Still pimping for the Koch brothers I see. Alex Epstein is a paid shill. Are cigarettes still healthy? https://accountable.us/koch-funded-climate-denier-alex-epstein-to-testify-after-big-oil-ceos-bailed/
My dad grew up in a Houston house without air conditioning. He talks about how they did build houses to take advantage of natural cooling. He called them shotgun houses. I found an article. https://www.wholehousefan.com/blogs/wholehousefans/how-homes-were-kept-cool-before-air-conditioning Shotgun house designs: In the warmth of Louisiana, homes were designed and built with the idea of maximizing airflow in mind. These “shotgun” houses were built with all rooms going straight through the home, which was built in a one-room width, so that the doors and windows could be lined up for cross-ventilation.
it's a book review here's the précis: two goals in his new book, Fossil Future—one significantly more difficult than the other. The first is to persuade readers worried about climate change that burning more oil, gas, and coal will actually benefit society. That might seem like the hard one, but it is child’s play next to the real argument: that the planet and its living ecosystem exist to serve human beings and their purposes, not the other way around. hope that helps
This sounds like a religious dogmatic expression rather than an expression of fact. I can see someone who follows one of the Abrahamic faiths having such a self-centered view of how the universe works (God made the universe for us alone)
I read the article, so that doesn't help. Do you agree that climate change is beneficial? Or how about the argument that some environmentalists believe crazy things, therefor carbon emissions are great! That's some outstanding critical thinking. Care to comment?
"but it is child’s play next to the real argument: that the planet and its living ecosystem exist to serve human beings and their purposes, not the other way around." "anyone with an open mind and a desire to see human beings live and prosper will likely acquire a more positive view of oil, gas, and coal than any New York Times feature or university seminar would acknowledge." That is the premise, the conclusion and the entire argument in a nutshell. Either go back to the stone ages as the wacko environmentalist want, or live in the wonderful world of fossil fuels. It's a stupid false dichotomy. What do you believe is the point of the article?
Hard disagree that all living things on the planet exist to serve human beings and their purposes, but perhaps I just have a problem with the phrasing. The planet existed for billions of years without human beings on it, and it will exist for billions more in the future (not too far off, probably) without human beings on it. The truth is neither exists to serve the other. I guess the argument really is that the interests of the human species should never take a backseat to the interests of non-human biological systems that exist on the planet, and the interests of non-humans only matters insofar as it benefits our own interests. I don't agree with that either, but mine is probably a minority opinion.
I think the phrasing is unfortunate, but the argument is that policy ends should serve humans rather than serving nature for nature's sake. Epstein's is an essentially anthropocentric argument--not an ecocentric or biocentric argument. That will offend radical environmentalists who make up a large percentage of the people Epstein is arguing with, and anyone else who has been influenced by radical environmentalism over the past 50-60 years.
The problem with the argument that the Earth exist to serve human beings so we should be burning more fossil fuels is that the Earth is a dynamic system. Climate change for the planet is an net neutral. The planet has survived mass extinction events and likely will survive the Anthropocene extinction event. The problem though is that humanity evolved under a very narrow climate and geographical range. Changes to the dynamic system of the Earth will not be good for us. Rising sea levels, increasing droughts, increasing storms are all very costly for our civilization. If we stress the Earth’s systems enough out civilization could quickly become unstable. Consider a brew vessel with a lot of yeast eating sugar. From the yeast standpoint it’s great they get all this sugar to eat. Eventually though from eating that sugar they produce too much alcohol that poisons them. That’s the situation we’re in.
I don't think this is true. 12,000 years ago the place where I live now was covered by an ice sheet one mile high. Humans adapted and moved out of the way. The Vikings colonized Greenland when the climate was warmer. Then the climate cooled, and the Vikings abandoned ship. (I simplify dramatically.) Humans currently live in equatorial Africa and above the Arctic Circle. There is no One True Correct Way™ for humans to live. There are clearly more comfortable ways to live and less comfortable ways to live, but the bottom line of human history is that humans are incredibly adaptable. I suspect we will survive anthropogenic climate change in the future. WWIII, on the other hand, might be tricky
I need to chew on it some more, probably, but my immediate reaction is that public policy should be a reflection of our principles, which need not be anthropocentric. Policies that limit the suffering of animals in factory farms may not strictly be in our interests, but I'm still supportive of it. Human flourishing is not the only thing that should matter.
I get that, I agree for the most part. But I do think that public policy ends are and should be oriented toward human welfare. Obviously a healthy environment and a healthy world is important for human welfare and for human happiness: we like the way the world is, we get pleasure from experiencing the way the world has evolved, we enjoy nature for its own sake. But in that latter sense, nature "exists" for human benefit--I think that's the intended point in the aforementioned unfortunate phrasing. But nature doesn't "exist for humans" as such. Stated differently, nature does not have a "purpose" independent of humans. Nature does not have "value" independent of the ones doing the "valuing" (us). If humans were to disappear, nature would not care. Nature is indifferent to human existence. Before humans evolved, nature did not care. Nature has ALWAYS been indifferent to existence.
The Viking Greenland settlement collapsed because of climate change. Many cultures have legends of a great flood and the inspiration for that story might be that the Black Sea was once a large freshwater lake with settlements around it that were wiped out in a cataclysmic flood caused by a changing climate. There have been thousands of cultures and civilizations that have been displaced or disappeared by changing climate. Humanity wasn’t as large nor concentrated as it was now in those previous incidences. And most of those climatic changes weren’t as large as the current changes we might see by the end of this century. Whether Earth exist to serve us or not we exist on the Earth. We are dependent upon it for our food, water, and air we breathe. Many of us live in coastal areas and river basins that are all susceptible to flooding. Many live in areas with where freshwater is scarce. All of that is very susceptible to Climate Change. Also since you brought up war we’re already seeing conflicts over diminishing resources. Those are only going to get worse as the Climate changes.
No miracle tech needed: How to switch to renewables now and lower costs doing it | The Hill BY MARK Z. JACOBSON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 06/28/22 12:30 PM ET THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL The world is experiencing unprecedented fuel price increases, energy blackmail between countries, up to 7 million air pollution deaths per year worldwide and one climate-related disaster after another. Critics contend that a switch to renewable energy to solve these problems will create unstable electricity grids and drive prices up further. However, a new study from my research group at Stanford University concludes that these problems can be solved in each of the 145 countries we examined — without blackouts and at low cost using almost all existing technologies. The study concludes that we do not need miracle technologies to solve these problems. By electrifying all energy sectors; producing electricity from clean, renewable sources; creating heat, cold, and hydrogen from such electricity; storing electricity, heat, cold and the hydrogen; expanding transmission; and shifting the time of some electricity use, we can create safe, cheap and reliable energy everywhere. The biggest reason for the cost reduction is that a clean, renewable energy system uses much less energy than does a combustion-based energy system. In fact, worldwide the energy that people actually use goes down by over 56 percent with an all-electric system powered by clean, renewable sources. The reduction is for five reasons: the efficiency of electric vehicles over combustion vehicles, the efficiency of electric heat pumps for air and water heating over combustion heaters, the efficiency of electrified industry, eliminating energy needed to obtain fossil fuels, as well as some efficiency improvements beyond what is expected. On top of that, a new system also reduces the cost per unit energy by another 12 percent on average, resulting in a 63 percent lower annual energy cost worldwide. Adding onto that health and climate cost savings gives a 92 percent reduction in social costs, which are energy plus health plus climate costs, relative to the current system. The energy-producing technologies considered include only onshore and offshore wind electricity, solar photovoltaics for electricity on rooftops and in power plants, concentrated solar power, solar heat, geothermal electricity and heat, hydroelectricity, as well as small amounts of tidal and wave electricity. The most important electricity storage technology considered was batteries, although pumped hydroelectric storage, existing hydroelectric dam storage and concentrated solar power electricity storage were also treated. We found that no batteries with more than four hours of storage were needed. Instead, long-duration storage was obtained by concatenating batteries with four-hour storage together. In a sensitivity test, we found that even if battery prices were 50 percent higher, overall costs would be only 3.2 percent higher than their base estimate. We also considered seasonal heat storage underground in soil plus short-term heat storage in water tanks. Seasonal heat storage is useful for district heating. With district heating, heat is produced and stored in a centralized location then piped via hot water to buildings for air and water heating. The alternative to district heating is using heat pumps in each building. The study found that the more district heating available, the easier it was to keep the electric grid stable at lower cost since it reduced the need for batteries to provide immediate electricity to heat pumps. Batteries are more expensive than underground heat storage. We found that the overall upfront cost to replace all energy in the 145 countries, which emit 99.7 percent of world carbon dioxide, is about $62 trillion. However, due to the $11 trillion annual energy cost savings, the payback time for the new system is less than six years. The new system may also create over 28 million more long-term, full-time jobs than lost worldwide and require only about 0.53 percent of the world’s land for new energy, with most of this area being empty space between wind turbines on land that can be used for multiple purposes. Thus, we found that the new system may require less energy, cost less and creates more jobs than the current system. Another interesting finding was that, with a fully renewable system, charging battery-electric vehicles during the day was less expensive for the grid than charging them at night because day charging matched well with solar electricity production. According to Anna von Krauland, a Stanford Ph.D. student who participated in the study, a main implication is that it “tells us that for the 145 countries examined, energy security is within reach, and more importantly, how to obtain it.” It’s important to note that we did not include technologies that did not address air pollution, global warming and energy security together. It did not include bioenergy, natural gas, fossil fuels or bioenergy with carbon dioxide capture, direct air capture of carbon dioxide, blue hydrogen or nuclear power. We concluded that these technologies are not needed and provide less benefit than those we included. Finally, our findings contend that a transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy in each country should occur ideally by 2035, and no later than 2050, with an 80 percent transition by 2030. Mark Z. Jacobson is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. His work forms the scientific bases for the U.S. Green New Deal. He is also the author of a book and textbook on transitioning to 100 percent clean, renewable energy. He is co-author of the new study “Low-Cost Solutions to Global Warming, Air Pollution, and Energy Insecurity for 145 Countries,” which includes summaries for each country and an infographic map.
Yea, I would agree but, ah, we can't read nature's mind, can we? What I got out of that paragraph is the author thinks nature does have a purpose and that purpose is to be human-centric. If that's not it, then the author's "real argument" seems to be human should be human-centric. Yea, we have been. If not, we wouldn't be in his current situation. But it's a false assumption that we have to give up being human-centric to get out of this current situation (or to progress toward other energy sources). In fact, many are arguing that progressing toward cleaner and renewable energy is very human-centric and that those that insist on staying put are anti-human future whether they know it or not.
