Best-of Power Hour: Power Hungry with Robert Bryce

On this week’s Power Hour Alex Epstein interviews Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, on the future of energy in general and “renewable energy” in particular. In the last year and a half Mark has published two fascinating and widely circulated reports: “The ‘New Energy Economy’: An Exercise in Magical Thinking” and “Mines, Minerals, and ‘Green’ Energy: A Reality Check”. Mark brings a great perspective to energy issues because he a) has a strong physics background and b) he is deeply knowledgeable about how different industries, above all the digital technology industry, use energy. On the show Mark and Alex discuss: - The three ways to use unreliable “renewable” energy and why none them work well - The massive and rapidly increasing quantities of reliable electricity used by digital technology - Why every hour of video uses as much energy as driving 1 mile - How AI has a limitless need for energy - Tech companies’ contradiction of supporting unreliable energy and demanding ultra-reliable energy - The fallacy of equating energy and electricity - The limits of battery density - Why engineers can’t fulfill arbitrary political wishes

6 Elo 20201h 3min

On this week’s Power Hour, Alex Epstein interviews Ron Stein, author of Energy Made Easy and Just Green Electricity, about the decline of California’s energy system. On the show they discuss: - How much oil California uses and where it comes from. - The decline of California energy production and the rise of imports from the Middle East. - Where California’s electricity comes from–hint: a lot of it isn’t from California. - How California is shutting down 4 reliable power plants with no replacements on the horizon. - How California’s regressive oil and electricity policies his poor and middle class Californians the hardest. - How California can change its energy future. On the podcast Alex also answers two listener questions: one about “energy privilege” and one about the role of reliable, low-cost energy in fighting oppression. At the end of the second question Alex discusses how modern, high-powered communication systems are valuable for fighting many kinds of oppression, but how the current social media model is dangerously suppressive of open intellectual debate.

29 Heinä 20201h 28min

From Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels Last Thursday I was interviewed by former Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts as part of a project by him to educate Australian politicians and members of the general public on energy and climate. We ended up going 2 hours and 15 minutes. I think it’s my best and most comprehensive interview to date. Here’s the very long list of topics we covered. - Should Senator Roberts be proud to be a human being, and be proud to have worked in the coal industry? - The vast improvement in human life and the role of fossil fuel “machine food” in that improvement - How much the human environment has improved in the last 200 years - How fossil fuels make it much easier to preserve the most desirable parts of nature - How fossil fuels helped end slavery and servitude - The three ways in which fossil fuels are crucial to medical science - How fossil fuels make possible today’s amazing division of labor - What going back to nature would be like in a world of 8 billion people - The question our society should be obsessed with but isn’t - The right way and wrong way to think about “changing the system” - Why the view that we are in a climate crisis is a religious, not scientific, view - Fossil fuels, opportunity, and happiness - Human beings’ capacity for caring and how it is manipulated - What actually leads to a better future for future generations - How property rights are required for a proper relationship between human beings and the rest of nature - The untold devastations of our anti-property rights policies such as the Endangered Species Act - A thought experiment: how would we think of fossil fuels if they sucked CO2 out of the atmosphere - Why people expect rising CO2 levels to be bad even though science tells us they will a) significantly increase plant growth and b) warm mostly the oldest parts of the world. - The “anti-impact framework” underlying most of today’s energy and environmental thinking - Why the moral case for fossil fuels does not depend on CO2 having a negligible impact - Sea level rise as by far the most plausible threat of rising CO2 levels—and why even that is a weak threat - The disingenuousness of “climate justice” - The four major types of energy - Why it’s wrong to compare the prices of reliable and unreliable energy - How “unreliables” don’t replace the costs of reliables, they add to the costs - How “unreliables” cannot make themselves but depend on fossil fuels for their existence - 100% renewable plans as “equal parts ignorant and genocidal” - Why the anti-fossil fuel movement is anti-nuclear - Why electricity prices in the US have gone up despite cheaper natural gas and coal prices - How the anti-impact movement stopped the trend of declining energy prices - The motives of the anti-impact movement - The role of envy - “The anti-impact framework” - How anti-impact, anti-human moral ideas attract power-lusters - The human flourishing framework - Why hydrocarbon companies don’t stand up to the anti-fossil fuel movement - The difference between executives’ and politicians’ public views on climate and their private views on climate - When are we obligated to speak the unpopular truth? - The power of one courageous voice - Why I focus on spreading the good news about climate livability - My relationship to the fossil fuel industry - Are we going to run out of fossil fuels? - Why having “good intentions” must include the intention to understand the relevant facts - How I approach thinking about moral issues

22 Heinä 20202h 19min

From Alex Epstein, host of Power Hour On this week’s Power Hour I interview Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, author of False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. As I discussed in my review of the book several weeks ago, I think this is an extremely valuable book, on two counts above all. 1. It documents in case after case how the media and political leaders wildly distort the conclusions of mainstream climate research. 2. It documents in case after case how human adaptation can neutralize climate danger. The book was recently attacked in a New York Times “review” by the famous near-socialist economist Joseph Stiglitz. Bjorn systematically refuted the pseudo-review on this impressive LinkedIn article. On the show we discuss: - How trusted media sources manipulated a climate research paper to predict 187 million climate refugees when the number was actually around 300,000 (half the number of people who move out of California every year) * Why we always need to look for positive and negative impacts, not just one or the other - How many seconds worth of electricity all of America’s batteries can store today - The true state of solar and wind in the world today - How people in developing countries around the world demand “real electricity,” not the meager, unreliable electricity provided by much-heralded solar installations - The prospects for nuclear energy - Some of the crude errors of the New York Times review of False Alarm - How global capitalism will encourage energy progress even when specific technophobic countries reject it

22 Heinä 202052min

On this week’s Power Hour Alex Epstein interviews Dr. Patrick Moore, ecologist and co-founder of Greenpeace, about climate catastrophism. Moore eviscerates climate catastrophism by looking at rising CO2 levels from a scientific and pro-human perspective–not the pseudoscientific and anti-human perspective that dominates today. Topics include: - Why Moore left Greenpeace. - The beginnings of the climate catastrophe movement. - Why Moore believes human beings would not only survive but survive better at far higher average temperatures (which would be concentrated toward the poles). - Why Moore believes that contrary to being in a Sixth Extinction, we are actually at an unprecedented time of biodiversity with no end in sight. - Why Moore believes “ocean acidification” claims are totally meritless. - The commonality among opposition to plastics, GMOs, nuclear energy, and fossil fuels. - Moore’s unrefuted theory that human beings actually saved life on Earth from terminal decline in CO2 levels.

16 Heinä 20201h 3min

Alex Epstein interviews Caleb Rossiter , Chairman of the CO2 Coalition. There is an active campaign, led by billionaire anti-fossil-fuel activist Tom Steyer, to convince Facebook to remove the CO2 Coalition from its platform. Some highlights include: - Rossiter’s decades-long work on African issues. - Why fossil fuels, especially coal, are crucial to African prosperity. - How Rossiter became suspicious of climate models. - CO2 as a warming gas *and* a plant fertilizing gas. - How challenging climate catastrophism hurt Rossiter’s career. - How the “paid off by the fossil fuel industry” narrative is laughable.

8 Heinä 202057min

Alex Epstein interviews Michael Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never, which hit #5 on Amazon. His recent article, ‘On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare,’ has been widely shared. Some highlights: - How Shellenberger went from being a renewables activists to championing nuclear. - Why Shellenberger decided to stand up against climate catastrophism after years of silence. - How modern environmentalism is a religion. - The real motives of most of modern environmentalism. - How environmental journalists misrepresent environmental science.

2 Heinä 202054min

Alex Epstein discusses two soon-to-be released books: Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger and False Alarm by Bjorn Lomborg. He explains why these are crucial books in the broader project of a pro-human environmental movement that rejects climate catastrophism.

24 Kesä 202057min