Physicist and
climate scientist Peter Kalmus is also a climate activist and author of the
2017 book, Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution.
He is described in a recent Newsweek article as follows: “Dr. Peter Kalmus
is a climate scientist at NASA studying future extreme heat impacts on human
health and ecosystems, speaking on his own behalf. He is also a climate
activist and the author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate
Revolution.” “The views expressed in
this article are the writer's own.” This is a case where Newsweek discloses
the author’s bias, which is good in my view. Of course, the title of the
opinion article: Sadly, It's Not 'Just Another Summer.' We Must End the
Fossil Fuel Industry pulls no punches about bias. In the article he opines:
“…I do think we are on a sociopolitical pathway—fossil fuel expansion—that
will eventually end civilization as we know it, cause billions of human deaths,
and further worsen widespread ecological collapse and mass extinction—damage
that will take millions of years for Earth to recover from.” And this: “Finally,
accept that we are in a war. It's a real war, not a figurative one, although
it's not like any other war in human history. People are dying, all over the
world, because of decisions made by fossil fuel executives in tall buildings.
And I can confidently state that many more people will die from climate impacts
in the coming years.” He readily utilizes the psychological technique of
association bias, referring to the fossil fuel use that necessarily continues
to economically undergird our society as extractive-colonial capitalism.
He demonizes fossil fuel executives in particular. This guy is a hardcore
catastrophist. He thinks he has it all figured out and that he can predict the
future. In fact, that is one thing some climate scientists and especially
climate policy wonks and activists profess to be able to do. Are they prophets?
He tells activists to take risks and be bold in professing their activism and
fighting that war he mentions. He is not the first.
Partisanism in the Climate Debate
Now in 2023 we
are in position where one group of activists and media are demanding that we
call climate change, the climate crisis or climate emergency, or that the
president or other prominent people make a declaration that we are in a climate
crisis, akin to declaring a state of emergency. On the other end of the
spectrum are those that still refer to climate change as a hoax and are ready
to reverse any policies meant to mitigate emissions. However, as a climate
crisis skeptic, I can relate to calls to slow down and to not enact mandates
and regulations that increase energy and electricity costs for consumers. I also
think we can criticize climate change overreach without becoming climate change
denialists, but radical climate activism also tends to stir backlash that
strongly opposes it. In fact, that radical climate activism on the political
left is seen as ‘wokeness’ and tends to empower the radical right. It’s quite
easy to see that extremism on one end of the spectrum tends to empower
extremism on the other end of the spectrum. Other overreach issues such as
forced social justice advocation and extremes in addressing migration issues, taxation,
labor, trade, environmental, bioengineering and other issues have led to
similar backlashes. Yascha Mounk’s new book, The Identity Trap: A Story of
Ideas and Power in Our Time, addresses trends of obsessions with identity among
the social justice-oriented part of the political left that tend to have the
unintended reversed effect of empowering right-wing populism. It has been shown
pretty conclusively that countries with lots of wind and solar have the highest
electricity prices. That has likely led to backlash against left-leaning
governments in Europe. The high prices in Europe of natural gas, coal, oil,
fertilizer, and many other things due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have also
likely strengthened that backlash since there was underinvestment in needed
fossil fuels, over-reliance on Russian energy, and overemphasis on renewables.
Overreach leads to backlash. It is politically risky. Curbing overreach can
also curb backlash to it. That is my view.
Anti-Fossil Fuel Bias Among Scientists and Engineers
One of the
social impacts of climate change is that it has led to an anti-fossil fuel
bias. That is, of course, a dilemma since even with record wind, solar, and
battery deployments, fossil fuels still make up a steady 82% of global primary
energy production and there is little real chance that is going to change soon.
Bias among scientists is not new. Over 50 years ago the Union of Concerned
Scientists (UCS) was founded. According to their website they combat climate
change, strive to develop sustainable means of power, food, and transport,
reduce the existential threat of nuclear war, and fight against corporate
misinformation about science. I am not sure these days that there is that much
corporate misinformation about science to fight against. Certainly, there are
disagreements about what regulations should be, but things have changed in the
corporate world. The UCS says that they analyze, expose, advocate, and
activate. They advise 1500 local and national organizations. They are a data source
for activists.
The UCS bias
is obviously left wing, but there are right-wing biased scientists as well. I
have spent the past 31.5 years working in the oil & gas industry. The
political bias of industry as a whole is clearly to the right. However, the
industry has accepted many of the realities of environmental impact and climate
change. It took some time for this to develop and there is still considerable
skepticism, but most companies are addressing these issues according to the
expectations from society, investors, and from the desire to be
problem-solvers. Pride is a component of innovation. Addressing environmental
impact and climate change are not political challenges but engineering
challenges, problem-solving challenges. While some compliance-based solutions
are needed, many solutions can be voluntary. The industry strongly prefers
voluntary solutions. I think this is the right approach. The industry is also
full of highly educated, talented, and innovative people who have engineered
new ways to produce oil & gas efficiently and are now developing ways to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
U.S.
universities are fairly well known to have left-leaning biases. The UCS was
founded by scientists and students at MIT. Many universities have codified
anti-fossil fuel biases through fossil fuel divestment movements led by
activists. The demonization of fossil fuel industries has become
institutionalized. The Guardian recently reported a new analysis that showed
that “at least 20 board members at California public universities have
direct ties to the fossil fuel industry.” These are people who work or
have worked at fossil fuel companies. I say, so what? Other board members no
doubt have worked in other industries. Fossil fuel companies make up a certain
percentage of the corporate world so this should not be seen as unusual or
alarming in any way, but it is being depicted that way. According to some,
their mere presence in academia is nefarious: “These board memberships are a
form of “infiltration” by polluters into academia, said Alicia Colomer,
communications and operations coordinator at the group Fossil Free Research,
which advocates for research institutions to cut all ties with the fossil fuel
industry.” She is essentially demanding an anti-fossil fuel bias for
academia. The Guardian also reported: “Universities and firms associated
with board members which responded to requests to comment from the Guardian
defended their positions and disputed assertions they influenced university
polices or research priorities.” At least they are pushing back on these
groundless accusations of impropriety. Several people cited in the article argued
that fossil fuel executives (called polluters and “bad faith partners”) should
be effectively banned from influencing academia in any way. Personally, I think
these ideas are rather ridiculous.
There are
several academic scientists who have repeatedly found themselves in the midst
of debates with their own research, and they have been accused of activated
bias. This is most common on the left. Some have made the rounds on late night
talk shows and articles of their work have been amplified in the media. These include
Mark Z. Jacobson, the atmospheric physicist at Stanford who famously came up
with a 100% renewable energy scenario for the U.S. utilizing just wind, solar,
and pumped hydro. It was debunked in a paper by 22 scientists who said many of
his assumptions were inaccurate and unfeasible, but Jacobson uttered (rather
arrogantly IMO) that there was not a single error in his data and calculations.
Cornell Civil
Engineering professor Dr. Anthony Ingraffea also made the rounds, always arguing
about the detriments of fracking. He and his Cornell colleague Robert Howarth,
a biogeochemist, have made predictions about fugitive methane emissions that
have been debunked by other studies. They did manage to bring the issue before
the public at a time it wasn’t emphasized, and they should be commended for
that. Howarth has done the work on methane emissions. His estimates are
considered to be at the extreme high end of the range given in many other
studies, much higher than the EPA’s estimates. His conclusions are in the
minority of conclusions. However, he is the go-to scientist when anti-fossil
fuel advocates need one to add to their argument. Ingraffea said he did not
want to be labeled an activist but with his advocacy to vilify and phase out fossil
fuels, it’s hard to argue that he is not an activist. Even Obama and his energy
secretary Stephen Chu found Howarth’s methane emissions estimates to be not credible.
Stanford’s Rob
Jackson has been involved in a number of studies seemingly designed to point
out the dangers of natural gas. He was instrumental in some water contamination
studies that attempted to point the finger at gas migration from the Marcellus Shale
into freshwater aquifers. Isotope studies showed that the gas migrated from gas
zones just below the aquifers and that water wells drilled too deep could cause
the same issue. That work, too, helped to point the industry toward developing
stronger strategies to mitigate stray gas migration. Thus, one can see that
some of the activism in the early part of the fracking revolution had a net
positive effect. The same is not true now, where news articles against fracking
still bring up data and studies from over a decade ago before the problems
were mostly eliminated. One thing that can be said is that the widespread fears
of water and air contamination that were predicted have not appeared, even as the oil
& gas industry produces far more oil and gas with far fewer wells and well pads.
The industry has also been exemplary in addressing the issues brought up by
activists. Roger Jackson appeared in 2022 in articles about his research on
gas stove emissions. His methodology in the experiment was strongly criticized
as non-realistic. When I read the article, I saw something about a Stanford
scientist and immediately thought of Jackson, and indeed it was him leading the
research. Jackson had been accused of being strongly biased against oil &
gas back in the early 2010s when he was involved in water contamination studies
in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Emily
Grubert, a civil engineer and environmental sociologist, has been invoked as a
subject matter expert on decarbonization in energy debates in the media. She is
an Associate Professor of Sustainability Policy at Notre Dame. She completed
her Ph. D. at Stanford in 2017 and was an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering
at Georgia Tech, previously. She also worked for a time as deputy assistant
secretary of carbon management at DOE. She has authored and co-authored many
papers. She has written about decarbonization, U.S. emissions projections, methane
emissions, environmental assessment, life cycle analyses, social effects of
extractive industries like oil & gas, water use and consumption of energy
and power providers, hydroelectricity, and aspects and effects of fossil fuel
plant retirements. Her degrees are interesting in that they bridge engineering
and sociology which are not usually considered in tandem in a single researcher.
I have seen her invoked in a number of energy transition articles where she
argued in favor of an accelerated energy transition and emphasized the
downsides of fossil fuel production and consumption. Recently, in a short piece
in Utility Dive, she accused the DOE of “error-ridden analysis” on a coal CCS
project in North Dakota. She cites a paper she co-authored in Environmental
Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability - US power sector carbon capture
and storage under the Inflation Reduction Act could be costly with limited or
negative abatement potential - that suggested that abatement via CCS can be
smaller than sought or even negative. She compared CCS to ethanol, an odd
comparison perhaps since ethanol CCS projects have become more common because CO2
can be captured at high capture rates from ethanol plants. Renewables advocates
have long argued that wind and solar are cheaper than CCS and that CCS just
extends the life of fossil fuels. They don’t mention that abated fossil fuels would
keep our electricity supply reliable and running full time, something wind and
solar can’t do without massive storage and transmission expansions and
overbuilds, which would make the whole costs of those renewables much higher
than fossil fuels. Advocates also try to account the social costs of carbon
into economic analyses. While I don’t think Grubert’s life cycle analysis here
does that (though I’m not sure), I do know she considers upstream methane emissions
in natural gas life cycle analyses, and I wonder which data she uses for that
since there is a whole range of data that can be used. Her argument about the
North Dakota plant may or may not be valid. It centers around the emissions
associated with extending the life of the plant with retrofitted CCS vs. retiring
it. Retrofitted CCS is more expensive than new CCS. One would have to consider
the needs of the local power grid to determine reliability concerns for each
project. The North Dakota plant may be an outlier since it burns local lignite
coal, one of the highest-emitting forms of coal. Also, as I have read about
this plant (if I have the right plant), it supports a local lignite mine which
would have to shut down if the plant were retired. The mine is the main
employer of the small town nearby and closing it would devastate the town. As
Grubert is also a sociologist and has argued previously for a just energy
transition, and as the Biden administration has goals and mandates to consider
local effects of energy projects and emissions abatement projects, especially
on disadvantaged communities, one might consider that this particular project,
despite its lesser economic and abatement merits, might still be desirable from
a society perspective. I do agree with her, however, that CCS and other
abatement projects should apply more to newer plants and less emitting plants
in general rather than focusing on retrofitting high-emitting plants near the
end of their normal lifespan. Thus, while she may be correct about the plant, its
special circumstances may warrant that it be approved even with marginal
abatement and at high costs. As her own analysis shows, the costs of CCS
projects vary considerably by plant. I do question some aspects of her own
analysis such as the capacity factors of natural gas plants. The reason is that
many of the simple cycle plants as well as some combined cycle plants run as necessary
backup to wind and solar. In this role, they are often idling and have higher
emissions due to ramping up and down. Thus, as I have long argued, they should
be considered as renewables system costs (to give her a taste of her own
medicine since she makes somewhat similar arguments about life cycle analysis in
comparing abatement vs. retiring) While it may well be cheaper to just retire
older fossil fuel plants than to retrofit them for CCS, if there is no viable near-term
replacement for them that can provide baseload energy then their life extension
may be desirable. Theoretically, an abated plant could run at a higher capacity
factor if able without affecting emissions too much. While the economics of fossil
fuel abatement methods like CCS and hydrogen can be hyped to seem viable, they
are not without considerable incentives. However, in order to keep our electricity
systems reliable, resilient, and stable these projects are still needed in considerable
numbers as a vital part of the energy transition as the IEA and many others
note, whether they are cost-effective or not. Since much of the funding for CCS
will be private funding it is all but certain that the most economic projects
will be selected based on cost advantages over other projects, Thus, the North
Dakota project is likely an outlier.
Predictions of Prominent Scientists Have Missed the
Mark Many Times
While many of the
predictions of scientists turn out to be correct there are also many examples
where they have been incorrect. Particularly, many catastrophic predictions
have turned out to be incorrect. These instances are well known, including
those of biologists Paul Ehrlich and his protégé John Holdren (Obama’s science
advisor), Michael Mann, James Hansen, and many others. Mann and Hansen had to
tone down the magnitude of their predictions to be less catastrophic than
originally predicted. The same is true of some climate skeptics like John
Christy and Roy Spencer who had to recalibrate their satellite temperature
measurements to show more warming than they originally predicted. In fact,
scientists in general have not always been that great at predicting the future,
even though that is one of their mandates, in a sense. This just shows that science
is not easy. That is not to bash science but just to point out the limitations
of prediction about global statistical phenomena with many variables like
climate that are highly dependent on modeling and model assumptions. A decade
ago, many thought shale gas and oil would have been largely played out by now
but instead recoverable reserves have grown considerably and the cost to
extract them has dropped. Predictions about peak oil and peak everything have
largely not materialized.
Climate Denialism, Climate Skepticism, and Climate
Pragmatism
We should
distinguish between those who outrightly deny the validity of anthropogenic
climate change from those who are skeptical to varying degrees of the narrative
advanced by the U.N., the IPCC, activists, and others. The outright deniers
also deny science. Those who are skeptical generally do not deny science, but
those on the more skeptical fringe of skepticism have distorted science to
their own liking. Some climate skeptics have dwelled on irrelevant data and
weak arguments. Both climate change skeptics and advocates have distorted and
cherry-picked data to support their own arguments. The important thing here is
to point out when that is the case. In order to understand and form valid
opinions on policy there is a need to look at the whole picture, not just parts.
Climate change
advocates have engaged in a kind of harassment by painting climate change
skeptics as climate crisis deniers. The connotations of the word “denier” suggest
holocaust deniers which makes the designation a kind of trope, comparing those
so designated to cold-hearted conspiracy theorists who veil themselves from
truth. That is why I do not use the word. I prefer to use the word “denialist,”
which is quite similar, but less connotative. I would say I fall into the camp
of a climate crisis skeptic. I do not deny that it is possible we may be facing
a climate crisis, either now or in the future, but I don’t think the current
evidence is definitive that this is the case.
Regardless of
one’s level of climate change skepticism or advocacy, one’s position on climate
policy is partially a separate issue. Some consider that even if we are in a
crisis, there are other crises that are more important to finance and address
in the near term. Those who are unsure or don’t think we are in a crisis are
stronger in this view. Pragmatism has to do with applying a methodology that
supports a utilitarian approach by doing the most good with all of the
financial resources available. It often includes trade-offs, compromises, and
sometimes piecemeal approaches that advocates reject. There are many examples.
Many people advocate for developing countries to be coerced into green energy by
limiting financing of fossil fuel projects in those countries that would be much
more beneficial to them economically by providing much-needed access to
affordable and reliable energy and electricity. The tax and mandate approach to
carbon emissions, especially with ratcheting up schedules and phase-out
schedules, can lead to high energy costs which disproportionately affect the
poor. With all the current inflation, that is even more of an issue. Many of us
simply can’t afford to adopt more green tech and find that it would be unfair
to have it forced upon us. We are forced to be pragmatic.
Pseudoscience Among Scientists
Scientists are
not immune to the charms of pseudoscience. Many doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers,
and other prominent professionals have fallen under the spell of conspiracy
theories. This is true of both ends of the political spectrum, although those
in the middle are generally less influenced by pseudoscience and conspiracy
theories.
We encounter
many headlines about climate change that support catastrophism. Some are quite
true but often there is a bigger picture to better evaluate the risks. We hear
about the doomsday glacier in Antarctica, Arctic acceleration where
temperatures have risen much faster than the global average, damage and
bleaching of coral reefs, and of course, all the headlines about hurricanes,
droughts, and wildfires that are partially attributable to climate change but
made to seem wholly attributable. Rarely do we hear headlines that say climate
change may not be as bad as we thought. If there are few or no deadly hurricanes
in a season that is generally not a newsworthy topic. Thus, climate change as a
newsworthy subject is influenced by the biases and fallacies that make bad news
more newsworthy than good news and controversial news more newsworthy than
uncontroversial news. Thus, when we compare our own exposure to the issue it
seems that the catastrophic view is more prominent. Climate catastrophism has
been compared to religious apocalypticism and indeed there are many
similarities. Indeed, as I wrote in Sensible Decarbonization, there is a long
history of environmental apocalypticism that parallels and overlaps with
religious apocalypticism, but I’ll save the details for another post.
One of the
biggest uncertainties about climate change is climate sensitivity. The range of
sensitivity put forth by climate scientists has not budged much, if at all,
since the 1970s, from about 1.5 deg C to 4.5 deg C. Others have pegged the range from 1.8 deg C to 5.6 deg C and others yet have sought to put it between 2.1 deg C and 3.6 deg C. Two NASA climate
scientists, John Christy and Roy Spencer, published a recent paper about their
new one-dimensional climate model that shows climate sensitivity near the
lowest end of the range at 1.9 degrees C. They claim their model is better because
it accounts for heat storage in deeper layers of land which other models do not
incorporate. I do not know how valid this point is. There are many studies of
climate sensitivity that have come up with values across the range. Other
climate scientists that are climate skeptics like Richard Lindzen have also
argued that climate sensitivity is at the low end of the range. Climate
scientists who are climate advocates have tended to find values closer to the
higher end of the range. Christy and Spencer are known for their satellite
measurements of temperature which showed a “pause” in warming. That data has
been reworked numerous times from slight errors pointed out by other scientists
so that the magnitude of the pause is less than originally thought. There is
still the matter of the satellite data not matching the surface temperature
data and the ocean temperature data which do not show the pause. The pause has
long been a rallying point for climate skeptics. Christy and Spencer are also
religious conservatives. Spencer is a meteorologist. I read one of Spencer’s
books published in 2010: The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature
Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists. He has written several other books about
climate skepticism, so he definitely has a bias. The book was fair in
explaining concepts and good in pointing out the politicization of the IPCC and
others but was not conclusive in debunking mainstream climate science. More
disturbing to me is hearing about his stance toward evolution, favoring
intelligent design creationism over established science. I had done some
research about Christy and Spencer and wrote about them in my book Sensible
Decarbonization. Christy is a Baptist minister and a former missionary.
Christian Dominionism
is based on a quote from Genesis that says humans should rule over other living
creatures. Based on a 2011 article in The Guardian, there is an evangelical
group called the Cornwall Alliance. They published a book by James Wanliss
called Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion Not Death that paints
environmental movements as a “native evil.” They are motivated by what they
call the “dominion mandate” that they interpret from the Book of Genesis. Roy
Spencer was on the board of directors of the Cornwall Alliance. The group is
also closely connected to the policy group CFACT and the climate skeptic
website ClimateDepot. The site is singularly focused on debunking climate
science much like the anti-fossil fuel activist groups are singularly focused
on debunking the benefits of fossil fuels. The information spheres of both
extremes in the climate debate are populated with echo chambers. Spencer’s
website’s posts after the 2020 election were all about using statistical
science to prove election fraud against Trump. I found that to be disturbing – a
scientist attempting to use statistical science to dispute an election that was
found by many different election commissions in multiple states run by both
parties to be free and fair. Of course, religion itself is not considered to be
pseudoscience, although one can argue that some of the superstitions inherent
or implied in many religions are indeed pseudoscience, including creationism. I
found Trump and company’s Stop the Steal movement to be very cult-like from its
very beginning. Despite all the massive evidence to the contrary, Trump still
maintains he was cheated, and an uncomfortable amount of his supporters agree.
On the left side
of the spectrum (mostly, as there is a presence on the right as well), pivots
toward pseudoscience include the anti-GMO and anti-vax groups. Perhaps the
lines are drawn differently on the left and right. On the left, the corporations
(especially profitable fossil fuel companies) and the complicit right or
centrist government are demonized. On the right, the leftist government and left-leaning
industries like the tech industry and the so-called “climate-industrial complex”
are vilified. Warriors of bias, fed by echo chambers, fan out to look for enemy
combatants to further vilify them. The left, by and far, has favored the
Precautionary Principle to inform all issues involving environmental impact and
technological impact. I have argued the merits for and against it here.
I believe that a cost-benefit feasibility approach is much better.
The Importance of Minimizing Bias in Energy and
Climate Science
The late
climate scientist Stephen Schneider called on people to actively exaggerate the
issue of global warming because he considered the problem so dire that even the
truth should be sacrificed to help solve it. Many climate activists seem to
echo such a view. That kind of a view is not helpful in reducing bias because
it says strong bias is necessary whether it is warranted or not. On the other
end of the spectrum, the idea that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by foreign
adversaries or socialists bent on wealth redistribution is also extreme and unhelpful
in reducing bias. By definition, the most extremist viewpoints are the most biased.
Thus, the level of bias is the issue. We all have biases to some extent, and it is
the extent that is important here. Maintaining that the vast majority of
climate scientists and scientists, in general, are simply wrong is not a very feasible
or defendable position. Similarly, maintaining that it is necessary that we expend
all of our resources to combat climate change at the expense of other more
immediate and more impactful problems is also not feasible, not sensible, and
can be seen as a cruel approach in that poor people would suffer the most and
people who need help will not get it because there are less funds available.
Moderate policy
approaches have the great advantage that they are more likely to result in real
cooperation and more likely to solve problems. Even in the energy transition
space, there are many collaborative efforts happening, especially with decarbonizing
fossil fuels and developing new technologies that depend on fossil fuels like
hydrogen. More collaborative efforts are needed to help decarbonize fossil
fuels and to reiterate to climate activists that fossil fuels are a necessary
driver of our modern industrial society that should be revered as such by
avoiding attacks against the industry from rhetoric to mandates and taxation.
Mandates and taxation, while meant to harm the fossil fuel industry, often
harm the poorest among us as well, simply by making energy cost more. That
should not be in anyone’s interest. Incentivization of wind, solar, and
batteries increases energy and electricity prices for consumers. We are willing
to accept those increases, more or less, but adding mandates and taxes on top
of that to the main sources of power and fuel would be more impactful to consumers.
This is true since gas and coal are by far the biggest energy sources on our
power grid and diesel and gasoline power the vast majority of our cars.
Mandates and taxes should be left for the future when renewables and EVs will
likely be more competitive. Decarbonization already hurts the poor a little,
but accelerated decarbonization will hurt the poor a lot more.
I found it
interesting that Obama energy secretary Ernest Moniz and Trump energy secretary
Dan Brouillette, now an executive at LNG firm Sempra, maintain a good friendship
and have appeared on panel discussions together. While their views no doubt
differ on several issues, they can work together. More of that needs to happen.
There are many scientists and engineers who support the energy transition and
also support the fossil fuel industry. The two are not, or at least should not
be, mutually exclusive. The narratives that demonize fossil fuels do not help
solve problems even if they identify and highlight issues. The profitability of
the fossil fuel industries allows them to spend considerably on decarbonization
and to invest in their competitors, wind, solar, batteries, and electrification,
where profits are smaller but where they can also build up their
decarbonization portfolios. The oil & gas and utilities industries are
among the biggest practitioners of voluntary decarbonization as well as among the
biggest recipients of mandated decarbonization. New fines on methane emissions
and looming power generation emissions mandates (unneeded IMO) attest that that
is the case. Incidentally, it is profitability that allows industries like oil
& gas and the tech industries to invest in decarbonization. The tech
industries are part of the information and communications sector that is
emissions-heavy. That is one reason they mitigate by powering their vast data
centers with renewables. The other is that they can afford to do it.
Another issue
is perhaps the veiling of bias in media amplification. While many groups and media
presences wear their biases on their sleeves, usually in their names, others
try to sound less biased than they are, to increase their bandwidth. There is a
post in the London Evening Standard, which when I looked up its bias, is
considered center-right and factual. A post - Best books on climate change
to help you understand the crisis, by Saskia Kemsley, in August 2023, suggested
books by Naomi Klein, Christine Figueres, Greta Thunberg, and one on intersectionalism,
all very biased books no doubt (though I have only read Klein’s book which was
extremely biased). They also included one by climate scientist Kerry Emmanuel
(also biased) and Bill Gates. Gates is obviously the least biased on the list.
I am surprised that a media source considered center-right and factual would recommend
such biased accounts of the climate change issue (demands to refer to it as a
climate crisis is a coercive way to force a bias on others). Bias veiling is a
common tactic among biased media and biased groups. It is rare to find a non-biased
group trying to be seen as more biased. The whole idea of veiling an identity
is to attract others to one’s bias, especially when it might be viewed as too
extreme. Thus, extremely biased groups like the Center for Biological Diversity
and the Organic Consumer Organization can seem non-biased.
References:
Sadly,
It's Not 'Just Another Summer.' We Must End the Fossil Fuel Industry | Opinion.
Peter Kalmus. Newsweek. October 4, 2023. Sadly, It's Not 'Just Another
Summer.' We Must End the Fossil Fuel Industry | Opinion (msn.com)
Sensible
Decarbonization: Regulation, Risk, and Relative Benefits in Different
Approaches to Energy Use, Climate Policy, and Environmental Impact. Kent C.
Stewart. Amazon Publishing, 2021.
Climate
model provides data-driven answer to major goal of climate research. Dr. Roy W.
Spencer, University of Alabama in Huntsville. Phys.org. September 29, 2023. Climate model provides data-driven
answer to major goal of climate research (phys.org)
At
least 20 California public university board members linked to fossil fuels.
Dharna Noor. The Guardian. October 4, 2023. At least 20 California public
university board members linked to fossil fuels | California | The Guardian
Best
books on climate change to help you understand the crisis. Saskia Kemsley.
Evening Standard. August 2023. Best books on climate change to help
you understand the crisis (msn.com)
Union of Concerned Scientists. www.ucsusa.org
Two Professors Faced Years of Harassment for
Defying the Fossil Fuel Industry. Now, They Are Reframing the Discussion Around
Fracking. Anil Oza. The Cornell Daily Sun. November 16, 2020. Two
Professors Faced Years of Harassment for Defying the Fossil Fuel Industry. Now,
They Are Reframing the Discussion Around Fracking - The Cornell Daily Sun
(cornellsun.com)
US power sector carbon capture and storage
under the Inflation Reduction Act could be costly with limited or negative
abatement potential. Emily Grubert and Frances Sawyer. Environmental
Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, Volume 3, Number 1. March 10,
2023. US power
sector carbon capture and storage under the Inflation Reduction Act could be
costly with limited or negative abatement potential - IOPscience
DOE’s error-ridden analysis on coal CCS
project threatens climate and engagement goals. Emily Grubert. Utility Dive.
September 5, 2023. DOE’s
error-ridden analysis on coal CCS project threatens climate and engagement
goals | Utility Dive
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