“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advances.”
This was the opening statement of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural address in 1933, at the depths of the Great Depression, when many people understandably felt they had much to fear. [emphasis, links added]
Roosevelt counseled that this fear “paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advances.”
We are in a similar situation today. Mankind’s main peacetime objective is to advance the spread of prosperity to all humanity, consistent with Judaism’s concept of tikkun olam: repairing the world to improve it.
In the West, this was accomplished over several centuries by replacing the energy used since prehistoric times — human and animal muscle, solar and wind — with coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power.
Then, the pseudoscience of extremists was popularized in “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s 2006 film, which said increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide would overheat Earth and destroy civilization.
If not nameless, it was undoubtedly an “unreasoning, unjustified terror” over the relatively modest “greenhouse” effect of a life-sustaining gas that took hold in the minds of many.
Certain policymakers became convinced that we must abandon fossil fuels and return to prehistoric sources or, in the current vernacular, “net zero.”
Never mind that before the widespread use of hydrocarbons, civilization was a thin veneer over squalor and misery preserved by slavery, feudalism, colonialism, and tyranny.
This demonization of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide has been debunked in many well-documented books by top-of-the-line experts, including Steven Koonin, Alex Epstein, Michael Shellenberger, Patrick Moore, Bjorn Lomborg, and Gregory Wrightstone.
In addition, tens of thousands of qualified scientists have signed public statements rejecting climate alarmism, including the Global Warming Petition Project and the Climate Intelligence Foundation.
Organizations such as the CO2 Coalition, The Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow regularly publish materials refuting alarmist claims.
Nevertheless, fear remains. Even many prestigious scientific societies have supported alarmist assertions despite overwhelming evidence of their falseness.
Governments in California, England, and Germany have gone to great lengths to incorporate solar and wind power into electric systems to the detriment of their economies and citizens.
At least half their electric power continues to come from coal or natural gas because the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow.
California suffers from relatively frequent rolling blackouts and brownouts, just like underdeveloped countries do. Among major European countries, Germany has by far the largest fraction of its electricity from solar and wind.
The cost of a kilowatt-hour in Germany is about double that in France, which is primarily nuclear, and about triple that in the U.S.
Assuming it is possible, achieving “net zero” would further increase costs because some scheme to power civilization is needed to compensate for the intermittency of wind and solar.
Consider the cost of currently favored huge battery banks, which can provide power for, let’s say, 10 days.
U.S. power demand is about 400 million kilowatts. Hence, battery banks across the country would have to last about 10 days, or approximately 250 hours, to provide the necessary 100 billion kilowatt-hours of energy.
Tesla batteries store 50 to 100 kilowatt-hours and cost $5,000 to $20,000.
Assuming a conservative cost of $10,000 for every 100 kilowatt-hours of energy, the country would have to spend $10 trillion on one billion batteries. Battery life is about 10 years, making annual replacement costs $1 trillion.
Such wasteful expenditures destroy civilizations.
Top photo by Javier Miranda on Unsplash
Read rest at Washington Times
