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Page added on April 23, 2018

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Blessing of fossil fuels

Blessing of fossil fuels thumbnail
Earth Day illustration

Earth Day turns 48 this year and thousands of activists will “recycle” their calls for greater government control over energy resources and infrastructure. Is that a cause we should support or oppose?

The question is important because abundant, affordable and reliable energy is vital to human flourishing, and government regulations put this resource at risk. On the other hand, Earth Day protesters claim our fossil-fueled civilization is “unsustainable” and headed for a climate catastrophe. Are they correct?

Prediction is difficult — especially about the future! Nonetheless, an abundance of information from high-quality sources reveals that the state of the world is improving. The long-term trends in human health and welfare are strongly positive.

Since 1950, annual global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions increased by 500 percent, and the world warmed about 0.8 degree Centigrade. And according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, each of the last 17 years ranks among the warmest since the 1880s. Anthropogenic global warming is real. However, that doesn’t mean the planet, and more important the people who inhabit it, are in peril.

Globally, life expectancy increased by 54 percent, from 48 years in 1950 to 74 years in 2015. All regions made substantial gains, including Africa, the poorest continent, where life expectancy increased by 68 percent.

Many activists claim global warming will make diseases like malaria more prevalent by extending mosquito breeding seasons. However, global malaria infections and deaths are down 22 percent and 44 percent, respectively, since 2000.

Some scientists claim warming will depress crop yields. Yet global yields for wheat, rice and soy were higher in 2014 than in 2000, and U.S. corn yields increased by 26 percent.

During that time frame, improved yields contributed to a 5 percent increase in food availability per person even though the global population grew by 21 percent. Similarly, the global percentage of undernourished people declined from 15 percent in 2000 to 8 percent in 2015.

What about quality of life? From 2000 to 2015, per capita GDP increased by 47 percent in Africa, and by much larger percentages in Asia and Latin America. As a consequence, the share of world population living in absolute poverty — people who earn less than $1.90 per day — declined from 29 percent to 9.5 percent. Life years lost due to disability and disease also declined for all age categories, especially young children and the elderly.

To be sure, hundreds of millions of people are still hungry and poor, and millions die each year from preventable diseases. But the trends are moving in the right direction — despite climate change. Why is that?

For starters, the warming rate is gradual and fairly constant, not rapid and accelerating, as it’s often claimed. Climate change is not “worse than we thought,” it’s better than they told us.

More important, increasing wealth and technological innovation make societies less vulnerable to the effects of weather and climate. For example, since 1990, weather-related losses as a share of global GDP declined by about one-third. Since the 1920s, global deaths and death rates related to extreme weather decreased by 93 percent and 98 percent, respectively.

As fossil fuel consumption increased, the environment became more livable and human civilization more sustainable. That’s not a coincidence. Energy scholar Alex Epstein explains: human beings using fossil fuels did not take a safe climate and make it dangerous; they took a dangerous climate and made it safer.

For example, drought, historically the most lethal form of extreme weather, is far less dangerous today than it was before the advent of global warming thanks largely to fossil fuel-supported technologies and capabilities: mechanized agriculture, synthetic fertilizers, refrigeration, plastic packaging, motorized transport and modern communications.

In addition, by making agriculture more productive, fossil fuels helped rescue nature from humanity. Climate economist Indur Goklany estimates that maintaining the current level of food production without fossil fuels would require converting billions of acres of wildlife habitat into cropland. Farmland expansion is expected to peak during 2020-2040, which means a growing humanity should be able to feed itself and co-exist with other species.

Thanks in no small part to fossil fuels, the world today is healthier, wealthier and safer than ever before in history. And there’s no evidence the economic and social progress is about to stop.

Unfortunately, most Earth Day protesters won’t see it this way — even though the results are right in front of them.

Marlo Lewis is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

T&D



44 Comments on "Blessing of fossil fuels"

  1. Cloggie on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 4:07 pm 

    They forgot to mention Global Greening.

    https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth

  2. dave thompson on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 4:26 pm 

    This article reads like total bullshit.

  3. Davy on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 4:58 pm 

    Yea, just enough rope for a curious ape to hang himself. Enjoy, while it lasts because there is much uncertainty directly ahead with the certainty of dangers we can only imagine.

  4. Harquebus on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 5:15 pm 

    “The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a advocacy group based in Washington DC with long ties to tobacco disinformation campaigns and more recently to climate change denial. It calls itself “a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy institute dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.”
    “It postures as an advocate of “sound science” in the development of public policy. However, CEI projects dispute the overwhelming scientific evidence that human induced greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change. They have a program for “challenging government regulations”, push property rights as a solution to environment problems, opposed US vehicle fuel efficiency standards, and spin for the drug industry.”
    https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Competitive_Enterprise_Institute

  5. Davy on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 5:37 pm 

    “Why a 15 Percent Slow-Down in North Atlantic Ocean Circulation is Seriously Bad News”
    https://tinyurl.com/ydh9pvx4

    “We know somewhere out there is a tipping point where this current system is likely to break down. We still don’t know how far away or close to this tipping point we might be. … This is uncharted territory.” — Stefan Rahmstorf

    https://tinyurl.com/ya9ctxw7

    “The North Atlantic ocean circulation (often called AMOC or the Great Ocean Conveyor) is now the weakest its been in sixteen centuries. Increasing melt from Greenland due to human-forced warming of the atmosphere through the deep ocean is freshening the ocean surface of the far North Atlantic. To the south, higher ocean temperatures are increasing surface salt content through greater rates of evaporation. Fresh water prevents ocean water from sinking in the north and rising salt content generates increased sinking in the south. As a result, the rate at which waters move from the Equator toward the Pole is slowing down. Since the mid 20th Century, this critical ocean circulation has reduced in strength by 15 percent on decadal time-scales.”

    “A slowing down of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic therefore means that Europe will tend to cool during winter even as it heats up during summer. Sea level rise will accelerate faster for the U.S. East Coast relative to the rest of the world due to a slowing Gulf Stream combined with the effects of melting land glaciers and thermal ocean expansion. The North Atlantic jet stream will tend to become wavier — with deep troughs tending to form over Eastern North America and through parts of Europe. These trough zones will tend to generate far more intense fall and winter weather. Finally, a slowing ocean circulation will tend to increase the number of low-oxygen dead zones.”

  6. Boat on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 6:11 pm 

    Just installed, a wind turbine so big one rotation will power a home for a year.

    http://www.wired.co.uk/article/biggest-wind-turbine-scotland-aberdeen-vattenfall-energy

    Bow your head and thank tech. Yo doomers what’s the eroei on these bad boys.

  7. Antius on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 6:29 pm 

    12MW is impressive. EROI improves with increasing size. There is a formula which I cannot remember. As both wind speed and capacity factor also increase with height, there are definite scale advantages to building turbines as large as possible.

    The key to the long term economics of renewable energy is reducing the need for electricity storage, which costs a fortune. The higher capacity factor of a big turbine built at sea, is definitely helpful in that regard. If you are stuck with intermittent energy, a 50% availability is a lot better than a 30% availability.

  8. Anonymouse1 on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 8:15 pm 

    Cloggen-fraud, this is about, what? The third or fourth time you’ve linked that article which, if read, says the exact opposite of what you assert? Do I need to link the exact (same) quotes again? Have you gone full retard, or is it just a case of you believing or hopeing, all of us goyims memory is bad as you you like to beleive?

    Again, Im not sure who you are trying to convince. All the other creationist retards, ie, boatwetard, the exceptionalist, narrativeman etc, are already ‘onboard’, but that is not even because of your particluarly stupid brand of creationlist horrshyt. THey were born ignorant, so, you not really telling them anything new. The rest of us, are not going to be change our fact-based worldview on anything you say.

  9. makati1 on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 8:30 pm 

    Anon, Tech is Boat’s religion. No thought or questioning allowed. He cannot accept the reality of limits or a future without electric.

  10. MASTERMIND on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 8:35 pm 

    America’s Fentanyl Problem Is Reaching a Whole New Group of Users

    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/americas-fentanyl-problem-is-reaching-a-whole-new-group-of-users/

  11. MASTERMIND on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 8:46 pm 

    Madkat

    America’s new big threat: an Axis of Autocracy headed by China and Russia

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-19/china-russia-and-iran-are-forming-an-axis-of-autocracy

  12. MASTERMIND on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 8:53 pm 

    Penn State says wilderness is too risky for outdoors clubs

    https://apnews.com/79dc2da81c644ef9bb97b844d88be1a5

  13. makati1 on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 9:05 pm 

    Well, MM, the Us propaganda spin is blatantly obvious in that article. I hope China and Russia ARE successful in their goal to take down the terrorist Us. You obviously cannot see that the Us is far worse than either in regards to ‘freedoms’. You live in a rogue country where laws are for other people and anything goes.

    https://www.theburningplatform.com/2018/04/22/rate-this-problem/#more-174859

    “The United States is far from the land of the free these days. The governments in state capitols and Washington DC have confiscated our rights and are selling them back to us.”

  14. MASTERMIND on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 9:14 pm 

    Madkat

    We both know Russia is going down in the near term. Why else would the media be spewing so much propaganda about them? The elites know the jig is up because of peak oil. So now they have nothing to lose! THIS IS A BATTLE TO THE DEATH!

  15. MASTERMIND on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 9:15 pm 

    Madkat

    Check this out!

    https://i.redd.it/75ufmhwc4pt01.jpg

  16. JCSR on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 9:45 pm 

    Fossil fuels truly are a blessing. The are used to make all kinds of useful things that can be recycled and used over and over again.They are also finite. They should not be burned never to be used again. Modern scientists will soon develope competitive wind, solar and hydrogen power to replace ices.

  17. GregT on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 10:15 pm 

    “Why else would the media be spewing so much propaganda about them? The elites know the jig is up because of peak oil.”

    Because Putin kicked their asses out of Russia, and stuck a wrench in their PNAC, and their NWO.

    They could care less about peak oil. They’ll just relocate to their retreats in the Bahamas, and return back after the dust (and blood) settles. Once populations have been successfully adjusted, there’ll be plenty of oil left to go around for everyone, for a very long time to come.

  18. makati1 on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 10:24 pm 

    MM, No, we both do NOT know that Russia is going down in the near term. You seem to believe so. I do not. I see Russia and China sharing power for a long time to come. Russia is perhaps the ONLY country left with the resources and low population density to actually stand alone and be independent.

    Add in the fact that it is a nuclear power that the Us is afraid of and you get a superpower with a great future. Both China and Russia have staying power while the Us has only decay and weakness. Those are facts.

    The Us is desperate for those Russian resources. They thought they had them when the USSR dissolved, but then Putin yanked them away again. THAT is why they are trying to convince you that Russia is dying or that they should start a ‘preventive’ war with Russia. It is all about $$$$.

  19. MASTERMIND on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 10:25 pm 

    Greg

    Look what happened when North Korea lost the majority of its oil imports. It became a slave state and millions died of famine in the 1990’s..You are going to feel that NWO boot up your ass real soon! Whether it’s a left or right boot will make no difference!

  20. MASTERMIND on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 10:26 pm 

    What Zombies Tell Us About Our Times

    Sarah Juliet Lauro discusses the origins of the zombie, from enslaved worker to liberated rebel in revolutionary Haiti, to the consumer zombie of the 1960s, and today’s anxiety about societal collapse.

    https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-april-23-2018/

  21. makati1 on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 10:35 pm 

    MM, your lack of history education and perspective is obvious. You try to equate NK with the rest of the world? LMAO.

    Do you know why NK lost it’s oil? Why there was starvation? Why it has needed to develop nukes? It is because of the immoral, illegal actions of the Us, not the NWO.

    BTW: New World Order is a world of many powers, not just one, the Us. It is just reverting back to the pre-Regan multi-polar world I grew up in. A very good thing. Maybe the one world currency is also a good thing. Likely the IMF’s “basket of currencies” idea. It will take the Us to its knees, or at least restrict it to its 4% of the world’s resources and not 20+% as it wastes now.

  22. GregT on Mon, 23rd Apr 2018 10:43 pm 

    “Look what happened when North Korea lost the majority of its oil imports. It became a slave state and millions died of famine in the 1990’s..You are going to feel that NWO boot up your ass real soon! Whether it’s a left or right boot will make no difference!”

    Canada is a net exporter of oil MM.

  23. Dredd on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 4:29 am 

    T&D spews rubbish (Ents & The Entities Become Nomadic – 3).

  24. Steve on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 9:26 am 

    @Cloggie Greener is not better. Quantity vs quality. https://tinyurl.com/y9y3r3j5

  25. Sissyfuss on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 10:34 am 

    This article is anthropocorn at its most egregious. It’s telling the sheeple that exponential growth a positive that is also infinite. Well Martha, let’s try for triplets this time.

  26. rockman on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 11:11 am 

    dave t – And the BS starts right up front: “Earth Day turns 48 this year and thousands of activists will “recycle” their calls for greater government control over energy resources and infrastructure.”. Every govt in the world has absolute control over the production, distribution and consumption of all fossil fuels within its borders. One segment of society may be displeased with the details of how that control is managed but it doesn’t change the fact: elected govts respond to the wishes of the majority of their electorate. If they did not they would be replaced by that voter majority.

    Yes: it can suck to be a part of the minority in such a govt. But it doesn’t change the FACT: fossil fuel production and consumption in democratic societies is controlled by their govts.

  27. Cloggie on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 12:06 pm 

    Blessing-of-fossil-fuel lates:

    http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotos-mikroplastik-im-arktis-eis-fotostrecke-160234-7.html

    German research institute collected Arctic ice samples to investigate plastic content: up to 12,000 micro particles per liter of ice.

  28. Cloggie on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 1:54 pm 

    The State of the Global Wind Industry.

    1 GW, that is a large conventional power station (PS)

    https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/23/siemens-gamesa-overtakes-vestas-as-leading-wind-manufacturer/

    PS (2017, nameplate)
    9.4 Siemens-Gamesa D-ES
    7.5. Vestas DK
    5.5. Goldwind CN
    4.8 General Electric USA
    3.4. Enercon. D

    These top 5 companies produce 31 powerstations every year, with rapid growrh rates.

  29. _______..... on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 2:36 pm 

    Not only will wind turbines kill lots of bird and insects they will disrupt air currents and weather and will alter spin and tilt of the Earth. Nobody thinks ahead

  30. Dredd on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 3:37 pm 

    Especially you _______…..

  31. Fred on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 3:54 pm 

    As usual the most obvious way forward is not being discussed much. Green BAU? The numbers simply don’t add up. What happened to the great energy respurce called “using less”.

    There surely is a place for renewable power as long as we find a way to produce the materials in a renewable way, maintain it in a renewable way, make it to last , make it so it can be repaired etc. But the key thing that needs yo come first is adjusting to live within our energy budget. Which means using a heck of a lot less energy than we are today.

  32. MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 5:30 pm 

    Fred

    Renewables are a mass delusion to convince the hoards that “we’re working on it’ and everything will be OK!

  33. Boat on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 7:01 pm 

    Mm

    China is working on solutions. They are adding almost 10,000 electric busses per year.

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Electric-Buses-Are-Eroding-Oil-Demand.html

    Cars will be next. Then trucks.

  34. dave thompson on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 10:04 pm 

    https://www.hometownsource.com/monticello_times/free/billboards-highlight-failures-of-renewable-energy-policy/article_f1e1001a-3db8-11e8-9dbc-5f04aa8cec39.html

  35. Go Speed Racer on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 8:40 am 

    Wait til a nuclear sub plows into it.

    With a drunk skipper at the helm, clutching
    a bottle in one hand, and a Hustler magazine
    in the other.

    Bet the submarine will fare better than
    the windmill.

  36. MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 9:07 am 

    Boat

    China’s oil demand is going sky rocketing. You retard. You are putting the cart in front of the horse..

  37. Boat on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 12:37 pm 

    Mm

    No it’s putting the buss in front of the passengers. Doomers discount tech advances every day but without them can’t seem to visualize how many bigger problems pollution would have caused.

  38. MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 12:41 pm 

    Subway Plans to Close 500 U.S. Stores and layoff workers as sales dwindle

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-25/subway-plans-500-u-s-store-closings-while-building-global-reach

  39. MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 12:53 pm 

    Millennial and Gen X Generations Say Baby Boomers Have Ruined the World With Their Poor Decisions

    https://www.alternet.org/millennial-and-gen-x-generations-say-baby-boomers-have-ruined-world-their-poor-decisions?src=newsletter1091463

  40. MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 1:01 pm 

    Boat

    I worked for AT&T for over six years. I know more about tech than you, I guarantee it. And I am not a doomer, I am a human..Stop trying to generalize people.

    UC Davis Peer Reviewed Study: It Will Take 131 Years to Replace Oil with Alternatives
    (Malyshkina, 2010)
    http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es100730q

  41. Anonymous on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 1:36 pm 

    The peak oil craze was not really about careful and insightful analysis and prediction. It was about leftist greenie dreams. It was not about careful prediction of when oil will peak but about wanting it to peak.

  42. MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 1:42 pm 

    Annoymous

    There is NO WAY we can offset those kinds of energy decline. I mean NO CHANCE, ZERO, NONE.
    https://imgur.com/a/VFlpH2t#0maF1pW

    https://www.scribd.com/document/367688629/HSBC-Peak-Oil-Report-2017

  43. Boat on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 1:59 pm 

    Mm

    Your carrying capacity for the rationalization of current trends should be kicking on the idiot light in the dashboard of your brain. Lol Try to catch up on tech trends.

    https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/07/new-us-renewable-energy-capacity-beats-natural-gas-fourth-year-running-renewables-now-account-20/
    .

  44. Boat on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 2:14 pm 

    The oil industry has been offsetting those declines for decades. The proof you can’t see is the history of the world’s #1 commodity. Lol the most covered topic in the history of the modern world other than religion.
    Trillions of reserves with huge chunks of the earth not even surveyed yet.
    Maybe the average driver can’t afford that $10 per gallon price, but I and millions can. Welcome to your future with oil.


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