by David Blackmon
The Los Angeles Times published an op/ed Friday in which it perhaps unintentionally poses the central proposition of the mythical energy transition: “whether our expectations should evolve in the name of preventing climate catastrophe.”
The op/ed is appropriately titled, “Would an Occasional Blackout Help Solve Climate Change?” It is a headline that tacitly admits a truth about the transition that boosters of renewable energy have been careful not to publicize: That the notion that generation sources with extremely low energy density like wind and solar cannot hope to be viable alternatives to generation with extremely high energy density like natural gas, nuclear and coal. It is a notion that defies the laws of thermodynamics and physics, and those are laws, not suggestions that can be discarded as a matter of convenience or, as in this case, in pursuit of a hyper-political agenda.
This kind of propaganda is designed to condition readers to accept the lowering of their own living conditions in the name of saving the climate, or, as this writer poses is, “preventing climate catastrophe.” It is the kind of propaganda Americans and citizens around the world have been bombarded with as we have experienced the current hot summer.
It is probably no accident that this piece in the Los Angeles Times comes just a few days after the New York Times published a piece by economist Paul Krugman titled, “Why We Should Politicize the Weather.” The theme of the propaganda is clear: Most of the legacy media has been following Krugman’s advice throughout this summer at the behest of boosters of climate alarmism.
Propaganda in the name of hyping a “climate catastrophe” (it was a mere “emergency” just a few years ago, mere climate “change” a few years before that) is widespread, indeed ubiquitous.
Meteorologists in Europe, Canada and other countries are now being encouraged to report land temperatures rather than the ambient air temperatures on which they’ve always based their reporting because the land measurements are usually several degrees warmer than the air we breathe. Many weather reporters in the EU countries have begun reporting temperatures in degrees F rather than degrees C because the Fahrenheit scale produces larger, more frightening numbers.
All in the name of hyping climate change. All in the name of politicizing weather and conditioning citizens to accept a downgraded quality of life. The bonus is that you get to feel good about yourself while you’re sweating and fanning yourself in your dark living room with the stench of rotting meat in your dead refrigerator because you are suffering all of this in the name of “doing something” about climate change.
It is a proposition about which the climate alarm movement has remained relatively quiet before this year. But the messaging began to shift in January as it becomes increasingly obvious that, even with all the billions in subsidies enacted by western governments, rising demand for energy is still outstripping the ability of renewables to displace fossil fuels and nuclear. Even as these governments in Europe, Canada and the U.S. force citizens to accept the steady deterioration of their grid reliability and quality of life, saddling future generations with mountains of debt in the process, governments in China, India and most other developing nations pursue national energy abundance and security.
This dynamic explains why, when U.S. Climate Czar John Kerry’s recent mission to China to try to kickstart moribund bilateral climate negotiations predictably ended in failure. China is going to do what is good for China, regardless of the propaganda of the climate alarm movement that Kerry amplifies at every opportunity.
Americans and Europeans and Canadians see this all happening and increasingly wonder why they must continue downgrading their standards of living when rising emissions from China alone far outstrip any reductions achieved by the west? This is a question to which the climate alarm movement has no good answer, other than to continue ramping up the fear tactics and propaganda.
That is why this previously quiet part of the energy transition agenda has been rising to the top of the alarmist message platform in 2023. No one should think the rhetoric will do anything other than keep ratcheting up from here.
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David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
