Federal judge tells climate litigants to tally the numerous blessings from fossil fuels since 1859
By Paul Driessen ~
Judge William Alsup has a BS in engineering, has written computer programs for his ham radio hobby, delves deeply into the technical aspects of numerous cases before him, and even studied other programming languages for a complex Oracle v. Google lawsuit.
As presiding judge in People of the State of California v. BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell, he insisted that the litigants present their best scientific evidence for and against the state’s assertion that fossil fuel emissions are causing dangerous climate change. Now he wants to see, not just the alleged damages from burning oil, natural gas and coal – but also the immense benefits to humanity and the people of California from using those fuels for the past 150 years and more.
SPOTLIGHT: 1970s activists said wind and solar energy would replace fossil fuels. Five decades later, that’s still a fantasy.
BIG PICTURE: More energy equals less suffering and more flourishing. When machines that run on energy wash our clothes and plow our fields, humans are freed from back-breaking, mind-numbing labour. We have time to go the library and to school. We have time to create art, and to discover medical breakthroughs.
To be useful, energy needs to be reliable. No one wants to be in an operating room where the electricity flickers on and off. Food safety is compromised when freezers and refrigerators work only sometimes. High tech manufacturing depends on exacting factory conditions that aren’t possible without a stable power supply.
In The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex Epstein explains that the reason wind and solar aren’t useful substitutes is because “the sun doesn’t shine all the time…
The latest EIA 2017 IEO report projects world energy consumption to increase by 28% from 2015 through 2040.
Non OECD countries (the developing nations-China, India, etc.) account for about 84% of this increased energy use with non OECD Asia making up the majority of this energy use growth.
Significant growth (43%) in natural gas use is projected in meeting the worlds total energy increase through 2040.
Petroleum and other liquid fuels use growth (18%) continues but at a slower pace than natural gas.
Coal energy use is projected to be stable during this period with declines in China offset by increased use in India.
Renewables (hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, other) is the fastest growing energy source with wind, solar and natural gas supplying most of the electricity sector growth.
Renewables are projected to supply 31% of world electricity generation in 2040 the same as coal…
A highly orchestrated, secretly foreign-funded group of Australian environmental activists opposing the $16 billion Adani coalmine in Queensland has “dampened” Indian investment interest in Australia and received heated criticism from the federal Coalition and Queensland Labor governments.
Indian Power Minister Piyush Goyal told The Australian yesterday the years of legal challenges to the vast Carmichael coal project, now revealed to have been funded by multi-million-dollar foundations in the US, “will certainly dampen future investments” from India…
After meeting Mr Goyal, federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan, who has previously criticised the campaign to block the Indian project, said: “We need to be able to take advantage of the demand for coal in Asia.”…
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the
industrialized civilizations collapse?
Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong,
founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
“The Earth has cancer
and the cancer is Man.”
– Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations
Without access to fossil fuels, every tree on the planet would have been cut down by now, to provide for peoples heating, cooking and industry.
When we’re burning fossil fuels, it means we’re not burning something else and cutting down forests. The more we burn fossil fuels, the more we can produce fertiliser. That means we use less land to grow food, so we can spare land for forests. So there is net forest increase, particularly in America. New England used to be 70% farmland, it’s now 70% forest. Countries like Bangladesh are growing more forest.
The best example of this is the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Haiti is almost 99% deforested, as they rely totally on wood for domestic and industrial fuel. On the other side, the forests of the fossil fuel burning, eco-terrorists – the Dominican Republic, remain lush and green.
Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic: Guess which country contains eco-criminals that can afford to use fossil fuels, and which country contains nature-lovers who are dependent on natural renewable organic biomass for energy?
•••
99% of Haiti’s forests have been decimated, not for building materials, but for cooking fuel
But over and above that, there is a fascinating new discovery that the world as a whole is getting greener. The Amazon is actually getting greener. And the reason is partly because more carbon dioxide is going into the atmosphere, and that makes plants grow faster.
A new satellite that measures greening of the earth has found that about 20% is getting greener. So the rain forests and forests of the world are getting greener from burning CO2. That happens to be a very unwelcome message for the environmental movement, but it happens to be true.
We’ve spent so long demonising fossil fuels, without objectively assessing the enormous benefits they provide, both for the environment and for the health and wellbeing of society in general.
The cheap, reliable nature of fossil fuels even made it possible to end slavery! Because we use machines instead of people. You either have cheap labour or cheap energy.
The multi-trillion-dollar ploy would also wreak havoc on the global economy — virtually every human activity, including breathing, releases carbon dioxide.
If the United Nations and fellow climate alarmists get their way on restricting carbon dioxide, the poor will soon be getting poorer — much, much poorer — especially in places such as Africa, Latin America, and large swaths of Asia. It is hardly an exaggeration to suggest that millions could die of starvation, cold, and more. Despite bogus promises of abundant, government-mandated “green” energy (think Solyndra), Europeans, Americans, Japanese, and others who live in developed countries will suffer greatly, too. The devastation will be particularly severe among the least well-off.
Earth’s would-be rulers, however, do not seem to care. The radical UN plan to fight “climate change,” as outlined by the global body amid the implosion of its man-made global-warming theory, would dramatically curtail available energy supplies. If adopted, nobody disputes the fact that the scheme would grant unprecedented powers over people, businesses, and governments to planetary bureaucrats. The multi-trillion-dollar ploy would also wreak havoc on the global economy — virtually every human activity, including breathing, releases carbon dioxide.
On top of that, experts say the plan would have virtually no effect on the climate. Indeed, all of the UN climate models have already been thoroughly debunked as global warming, in defiance of hysterical predictions, stopped over a decade and a half ago (see companion article on page 25). But the agenda was never really to stop “global cooling,” “global warming,” or even “climate change,” so it is hardly surprising to learn that the UN is nowhere near ready to give up on its vision of complete planetary dominance. Continue Reading »
By Paul Driessen ~
Environmental and climate…
By Andrew Bolt ~
Indian Power Minister Piyush Goyal told The Australian yesterday the years of legal challenges to the vast Carmichael coal project, now revealed to have been funded by multi-million-dollar foundations in the US, “will certainly dampen future investments” from India…
If the United Nations and fellow climate alarmists get their way on restricting carbon dioxide, the poor will soon be getting poorer — much, much poorer — especially in places such as Africa, Latin America, and large swaths of Asia. It is hardly an exaggeration to suggest that millions could die of starvation, cold, and more. Despite bogus promises of abundant, government-mandated “green” energy (think Solyndra), Europeans, Americans, Japanese, and others who live in developed countries will suffer greatly, too. The devastation will be particularly severe among the least well-off.
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