From MasterResource
By Robert Bradley Jr. — October 25, 2022
“The superior case for dense mineral energies economically and environmentally should inspire a rethink. And climate policy is in shambles heading into COP 27.”
“What is really fishy is that those that admit to ‘climate anxiety’ do not have any appetite to seriously entertain the case for CO2/climate optimism, aka energy freedom for the masses. And they see no evil in the eco-sins of wind, solar, and batteries….”
I actively engage in (and occasionally share) debates on LinkedIn against climate alarmists/forced energy transformationists. I sometimes feel like a teacher presenting a suite of arguments that have been cursorily dismissed. The good news is that there are a lot of readers in the middle who see what is going on. A number now join me in what is a two-sided debate at LinkedIn.
I have had to block some hateful opponents, but overall I have learned much from ‘dropping behind enemy lines’. Here are some major takeaways from my nearly one-year experience.
- The large majority of opponents ignore rather than engage. They follow Michael Mann’s advice of “Report, block. Don’t engage.”
- Those who do engage are convinced that the “deniers” do not have an intellectual case and are just “shills for Big Oil” (see exchange below).
- Exposed to non-alarmism, the activists fall back on the IPCC and other chosen authorities (“argument from authority”).
- After rebuttal to #3 (like with Climategate), ad hominem comes along the lines of #2.
- After #3 and #4, they disengage.
Some adversaries have been polite and actually admit to some weaknesses in their case. But they are the exception behind the green curtain; most debate with religious fervor and argue as if there is not a Green Energy Crisis around the world, from Texas and California to the UK and the EU.
Overall, there is really little movement by the alarmists/forced energy transformationists, whether as the result of deep ecology, not understanding economics (tradeoffs and opportunity cost), or being mad at the system, the status quo, the establishment (in which case I wish they would rebel against the true elites).
What is really fishy is that those that admit to “climate anxiety” do not have any appetite to seriously entertain the case for CO2/climate optimism, aka energy freedom for the masses. And they see no evil in the eco-sins of wind, solar, and batteries, nor do they comprehend the energy density/intermittency argument that was recognized 150 years ago.
———————————-
Here is a recent exchange at LinkedIn that is typical:
Robert Bradley Jr.: Time to rebel against the intellectual/climate elite. Mass mineral energies for real people.
Brian Scott: Or for lobbyist like yourself that are paid to misinform right Rob?
RB: Wrong on all counts …. We have gone through this before. The superior case for dense mineral energies economically and environmentally should inspire a rethink. And climate policy is in shambles heading into COP 27.
BS: Your organization is funded by the industry its well documented. Climate policy investments are at an all time high
RB: Been through this before. We have several thousand classical liberal supporters. Do you know what classical liberalism is? End the ad hominem and focus on the arguments–yours are anti-economics and anti-environmental.
BS: Mine are anti environmental?
RB: Yes … duplicating the grid and the transportation system require a whole new level of industrialization and a huge ramp-up of mining. “Big shovels” as Daniel Yergin says.
And machining up the landscape with wind and solar and transmission that operate a third of the time is violating nature in a way that dense mineral energies avoid. And what do you have against Global Greening from CO2?
BS: Duplicating is nonsense. Mining for mineral for the purpose of reducing climate change impacts while recycling those minerals for use over and over again.. landscape isn’t an issue rooftop covers more than enough of demand and solar farms on marginal farm land helps farmers pay their bills. Co2 for greening? I would say if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you but I realize you are paid to sell that narrative. The idea of greening by increasing droughts amd flooding is hilarious.
RB: Duplicating it is … wind, solar, batteries that are not needed by the energy economy. Talking about industrial wind and industrial solar, not micro and off-the-grid. Big eco-revolt at the grassroots.
CO2 greening–that’s settled science. Climate model predictions–unsettled science.
On the ad hominem, “I realize you are paid to sell that narrative.” that is simply incorrect. I argue the correct, classical liberal worldview that you do not seem to understand.
Increasing droughts and flooding? Fallacies if you want to examine the long term data. The ‘energy transition’ is bad economics and bad ‘environmentalism.’ Global greening and energy density are pro environment. Dilute, intermittent technologies are eco-disruptive.
Elitism vs. energy for the masses, as chosen by the masses.
BS: lol More propaganda, not settled by scientists but a paid web developer. I’m curious if Mr Koch edits these for you or if you have artistic freedom
RB: Wrong again on the ad hominem. Just deal with arguments: dense mineral energies are better for the environment and pocketbook than dilute, intermittent, parasitic, crony energies.
And energy consumers worldwide have had enough of an intellectual/political elite alarming and robbing them.
COP27 charade coming.
BS: I would be glad if we could deal with the argument. As you destroy the world with Emissions you have no solution. I have a lot of friends in the oil and gas industry with varying opinions, none of them believe this co2 to save the earth nonsense.
RB: “Destroy the world with Emissions” … “you have no solution.” … ” co2 to save the earth nonsense”
Three strikes. First, emissions of real air pollutants have gone down, way down, and this is expected to continue. CO2 is not a pollutant destroying the world.
Second, the solution is 1) do no harm 2) anticipate and adapt with weather extremes, which is not ‘climate change’ 3) thrive with enhanced CO2 and the best energies.
Third, CO2 does not ‘save the earth’ but enriches it. This is part of the debate that is settled science.
BS: Money will make people believe anything won’t it. Where specifically has ipcc gone I wonder. Should you get them a check?
RB: Wrong again on your ad hominem. I am just arguing a strong, superior argument. I would not have it any other way.
Final Comment
Always be polite and keep it scholarly. For example, I had a similar exchange with a fellow from a distant country that was a … professional clown. The fellow above has bad initials for such an exchange. Openings for cheap shots. There are many, many other people reading the exchanges, and they are in the middle and persuadable. Keep the high ground.
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I frequently comment on WSJ articles or opinion pieces where comments are allowed as well as some other sites and experience the same phenomenon. I frequently cite Willis E’s posts re: Where’s the Climate Emergency, Mark Mills Mines, Minerals, and Greene energy, a reality check, and edmhdotme‘s graphs re: “renewables” energy costs, and a few others. My goal is not to change the minds of the true believers – IMO, an impossible task – but to put arguments out there that may be convincing to others who may be able to be persuaded, and also, to help educate those that are skeptics but frankly don’t make very good arguments. For the most part, the true believer arguments fall apart pretty quickly and denial ensues along with the ad hominems, but I think we all need to make an effort to fight this battle on multiple fronts. My small effort likely makes little difference, but hopefully helps educate a few.
Thank you for fighting against #ClimateScientology
Two days ago there was a post about Bjorn Stevens which attracted a lot of hostile comment. This is not necessarily a bad thing – if you’re getting a lot of flak you’re over the target. I made my usual point about non-co2 warming mechanisms and attracted to a troll.
If you read the exchange – it’s nearly at the end so is easy to find – the methods are easy to spot, never discuss science, never yield even the most obvious point, just keep repeating uncheckable assertions.
Heaven knows what is the motivation. Maybe they’re just dorks.
JF
You describe Griff and Simon to a T.
Arguing with them is almost always pointless. I had a long series of discussions with a ‘friend’ who went down the greeeen path; he (an engineer, BTW) declared he didn’t really “understand” graphs, so he’d basically ignored the (WUWT) graph that shows warming trends from models vs trends from satellite / balloon records. Doesn’t understand graphs? REALLY? Lack of understanding, or lack of desire to understand?
I encountered him again, recently; he was telling one of my kids that there’s no hope for me, I’m just a denier; you see, he offered to take me ’round to a couple of university professors he knows, who could explain CAGW to me. I declined; if they’re friends of his who he wants me to talk-to about CAGW…
1) WHY does he want me to talk to THESE friends of his? and
2) Because they’re friends of his, WHOSE side of CAGW will they parrot – his, or mine?
So I’ve downgraded him from ‘friend’ to ‘acquaintance’, and hope not to encounter him again. Not the first ‘friend’ I’ve done that to; sad, really…
Done the same myself…
There was a time, not to long ago, when people with differing political views could sit down and have an enlightening conversation.
That time, sadly, is long gone and I blame leftists for the change.
I have friends and acquaintances that are professors in universities and they are realists about climate .
They can think for themselves and they can see that the so called proof of global warming is far from settled .
They have to be careful with what and how they teach as the majority of academics in New Zealand universities are warmists.
They are quite free with their help and advice if I ask for data concerning climate.
We do not have beliefs. Beliefs own us. Belief is what directs a person strap a bomb to themselves and blow up a bus filled with of children, destroying others and the believer at the same time.
I sometimes read the Ars comments sections when there is a climate story, and the tone of this exchange is very familiar. On Ars its also the tone of the staff, as well as the commenters, who take the approach of banning anyone who dissents from the party line.
Its amusing, you see some newcomer enter, put up a few dissenting or skeptical posts, after which every post they make is moderated down till it becomes hidden, and finally the account is banned.
The really interesting thing to ask about these exchanges isn’t so much the merits of the arguments, its more, what is this all about anyway?
Its obviously very important to the faithful that there shall be no questioning of the dogma of CAGW – the dogma is well summarized by the interlocutor in these exchanges. So there is the progress from dismissal, ad hominem attacks, accusations of being in the pay of Big Oil, follwed by banning.
But why?
There is the blind faith in wind and solar and marks of virtue such as EVs. But that doesn’t seem so large a factor that it explains the rather fanatical desire to eliminate all questioning.
The only explanation that seems to fit the facts is fear of ostracism. People are genuinely afraid of dissenting from their peer group of social contacts because they fear ostracism if they do. The same factor seems to be operating in gender discussions. Cambridge University in the UK is lately doing its best to get Helen Joyce shunned (she is a gender critical Economist journalist who has written a very striking book on the subject). Nottingham City Council tried to ban a speaker, without knowing what she was to talk about, because she has taken gender critical stances in the past.
Last I heard she was intending to sue on the basis that the Equalities Act in the UK makes gender critical beliefs protected – you cannot be discrminated against for holding them.
But even if that is the explanation, it just puts the question back one level. Why is it that groups have decided to make faith in these particular dogmas criteria for inclusion or shunning? Why is it that a group, quite likely with no trans members, is so hung up on everyone believing, or pretending to believe, that biological sex is not real? Why is it that groups similarly, who have no intention of changing their lifestyles at all, set as a criterion for membership that you have to believe whole heartedly in the supposed climate emergency?
Its very weird. I do wish there was someone who understood it and could give a plausible account of what is happening.
God is dead, but we still hang on to the concepts of sin, guilt and shame.
The problem we seem to have now is that redemption is no longer an option.
If you haven’t already read the book “The Madness of Crowds” by Douglas Murray I highly recommend it.
Yes, I’ve read it and found it excellent. I agree that the phenomenon is similar to what we see in religious cults. In fact the whole woke phenomenon bears out Chesterton’s famous remark, that the problem with the loss of belief (he meant in conventional Christianity) is not that people then believe nothing, but that they start believing in anything.
Another case which maybe has something in common is that of so called ‘honor killings’, where social pressure seems to cause men to kill their children or siblings, mainly but not exclusively women and girls, because they are thought to have breached some code of behavior related to sexual matters and thus brought shame on the family.
Social pressure can be, as this shows, immensely powerful. It is due to the power of shunning and ostracism in societies where just getting the necessities of life requires connexion.
In the UK, US and Australia its not that the local shop refuses to serve you, or the local school allow your kids in. Its that your ISP disconnects you, your bank closes your accounts… and so on.
Great question Michel.
My take on it is that allegiances are vital to evolutionary process.
To test whether someone is on your side you tell them a lie. This lie can manifest as fashion, manners, religion or climate evangelism. If they chose to believe you then they have given up something important (the truth) and can therefore be trusted as a part of your team.
It’s a bit like a mafia boss testing a new recruit by getting him to kill someone as proof of allegiance.
There are two things we value above all others, Life and the truth.
Believing a lie is a little less dramatic than taking a life and is a better way of proving our support or social grouping.
“Chesterton’s famous remark… not that people then believe nothing, but that they start believing in anything.”
Yes, that’s spot on.
Great questions. I once presented at a national higher education “sustainability” conference along with a co-presenter, Rachelle Peterson, from the National Association of Scholars. Prior to our talk that came late in the conference, I sat with a number of attendees over meals and breaks and had a cordial time.
But then we spoke. BOOM! Rachelle used the word “patriarchy,” quoting one of the left’s own writers, and a woman member of the audience jumped up and ran from the room in terror! I later learned that she was a radical feminist and couldn’t stand having her arguments used against her. In my talk, I did not come across as a “denier.” Climate was not my main topic. My approach was to teach the history of the term “sustainability” and how the concept emerged and took on new meaning in the late 20th century. I then described how activist NGOs and philanthropies had co-opted the noble idea and infested it with leftist social and political ideologies, and then further targeted higher education from the outside. I talked about the “them vs us” mentality that emerged, and how the movement uses the psychological barrier of FEAR (fear of change, fear of failure, and belief in the “system’ with its litany of “horribles”) to manipulate people. In so doing, I said that they are disenfranchising at least half of their campus community. Throughout the talk, I sprinkled in some Scott Adams Delbert strips making fun of greens. Finally, I challenged them to test their assumptions. What would they do or do differently if they found that the premises that they accepted as “true” were in fact wrong. Moreover, I challenged to not always take the pessimistic (glass half empty) view. What if things are changing for the better, or that the rate and magnitude of change are not an emergency or catastrophe. And how might they broaden their appeal to the wider community rather than “cancel” and shun them?
I ended with a couple of apropos quotes:
“It ain’t them things you don’t know what gets you into trouble, it’s them things you know for sure what ain’t so.”
– Charles F. Kettering (1937)
“You can give respectability to mythology if you couch your myth in sufficiently academic language.”
– Dr. R.C. Sproul
After the conference (if I heard the word sustainability once more before I left town, I felt like my head would explode), I monitored email traffic on the GreenSchool Listserve. As expected, I was dismissed as a denier. Some complained that we misled the organizers and sneaked onto the conference agenda. Some said, if they had known, they would not have attended (lest they hear something contrary to their faith). One young woman, with whom I had shared a nice lunchtime discussion, said that I seemed so nice and was surprised by what we had to say. That is about as positive a remark as I saw – that I am a real person and not a monster.
I would do it again. The effort was well worth it, although our audience was already closed-minded and cut off from reality.
But, you see, the tendency in the Anglosphere is for it not to stop there. The next step, for Toby Young for instance, is for unrelated accounts to be cancelled. Or for Julie Bindel to discover she cannot rent a hall from Nottingham City Council for a meeting. Or for Rose Duffield to discover that she cannot safely attend her political party’s conference.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/07/nottingham-council-apologises-to-julie-bindel-for-unlawfully-cancelling-talk
There are lots of these cases. Its what led Toby Young to found the Free Speech Union, and PayPal’s reaction to THAT was to cancel both his personal account, that of the Free Speech Union, and also that of the Daily Sceptic. The only connexion between these was that they are related to Toby Young. It seems to have been a deliberate banning of Young himself and anything he is undertaking.
As in the poem by Yevtushenko
How sharply our children will be ashamed
taking at last their vengeance for these horrors
remembering how in so strange a time
common integrity could look like courage.
They are pushing us to create a parallel, alternate economy and society. Unfortunately, those become easy targets for tyrants and propagandists. We are witnessing the rapid unraveling of western thought and culture, a return to the Dark Ages.
Very interesting flash, thanks for the anecdote, sounds to me like you went at them pretty hard lol!
Good job…my god do they need waking up… not woke.
Most of my confrontations with the global warming crowd ends with a silent pause and then “Well, we need to leave our grandchildren a better place to live.” This of course, is what I am trying to do. I don’t want my grand kids eating bugs for dinner and setting the thermostat to 60 degrees because they can’t afford heat.
Good luck, Robert. LinkedIn abruptly terminated my account without any explanation, but clearly for the violation of arguing AGW. I had many debates such as yours.
The LinkedIn axe fell when my post demonstrated that the historical air temperature record had changed systematically to cool the past, and that the whole 20th century air temperature trend could be explained by natural cycles, without any CO2 participation at all.
That proved too much for them.
The LinkedIn Trust and Safety Teams runs from analytical disproofs. Cowards all, or cheats.
The LinkedIn T&S thought-police may decide you, too, are too dangerous to their narrative, and bring down the curtain on your account..
Paypal cancelled (though has subsequently reinstated) the accounts of Toby Young personally, and also the Free Speech Union. No explanation was given. The nominal reason was breach of Paypal policy, but there was no explanation of what the breach had been.
https://freespeechunion.org/
Its become very similar to China and social credit. Except this is happening in the US, the UK and Australia so far without any government action, just by the actions of independent corporations animated by the same approach.
The next step will be for government to try to facilitate this by legislating against online anonymity. For now, the prudent thing is only to post anonymously. Otherwise one is liable to wake up one morning and discover that bank accounts have been cancelled, utility companies will no longer provide services, post (in countries with privatized mail service) will no longer be delivered, social media accounts will be frozen. And the police, as in the case of Harry Miller in the UK, arrive to explain that your postings, though perfectly legal, have offended someone, and that this will now be logged as part of your police record and you would do well to desist in future.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-59727118
Meanwhile the liberal media, such as the Guardian or Ars, explain that these are all private companies, so there is by definition no censorship going on. On the contrary, to try to compel them to stop doing this would breach THEIR First Amendment rights (in the US). Or similar elsewhere.
I always try to be polite and scholarly in my arguments with climate alarmist in the newspapers, but I do not accept to be accused of being a paid agent for the fossil fuel industry. I ask them to provide proof and inform the newspaper that the accusations are merit less and constitute libel. The newspapers have blocked such persons from the debate a number of times.
Arguing with Climate idiots is generally tiring, depressing, unrewarding, and possibly counter-productive
You can’t reason someone out of a position if they didn’t reason themselves there in the first place. Good luck.
Notes without comment. From the Telegraph
I love when they bring up the “paid lobbyist, or paid by oil companies” deflection. You mean as opposed to the alarmist side being paid by governments, with infinitely bigger pockets than any fossil fuel company? Got it..
I have asked them to fundraise for us to get that Big Oil money. No luck…
Very similar to my experiences with global warmunists.
Sadly my relatives who believe 100% in impending global climate disaster refuse to even discuss it at all. I think they suspect that I have the truth of the matter and if they listen to me, they’ll see it for themselves and will have to admit the “facist, anti-science, denier, ultra-right-wing extremists were right all along, not just about climate but everything else too.
“Those who do engage are convinced that the “deniers” do not have an intellectual case and are just “shills for Big Oil” (see exchange below).”
Are the Chinese leadership “shills for Big Oil”?
If solar is cheaper than coal, why does China burn so much coal?
It takes a effort to dig up all that coal and transported around the country.
Also they import a lot coal from various countries.
And they export a lot solar panels.
Could it be because China’s average temperature is about 8 C?
Or perhaps, Shills for Big Rail?
Robert, very nice. You missed an opportunity on the global greening.
“Global greening and energy density are pro environment.”
Planting trees is a huge Greenie strategy to curb global warming. Airlines, etc. plant trees to absorb the CO2 of a trip. According to Google, they counted 3 trillion trees on earth and global forests have grown 18% ina area in 40yrs – 540B trees from oil, gas and coal burning. Virtue planting is puny in comparison.
People like your opponent would fail a Turing test.