I just watched Opposing Views: Is Climate Change A Problem? | Alex Epstein & Dr. Andrew Dessler. This is not a debate. It is two separate interviews. And this episode features one of the most dramatically opposing viewpoint presentations I’ve ever seen. Mikhaila Peterson really draws out the essences of the pro-catastrophe versus the pro-human sides of the climate change debate (which is at bottom an energy and political debate).
Here is my quick, though incomplete, take on the episode. But you’ll get the picture:
When someone says, “Just look out the window” to “see” climate change—let alone a “climate crisis”—you know you’re dealing with religion, not science. Just as a religionist can “see” God in anything, so the climate catastrophist can “see” climate change.
When every bad weather event is “evidence” of catastrophic climate change, you know you’re dealing with dogmatism.
When fossil fuel companies are demonized, but the fossil fuel consumers who willingly buy their products are let off the hook, you know your dealing with injustice and bias.
When all of the damage caused by extreme weather is labeled a cost of fossil fuel use and a subsidy for fossil fuel companies, even though storms, fires, heat waves, cold waves, et al have always occurred, you know your dealing with dishonesty.
When the wild swings of climate over the recent past—well documented by Brian Fagan in The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850, which actually covers the multi-century Medieval Warm Period that came before the Little Ice Age—are ignored, you know that you’re dealing with historical white-washing.
When someone tells you that “the free market won’t work” after the free markets unleashed by the Enlightenment gave us The Great Enrichment, including the ability to vastly increase man’s safety from climate dangers, you know your dealing with a statist who is not concerned with the voluntary choices or well-being of average people.
Dressler’s panic-mongering assertions and “renewable” energy pie-in-the sky propaganda are not much different from what I get from my daily newspapers. Epstein is a breath of fresh air, offering the needed balance, objectivity, and moral clarity. And there are others worth consulting. In addition to Epstein, you can turn to such experts as Pielke Jr, Koonan, Shellenberger, Lomborg, Bailey, Bryce, and Moore, to name a few. I wonder if Dressler’s students are getting the opposing view. They’re probably leaving his classroom with an irrational dread of the future, and being panicked into voting for authoritarianism, at a time when the planet has never been more hospitable for human flourishing, and the future is the brightest young people have ever faced, albeit not without threats from the likes of Environmentalism, socialism, egalitarianism, Wokism, and other anti-human isms. These students are victims of educational malpractice.
The points I touch on will be clarified when you watch Opposing Views: Is Climate Change A Problem? | Alex Epstein & Dr. Andrew Dessler. One note: Epstein was interviewed after Dressler, even though Epstein is presented first.
Here is a list of books that anyone who wants to get past the quasi-coordinated efforts by the political/media/crony businessEnvironmentalist complex to convince us that the end of the world is rushing toward us and the only way to avoid the coming catastrophe is to grant the catastrophists totalitarian powers to direct our lives:
Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less by Alex Epstein
The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century by Ronald Bailey
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress -- Steven Pinker
Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom by Patrick Moore
Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us by Michael Shellenberger
False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet by Bjorn Lomborg
The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change by Roger Pielke Jr.
Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters by Steven E. Koonin
State of Fear by Michael Crichton
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein
A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations by Robert Bryce
Related Reading:
New U.N. Study Shows Climate Catastrophists Getting More Open About their Totalitarian Designs
‘Climate Crisis’: The Dem’s Path to Totalitarian Socialism
The 'Watermelon' Analogy is Real, and it is Dangerous
Environmentalists, Luddites, and Collectivism
Paris Climate Agreement Adopted: New Central Plan for the World’s Economy and Climate—Ronald Bailey for Reason.com
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