Episode 1 of BBC’s Big Oil vs The World is a polished, emotional, lawyer-like brief for one side of a multi-sided, complex issue. But in the final analysis, the BBC case is long on agenda and feelings and short on facts, balance, and proper context. The documentary is slick propaganda that accuses oil companies of producing slick propaganda.

With its documentary Big Oil vs The World, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has added its voice to the chorus accusing the petroleum industry in general, and ExxonMobil in particular, of misleading the public and slowing the global response to climate change. The three-part documentary (Denial, Doubt, and Delay) was produced in cooperation with PBS, which ran its version on Frontline under the title The Power of Big Oil in April and May of this year.…

“To the extent that the challenges that the article documents are more real than Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 declaration that ‘The battle to feed all of humanity is over,’ the best response is to ignore the scientists’ solutions.”

In January 2021, Paul and Anne Ehrlich and a host of other famous scientists published the grimly titled article, Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future. The piece appeared in the online journal, Frontiers in Conservation Science, “where,” the masthead informs us, “scientists empower society.”

The heavily footnoted article warns that continued population growth will lead to increased consumption which will, in turn, result in loss of biodiversity leading to a 6th mass extinction, climate change leading to mass migrations, declining child health, water and earth toxification, more pandemics, increased terrorism, war over resources, and greater material inequality.…

“We congratulate Simon Kinsella for his fortitude and diligence. Other communities are in line for similar threats as from South Fork Wind proposal (Long Island). Pushback to agencies that thrust agreements and permits in favor of wind development without appropriate assessment is essential, economic issues aside.”

Simon Kinsella of Suffolk County New York is no stranger to legal proceedings. His filing last month with the District Court at District of Columbia follows a neat pattern of Citizen “water bearer” to environmental concerns raised for years now regarding South Fork Offshore Wind (Ørsted) with the Long Island Power Authority and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (Department of the Interior).

The Biden Administration’s priority is industrializing large strips of coastal ocean water to get the radically uneconomic offshore wind industry going on the East Coast.…

“Among the 867 findings extracted from the analysed publications [regarding offshore wind], 72% reported negative impacts, while 13% were positive.”

“The progressive expansion of OWFs [Offshore Wind Farms] to meet energy production objectives, including floating devices in deeper areas and farther offshore, faces relevant technical, economic, social, and ecological concerns worldwide.”

– “Reviewing the Ecological Impacts of Offshore Wind Farms,” npj Ocean Sustainability (2022).

Deep ecologists and rank-and-file environmentalists should shudder at the thought of industrial wind turbines talking over the coastal waters. The massive structures and electric cables to shore are bad enough. But the machinery’s low average-capacity factors and susceptibility to bad weather make for a very risky economic/ecological deal.

But economics scarcely matters to the Church of Climate. Carbon dioxide and fossil fuels are always worse.…