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Page added on July 8, 2016
Powerful Fuels lead to Human Freedom and Prosperity
Some people who are not well versed in human history believe that fossil fuels are inherently evil, costly and harmful to human health. They ignore the side of the accounting ledger that documents the incredibly beneficial effects concentrated fuels have provided to overall human freedom, happiness, self actualization and reduction of dependence on nature.
Kathleen Hartnett-White, one of the co-authors of Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, is fully aware of the beneficial effects of hydrocarbon extraction and use as a fuel to empower major portions of the human population. She joined me on July 6th for a spirited discussion about the importance of abundant energy that can be converted to reliable, focused power.
We talked about the ways that concentrated energy sources have given people some of the comforts, nutritional options, free time and freedom of movement that used to be only available to the very thin slice of the population that owned or controlled both beasts of burden and large numbers of other human beings.
Hartnett-White described the way that the shale revolution in both natural gas and oil has changed the world’s available energy balance and altered people’s assumptions about the future availability of conventional fuel supplies. We disagreed a little in our view of the sustainability of that revolution and its need for substantially higher prices to keep it viable.
We talked about the way that some people believe that the risks from climate change are so dramatic that they require human society to depower and devolve back into a less free, less mobile, less comfortable and less prosperous mode of living.
As a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Fueling Freedom Project is unabashedly aimed at changing the public conversation about energy from one that seeks to keep fossil fuels away from people into one that seeks to continue intelligent use of concentrated fuel resources as a way to improve the human condition.
Hartnett-White noted that the way most climate change activists treat nuclear energy provides evidence that their primary motivation is to depower the people rather than to reduce CO2 production. As she noted, if reducing risks from an atmospheric build up of CO2 was their primary concern, they would rethink their stubborn opposition to nuclear energy. Instead, they promote unreliable and uncontrollable sources of power like the wind and the sun even while fully recognizing that those sources are incapable of providing the same quantity and quality of power that people purchase today.
My own position on energy and empowerment is fairly close to the one expressed by Harnett-White and Alex Epstein, the author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuel and a previous guest on the Atomic Show.
While both of those writers acknowledge the value of nuclear energy as a concentrated fuel source, they are both relatively unaware of the unrealized potential of fission technology. They both seem to accept the current state of regulations and immaturity of the manufacturing and construction capabilities as a given. I see them as temporary limitations that could be drastically altered. The potential has some similarity with the way that the combination of hydraulic fracturing, detailed geological data and horizontal drilling have revolutionized our perception of the available oil and gas resources in the United States.
I accept the fact that steadily increasing the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is dangerous and is altering Earth’s climate in unpredictable ways while also changing ocean chemistry in ways that will stress a wide variety of aquatic life.
However, the oft stated goal of achieving zero human CO2 emissions is unreachable. Instead, we should be striving to reach a quasi steady state concentration by replacing as much fossil fuel use as is reasonably achievable by a rapidly expanding fission technology base. That is a path toward both a livable planet and a prosperous, creative human population with a growing majority of people that are able to take full advantage of its amazing features and comforts.
Your comments on this show are, as always, welcome and encouraged.
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11 Comments on "Powerful Fuels lead to Human Freedom and Prosperity"
Apneaman on Fri, 8th Jul 2016 9:25 pm
Again, taking James Hansen’s 1988 address to congress of the consequences of AGW from not slowing down as the starting point of the first major warning and thus big political fight, how many fossil fuels have been left in the ground to protect the kiddies? None – their use has gone up every fucking year and so has the industry whining and lying. Not only has almost every scientific prediction come true, but they have been exceeded by leaps and bounds. Take a look at the destruction. The environmentalists make a very handy boogie man, but looking at all the big metrics clearly shows they have had zero effect on the aggregate. BOO! I know they meant well, but going by the judges score card the environmentalists have yet to land a blow and are bleeding profusely from multiple cuts. It’s exactly the same as the NRA/gun lobby alarmist PR, the further away from reality the louder the screaming. Gun sales and fossil fuels – as they increase so does the paranoid PR. Sheep indeed.
Congratulations, you just won the biggest jackpot in human history. The only catch is if you spend it your descendants will have short horrible lives and civilization will be destroyed then the entire species.
150 years later, the windfall is almost spent and a future livable planet for the humans is no longer a possibility due to lag time/inertia and speed of change.
Kathy has no scientific credentials or education, she has a degree in comparative religious studies…… and a face like a sack of hammers.
Kathleen Hartnett White Proves She is Not a Scientist
“At a recent event hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the group’s director, Kathleen Hartnett White, declared that carbon dioxide, the pollutant most responsible for warming Earth’s climate, is the “gas of life” and that we don’t need limits on carbon emissions.”
http://blogs.edf.org/texascleanairmatters/2015/01/16/kathleen-harnett-proves-she-is-not-a-scientist/
Nothing can stop what is coming, but as long as these types of people have the power, you can expect only the worst possible outcome for you and yours. Look at cancer capital Houston. In spite of being warned of the coming deluges and the guaranteed danger of developing low lying areas (bowl) and sticking hundreds of thousands of people (homes, business) into it, they did not hesitate for one fucking second or even take any special precautions or warn folks. Same deal for Calgary’s 6 billion dollar and counting 2013 flood. They were warned by scientists and hydrologists and engineers. Didn’t do anything except keep building. How’s those 4 million Albertan’s prospering now? Over ten billion in damages and counting in three years from just two AGW jacked events. How free are those 10 dead Texas soldiers, swept away in the most recent record Texas deluge doing? They free from all of it now eh?. At least you still have the freedom to move your family away from the most dangerous areas and potentially delay their suffering.
Go Speed Racer on Fri, 8th Jul 2016 9:41 pm
Reads like that selfish Ayn Rand stuff.’ Author did not even prove anything. So nobody said that we don’t like the benefits of fossil fuel. What we said is, the fossil fuel gonna run out. Author didn’t notice the difference.
ghung on Sat, 9th Jul 2016 9:18 am
“They ignore the side of the accounting ledger that documents the incredibly beneficial effects concentrated fuels have provided to overall human freedom, happiness, self actualization and reduction of dependence on nature.”
No, they don’t, nor do they ignore the civilization-ending consequences. There is no “zero-carbon” energy source at scale other than than direct solar photo-synthesis. Even glass production for passive solar structures produces carbon emissions.
To date, the only reductions in carbon emissions growth have occurred during times of economic decline. Pretty much says it all. Matters little, as Nature is forcing us to simplify, one way or another, despite all of our complex schemes to maintain high-energy lifestyles and economic growth. The hubris of people like this will be little more than the dust we’ll all become.
Sissyfuss on Sat, 9th Jul 2016 10:40 am
The author states that fossil fuels provide for a reduction of dependence on Nature. Uh hello! That must mean that we get our energy sources from Walmart thereby bypassing millions of years of stored sunlight. Problems solved!
JGav on Sat, 9th Jul 2016 10:59 am
World fossil fuel subsidies last year ran close to $1 trillion! And these idiots dare talk about a “war on fossil fuels??!!”
Anonymous on Sat, 9th Jul 2016 1:49 pm
From their website
“Funded by thousands of individuals, foundations, and corporations, the Foundation does not accept government funds or contributions to influence the outcomes of its research.”
But mostly funded by corporations, specifically, uS oil corporations. Because in lalaliberty land, individuals, foundations and corporations do not influence outcomes of research apparently, only govt does that, I guess.
IoW, just another industry-funded and directed, PR front.
Anonymous on Sat, 9th Jul 2016 2:06 pm
Here is some background on Karen Hartnett, one of this foundations ‘energy experts’. Im not sure where you get certified or even qualified to be declared an ‘energy expert’. There isn’t a lot in her CV to indicate ‘expertise’, unless her degree in comparative religion covered that.
“White received her bachelor cum laude and master degrees from Stanford University where for three years she held the Elizabeth Wheeler Lyman Scholarship for an Outstanding Woman in the Humanities. She was also awarded a Danforth National Fellowship for doctoral work at Princeton University in Comparative Religion and there won the Jonathan Edwards Award for Academic Excellence. She also studied law under a Lineberry Foundation Fellowship at Texas Tech University.” [1]
http://www.desmogblog.com/kathleen-hartnett-white
Rick Bronson on Sat, 9th Jul 2016 5:59 pm
They all know very well that the fossil fuels are under siege.
There was a time when lot of electricity is generated using Oil, but now Oil is mostly relegated to Transport sector.
Things have changed so fast that even for producing Oil using EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery) lot of Natgas is used and of late solar power is used to generate steam.
An interesting article.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Using-Renewables-In-Oil-Recovery.html
Boat on Sun, 10th Jul 2016 10:06 am
Chinese firm wins award for off-grid wind powered desalination system
http://www.windpowerengineering.com/construction/projects/offshore-wind/chinese-firm-wins-award-off-grid-wind-powered-seawater-desalination-system/
Kenz300 on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 7:46 am
Koch Brothers Continue to Fund Climate Change Denial Machine, Spend $21M to Defend Exxon
http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/22/koch-defends-exxon/
Big Coal Funded This Prominent Climate Change Denier, Docs Reveal
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/roy-spencer-peabody-energy_us_57601e12e4b053d43306535e
Pope Francis’s edict on climate change will anger deniers and US churches | World news | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/27/pope-francis-edict-climate-change-us-rightwing
Head Of The Episcopal Church Says It’s ‘Sinful’ To Ignore Climate Change
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/26/katherine-jefferts-schori-climate-change_n_6949532.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
roccman on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 3:08 pm
I think rubbish – increased energy – increases population – thus increases the king…president…pharaoh to impose the will of war on the populace. See what Tolstoy says in War and Peace related to the two aspects of human’s “free will”. Without increases in energy availability – we all would be limited to living in caves, but not being pawns in the “War God”. The “Event” alluded to is the war of 1812.
The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns- should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and complex causes.
We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.
Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.
There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him.
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.
“The king’s heart is in the hands of the Lord.”
A king is history’s slave.
History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind, uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.
Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples*- as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him- he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own volition, to perform for the hive life- that is to say, for history- whatever had to be performed.
*”To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples.”
The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg’s wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia- undertaken (as it seemed to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace, the French Emperor’s love and habit of war coinciding with his people’s inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations, and the expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining advantages to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors he received in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the opinion of contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to attain peace, but which only wounded the self-love of both sides, and millions and millions of other causes that adapted themselves to the event that was happening or coincided with it.
When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and so forth is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander desired his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill weighing a million tons fell because the last navvy struck it for the last time with his mattock. In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.
Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.