“[Facebook is] a powerful way to misinform people, since these groups can’t win in the actual scientific arena, so they only can win in these media environments where they can pay to promote stuff.” (Andrew Dessler, 2020).

“All of the noise right now from the climate change denial machine, the bots & trolls, the calls for fake ‘debates’, etc. Ignore it all….Report, block. Don’t engage.” (Michael Mann, 2019)

Andrew Dessler and Michael Mann are two very emotional climate alarmists in today’s vigorous, unsettled debate. “Hide the Decline” Mann, the leading culprit of the Climategate scandal, triggered “a public-relations disaster for science” by manipulating data and techniques to reach a preordained (alarmist) result. Andy Dessler, who admits to a “very low threshold for outrage,” is the alarmist’s alarmist–a true catastrophist.…

“I began publishing Julian Simon’s upbeat analytical articles on the benefits of population growth…. [O]ur ‘Econ Update’ newsletter was mailed to every high school with a debate program. Julian Simon’s Ultimate Resource thus joined the battle of ideas against ‘Growth DAs’ in debate classes, clubs, and tournaments across the country.”

When I worked at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in New York in the mid-1980s, Julian Simon used to call from time to time. Sometime he would send a letter with just a leaf inside.

High school debate was my connection to Julian Simon. 

Discovering Julian Simon

I learned about The Ultimate Resource (1981) from Andrea Rich’s Laissez-Faire Books catalog. A few years earlier, Economics in Argumentation had outsourced a debate resource guide to a former debater for the national high school debate topic.…

Will green investment be prioritised in the economic stimulus packages that are undoubtedly needed? Will people think differently about travel or food security? Will we emerge with a politics that focuses more on a collective approach to global challenges such as climate? Or will we fall back into desperate attempts to rekindle the old economy and the old ways? – Rebecca Willis (UK), The Guardian, May 21, 2020

The shallowness of climate concern among the public and voters is a large elephant in the climate room. A recent poll by the American Energy Alliance confirmed that U.S. voters are much more interested in pocketbook issues than in the ephemeral, politicized issue of “climate change.” The same is true when it comes to politics as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) lamented earlier this year:

There is no company that shows up in Congress on climate, except maybe Patagonia.

“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, pp. 126–127).

The Houston Chronicle‘s favorite climate scientist, Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, a leading climate alarmist (see Part I yesterday) fancies himself as an energy and public policy expert. And so the Chronicle takes Dessler at face value well outside of his areas of expertise.

Dessler’s Latest

Here is Dessler’s latest Opinion piece for the Houston Chronicle, A Just Transition from Fracking to Renewable Energy is Possible [February 28, 2020] His op-ed (in yellow) is interspersed with my critical comments.…