Guest essay by by Eric Worrall
The climate visionaries have set the target. Now it is up to you engineering types to figure out the details.
How do we solve climate change? Abolish fossil fuels
P.E. Moskowitz 12 hours ago
- Our climate change goals are way too small for the severity of the crisis.
- Calling for the complete end of fossil fuel extraction is the only way forward.
- Other movements have proven that bold calls for abolition can radically change politics.
- P.E. Moskowitz is an author, runs Mental Hellth, a newsletter about capitalism and psychology, and is a contributing opinion writer for Insider.
- This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
As Joe Biden campaigned for president in 2020, he outlined an environmental agenda that included achieving 100% clean energy in the US by 2050. The goal was ambitious, but details were scant on how to get it done. How, for example, would Biden meet the target while simultaneously promising to not ban fracking, an extractive process that contributes tremendously to the climate crisis?
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Even the ambitious climate goals laid out by politicians in campaign promises fall far short of what’s needed to stop the climate crisis.
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Having a concrete goal (stopping the worst effects of climate change) with a concrete target (stopping oil and gas extraction) is the only way to move a pro-environment agenda forward.
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There are already many groups who have gotten the memo to push for massive, systemic change on climate. Students have forced over 100 colleges and universities to divest from fossil fuel corporations. Indigenous rights movements blocked 1.6 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from being released through protest campaigns, pipeline blockades and other actions, equivalent to 25% of the emissions of the US and Canada each year.
But these movements, as powerful as they are, still remain on the fringe of the fight against climate change. As Klein points out, mainstream environmental organizations push for incremental change, while people thirst for something more radical.
We cannot end climate change without ending the extraction of fossil fuels. But if we keep considering that an unrealistic proposition, we’re doomed to use up massive amounts of people’s energy to push for small reforms, a cycle that creates cynicism and defeatism.
It’s a tall order to abolish all fossil fuel extraction, but the first step is simply naming it as a goal.
Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/solve-climate-change-crisis-abolish-fossil-fuels-oil-gas-2021-10
According to her bio, P.E. Moskowitz is the author of two books: How to Kill a City and The Case Against Free Speech. They write the newsletter Mental Hellth, which explores our current discourse on psychology, self-help and care, and critiques popular conceptualizations of mental health from an anticapitalist perspective. They are the co-founder of Study Hall, a freelancer services and advocacy organization with over 6,000 members. They also guest-lecture on media, democracy and free speech at SUNY Purchase. They’ve written for many magazines and websites. P.E. was born, raised, and lives in New York City. Their dog’s name is Remi.
Moskowitz’s main website, “Mental Hellth“, has posts like “How to break through our neoliberal selves – a Buddhist therapist on how capitalism fractures psyches, and how to repair them“.
What can I say – I don’t like breathing exhaust fumes any more than anyone else.
But many years ago I tried working a small vegetable plot by hand, to feed my family during a particularly lean year. Back breaking physical work, yet even with the aid of lots of pesticide and fertiliser, I only produced enough vegetables to feed us for three months.
That is why people die young in peasant societies, or hunter gatherer communities. Only the very young can keep up the magnitude of physical effort required to keep themselves and their loved ones alive. By the time they reach their 40s, assuming they haven’t died of disease, or overwork, or injury, most people’s bodies simply cannot maintain the effort required to keep up with their needs. So they slowly starve to death.
Or in communities which live in particularly harsh environments, like the old time Inuit, in bad times the old folk asked their relatives to help them die. They did the honourable thing, they removed the burden of their continued maintenance from their edge of survival community.
Fossil fuel liberated us from all that.
Fossil fuel is the reason why people like P.E. Moskowitz have the leisure time to pontificate about the need to end the extraction of fossil fuel, on their fossil fuel powered computer made of plastic.
We, politicians, have determined that we all need flying pigs powered by Unicorn farts: over to you engineers (serfs).
Us ignorant, stupid popularity contest winners have decided to tell you educated, intelligent realists what to do. The response ends in off!
Our position is fully supported by members of the British Royal Family.
Hmmm…If that statement was true, then both U.S. and Canada total emissions would be down some 25%. Or Global Emissions would be down an amount equal to 25% of U.S. emissions PLUS 25% of Canadian Emissions. Yet total global emissions continue to rise. Why is that???
It’s probably the same as when politicians “cut spending,” it means they cut a hypothetical increase some years in the future.
18 months ago the world went into lockdown .
With no leisure travel , sport , a large reduction in flying and about an 80% drop in road traffic across most of the world .
The end result has been no difference to the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
So , even if you believe that CO2 has any effect on the climate , a massive reduction in fossil fuel use does not have any effect at all .
You shouldn’t believe the plot.
Pipeline blockades resulting in less efficient road and rail transport of much needed fuel, resulting in emissions higher than they would otherwise be? I guess that 25% reduction is achieved by causing a 30% increase?
Snort-gasm
Someone ought to tell PE M. That (her) their coat is made from synthetics derived from petrochemicals extraction
And if they are fortunate enough to afford all natural fibers for their clothes and the leisure time to prepare, weave and make them, they should know that without fossil fuels, the crops and livestock used to produce the fibre would not exist.
The money phrase in the post above was one of the two titles of books this clown wrote:
Why should anyone in a free society pay one milliseconds worth of attention to this fascist wanna-be dictator?
Unfortunately, it seems like half of this so-called free society WANTS government regulation on speech. Somehow they seem to think it will only affect speech they disagree with.
We Engineers have determined most politicians and all climate ‘visionaries’ are idiots. Don’t listen to idiots. Clear enough? How copy, over?
Not to mention Cow Fart Stoppers
Other than the brainwashed, everyone knows we are an Ice Age.
In an Ice Age warmer times and much better than the colder time.
We are currently past the warmest peak of the interglacial period called
the Holocene period:
“The Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO) was a warm period that occurred in roughly the interval roughly 9,000 to 5,000 years BP, with a thermal maximum around 8000 years BP. “
Holocene climatic optimum – Wikipedia
It was the best of time 8000 years ago, and no one quite sure when we enter an Glaciation period.
A glaciation starts cold conditions like during our recent Little Ice age which ended in 1850 AD and gets cooler and cooler. During Little Ice Age global average temperature got as cool as 13 C. It could take centuries to cool to 13 C, but 14 C is not very nice either.
The recent warming has been benefit, rather than curse, and may not last long.
The so called “father” of global warming was living with 14 C world, and wanted warming from increased CO2 levels warming- and he imagined 5 C of warming. He was not crazy {at least in that sense] anyone living in 14 C world wanted warming.
The problem (from an Anthropological view) is that as a social control mechanism, the realization of individual liberties, capitalism (itself a recognition of private property rights independent from a Sovereign), and Democracy, are all historical aberrations of humanity.
The bulk of human history has been nasty, brutish and short (h/t to Hobbes*). The vast majority of human history until the last 2 centuries has been Caesars, Czars, Khans, Autocrats, Monarchs, in feudal 2 class systems of privileged class and a peasantry used for their human labor, as that was the dominant energy resource for which to gather monopolize wealth. Having an illiterate mass population was a key enabler.
Fossil Fuels changed that equation. Slowly at first. Coal became available to mass produce steel implements for farming and agriculture bringing more calories to the tables. Fossil fuels not just that but also enabled the individual man and his family to become independent of the Sovereign with increasing energy availaible and the entrepreneurial wealth that could be attained. Availability of things like steel tools and powered mechanism to harvest a man’s own crops and sell them at profit to then buy the loand upon which to contue such enterprise. The race to the Industrial revolution began 250 years ago powered first by coal, but then oil and now natural gas, and some nuclear power..
* “and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Leviathan, i. xiii. 9). Thomas Hobbes, 1651AD in poem Leviathan.
And here I was thinking you were referring to Calvin and Hobbes!
I get what saying about “aberrations”
Or uniqueness.
One should not expect it to continue.
We are standing on giants {and can fall off, but might fall far and not do
the dead cat bounce. Or could crash burn badly- and recover.
I would rather we didn’t go thru a lot pain.
Don’t think it is needed.
And I am optimistic {probably, pathologically optimistic} that no great
crash is around the corner.
I would rather say we living is best time ever, and we are truly living
in a magical time.
Which going to get a lot better, pretty fast.
gbaikie,
Like you, I am an optimist and believe that over the long run things will get better, however I also believe there will be short term pain. Humans learn more from failure than success, and have a much stronger response to pain than satisfaction.
And only an idiot (or the very ignorant) would throw all that away in order to chase a promised paradise that never has, and can not, exist.
A very nice vision. Very compassionate to Mother Earth. Incredibly stupid, unless you really, really think it’s OK to let millions of people die of starvation to support your compassionate vision. I’m going to go with “stupid” until there is evidence your plan is pure malevolence. Just giving you the benefit of the doubt. Just barely.
Nah. They’re evil.
Never ascribe to evil what can be explained by stupidity.
Someone famous said that, or something like it.
I think it was incompetence and malevolence, but the idea is the same.
I have seen never attribute to malevolence that which is adequately explained by stupidity attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.
It’s known as Hanlon’s razor:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity“
The malice is with the leaders. The minions are the stupid. (aka “useful idiots)
There comes a point when the incompetene / stupidity is so consistently damaging it becomes almost impossible to NOT ascribe it to malevolence / evil.
Especially when the stupidity is actually willful ignorance driven by a desire for power and dominance over others.
Not even compassionate to Mother Earth. the only concrete problems with CO2, or at least the theorized ones, are negatives for humans. In all other ways it is an enormous boon for mother earth.
It would be worthwhile calculating how much CO2 would be released by the decomposition of the bodies of the 6 billion people, and presumbably also their livestock, needed to reach the magic number. I’m not sure how good that would be for the planet.
“P.E. Moskowitz is an author, runs Mental Hellth, a newsletter about capitalism and psychology …”
I stopped there.
Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other idea.
Unlike Socialism or Communism, Capitalism is not an ‘idea’. It is a term invented by academia to describe the living reality of western, successful, free market economies.
Capitalism as a description of the free market was coined by socialists (Marx I think) to disparage the free market. The free market is what happens when government gets out of the way, which is contrary to the heavy central planning that socialists claim to love.
“The free market is what happens when government gets out of the way”
Yes.
Nonsense. Markets only exist because of government intervention and are in fact created by governments. It is the government that maintains standards, rules, roads etc all of which are necessary for markets to exist. Suppose there were no standards for weights or measures how efficient and free do you think markets would be? Or if there were no public roads — just how do you think you would get to the market to buy/sell your goods? And what about laws, without governments to enforce them how would you ensure that you weren’t conned by someone or how would you enforce a contract? Similarly why do most countries have laws preventing monopolies since in a supposed free market companies should be free to buy other competing companies.
Markets are a human invention and as such we get to choose how they operate. “Free markets” are a fiction and do not exist nor could they.
A “free” market is commonly understood to be a condition where government regulators don’t tell a supplier of safe, ‘discretionary’ products & services how much they can sell their products for, nor how much they can sell to whom, where and when.
Nor do governments make some products ‘mandatory’.
Governments establish stability, and are required for that.
Free markets will be created from that stability. Such as the child who builds himself a lemonade stand in his front yard and starts selling lemonade to his new customers.
Government provided the stable environment for this to flourish, but had nothing to do with the actual establishment of this particular free enterprise lemonade stand.
All government has to go is stay out of this kid’s way, and he will do just fine. That’s a free market. The less government intervention, the better.
That’s not to say that the government doesn’t have to establish certain rules in certain circumstances, but the fewer, the better.
True. Standard weights and measures. Prosecute those using false weights and measures etc.
But “Free Enterprise” also includes those who voluntarily help others and/or voluntarily donate to groups they support in a variety of efforts. And those people/groups are free to cut off those that they come to realize don’t want help, they just want a handout.
Involve Government and those who sincerely want to help people and would voluntarily donate this cause but not that cause find themselves and everyone else being taxed to support whichever cause buys the most votes. Freeloaders can’t be cut off.
Chaswarnertoo,
Probably more accurate to say “The Free Market has lifted more people out of poverty than any other idea.”
I am sure P.E. Moskowitz is a nom de plume for Griff.
If he was not a leftist he would refer to the free enterprise not capitalism.
I stopped at ‘they’ when I finally realised there was only one person in ‘they’: She.
In 1932 Germany, taking the Nazi Party and Hitler’s calls for German racial purity to their logical conclusion should have been the wake-up call for most Germans and the destruction and ruin it would bring to Germany and Italy as they went down that path. Obviously it wasn’t. The saner German Jews like Albert Einstein (who also had the resources and contacts) emigrated out. The result is now history.
Taking the Climate Scam to its logical conclusion, the elimination of all fossil fuel use should be the wake-up call to the rational mind for the destruction and ruin such a policy would bring to the countries that go down that path. Will history repeat?
Yes, but where would you migrate today, to escape the green madness?
Antarctica – I believe global warming is making it rather pleasant in those distant shores
Just recruit a few ship-loads of colonists and get them down there in time for the glorious Antarctic spring. The joy of cavorting with penguins should distract them enough that they won’t notice they are freezing to death.
Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Emirates?
I seriously considered moving to Dubai. Their low crime rate and adherence to rule of law is impressive. But they are dictatorships. If you fall afoul of the local royalty there is no comeback. I’ve heard some horror stories of how badly things can go wrong.
My husband is working in Qatar. If you are “family” life is good, otherwise not so much. Currently Doha is under construction in preparation for the World Cup next winter.
The problem with dictatorships, Eric, is that good times last only as long as a good dictator. Bad dictators are the general rule.
Yes, Plato’s “philosopher kings” usually turn out to be Pol Pot.
Probably the best bet might be some of the central and south American countries….you don’t hear much of this kind of nonsense down south of the equator in the Western hemisphere.
The obvious effort is to make sure there is nowhere to which individuals can emigrateaway from the madness.
There won’t be Democracy to immigrate to, where individual liberties, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of thought will be allowed in the public square.
Cancel culture is the evidence of what is being attempted. Arrests for being in public without a mask, or gathering with friends without a permit, all signs of what is happening.
It’s Global socialism and dictatorships. No room for the individual unless he/she has a very wealthy connected position to the political class.
Again Orwell:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” ― George Orwell, 1984
Socialism is a kind & benign political philosophy that should be embraced with open arms, I give you examples:-
Stalin; approx 45 million deaths -true total unknown!
Mao; approx 80 million deaths -true total unknown!
Hitler; approx 60 million deaths – true total unknown!
Pol-Pot; approx 500,000 deaths (rank amateur) – true total unknown!
See, isn’t Socialism wonderful? That reminds me, I must get my new contact lenses ordered asap, wearing these spectacles frightens me just in case I am identified, because of wearing them, as educated, & therefore up for the chop!!! Maybe Agenda 21 took a leaf out of Pol-Pot’s book that’s why they want education systems around the world to be dumbed down!!!
Alan, Re: Pol-Pot – you’ll be glad that the greenies have managed to ban plastic bags – nearly.
Don’t leave out N. Korea…a few million dead from starvation and other means…Kimmy Jong just held a public execution of someone who dug a tunnel for escape….it’s all for the people in the People’s Republic…the few people who rule.
Apologies, yes they were pretty dreadful too!!! As I’ve said before, whenever I hear of “The People’s Democratic Republic of………”, fill in where ever, I know instantly that the two things that country is not for, is democracy or its people!!! Venezuala is a classic case in point, filthy stinking oil & gas rich state, just can’t put food on the supermarket shelves for its people, they just don’t care about their people!!!
But, Alan, you forget that in “The People’s Democratic Republic of………” those who vote have their vote multiplied by the amount of power they possess.
Estimates for Pol Pot go from 1.5 to 2 million, a rank armature, perhaps. However, on a percentage basis, he has no peer, killing 1 of 4 Cambodians.
It’s interesting that Doug Casey set up a self-sufficient ranch in Argentina as a Safe Haven, but still has not escaped the exigencies of politics.
I’m guessing that’s Naomi Klein intrepid North America and world traveler.
In the past couple of years alone Naomi’s book promotions have taken her all over from New York to California, Ontario, Michigan, Germany, Ireland (tickets €12 – €35), UK (£30 plus £1.97 booking fee), Texas, Oregon and back all in the cause of eliminating fossil fuels that have caused the climate emergency (née climate crisis).
Note to disappointed fans: Naomi’s speaking events have been moved to online but “only during the global pandemic”.
Me? I thirst for common sense and freedom of speech. Freedom to disagree.
In her little “The Case Against Free Speech”, did she advocate violence against those she disagreed with?
I’d say the case against free speech begins and ends when they started calling rioting and looting in places like Portland “free speech” and “peaceful protest” … and refused to prosecute the vandals.
What’s that old saying? “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
Speak what you want. Freedom. Go the sticks and stones rout, you’ve just crossed the line from words to actions that violate others’ rights.
The only climate crisis that I am aware of is the crisis caused by the climate change scam.
Glaciation would be real problem, and is due within a few thousand years.
Well, as said before, Inter-glacials only last between 10,000 to 15,000 years, & the Holocene started around 11,500 years ago, so in theory, we’re living on borrowed time!!!
Actually we are sliding towards the glaciation phase as it has been cooling for at least 5,000 years now.
I know, worrying isn’t it???
Which suggests that positive climate retroaction is a thing – only down!
Climate change is no problem for humans or nature. Been doing it for billions of years. Climate change policy on the other hand will bring the very calamitous crises it claims to attempt to avoid – that is, energy scarcity and the resulting human pan – g e n o c i d e of politically-induced energy poverty.
Equate the likelihood that “it will not end well” with the speed at which representative democracy has become a train wreck on the shoals of a non-pandemic that was soluble by readily available therapeutics that couldn’t make Pfizer and Merck enough money…
Groan.
C02 is still dangerously low at 450 ppm.All life dies below 150 ppm.
Crops grow best at 1000 ppm.
Burning all available fossil fuels would only get us to 850 ppm.
Humans are fine at 10,000 ppm.
10x as many humans die of cold as heat.
Humans always do better in warm periods.
Life on Earth does better in warm periods!!!
Not much lives on or under ice a kilometre or two thick.
Too true!!!
All great civilisations have arisen with a warm period
Equally too true!!!
As many of these eco-loons seem so keen to return the world to its “natural ” state (whatever that is), you might imagine they would take their cue from nature and accept that circa 1000pmm co2 was the optimum atmospheric mix.
Note the wine grapes growing in Northern England during the period of climate in which agricultural productivity was high enough to support the construction of large cathedrals.
The Lancet study showed that 20X more people die from cold than from heat. Not only that, but the study also showed that extreme heat and cold were not the culprits. Most deaths occurred during moderate cold and heat … when people were unprepared.
So glad that someone has realized that Climate Scientist haven’t got a solution, need to through it to engineers. But what a wicked problem.
By the way, is P.E. Moskowitz one person? The text jumps to the plural almost immediately.
I’m not sure. The bio on business insider looked like P.E is a woman, but anything is possible these days…
I understand she identifies as a black homosexual man.
She is Legion for She is MANY
Using it as the Royal we.
Weee are NOT ammused
It’s a gender neutral pronoun I think.
The wonders of choosing your own pronouns.
I first read it as she and someone else, but I didn’t catch the name of the other person….maybe she had a mouse in her pocket.
PE is being gender-neutral. All the most ever-so-compassionate people do that, so as to not be a non-binary oppressor.
She should stop doing that right now.
Pat,
Can you, or someone, help me, please?
If I get oppressed by a binary oppressor, am I not oppressed just as if it were a non-binary oppressor?
Hope I’ve got hat the right way round.
I’m sure the ever-so-compassionate will forgive me if I have not.
Not many oppressors here inside the M25 – binary, or non-binary, or any of the other [obviously] manifold types – so I’m a bit out of touch, I fear.
Perhaps a Field Guide – ‘Oppressors, and how to Spot Them’ would sell well.
I do have a pressure cooker, but I gather that’s not quite the same thing.
Auto
auto, I should have written it as ‘oppressor of the non-binary.’ The meaning was ambiguous as written.
Sorry to say, you can only be a non-oppressor to the extent you have no firm opinions whatsoever. Servile agreement with the alphabetized is your lot. 🙂
Oppressors are easy to spot. First look to skin tone. Light colors (white, beige, lightly tan) are oppressors. Second, look to sympathy with the light colors. If a dark skin tone person espouses ideas like hard work, promptness, merit, … which can be associated with people with light skin, they are oppressors.
Non-oppressors are those who oppress oppressors. Because oppressing oppressors is what non-oppressors do. And it can pay well.
The climate visionaries have set the target. Now it is up to you engineering types to figure out the details
And one of those details to remember is that those giant batteries to run the economy when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine need to be charged when it does. Soooooo, the windmills and solar panels have to have twice the capacity if they are to provide useable power and charge up the batteries at the same time.
You are an optimist Steve
Let P be the power in Gigawatts required to satisfy all our societal needs 24 /7
Let I be the power in Gigawatts of installed wind capacity necessarty to achiev this
Let Cap be the Capacity factor – the percentage of the nameplate power that is delivered on average
Let Eff be the efficiency factor of the energy storage say HYdrogen with efficiency about 50%
Imagine in any 100 hour period let Cap be the number of hours the wind turbine is producing
Energy supplied in Gigawatt hours =I *Cap where cap = number of hours say 40 for a 40% capacity factor
This energy must be enough to satisfy our 40 hour need ie P*40 plus in addition to supply that power for the 60 days that the wind is not blowing taking into account the efficiency factor of the storage mediumie P*60/eff
then I *40 =P*40+P* 60/Eff
I used 40 an d 60 hours for illustrative purposes
The general equation uses Cap and 100-Cap
an
And the equation is
I*Cap=Cap*P+P* (100-Cap)/Eff
or I = P* (Cap+(100-Cap)/Eff)/Cap
If you want 100 GW with cap fact 40%and storage efficiency 50%, Install 400 GW
If I may I will copy that and send it to my MP and ask for an explanation of how the UK will achieve Net Zero as per Boris’ Saudi Arabia of wind. Also add that 40 in 100 hours is very optimistic, it’s not unusual in the UK for it to be 10 hours in 350
Alastair, thanks for the analysis. Yes it’s way worse than needing merely double the capacity because of the losses that stack up each time energy is transformed and moved from one storage system to another. However 50 words compared to 200 words with equations and gobbledygook is a lot easier to understand.
I will no doubt slap that factoid up here at WUWT and elsewhere again. So I’ll see I can make those future postings more in line with the reality you’ve so kindly pointed out.
And if you want to avoid using fossil fuels to build these giant batteries, and eventually their replacements, you will need yet another multiple of renewable energy capacity.
Oh, I forgot, the windmills and solar panels will need replacements every so often, but IIRC they don’t produce enough power in their lifetime to reproduce themselves as well as proving electricity for us to use in everyday life.
At present the temperature outside is 10°C with clouds overhead, so very little vegetation growing and I wonder how a cooler world will work?
Banning or even restricting the use of fossil fuels before there are workable alternative technologies already in place and online is going to lead to deaths from starvation, cold weather, and extreme heat events. We are decades away from that and the technologies and resources don’t even exist to replace fossil fuels in our lifetimes (absent a crash nuclear program).
When they ban fossil fuels, (for europe and north America) the only way to fairly allocate the reduced energy supplies is energy and food rationing.and everyone who advocates eliminating fossil fuels should be given zero ration points.
Let them starve and freeze first, let them be the vanguard of humanity’s next Great Leap Forward.
And when we mourn Greta, this idiot, AOC, and countless others let us vow ‘Never Again’.
Private executive jet aircraft have been quarantined from carbon or emissions tax by the EU, so they need to be supplied with aviation jet fuel so that friends of the hoaxers can travel for meetings and stuff.
let us vow ‘Never Again’
Such vows are always forgotten eventually.
“Banning or even restricting the use of fossil fuels before there are workable alternative technologies already in place and online is going to lead to deaths from starvation, cold weather, and extreme heat events.”
Not a bug, rather a feature, since humans are a cancer on Mother Gaia. The fewer of us the better. Not starting with the Climate Alarmists of course, since they doing the good work of ending Human civilization. They have special status, just ask them…..
The only way you can get even near net zero is nuclear, nuclear, nuclear. Smaller modular systems would have to be installed because they have short development times. Such a program is incredibly ambitious but is at least possible. The paradox with “renewables” is that they require fossil fuels to produce in the first place and need to be replaced on a continuous basis. But I agree with the conclusion. Let the engineers at the problem – instead of virtual signalling politicians.
A case in point: Many years ago the government of the day put forward plans for an orbital motorway around London, the M25! When the consultants came back with proposals for a scheme, they advised that to cope with the amount of traffic then & now would require a four lane motorway system! The Civil Servants put the dampers on that straight away as we were NOT America, but Britain! SO they built a three lane standard motorway around London. 10 years later, due to serious congestion problems & long cues imposing on the workers’ day, a new plan was hatched, to add a fourth lane to the M25, that cost £millions, long delays, traffic congestion, during the new construction works!!! Had the powers that be listened to the engineers in the first place, a lot of time, effort, & taxpayers money would have been saved!!!
Alan,
It’s much worse than that.
The plan was for Ringways – plural.
Up to four of them.
For a much fuller – and sometimes very entertaining – look, see – https://www.roads.org.uk/ringways
Auto
Wait until the site covers the M23 . . . .
Not even nuclear fission could get us near net zero. And certainly not in the time frame being talked about. In fact if nuclear fusion was worked out and we had a reactor design ready to be built starting today we still wouldn’t get near net zero in the time frame.
It’s simply a physical impossibility.
I’m not sure. Look at what the industrial section of the U.S. did from a standing start in world war 2 within a year.
If the world was really facing a true crisis we could have enough modular reactors in place within five years to power the entire country. There is no physical reason why not. The restrictions are political and economic. When you are talking about the end of the world those get shuffled to the side quickly.
Of course, the truth that there is no actual crisis means it won’t happen, but there is no physical reason why it couldn’t.
She could try it. I’d allow her the clothes she stands up in and the money to buy a horse
Are you completely bonkers?
The war on civilisation needs you – and your neuroses
Business insider is the most misnamed media outlet in history
Isn’ t that the truth! They write more articles on Donald Trump than they do on business, and now it looks like they are going alarmist, too.
There must be some hard lefties working there or owning the business. They are defintiely a radical Left publication.
I wonder if PE has a mobile phone/computer? Does she bring home her shopping from food stores in a plastic bag (or two or more)? Does she drive a car? If so, is it electric/hybrid? Or does she ride a bicycle? Was her bike made with energy only from wind or solar? Are all of her clothes totally organic? Does her home have electricity? From what sources? Over to you, PE! Inquiring minds want to know!
A good post. Thank you 🌍
You are welcome Asitha.
Now that I’ve seen an example of the kind of insightful writing I would expect from ‘Business Insider’, I now know one subscription I will avoid for Christmas. Thanks for the heads up.
Always amazes me how these people start by telling everyone else what to do instead of providing details of how they have managed to stop using any fossil fuels in their lives.
They seem to be doing their best to kill off the concept of lead by example. Perhaps they have no intention of living by the rules they want to set for others. If all those maskless Hollywood events are any example, where only the help have to wear masks, I think we’ve seen a glimpse of their future intentions.
They envision a two-tiered system where they live in luxury behind walls and armed guards while the masses toil in poverty to keep them in affluence, just like they depict in so many of their dystopian movies.
They seem to forget how those movies always end.
THEY need to take command of their own lives and try Totally Divesting themselves of ALL materials and goods produced by or dependent on Fossil Fuel Extraction before THEY place the demanded restriction upon others
Detach from Grid Sourced Energy (fossil is in the mix)
No Solar Power (Coking Coal is required to purify the silica)
Scrap their ICE autos (no trade in value no resale)
Buy new Battery EVs (and leave them parked in their garages (see below))
No use of synthetic rubber tires (requires Petrochemicals to produce)
No Asphalt roadways
No Plastics (dependent on petrochemicals)
No structural steel (affordably dependent on Coking Coal for purification)
No Wind Turbines (dependent on Strong Structural Steel and Plastics (see above))
No goods requiring interstate/intrastate transport (requires Diesel)
No using Any of the more than 6000 goods that are dependent on petrochemicals
Convert to Amish
Then you will prove your dedication and I might be inclined to give your argument weight beyond picogram into nanogram only because it is currently outweighed by your own hypocrisy
You should add that THEY have to grow THEIR own food, make their own clothing, and figure out how to use an outhouse. THEY aren’t up to it, y’know. THEY are too dependent on being waited on. I’m not, you aren’t. We’ll survive and thrive. THEY will evaporate away to dust.
and no concrete roadways.
Absolutely.
The linked article is paywalled. Did she set a time frame for abolishing fossil fuels?
All my working life I thought I was an engineer. Only now do I learn I really am a magician.
Since one of the axioms of their belief system is that renewables are cheaper than coal, expressing skepticism outs you as a potential climate criminal. They still expect the magic, of course.
I read that piece of crap from that always left leaning piece of crap online publication. In fact every thing I have ever read from the so called Business Insider is leftist trash or propaganda.
I think ‘Mental Confusion’ would have been better in the Title.
How about just calling it “Insanity”….
I don’t like to criticise something without some background
“Founded by DoubleClick Founder and former C.E.O. Kevin P. Ryan, it [Insider, formerly Business Insider] is the overarching brand in which Silicon Alley Insider (launched May 16, 2007) and Clusterstock (launched March 20, 2008) verticals fall beneath.
The site provides and analyzes business news and acts as an aggregator of top news stories from around the web. Its original works are sometimes cited by other, larger, publications such as The New York Times and domestic news outlets like National Public Radio.”
https://www.allsides.com/news-source/business-insider
Interestingly, according to Wiki, Ryan was named the director emeritus of Human Rights Watch as well as being on the advisory board for Doctors Without Borders, or Medicins sans frontieres. And that tells me all I need to know.
It’s the non academic equivalent of The Convers[at]ion. In a word, unbelievable.
Thanks for the insight. I wondered who was involved. It’s Defintely a Hard Left publication.
Can we have a list of words that fail moderation please?
I posted a factual post on the background of Insider/Business Insider – with links – twice and it has disappeared; twice.
Is WUWT linked in some way to Business Insider?
I think we should be told.
Now it’s back pending ‘approval’
What is going on today?!
Due to it’s outage, the Facebook fact checkers haven’t gotten to your post yet.
Considering the author is involved in mental health, curiously, right now a huge Facebook/Instagram scandal with whistleblower Frances Haugen is all over the media. Internal FB documents documented the dangerous impact on kids. I just wonder if any mentioned climate doom and depression.
FB planned to go after the tweeny market and had to can that idea.
Whistleblower: Facebook research showed Instagram is worse for teenagers than other social media (“60 minutes”)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT2sMDCW_2k
Note the title comment on feedback. I suspect climate doom works exactly the same way.
It sure looks like FB is using applied behavioral psychology.
I’m a member of the Free Speech Union but if I needed anecdotal evidence to argue against it the effusions of Mrs Moskowitz would be where I started. What a load of (dangerous) tripe.
It’s not even wrong.
No problem! Them and their families first.
Mental Health must be named on the same basis as the American Cancer Society.
Okay, Eric, if you are going to have a garden that will feed your family for a year, you need a minimum of two (2) acres of fertile soil and you need to get your kids involved because they are closer to the ground than you are. You also have to be willing to chase off the squirrels, because they are patent thieves of everything, and it’s a good idea to ask a beekeeper to loan you a working hive to fertilize the tomatoes, squash (zukes and hard shell both), peas, beans, watermelons, cantelopes – etc, etc., etc. – and then enlist your offspring in the business of growing your own food. I grew up with this. It was worth it to plant five rows of red and icicle radishes and pull them up, wash them with the garden hose and put them in the fridge.
We also planted popcorn and potatoes and bought a box of ladybugs every year to turn loose on the world. That was fun. I planted parsley and other herbs one year, not realizing that parsley is a biennial, and when it came up the second year, it attracted enough honeyseekers to populate a city. When they were done, the flower heads were fertilized and I got to harvest the parsley seeds for the next year.
Gardening is good for you. If you do this, then your kids know where their food actually comes from and don’t assume it arrives on a truck that unloads it at a store. Yes, I know: not everyone has room for a garden like that, but it’s worth it. And it is not backbreaking if it’s done right. Plenty of people are still gardening into their 80s.
That painting, BTW, is Millet’s “The Gleaners”, 1857, and gleaning was done after grains were harvested so that nothing was wasted or left to birds to steal. Gleaning goes way back in time, part of human history.
I remember gleaning as a kid in wartime Britain, to eke out the balancer meal that we got for the chickens in lieu of an egg ration. I can still smell that balancer meal cooking up with potatoes and vegetable scraps to a warm crumbly mix that the chickens fought for. Allotment gardening, 10 evacuees Mum fed for a few months and three for the duration and after to finish their schooling. The Gasworks was bombed, I watched it has from my school window, a lone plane flying low in the valley and a direct hit on the gasometer, whoosh, great excitement for an eight year old. We went back to a wood burning stove for hot water and cooking, be difficult to find the wood if everyone did that now.. People today in the cities have no idea of the work involved in growing harvesting preserving foods, salting, drying bottling smoking,mounding root vegetables, and watergas trailers for lorries cars and buses, one hill the passengers had to get out and push, Trouble is with electric buses they are too heavy to push, just have to wait for sunshine for the rooftop solar array to kick in.
Thank you for those memories of yours, Julian. It does make a difference that you (and I) can relate to these things, which happened because of shortages (wartime) or a salary that had my dad just getting by. I think you should put all that down on paper for your grandkids. It’s family history now, and you don’t want that lost.
Something is certainly going on. Are these those “interesting times” we hear about now and then?
Sara,
Smart idea.
My Dad – dead this quarter of a century did something like that for – I think – a local school.
I have taken the [UK-based] questionnaire, and prepared it for an electronic world.
Here it is: –
How We Used to Live
1. What was your home like when you were ten?
2. Did you live in a city, town, village, or elsewhere?
3. Which invention in the home has changed the way we live the most?
4. What was your favourite meal? And favourite drink?
5. Where did your family do its shopping?
6. As a child, were you expected to do any household chores?
7. Did your parents have anyone to help with work around the home?
8. How many children were in your family?
9. Were there any ‘dangerous’ childhood illnesses? Did you know any child that died as a child?
10. Did you – and your family – observe any religious festivals or customs?
11. Did you worship regularly – and if so, how?
12. Please describe a typical day when you were about ten years old.
13. Can you tell me briefly about the stages of the year; Christmas, holidays, etc.?
14. How old were you when you started and finished school? How many schools did you attend?
15. What was school like?
16. Who were your favourite teachers? Did they teach your favourite subjects?
17. Were there any school punishments, and what were they for?
18. What did you like – and dislike – most about school?
19. Can you remember any school friends? Are you still in contact with any school friends?
20. Did you, or your friends, try to go to university?
21. What job[s] did you have when you left schools? Did you think to follow your father or mother?
22. How much were you paid? And did you then contribute to the household expenses?
23. What types of transport did you use most often?
24. Did you take any family outings/holidays? Where did you go?
25. How did you travel on holiday – or on outings?
26. When did you first travel by airplane?
27. Did you learn to drive? At what age? Did you have a car?
28. What are the differences between dress for a ten-year-old today, and when you were ten?
29. What influenced the way you dressed as a teenager?
30. How did you get ‘News’ when you were ten?
31. What did you do in your spare time? What games did you play with friends at ten?
32. Did you have any hobbies at about ten?
33. Did you have a radio or TV in your home? If so – what were your favourite programmes?
34. Did anyone in your family play a musical instrument, or sing?
35. Did you have any pets?
36. Did you have a favourite book or toy?
37. What music was popular? Did you have any favourite performers?
38. Did you go to the cinema very often? Who were the famous film stars of the day?
39. What sports, if any, did you play?
40. Did you have any sporting heroes?
41. Did you get any pocket money? How much? How did you spend it?
42. When did you first drink alcohol? Smoke? [and try illegal drugs]?
43. During your life, which personalities have you most admired? And why?
44. Which important events have most affected your life?
45. What are your dearest memories?
46. Did any world event change your life a lot?
47. Do you have any wartime memories? If so – which war?
48. What do you think are the greatest scientific and medical achievements in your lifetime?
49. Can you tell me a little about your grandparents? Names, jobs, places of birth, etc.
50. What is the greatest difference between your life at ten, and a ten-year-old’s, today?
It’s not copyright.
Please use – or distribute – as you would, including all or just some of the questions. No acknowledgement needed
Auto
Some of those questions bring back some real memories. Thanks!
Thanks Auto, great list. And Sara, I did write “My Story” in a class of that name at U3A (University of the 3rd Age) a great two year course, we learned the most interesting private histories of everyone as we read our 4 foolscap page assignment to the others, in sworn confidence of course.
“P.E. Moskowitz is an author, runs Mental Hellth, a newsletter about capitalism and psychology”
So he’s a Marxist then. I bet he uses fossil fuels and their products every day without realising.
It’s easy to end fossil fuel use … we just relabel them as 100% organic stored solar energy … and the greens will love them …. job sorted
P E Moskowitz is just another depressed woman trying to drag every one else in to her depression with her. She needs MEDS and lots of them.
There is no polite way to put it: The author has gone “full retard” on climate, and specifically on energy.
Sure. Let’s also reduce the overall population on the planet by about 90%, too. I vote we start with those advocating we eviscerate the economy for an imagined cause-effect relationship to an imagined problem, and then see what difference it makes first. Not by violence, mind you, just deny them the benefits of the fossil fuel economy and all the products that depend on it—which is just about everything, including foods farmed using energy that was produced (even if indirectly) by fossil fuels, or dependent on fertilizer or insecticides and transported using fossil fuels and sold in markets lit using fossil fuels. Even the tools of exploiting solar and wind energy depend on fossil fuels, to mine, fabricate, transport, store, and link the energy.
What exactly are we teaching in schools?
You have to also deprive them of heat and water and shelter, or it doesn’t really work. Oh, and plumbing – that’s gotta go.
Have you ever wondered how these self-important mopes would get along if we (the self-supporting noonches) and they were sent back to the 17th or early 18th century, and who would do better? Us or them? I think we’d all be okay, and they’d be crying to be let in out of the cold.
So, the present neoleft is too far right for this author. Just stop ff production. Just stop living for 75% of us. This lady wants to stop free speech, too, although obviously she thinks she should be free to talk her ugly how-to-kill-a- city stuff.
Business publishers have clearly been a target of the silent totalitarian takeover, but what is wrong with the business people who support these organs of enterprise wreckers.
Here is an axiom (said by many here). If you give ground to these evil folk, they are encouraged to take more. I’d rather be ruled by Ghengis Khan than by idiot elites.
The latest clueless climate caterwauler’s confabulation: “Back to the Middle Ages Now”.
“Now it is up to you engineering types to figure out the details.”
Us engineering types have been saying for a long time that the 2 billion casualties and several billion more living in energy poverty and real poverty won’t like your very poorly conceived goals.
And they will likely react by asking engineers to build guillotine factories to be used on the elites.
He is suggesting destroying the US as a world power.
He deals with the intangible in his work while suggesting the destruction of the very tangible.
P.E. Moskowitz seems confused about numeration, switching back and forth between self-referential plural pronouns while acting under the singlular verb to be.
I.e., “P.E. Moskowitz is the author… ” [but] “They write the newsletter…”
PE Moskowitz is transgender and appears to be in the process of becoming a female. I think that’s the reason for the use of both singular and plural.
No matter; that’s one big bag of crazy to think that we could do away with fossil fuels without significant pain and mass loss of life.
“P.E. Moskowitz is the author … They write … They are the co-founder … They also guest-lecture … They’ve … Their dog’s name …”
How many of them are there? Is it a whole group? or just one human with 17 personalities?
They = non gender specific opposed to She or Her
Can anyone tell me if she has set a time line for abolishing fossil fuels?
Timeline? Nope, the point of the article is it must be done right away, without such niceties as figuring out how we are all going to live after it’s done. That’s for later, and if it doesn’t work out, blame it on the engineers who failed to make it work,
How dare pro-humanity individuals and governments support banishment of fossil fuels, when their banishment would be the greatest threat to civilization resulting in billions dying from starvation, diseases, and weather-related deaths?
Lysenkoism runs rampant in
the green movements . “We give you political science goal ,Five years comrade,or the gulag.”
At the risk of repeating myself here, billions of deaths is not a bug, it’s a feature. Socialism/Communism/Fascism all ways, and every time, leads to mass death.
It’s been clear all along that the main agenda is abolishing fossil fuels, but like abolishing the police, it’s easier said than done. When is this supposed to happen? Immediately?
If the burning of fossil fuels was completely banned, people with access to trees would start burning wood to heat their homes in winter. This would emit CO2 into the air, and also the rate of removal of CO2 by trees would decrease, which would tend to further increase the accumulation of CO2 into the air.
Wind turbines and solar panels don’t produce enough energy to solve this problem. Among known technology, natural gas is the best in the short term, with a transition to nuclear in the long term.
i guess they want us naked and starving. around 75 % of all clothing is from oil. with out oil we will not be able to grow enough food to feed the world population. this person must want to kill around 1/2 of the worlds people.
“Calling for the complete end of fossil fuel extraction”. Do these idiots have even the slightest conception of what this would mean. Back to the Stone Age with war, famine, disease and a short brutal life. Maybe that is what they really want
It’s already been done. Look up Pot Pot. They only managed to kill of 25% of the population before even the Vietnamese Communists couldn’t stand it any more, and took over. Left to their own devices, the only Cambodian’s left alive would be top members of the Party.
How do we solve climate change? Abolish fossil fuels
Or wear appropriate clothing, heat and cool buildings as necessary and adjust outdoor activities according to the season.
As for effects for slightly warmer or cooler seasons, adapt like our primitive ancestors did.
Wear more when it’s cold, wear less when it’s warm…
Warmer is better
TOGA
TOGA
TOGA
Can’t tell if that’s sarcasm, or if you are simply totally insane. 🙂
I thought he posing a question and offering two options for answers:
Q: How to solve (the problem of) climate change?
A: Stop using fossil fuels, or
B: Use both old and new approaches to cope with climate change.
(N.B. old approach, move to better climate; new, get HVAC installed)
Personally, I support B.
But then there is the tithe that we would have to hand over to our betters, who, naturally, must exempt themselves from burdensome tasks if they are to be free to devise new ways to manage our lives, given that we clearly are unable to do so ourselves.
I just love the hubris of these people. The world has existed for a long, long time, and in all the time humans have been here, never have they been able to influence much of anything, globally, and certainly not the climate. This is another of the periodical “Tower of Babel” moments, not unusual, but unfortunately seen more and more in the age of mass media. Of course, ‘we in this age are the absolute pinnacle of human development and are special’…which I’ve heard multiple times in my lifetime. And in another generation or two, we’ll see another bunch of these pronouncements, which will of course try to tell us that those of us living in the early 21st century were backwoods idiots, and ‘we who are living now are superior and smarter and…’ blahblahblah.
“It” fails to mention the planets largest polluter. India escape censure,Russia likewise.
This is nectar for marxist reconstruction it’s such as Izaak W.
She is not a scientist or engineer. She is a communist who calls herself a journalist. Why should anyone care what she has to say?
From the Business Insider article :
That link is to an EIA webpage titled “Energy and the environment explained : Where greenhouse gases come from” which includes the graph at the end of this post.
P.E. Moskowitz appears to have made the classic mistake of constantly switching between “(Primary) Energy (Production / Consumption)” and “Electricity (Generation)”.
They are not freely-interchangeable terms !
Even completely “eliminating” coal and (natural) gas from electricity production in the USA would only reduce American CO2 emissions by about a third.
– – – – –
The more extreme environmental activists claim that the “risk” from CO2 (/ GHG) emissions is so great that “the end justifies the means” when it comes to reducing fossil-fuel burning, and that even if there would be hardship in the short-term by going to zero-emissions “immediately” it would be more than offset by the long-term gains for the environment … oh, and for people as well.
In a separate development they have already persuaded California to shut down their last nuclear power units, at the Diablo Canyon site, by 2025.
I propose the following “experiment” for the state of California to show the world just how many “benefits” would accrue from “eliminating” all fossil-fuel emissions immediately :
– Shutdown all coal and CCGT power plants (in California) immediately
– Disconnect all electricity transmission lines (to California) from states with majority coal and/or CCGT generation immediately
– Shutdown all methane (CH4, a “potent” GHG …) distribution networks for home, business and municipal cooking and heating purposes (in California) immediately
– Shutdown all “gas stations” (in California) immediately
– Eliminate all sales of “fuel oil”, including “marine bunker fuel”, (in California) immediately
– Eliminate all sales of kerosene, including “Jet Fuel A[-1]”, (in California) immediately
In their article P.E. Moskowitz claims that “the majority of people in most developed countries say they’d be willing to take action to prevent climate change”.
How about putting that particular “Proposition N : To show the entire world what urgent action to ‘prevent’ climate change would actually look like” to the people of California in a referendum ?
How long would it take for the benefits of such action to outweigh the short-term negative consequences ?
One only needs to review the history of Russia’s infamous and deadly series of Five Year Plans during Communist rule to see how wrong government planners and visionaries can be in their quest towards utopia.
Business Insider: Abolish Fossil Fuel To Stop Global Warming
Should be:
“Abolish Fossil Fuel To Stop Staying Warm Winter and Cool in Summer”
PS Don’t know that those seasons existed long before Jed Clampett “was shootin’ at some food and up from the ground came a bubblin’ crude …”
This book explains why fossil fuels are here to stay. You cant run a modern economy with stupid wind turbines.
The moral case for fossil fuels
Are we even sure that CO2 is not a net benefit? Until we more than double the amount of CO2 it will keep increasing the biomass of the planet which is a very good thing. As long as it does not have an negative effect by raising the temperature along the equator to the point where those areas become unhabitable by people plants and animals it is a net good. As far as sea level rise thats selfish of people to keep sea level from rising at the expense of CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the total biomass of the planet.
As far as renewable energy your unbiased engineers would tell you that it does not provide reliable energy. Just look at China during this winter. If the greens had not gotten in their way we would probably have 4th generation nuclear by now and lower CO2 levels.