“I wonder if the court or a charity could provide Amy Pritchard (and other members of Extinction Rebellion) with a few books to quell her alarmism, one book being Alex Epstein’s Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas–Not Less.”

A UK judge has reinforced the law that has climate alarmists up in protest. His was a good decision. But on LinkedIn, Ben Tolhurst, a climate busy body, complained:

My friend Amy [Pritchard of Extinction Rebellion] was jailed for 10 months this morning by judge Silas Reid for cracking a window [no, three windows costing $350,000] of JPMorgan Chase & Co., the world’s biggest funder of fossil fuels. I had the privilege of hearing her summing up speech last week and was sure that even the most hard hearted would be moved by her account of why she took the action.

“The popular climate discussion … looks at man as a destructive force for climate livability … because we use fossil fuels. In fact, the truth is the exact opposite; we don’t take a safe climate and make it dangerous; we take a dangerous climate and make it safe. High-energy civilization, not climate, is the driver of climate livability.”

– Alex Epstein, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels (2014), pp. 126–127.

Physical climate change in terms of human welfare defines the debate between the alarmists and skeptics. And a good way to begin that debate is to put climate livability and nature in proper context. The quotation above does just that, tearing away the deep ecology notion that nature is benign, optimal, and fragile.

There is one graphic, one data series, that makes Epstein’s point — and puts the climate alarmists and forced energy transformationists on their heels.…

“Oil industry lobbyists are not worthwhile humans. It’s not a real job, it is corruption and beneath contempt. Taking bribe money to spread propaganda that results in genocide is sub human.” Tom Trounce (below)

I recently had an ‘interesting’ discussion on social media with a strong advocate for (dilute, intermittent) ‘renewable’ energies. My critic, an angry foe of fossil fuels, didn’t present solid arguments but only ad hominems, followed by trash talk. Such is the unfortunate part of debating climate/energy issues on LinkedIn, where certain (brainwashed?) alarmists work to discredit and marginalize their opponents.

Tom Trounce was the bad guy. His profile at LinkedIn advertises:

Improving lives through community, compassion and expeditions | Non-profits | Company culture | Leadership integrity | Technology | Customer Experience | Purpose

What? Improving lives, compassion, integrity.…

“Last chance travel …. From melting glaciers to unbearable summer heat, climate change will make some holiday destinations unrecognizable.”

The mentality of the doomsday crowd is something to behold. Why would one go zombie on the coming end of modern civilization rather than soberly examine the (failed) track record of alarmism and the (non-alarming) data of weather extremes, temperature, and climate-related deaths?

I am reminded of two authors of the 1972 Club of Rome study who were so confident of doomism (here):

Dennis and Donella Meadows retreated to a New Hampshire farm after completing the book “to learn about homesteading and wait for the coming collapse.” “We definitely felt like Cassandras,” Donella Meadows added, “especially as we watched the world react to our work.”

But maybe Kenneth Boulding got it right when he said:

Is there any more single-minded, simple pleasure than viewing with alarm?