The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

by Alex Epstein

  Federal Statistical Office of Germany. GENESIS-Online database. “Monatsbericht über die Elektrizitätsversorgung der Netzbetreiber.” Accessed July 10, 2014. https://www-genesis.destatis.de.

  “Global Tropical Cyclone Accumulated Cyclone Energy.” Global Tropical Cyclone Activity. Accessed July 10, 2014. http://models .weatherbell.com/tropical.php.

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  Hansen, J., et al., “Global Climate Changes as Forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies Three-Dimensional Model.” Journal of Geophysical Research 93 (August 20, 1988): 9341–46. Goddard Institute for Space Studies, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, New York. doi: 10.1029/JD093iD08p09341.

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  Idso, Craig. “Plant Growth Database.” Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. Accessed May 4, 2014. http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php.

  Keeling, C. D. et al., “Exchanges of Atmospheric CO2 and 13CO2 with the Terrestrial Biosphere and Oceans from 1978 to 2000.” I. Global aspects. SIO Reference Series, No. 01-06. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego. (2001).

  MacFarling Meure, C. et al., “Law Dome CO2, CH4 and N2O Ice Core Records Extended to 2000 Years BP.” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33. (2006). L14810. doi:10.1029/2006GL026152.

  Maue, Ryan N., “Recent Historically Low Global Tropical Cyclone Activity.” Geophysical Research Letters 38 (July 20, 2011). L14803. American Geophysical Union. doi:10.1029/2011GL047711.

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  “Merged Ice-Core Record Data.” Scripps Institution of Oceanography CO2 Program. Accessed July 9, 2014. http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/atmospheric_co2.html.

  Morice, C.P., et al., “Quantifying Uncertainties in Global and Regional Temperature Change Using an Ensemble of Observational Estimates: The Hadcrut4 Dataset.” Journal of Geophysical Research (2012), 117, D08101. doi:10.1029/2011JD017187.

  Myhre, Gunnar, Eleanor J. Highwood, Keith P. Shine, and Frode Stordal, “New Estimates of Radiative Forcing Due to Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gases,” Geophysical Research Letters 25, No. 14, pages 2715–18, Jul. 15, 1998, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/ 98GL01908/abstract

  “National Emissions Inventory (NEI) Air Pollutant Emissions Trends Data.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Accessed July 10, 2014. http://www.epa.gov/ttnchie1/trends/.

  Peterson, Per F., Haihua Zhao, and Robert Petroski, “Metal and Concrete Inputs for Several Nuclear Power Plants.” Report UCBTH- 05-001, UC Berkeley. February 4, 2005.

  “Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation.” WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program update 2014. (May 2014.) Accessed July 10, 2014. www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/2014/ jmp-report/.

  “RSS Lower Troposphere Data.” Microwave Sounding Unit Temperature Anomalies. U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Climatic Data Center. Accessed on July 9, 2014. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/msu/.

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  Wilburn, D.R. “Wind Energy in the United States and Materials Required for the Land-Based Wind Turbine Industry from 2010 Through 2030.” U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2011–5036.

  “World Development Indicators.” World Bank. Accessed June 8, 2014. http://data.worldbank.org/products/wdi.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1:

  THE SECRET HISTORY OF FOSSIL FUELS

  1.BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2013, “Historical Data Workbook” [XLSX], June 2013, www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy-2013.html.

  2.Ibid.

  3.Peter Voser, “Getting the Future Energy Mix Right: How the American Shale Revolution Is Changing the World,” Shell, speech, Boston, Mar. 21, 2013, www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/media/speeches-and-webcasts/2013/getting-the-future-energy-mix-right.html.

  4.Elizabeth Bumiller and Adam Nagourney, “Bush: ‘America Is Addicted to Oil,’” New York Times, Feb. 1, 2006, www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/world/americas/01iht-state.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

  5.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Potential of Renewable Energy Outlined in Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” press release, Abu Dhabi, May 9, 2011, http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/press/content/potential-of-renewable-energy-outlined-report-by-the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change.

  6.Justin Gillis and Kenneth Chang, “Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans,” New York Times, May 12, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/science/earth/collapse-of-parts-of-west-antarctica-ice-sheet-has-begun-scientists-say.html?_r=0; Ben Wolford, “Is It Too Late to Save Our Cities from Sea Level Rises?” Newsweek, June 5, 2014, www.newsweek.com/ 2014/06/13/it-too-late-save-our-cities-sea-level-rise-253447.html.

  7.Bill McKibben, “The Ethics of Fossil Fuel Use” (debate at Duke University, Durham, NC, November 5, 2012). Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_a9RP0J7PA 4 minutes 10 seconds.

  8.Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth (New York: New American Library, 1972), 56–58.

  9.Bernard Dixon, “In Praise of Prophets,” New Scientist 51, no. 769 (Sept. 16, 1971): 606, http://books.google.com/books?id=azwQStEZq-8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.

  10.Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The End of Affluence (Riverside, MA: Rivercity Press, 1974), 49.

  11.“Ecology, the New Mass Movement,” Life, Jan. 1970, 22.

  12.Paul Ehrlich, “An Interview with Ecologist Paul Ehrlich,” Mademoiselle, Apr. 1970, 292.

  13.Eric Eckholm, “Significant Rise in Sea Level Now Seems Certain,” New York Times, Feb. 18, 1986, www.nytimes.com/1986/02/18/science/ signifigant-rise-in-sea-level-now-seems-certain.html.

  14.Philip Shabecoff, “Swifter Warming of Globe Foreseen,” New York Times, June 11, 1986, www.nytimes.com/1986/06/11/us/swifter-warming-of-globe-foreseen.html.

  15.Bill McKibben, The End of Nature, rev. ed. (New York: Random House, 2006), 124, 128.

  16.Paul Ehrlich, The Machinery of Nature (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 274.

  17.Richard Lindzen, “Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus,” Regulation: CATO Review of Business & Government 15, no 2 (Spring 1992), 87–98, http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/regulation/1992/4/v15n2-9.pdf.

  18.Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 35.

  19.Paul Ehrlich and Richard Harriman, How to Be a Survivor, 72.

  20.Amory Lovins, “Amory Lovins: Energy Analyst and Environmentalist,” Mother Earth News, November/December 1977, http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/amory-lovins-energy-analyst-zmaz77ndzgoe.aspx.

  21.Bill McKibben, “A Special Moment in History: Part Three,” Atlantic Online, May 1998, http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98may/special3.htm.

  22. , Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (New York: Times Books, 2010), 184.

  23.Anis Shivani, “Facing Cold, Hard Truths About Global Warming,” Boston Globe, May 30, 2010, http://www.bost
on.com/ae/books/articles/2010/ 05/30/ facing_cold_hard_truths_about_global_warming/.

  24.Robert Bradley Jr., “Howlin’ Wolf: Paul Ehrlich on Energy (Part I),” MasterResources, March 13, 2010, http://www.masterresource.org/ 2010/03/howlin-wolf-paul-ehrlich-on-energy-part-i-demeaning-julian-simon-energy-as-desecrator-doom-from-depletion/.

  25.BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2013.

  26.Ibid.

  27.Amory Lovins, “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?,” Foreign Affairs, October 1967, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/26604/amory-b-lovins/energy-strategy-the-road-not-taken.

  28.BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2013.

  29.BP, Statistical Review of World Energy, Historical data workbook,” accessed July 10, 2014, http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html.

  30.World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI) Online Data, Apr. 2014, http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.

  31.Ibid.

  32.Jimmy Carter, “The President’s Proposed Energy Policy,” Apr. 18, 1977, Vital Speeches of the Day 43, no. 14, May 1, 1977, www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-energy.

  33.Richard Heinberg, The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2005), 85.

  34.Timothy R. Klett et al., “Assessment of Potential Additions to Conventional Oil and Gas Resources of the World (Outside the United States) from Reserve Growth,” U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet, 2012, p. 2; Inderscience, “How Much Oil Have We Used?” ScienceDaily, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507072830.htm.

  35.R.T.H. Collis, “Weather and World Food,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 56, no. 10 (1975): 1078–83, http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0477%281975%29056%3C1078%3AWAWF%3E2.0.CO%3B2.

  36.John Gribbin, “Cause and Effects of Global Cooling,” Nature 254 (1975), 14, doi: 10.1038/254014a0.

  37.Shabecoff, “Swifter Warming of Globe Foreseen.”

  38.National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, “Combined Land-Surface Air and Sea-Surface Water Temperature Anomalies (Land-Ocean Temperature Index),” table data, global-mean monthly, June 2014, http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif.

  39.Bill McKibben, The End of Nature, 128.

  40.Indur M. Goklany, “Weather and Safety: The Amazing Decline in Deaths from Extreme Weather in an Era of Global Warming, 1900–2010,” Reason Foundation, Policy Study 393, Sept. 2011, http://reason .org/files/deaths_from_extreme_weather_1900_2010.pdf.

  41.Ibid.

  42.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “13.3.3.3 Implications of Regime Stringency: Linking Goals, Participation, and Timing,” IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007, 2007, www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch13-ens13-3-3-3 .html.

  43.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Potential of Renewable Energy Outlined in Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” press release, May 9, 2011, http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/press/content/potential-of-renewable-energy-outlined-report-by-the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change.

  44.Kirsten Gibson, “Rokita Holds Town Hall in Lebanon.” Purdue Exponent, Aug. 26, 2013, www.purdueexponent.org/city_state/article _bd15b4a3-ce01-55b8-a972-27109a6eb44e.html.

  45.David M. Graber, “Mother Nature as a Hothouse Flower: ‘The End of Nature’ by Bill McKibben,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 22, 1989, http://articles.latimes.com/1989-10-22/books/bk-726_1_bill-mckibben/2.

  46.Bill McKibben, The End of Nature, 162.

  47.Ibid., 183.

  48.McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, xii.

  49.Haripriya Rangan, Of Myths and Movements: Rewriting Chipko into Himalayan History (New York: Verso, 2000), 42.

  CHAPTER 2:

  THE ENERGY CHALLENGE

  1.U.S. Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2013, July 2013, www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo.

  2.Kathryn Hall, “Kathryn’s Story,” Power Up Gambia, www.powerupgambia.org/about/story.

  3.“Calories Burned by Occupation,” CalorieLab, http://calorielab.com/burned/?mo=se&gr=11&ti=Occupation&wt=150&un=lb&kg=68.

  4.Kathleen M. Zelman, “The Olympic Diet of Michael Phelps,” WebMD Health News, August 13, 2008, www.webmd.com/diet/news/20080813/the-olympic-diet-of-michael-phelps?printing=true.

  5.World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI) Online Data, http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.

  6.Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1980), 148.

  7.International Energy Agency, “Energy Poverty,” www.iea.org/topics/energypoverty.

  8.Ibid.

  9.World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI) Online Data, April 2014, http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.

  10.Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Fallon, NBC, Dec. 9, 2000.

  11.Food and Agriculture Organization, Regional Office for Europe, “Inventory of Hazelnut Research, Germplasm and Reference,” (accessed July 17, 2014), http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/x4484e/x44 84e03.htm.

  12.BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2013, www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy-2013.html.

  13.Ibid.

  14.American Enterprise Institute, “The Myth of Green Energy Jobs,” http://www.aei.org/outlook/energy-and-the-environment/the-myth-of-green-energy-jobs-the-european-experience/.

  15.Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, “Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells,” http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/dye-sensitized-solar-cells; Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, “Photovoltaic Cell Material Basics,” August 19, 2013, http://energy.gov/eere/energybasics/articles/photovoltaic-cell-material-basics.

  16.GE Power and Water, Renewable Energy, “1.5 MW Wind Turbine Series,” 2010, http://site.ge-energy.com/prod_serv/products/wind_turbines/en/downloads/GEA14954C15-MW-Broch.pdf.

  17.Stephen Markley, “The Rumpus Interview with Bill McKibben,” The Rumpus, December 10, 2012, accessed July 10, 2014, http://therumpus.net/2012/12/the-rumpus-interview-with-bill-mckibben/.

  18.Kiley Kroh, “Germany Sets New Record, Generating 74 Percent of Power Needs from Renewable Energy,” thinkprogress.org, May 13, 2014, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/13/3436923/germany-energy-records/.

  19.I use daily data for solar and wind electricity production and monthly data for total electricity production because each was the most specific data I could obtain from the German government.

  20.Reuters, “Germany Plans to Build, Revamp 84 Power Plants-BDEW,” April 23, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/23/germany-energy-bdew-idUSF9E7J100V20120423.

  21.Bruno Burger, “Electricity Production from Solar and Wind in Germany,” Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, presentation, Freiburg, Germany, May 26, 2014, www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/downloads-englisch/pdf-files-englisch/data-nivc-/electricity-production-from-solar-and-wind-in-germany-2014.pdf.

  22.The Great Global Warming Swindle, directed by Martin Durkin, Mar. 8, 2007, WAGtv, http://greatglobalwarmingswindle.com.

  23.Ibid.

  24.“Wood: The Fuel of the Future,” Economist, Apr. 6, 2013, www.economist.com/news/business/21575771-environmental-lunacy-europe-fuel-future.

  25.“State of Food Insecurity in the World,” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2011, p. 11, www.fao.org/docrep/014/ i2330e/i2330e03.pdf.

  26.BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2013.

  27.Ibid.

  28.Cedric Philibert and Carlos Gasco, Technology R
oadmap: Hydropower (Paris: International Energy Agency, 2012), www.iea.org/publica tions/freepublications/publication/2012_Hydropower_Roadmap .pdf, 18.

  29.Ibid., 5.

  30.“About,” Years of Living Dangerously, www.sho.com/sho/years-of-living-dangerously/about.

  31.Reed McManus, “Down Come the Dams,” Sierra, May–June 1998, www.sierraclub.org/sierra/199805/lol.asp.

  32.International Atomic Energy Agency, “Nuclear Power Advantages,” www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Development/devnine.html (accessed June 22, 2014).

  33.World Nuclear Association, “Safety of Nuclear Power Reactors,” Apr. 2014, www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-Plants/Safety-of-Nuclear-Power-Reactors.

  34.World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Radiation and Health Effects,” Feb. 2014, www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Radiation-and-Health/Nuclear-Radiation-and-Health-Effects.

  CHAPTER 3:

  THE GREATEST ENERGY TECHNOLOGY OF ALL TIME

  1.Vaclav Smil, Energy in World History (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 116.

  2.International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2013, November 12, 2013, www.worldenergyoutlook.org/publications/weo-2013.

  3.World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI) Online Data, April 2014, http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.

  4.BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2013, www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy-2013.html.

  5.World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI) Online Data.

  6.Smil, Energy in World History, 160–66.

  7.“Shenhua Coal to Liquids Plant, China,” Hydrocarbons Technology, www.hydrocarbons-technology.com/projects/shenhua (accessed June 23, 2014).

  8.BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2013.

  9.Ibid.

  10.Hobart King, “Methane Hydrates,” Geology.com, http://geology.com/articles/methane-hydrates (accessed June 23, 2014).

  11.U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Annual Energy Outlook 2014,” Table A2: Energy Consumption by Sector and Source, May 2014, www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/tbla2.pdf.