the debate works, how you win the debate, how you win the politics, how you get stuff built. Even the thing of saying, “Can’t they just hire a nastier PR company?” You think that would work?
… the climate community — and I don’t want to just associate it with Democrats here — but they’re just losing the arguments. Largely it’s because one side is trying to win with logic and the other side is just trying to entertain. It’s totally asymmetric.
We, the climate community, stop doing stupid stuff that is counterproductive. If you want to go fast, sometimes you just have to win like a tortoise, not win like a hare. Saying “electrify everything” — let me link it back to electrify everything, just to where we came, where I came from, just very briefly, if I might. The problem with saying “electrify everything” is that anybody who has a gas furnace or an internal combustion car immediately is going to be alienated. I just reframe it and say, can we just do… There’s this smorgasbord of cheap, effective things, affordable things, clean solutions.
It’s right in front of our noses. Can we just please do that and stop talking about hydrogen airplanes or all sorts of the last few percent? …
I’m with Chris Wright in that energy use correlates with human progress. The first thing is let’s all hope that the use of energy, that the economy keeps growing because that is what’s pulling people out of poverty and it’s providing the good things in life….
If you can’t have wind and solar, then you use your fossil. That’s reality….
I’m not going to persuade Chris Wright of anything or Bjorn Lomborg or… None of these people will be persuaded. What I’m trying to do is make fun of their ideas, to deny the territory to the average person who might read one of those other reset pieces and say, “This seems pretty sensible. This is what the grown-ups think.” It’s not what the grown-ups think….
I call it winning the transition like a tortoise, not like a hare. The hare is the 1.5. We failed. The hare version has failed.
… most people will not choose to be scared. Frankly, I was going to say four hottest years in the history of hot years. We just had the four global record harvests. A lot of people out there, we just have to understand, are not scared….
Are you going to die of climate change? No. But it is your responsibility, particularly if you call yourself a conservative. There’s a clue in the name — conserve — which means when you have these long-term grinding problems that are not going to go away, it is your responsibility to do something about it, not destroy all of your energy infrastructure tomorrow.
I think [gradualism] is a narrative that can resonate a lot more than this “we’ve got to sound the alarm.” …. The problem with that is if you accuse people of being ignorant and inattentive, don’t be surprised when the next day you ask them to buy a heat pump and they tell you to go to hell.”