In a world where “decarbonization” dominates the political and economic discourse, an upcoming debate promises to question whether the ambitious goals of reducing carbon emissions justify the immense economic, social, and technological price tags attached to them. This pivotal discussion will feature leading experts in atmospheric science, economics, and energy policy, creating a forum to explore the contentious trade-offs inherent in climate change mitigation strategies.
The Panel of Experts
The debate features four distinguished speakers:
- Kerry Emanuel: A Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at MIT, Emanuel brings a deep understanding of climate dynamics, likely advocating for the scientific necessity of decarbonization.
- Robert Pindyck: An economist from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Pindyck has critically examined the uncertainties in climate models and their use in policy decisions. He will offer an economic lens on the debate.
- Steven Koonin: A Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Koonin is well-known for his skepticism of mainstream climate narratives and emphasizes the uncertainties surrounding climate data and models.
- Mark Mills: Executive Director of the National Center for Energy Analytics, Mills often critiques the feasibility of transitioning to a “net-zero” energy future, highlighting the material and energy demands of renewable technologies.
The Moderator
John Tomasi, the President of Heterodox Academy, will moderate. Tomasi’s leadership in fostering open, critical discourse ensures that the debate avoids echo chambers and instead challenges participants to rigorously defend their positions.
When and Where
- Date: Today Thursday, November 14
- Time: 7:00 PM
- Location: Wong Auditorium (E51-115), MIT
- Admission: Free, though registration is encouraged.
- Online
For those unable to attend in person, the event will stream live on YouTube (@MITFreespeech).
Why This Debate Matters
The topic—“Is Decarbonization Worth the Cost?”—is arguably one of the most pressing of our time. With the debatable global push toward net-zero emissions, the policies crafted today will shape economic structures, technological innovation, and societal norms for decades. Yet, questions persist about the cost-benefit calculus:
- Economic Trade-Offs: Decarbonization requires unprecedented investments in renewable infrastructure, energy storage, and grid modernization. Are these investments yielding tangible benefits, or do they disproportionately burden certain sectors or demographics?
- Scientific Uncertainties: How reliable are the climate models underpinning decarbonization policies? Skeptics like Steven Koonin argue that these models fail to capture the complexity of the climate system, overstating risks.
- Energy Realities: Mark Mills frequently points out the physical limitations of renewable technologies, including the need for rare earth materials and the environmental costs of mining. Are these challenges adequately addressed in the rush to “green energy”?
- Alternative Approaches: Could adaptation strategies, as opposed to aggressive mitigation, offer a more cost-effective path forward?
A Critical Opportunity
This debate is more than an academic exercise. It is an opportunity to scrutinize policies that have far-reaching implications for economic stability, technological progress, and global economies. Decarbonization might be an article of faith for many, but faith is no substitute for rigorous analysis.
Attending or watching this debate will allow you to engage with the arguments on both sides, fostering a more informed perspective on one of the most consequential questions of our era.
Don’t miss this chance to hear from some of the brightest minds tackling one of the thorniest issues of modern policy-making.
For more details and registration, scan the QR code on the event flyer or visit the MIT Open Discourse Society’s website.
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Is Decarbonization Worth the Cost?
No
Depends.
If the eco-fanatics were willing to embrace nuclear, then we could be a long way towards net-zero already, at minimal if any cost, with the added benefit that we could cripple oil/gas exporting countries like Russia and others in the Middle East and likely change global politics forever.
As it is, the zealots want to end the use of fossil fuels, but at the same time reject the only technology that could make that a reality.
And the real tragedy is that governments across the west have been stupid enough to play along with this for the last 25 years or so.
If the eco-fanatics were willing to embrace nuclear,
then we could be a long way towards net-zero . . .
__________________________________________
You don’t get it. So once again it’s time for this one:
Well said, Steve.
No, you don’t get it.
We can argue until we’re blue in the face about whether CO2 is a problem or not, but you will never change the climate fanatics minds.
The only way you will ever win is by proving, with facts, that what they want is achievable, but only if they are willing to accept that which they are not willing to accept.
And I wouldn’t hold my breath on that, either.
No, you don’t get it.
Continually cow-towing to the CO2 warming myth feeds straight into the AGW-cult meme.
Enhanced atmospheric CO2 is absolutely BENEFICIAL to all life on Earth.. There is no “cost”
Decarbonisation is the most stupid, anti-science idiocy introduced for a long time.
The believers will simply ignore clueless “climate deniers” like you.
Are you one of those “believers” ???
Totally in fantasy land.
Let’s see if you have any evidence shall we…
1… Please provide empirical scientific evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2.
2… Please show the evidence of CO2 warming in the UAH atmospheric data.
3… Please state the exact amount of CO2 warming in the last 45 year, giving measured scientific evidence for your answer.
Don’t be another Greene. !
All good questions!
Climate Alarmists don’t have those answers.
“cripple oil/gas exporting countries like Russia and others in the Middle East”
Sounds dangerous.
The Left is big on ‘intersectionality’, in this case between the members of the death cult that is climate alarmism and the governments that are happy to kill them.
Decarbonisation is TOTALLY UNNECESSARY.
and totally COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE.
Should be a good one! The promoters of the unicorn-dust approach to energy – especially Mark Jacobson in CA and Robert Howarth of NY – should take note. I like Mark Mills’ take on the materials requirements for the imagined energy transition to non-emitting energy systems.
Decarcerate via storage is economically impossible.
https://www.cfact.org/2024/06/10/windless-nights-make-net-zero-impossible/
Decarcerate? Is that a word? My machine thinks so. Try decarb.
In fact, the real problem, certainly as far as the UK is concerned, is not windless nights, or even last week’s persistent low wind output, but the fact that wind/solar is seasonal, such that around this time of year we get minimal solar generation, but at the same time, at best average wind output, over a period of several months.
What this means in practice, is that, even if wind can meet demand on most days, there isn’t enough surplus generation to recharge the storage that is needed to meet demand on the days when the wind isn’t blowing, so the only way the country can get through the season is by building up perhaps 6 weeks of storage over the spring/summer, to draw down on over the autumn/winter.
The fact that it’s economically impossible to store enough energy to meet one day’s demand shows the scale of the problem, but the true size of the problem is about 40 times the size of that.
“Decar[bon]ate via storage is economically impossible“
___________________________________________.
Besides that, it’s stupid.
I find myself banging my head on the wall. Why?
Is Decarbonization Worth the Cost?
This is ‘the’ classic no-brainer, yet it’s the question that everybody is determined to fudge in some way or other.
Do Turkeys vote for Christmas? Does Parliament love the people?
Answer, no.
Early in our introductory classes in engineering school, I remember one professor telling us that when the answer becomes obvious, put the pencil down. So yes, these debates are interesting for many, but it has been blindingly clear for a long time that “decarbonization” is just never going to work.
Clear here but not everywhere. Many states have decarb laws with no sign of repeal. Need to keep beating that war drum.
Agreed! Living here in central NY, our state is on this ridiculous “climate leadership” path.
I also remember some little things my engineering professors said. Like “a thing cannot heat itself”. The climate change idea seems to me to run along this line.
In climate change world witchcraft applies…
Just wondering if that “engineering professor” was aware of plutonium, particularly the isotope plutonium-238, a mass of which is naturally warm to the touch due to the heat generated by its radioactive decay.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”.
— Mark Twain
“fission and fusion are both irreversible processes and will increase the entropy of the system as a whole. You cannot return the products of either reaction to their initial state without losing some amount of energy in the process, usually as EM radiation or heat.”
Entropy was invented to balance an equation that makes the professor right.
The laws of thermodynamics do not—indeed, cannot—apply to nuclear decay in a single mass of Pu-238.
The laws of classical thermodynamics, particularly the first law, are fundamentally based on the principle of conservation of energy, where changes in energy are expressed as (a) work performed on/by the system under consideration and (b) changes in the system’s enthalpy. Classically, enthalpy is the system’s internal energy (only considering the total kinetic and potential energy within the system itself) plus the product of its pressure and volume (PV), essentially accounting for the energy associated with volume changes during a process. Nothing is stated about energy associated with the strong nuclear force.
The laws of classical thermodynamics are also based on the principle of conservation of mass, with the assumption that the total mass of a closed system remains constant throughout a process. That is, classical thermodynamics, including the Second Law that involves entropy, does not allow for the transformation of mass into energy . . . such as the ever-decreasing Pu-238 mass from its nuclear transformation into radiation and thermal energy.
I’m not sure I agree. You can account for the energy released in nuclear decay by the mass defect. It’s just another input to the total energy/mass balance.
Please tell me which of the laws of classical thermodynamics admits that mass can be converted into energy and this needs to be considered?
FYI, the formal Laws of Thermodynamics were primarily established around the mid-19th century, with the first and second laws being formally stated by scientists like Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) around 1850, while the third law was developed by Walther Nernst between 1906 and 1912.
In comparison, Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=mc^2 was not put forth until 1905.
The Third Law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of a system approaches a constant value, normally zero, as the temperature approaches absolute zero. Therefore, it states nothing regarding mass being converted to energy.
Some people who post to WUWT believe that it is possible.
My Dad (class of 1932) told a similar story. The professor told the Econ 101 class, “If you keep a notebook of the cost of owning an automobile you will find out how much of your income the machine is costing you. (which was a lot.) So what should you do?” Someone in the class predictably said, “Get rid of the car.” The professor said, “No, get rid of the notebook.”
To the indoctrinated, only the ideology is “obvious.”
Not only can it never work…
… it is totally unnecessary and totally counter productive.
A complete and utter waste of time, effort and money.
Correct.
Any debates on “decarbonization”—a poorly defined-term, but defined by me here in context to mean reducing use of all fossil fuels containing carbon compounds—must now surely involve the adverse impact of reductions of human emissions of CO2 on the growth of plants across planet Earth.
It is now scientifically established that the increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration levels have lead directly to increases in Earth vegetative coverage, including increasing the acreage yields of many important food crops.
To quote one among many scientific papers on this, from Leon Hartwell Allen, Jr., U.S. Department of Agriculture (https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/1911/chapter/8#108 ):
“Plant Growth Responses to Carbon Dioxide
Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have caused increasing photosynthetic rates, biomass growth, and seed yield for all of the globally important C3 food and feed crops (Acock and Allen, 1985; Enoch and Kimball, 1986; Warrick et al., 1986; Allen, 1990) . . . A few experiments have been conducted with carbon dioxide concentration maintained across a range of 160 to 990 ppm. Figure 7.3 shows the results of one study with soybean canopy photosynthetic rates across the 90 to 900 ppm carbon dioxide concentration range. A nonlinear hyperbolic model was used to fit soybean photosynthetic rate data to carbon dioxide concentration (Allen et al., 1987). Photosynthetic rates at the various carbon dioxide concentrations were divided by the photosynthetic rate at a carbon dioxide concentration of 330 ppm to normalize the data to a common condition. Data sets of biomass yield and seed yield from four locations over three years were also fit to the model (Allen et al., 1987). Relative yields with respect to yields at 330 to 340 ppm were used.”
The attached graph is Figure 7.3 referenced in the above-quoted excerpt.
This data is entirely consistent with the relatively well-known fact that commercial greenhouse growers routinely install CO2-generation systems to increase the gaseous CO2 concentration levels inside their greenhouses to the range of 800–1000 ppm so as to maximize their production yields.
In a world where malnutrition/hunger is still “the rule rather than the exception”, do we citizens of “first world” nations really want to do this to the populations of third-world countries? How could we do such in good conscience?
In my above comment I forgot to reference the following four supporting WUWT articles on the “global greening of Earth” due to increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, all published within the last four months:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/14/antarctic-greening-study-wilfully-blind-to-co2-fertilization/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/08/13/another-new-study-finds-rising-co2-enhances-planetary-greening-and-reduces-drought-risk/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/07/22/yale-environment-360-pushes-alarming-carbon-dioxide-story-despite-beneficial-global-greening/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/07/21/global-greening-becomes-so-obvious-that-climate-alarmists-start-arguing-we-need-to-save-the-deserts/
“I forgot to reference four WUWT articles on “global greening of Earth” published within the last four months”
________________________________________________________________________
WUWT should have been banging on about CO2’s greening effect for the last 20 years.
I’m no better, I’ve only been putting up this one
1. More rain is not a problem.
2. Warmer weather is not a problem.
3. More arable land is not a problem.
4. Longer growing seasons is not a problem.
5. CO2 greening of the earth is not a problem.
6. There isn’t any Climate Crisis.
rather frequently for the past year or so.
Recently, someone put up this one
1. Sea level rise did not accelerate as Hansen asserted.
2. Arctic summer sea ice did not disappear as Wadhams and Gore asserted.
3. Glacier National Park glaciers did not disappear as USNPS asserted.
4. UK children still know snow, opposite what Viner asserted.
5. Ocean isn’t boiling as Guterres asserted.
6. Planet is greening.
here on WUWT that begs the question:
“Is there any problem connected to elevated CO2 concentration?
My answer is, “No”
Change “fossil fuels” to hydrocarbon based fuels.
Only coal is a fossil.
It is evident you don’t have a problem confusing adjectives with nouns.
See attached screen grab.
Natural gas (mostly methane found on top of, and within, coal formations) as well as most natural petroleum in underground formations (in many instances with natural gas on top) are correctly stated to be fossil fuels.
Most petroleum formed during the Mesozoic Era, which spanned from approximately 252 to 66 million years ago. Most natural gas formed predominately from 550 to 2 million years ago.
You are cherry picking.
fossil
NOUN
the remains or impression of a prehistoric organism preserved in petrified form or as a mold or cast in rock.
More than 20 dictionaries have that definition
fossil
ADJECTIVE
Designating petrified remains or other traces of living organisms preserved in the earth, esp. in the strata of past geological periods; that is a fossil (sense A.2b), fossilized. Hence (of organisms): known only in the form of fossils, dating from a past geological period.
From the Oxford English Dictionary
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/fossil_n?tl=true
Oil is not a fossil.
Natural gas is not a fossil.
Just to be clear:
Coal is technically not a fossil fuel. The formation of coal required “cooking” of trees, etc., which is different than true fossilization, which turns the organic matter into something akin to stone, petrified but without high temperatures needed.
Coal also is not a hydrocarbon. Molecules in coal generally do not include hydrogen.
Oil and gas are explicitly hydrocarbon fuels.
Basic chemistry:
Coal is oxidized to produce heat.
Oil and gas are reduced to produce heat.
https://www.plasticstoday.com/materials/sorry-folks-oil-does-not-come-from-dinosaurs
Oil and natural gas do not come from fossilized dinosaurs! Thus, they are not fossil fuels. That’s a myth. According to Wikipedia, the term “fossil fuel” was first used by German chemist Caspar Neumann in 1759. It was subsequently used more ubiquitously in the early 1900s to give people the idea that petroleum, coal and natural gas come from ancient living things, making them a natural substance.
Over the course of millions of years, “members of these massive colonies died off” and “sank to the bottom of the sea and were gradually covered by accumulating sediment,” writes Strauss. “Over millions of years, these layers of sediment grew heavier and heavier until the dead bacteria trapped below were ‘cooked’ by the pressure and temperature into a stew of liquid hydrocarbons.”
As for coal, Strauss notes that the world’s coal deposits “were laid down during the Carboniferous period, about 300 million years ago—which was still a good 75 million or so years before the evolution of the first dinosaurs.” Coal was formed when the dense forests and jungles were “buried beneath layers of sediment, and their unique fibrous chemical structure caused them to be ‘cooked’ into solid coal rather than liquid oil,” explains Strauss.
The term “fossil fuel” is really a misnomer that caught on and is still being used. For example, I received a notice for the Global Plastics Summit (June 4 to 6 in Houston, TX) sponsored by IHS Markit and the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS). One of the featured speakers is Steve Winberg, Assistant Secretary, Fossil Energy for the U.S. Department of Energy. The title of his presentation is, Fossil Energy Innovation and Opportunities. Winberg might be surprised that fossils have nothing to do with energy!
Good grief! . . . back to Chemistry 101 for you. Hydrocarbons are “oxidized” (burned with oxygen), NOT reduced (burned with hydrogen), to produce heat. . . this is fundamentally why the combustion of either petroleum or natural gas produces CO2 and H2O as a reaction products.
Funny you did not list all the definitions in Merriam-Webster.
2. being or resembling a fossil
Nor did I list all the definitions of “fossil”, when used as an adjective, that are given in the 13 full-size dictionaries of the English language listed by Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_English_dictionaries ).
Laugh on. 😜
Coke and Pepsi have uncarbonated on the shelf. Do the same with gasoline. Unleaded; diesel, and uncarbonated. Let the customer choose.
Every gallon of uncarbonated you buy; the oil company buries a lump of coal
Uncarbonized (not uncarbonated) gasoline = 0 mpg. Go for it!
Every gallon of uncarbonated you buy; the oil company buries a lump of coal
_______________________________________________________________
For Every gallon sold
We bury a lump of coal
Some people are ignorant enough and stupid
enough to make that their preferred gas to buy.
They walk among us.
I had fun:
This is an amusing line-up:
Poor Emanuel, if he is advocating decarbonization against those three!
The bottom line is, however, NOT in question.
Simple calculation shows that the replacement of dispatchable base power with wind/PV is not within the financial grasp of the world, the required area is not available, and the commodities cannot be dug out of the Earth fast enough. NOTHING about the energy transition adds up, in fact, no matter what the ‘goal’.
On the contrary, I think he deserves extra credit for agreeing to a genuine debate against three “sceptics / critics / critical thinkers”, especially given that most previous “debates” on similar subjects were 3-to-1 (or even 4-to-0) in the other direction.
The vast majority of the pro-consensus lobby would have run away as fast as they could whilst screaming “They are not climate scientists ! ! !” at the top of their lungs.
Like I said, kudos to Kerry just for being there.
“They are not climate scientists ! ! !”
For multi-dimensional problems (physics, economics, engineering, chemistry, politics & etc.) there are tradeoffs that demand involvement of a diverse skill set to avoid a narrow focus by activists/profiteers with an axe to grind. Net Zero is the result of ignoring physics, economics, engineering & etc. and allowing fear-mongers to dominate the discussion.
As computer systems grow in size the problem is not processing the data. The problem is backup and recovery. Failures become more common with increased size and recovery takes longer. Until you reach a point at which failures swamp recovery and the system is dead.
This is similar to using wind and solar to run a modern 7×24 economy.
The cost of doing the impossible is infinity. One might as well burn dollar bills to stay warm. It costs less.
Debate an unknown cost of decarbonization?
How is that done?
Everyone wild guesses a number?
So far decarbonizing just the electricity sector, about 25% of US primary energy consumption, has no feasible plan in the US. With no feasible plan, any cost estimate is just a wild guess.
A better debate:
How much money is likely to be wasted before we find out net zero is a failure?
You mailed it.
“Emanuel, for his part, author of the 70-page primer What We Know About Climate Change (MIT Press: 2018), stated: ‘If I’d written a book called What We Don’t Know about Climate Science, it would have been an encyclopedia.’
I wonder if Emanuel still believes this today. He should be asked.
thedailyeconomy.org/article/climate-co2-optimism/
I have an electronic copy of Emanuel’s booklet. It is filled with green platitudes and devoid of physics and economics.
First item is to note that decarbonization is not what is going on. CO2 is not carbon.
Is Decarbonization Worth the Cost?
How would they know, they’ve never done a cost/benefit analysis.
Yet I think I can safely answer no. That’s because it’s plain for anyone to see, the costs are astronomical and the benefits are zero.
Is Decarbonization Worth the Cost? That depends. Is flushing money down the toilet worth the cost?
“In a world where “decarbonization” dominates the political and economic discourse,”
Someone’s been to the theater. I imagine it spoken in a gravely voice while a grim looking debate team rides horses over a dusty horizon at sunrise to right wrongs with ancient weapons.
Is Decarbonization Worth the Cost?
In the first place, “Decarbonization”, which leads to the destruction of most of the Humanity, should be named “Decarbonazification”.
Story tip
There was a debate in the House of Lords which can be read in the Hansard record here:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2024-11-14/debates/28ADB352-9C5F-4ECC-9497-23A21A0E9607/RenewableEnergyCosts
It is remarkable that even Lord Browne, former CEO of BP can stand up and lie to the House: he was not alone in distorting facts. However, several placed good critiques of Net Zero on the record. Not that the MSM reported them. Part of Lord Moynihan of Chelsea’s speech captured the essence:
As of this Friday morning (EST)- their YouTube version has zero comments. You’d think that many MIT students would post comments there. But here, I see 52 comments.
I watched the whole debate and was surprised that no one bothered to note that the debate question sits on an unproven assumption: “Human emissions cause warming that might be dangerous in the earth’s atmosphere.” The negative answer to the debate question was addressed by Koonin and Mills without even mentioning this assumption and I think their side prevailed but the first questioner lamenting the lack of Lindzen on the MIT panel should have sparked them to at least note the absurdity of the debate question.