The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

by Alex Epstein

  12.Tesla Motors, “Battery: Increasing Energy Density Means Increasing Range,” 2014, www.teslamotors.com/roadster/technology/battery.

  13.U.S. Energy Information Administration, “How Much Gasoline Does the United States Consume?” May 13, 2014, www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=23&t=10; BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2013; World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI) Online Data.

  14.American Chemical Society, “Development of the Pennsylvania Oil Industry,” National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program, 2009 www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/pennsylvaniaoilindustry.html.

  15.Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 11.

  16.National Resources Defense Council, “Stopping the Keystone Pipeline,” www.nrdc.org/energy/keystone-pipeline (accessed June 23, 2014).

  17.William Stanley Jevons, The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines (London: Macmillan, 1865), vii.

  18.Ibid., viii.

  19.Anonymous, Times (London), Apr. 19, 1866, repr. in Sandra Peart, ed., W. S. Jevons: Critical Responses, 4 vols. (New York: Routledge, 2003), 1: 196.

  20.Ibid.

  21.Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Sierra Club/Ballantine, 1968), xi.

  22.Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 85.

  23.Robert Sirico, Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2012), 164.

  24.“World Population,” United States Census Bureau, Dec. 2013, www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop/table_population.php.

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

  26.Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (New York: Harper, 2010), 157.

  27.William Crookes, “Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science,” Chemical News 78 (1898): 125.

  28.University of York, “Ammonia,” The Essential Chemical Industry, Jan. 2, 2014, www.essentialchemicalindustry.org/chemicals/ammonia.html.

  29.Indur M. Goklany, “Humanity Unbound: Fossil Fuels Saved Humanity from Nature and Nature from Humanity,” Cato Institute, Policy Analysis 715, Dec. 12, 2012, 3, www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa715.pdf.

  30.BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2013.

  31.John Kerry, “Remarks on Climate Change,” U.S. Department of State, speech, Jakarta, Indonesia, Feb. 16, 2014, www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/02/221704.htm.

  CHAPTER 4:

  THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT AND THE FERTILIZER EFFECT

  1.Richard Lindzen, “Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 71, no. 3, Mar. 1990, http://eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/cooglobwrm.pdf; Patrick J. Michaels, Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 1992).

  2.Lawrence A. Baker et al., “Urbanization and Warming of Phoenix (Arizona, USA): Impacts, Feedbacks and Mitigation,” Urban Ecosystems 6, no. 3 (Sept. 2002): 183–203, doi: 10.1023/A:1026101528700.

  3.“20,000 Killed by Earthquake: Toll Is Growing, Bodies Float Down Ganges to the Sea,” Border Cities Star, January 20, 1934, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3Q4_AAAAIBAJ&sjid=aU4MAAAAIBAJ&dq=earthquake&pg=1690%2C3778979.

  4.“100 Are Injured, Property Damage Exceeds $1,000,000: Tornado Strikes Three States, Bitter Cold in North Area,” Ames Daily Tribune, February 26, 1934, http://www.newspapers.com/image/?spot=605947.

  5.“Death’s Toll Mounts to 60 in U.S. Storms,” Montreal Gazette, February 27, 1934, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=O0swAAAAIBAJ&sjid=bKgFAAAAIBAJ&dq=bering%20sea%20ice&pg=6065 %2C3419263.

  6.“1,500 Japanese Die in Hakodate Fire; 200,000 Homeless: Largest City North of Tokyo Is in Ruins and Mayor Says It Is ‘a Living Hell,’” New York Times, March 22, 1934, http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/03/22/94504668.html.

  7.“Where Tidal Wave Ruined Norway Fishing Towns,” Lewiston Morning News, April 26, 1934, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=wKJfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HDIMAAAAIBAJ&dq=tidal%20wave&pg=1854%2C677 0134.

  8.“Antarctic Heat Wave: Explorers Puzzled but Pleased,” West Australian, Perth, Australia, June 7, 1934, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/33242855.

  9.“7 Lives Lost as Tropical Storm Whips Louisiana: Hurricane Moves Far Inland Before Blowing Out Its Wrath in Squalls,” Tuscaloosa News, June 18, 1934, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=n34AAAAIBAJ&sjid=7EsMAAAAIBAJ&pg=5144%2C2222085.

  10.“Widely Separated Regions of the Globe Feel Heavy Quake,” St. Petersburg Times, June 21, 1934, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Fy9PAAAAIBAJ&sjid=e04DAAAAIBAJ&dq=earthquake&pg=4691%2C1046632.

  11.“Earth Growing Warmer: What Swiss Glaciers Reveal,” Courier-Mail, June 22, 1934, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/36712632?searchTerm=%22climate%20change%22&searchLimits=.

  12.“Death, Suffering over Wide Area in China Drouth,” Southeast Missourian, July 17, 1934, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=wawoAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xdIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6058,6240793&dq=heat-wave+china&hl=en.

  13.Wladislaw Besterman, “Toll of Flood at High Figure: Over 100 Bodies Recovered and 500 Persons Missing in Southern Poland,” Waycross Journal-Herald, July 18, 1934, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=UGFaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8EwNAAAAIBAJ&dq=heat%20nebraska& pg=4328%2C5922735.

  14.“Cuban Malaria Increases: Thousands Become Ill in Usual Seasonal Spread of Disease,” New York Times, July 23, 1934, http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/07/23/93634956.html.

  15.“Mid-West Hopes for Relief from Heat; 602 Killed,” Berkeley Daily Gazette, Berkeley, California, July 25, 1934, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=MDcyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FOMFAAAAIBAJ&pg=227 6%2C1837317.

  16.“Famine Faces 5,000,000 in Drouth [Area,” Pittsburgh Press , August 14, 1934, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=djft3U1LymYC&dat=19340814&printsec=frontpage.

  17.“Rumanians Are Alarmed by Epidemic of Cholera,” New York Times, September 9, 1934, http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/09/10/95056316.html.

  18.James E. Hansen, “Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near on Global Warming,” Huffington Post, June 23, 2008, www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/twenty-years-later-tippin_b_108766.html.

  19.Lindzen, “Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming.”

  20.Qiancheng Ma, “Greenhouse Gases: Refining the Role of Carbon Dioxide,” Science Briefs, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Mar. 1998, www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/ma_01.

  21.Patrick Lynch, “Paleoclimate Record Points Toward Potential Rapid Climate Changes,” National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Research News, Dec. 8, 2011, www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20111208.

  22.David M. Etheridge et al., “Natural and Anthropogenic Changes in Atmospheric CO2 over the Last 1,000 Years from Air in Antarctic Ice and Firn,” Journal of Geophysical Research 101, no. D2 (Feb. 20, 1996): 4115–28, doi: 10.1029/95JD03410.

  23.Gunnar Myhre, et al., “New Estimates of Radiative Forcing Due to Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gases,” Geophysical Research Letters 25 (1998). No. 14, pp. 2715–18.

  24.John Kerry, “Remarks on Climate Change,” U.S. Department of State, Speech, Jakarta, Indonesia, Feb. 16, 2014, www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/02/221704.htm.

  25.“The Keeling Curve: A Daily Record of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego,” June 8, 2014, http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu.

  26.National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, “Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index,” GISS Surface Temperature Plots, May 12, 201
4, http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif.

  27.Davis Guggenheim, director, An Inconvenient Truth (Beverly Hills, CA: Lawrence Bender Production), 2006.

  28.Svante Arrhenius, Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1908), 63.

  29.“Global Warming’s Denier Elite,” Rolling Stone Online, September 12, 2013, www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-denier-elite-20130912.

  30.National Aeronautics and Space Administration,“ Consensus: 97 Percent of Climate Scientists Agree,” http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus (accessed June 7, 2014).

  31.Kerry, “Remarks on Climate Change,” Feb. 16, 2014.

  32.President Barack Obama, Twitter post, May 16, 2013, 12:48 p.m., https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/335089477296988160.

  33.John Cook et al., “Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature,” Environmental Research Letters 8, May 15, 2013, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024.

  34.David Friedman, “A Climate Falsehood You Can Check for Yourself,” Ideas, Feb. 26, 2014, http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-climate-falsehood-you-can-check-for.html.

  35.Cook et al., “Quantifying the Consensus.”

  36.Ibid.

  37.Andrew (computer analyst), “Cook’s 97 Percent Consensus Study Falsely Classifies Scientists’ Papers According to the Scientists That Published Them,” Popular Technology, May 21, 2013, www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html.

  38.Ibid.

  39.Ibid.

  40.Ibid.

  41. Jonathan Schell, “Our Fragile Earth,” Discover, Oct. 1989, 45–48.

  42.Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Betrayal of Science and Reason (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), 207.

  43.Craig D. Idso, “The State of Earth’s Terrestrial Biosphere: How Is It Responding to Rising Atmospheric CO2 and Warmer Temperatures?” Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Dec. 5, 2012, www.co2science.org/education/reports/greening/The StateofEarthsTerrestrialBiosphere.pdf.

  44.Craig D. Idso, “The Positive Externalities of Carbon Dioxide: Estimating the Monetary Benefits of Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations on Global Food Production,” Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Oct. 21, 2013, www.co2science.org/education/reports/co2benefits/co2benefits.php.

  45.Monte Hieb, “Climate and the Carboniferous Period,” Plant Fossils of West Virginia, Mar. 21, 2009, www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html.

  CHAPTER 5:

  THE ENERGY EFFECT AND CLIMATE MASTERY

  1.EM-DAT: OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database, U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium, 2014, home, www.emdat.be.

  2.Ibid.

  3.Ibid.

  4.Ibid.

  5.National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Climatic Data Center, “U.S. Tornado Climatology,” www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-information/extreme-events/us-tornado-climatology (accessed June 25, 2014); National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Climatic Data Center, “Hurricanes,” www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/hurricanes.html (accessed June 25, 2014).

  6.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, 3, http://reason.org/files/deaths_from_extreme_weather_1900_2010.pdf.

  7.Indur M. Goklany, “Humanity Unbound: Fossil Fuels Saved Humanity from Nature and Nature from Humanity,” Cato Institute, Policy Analysis 715, Dec. 12, 2012, 3, www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa715.pdf.

  8.EM-DAT database.

  9.John Kerry, “Remarks on Climate Change,” U.S. Department of State, speech, Jakarta, Indonesia, Feb. 16, 2014, www.state.gov/secre tary/remarks/2014/02/221704.htm.

  10.Bill McKibben, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” Rolling Stone, July 19, 2012, www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719.

  11.WorldLifeExpectancy.com, “USA Life Expectancy,” www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/life-expectancy (accessed June 25, 2014).

  12.Joanna Zelman, “50 Million Environmental Refugees by 2020, Experts Predict,” Huffington Post, May 25, 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/22/environmental-refugees-50_n_826488.html.

  13.IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [T. F. Stocker, et al., eds.]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York, NY, p. 23, doi:10.1017/CBO978110 74153 24.004, http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5 _SPM_FINAL.pdf.

  14.Vanessa McKinney, “Sea Level Rise and the Future of the Netherlands,” ICE Case Studies 212, May 2007, www1.american.edu/ted/ice/dutch-sea.htm.

  15.J. W. de Zeeuw, trans., International Peat Society Commission VIII, “Peat and the Dutch Golden Age: The Historical Meaning of Energy Attainability,” A.A.G. Bijdragen 21 (1978): 5–6.

  16.Richard Tol and Andreas Langen, “A Concise History of Dutch River Floods,” Climate Change 46, no. 3 (Aug. 2000): 359–60.

  17.Ibid., 361.

  18.Albert Gore Jr., Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992; New York: Rodale, 2006), 326; citation to 2006 ed.

  19.Petr Beckmann, The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear (Boulder, CO: Golem Press, 1979).

  20.McKibben, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math”; James E. Hansen, “Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near on Global Warming,” Huffington Post, June 23, 2008, www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/twenty-years-later-tippin_b_108766.html.

  21.Fred Krupp, “Climate Change Opportunity,” Wall Street Journal, Apr. 8, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB120761565455 196769.

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

  23.Goklany, “Weather and Safety,” 3.

  24.Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Random House, 1957), 146–47.

  CHAPTER 6:

  IMPROVING OUR ENVIRONMENT

  1.“The ocean holds 97 percent of the Earth’s water; the remaining three percent is freshwater found in glaciers and ice, below the ground, or in river or lakes,” National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, National Ocean Service, “Where Is All of the Earth’s Water?” Jan. 11, 2013, http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/wherewater.html; U.S. Geological Survey, USGS Water Science School, “The World’s Water,” Mar. 17, 2014, http://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthwherewater.html.

  2.U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Drinking Water Contaminants,” June 3, 2014, http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/index.cfm; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Drinking Water Treatment,” 2009, http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/guidance/sdwa/upload/2009_08_28_sdwa_fs_30ann_treatment_web.pdf.

  3.“Water-Related Diseases: Information Sheets,” World Health Organization, accessed July 10, 2014, http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases/diseasefact/.

  4.Sara E. Rollins, Sean M. Rollins, and Edward T. Ryan, “Yersinia pestis and the Plague,” American Journal of Clinical Pathology 119 (2003), S78, doi:10.1309/DQM93R8QNQWBFYU8; David Leon, “Smallpox and Global Governance,” Global Policy, www.globalpolicyjournal.com/brookings-audit/smallpox-and-global-governance; Richard Carter and Kamini N. Mendis, “Evolutionary and Historical Aspects of the Burden of Malaria,” Clinical Microbiology Reviews 15, no. 4 (Oct. 2002): table 3, doi: 10.1128/CMR.15.4.564-594.2002.

  5.Paul Reiter, Memorandum for the British House of Lords Select Committee on
Economic Affairs, Mar. 31, 2005, www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we21.htm.

  6.World Health Organization, “Cholera 2012,” Weekly Epidemiological Record, no. 31, Aug. 2, 2013, p. 321, www.who.int/wer/2013/wer8831.pdf?ua=1.

  7.Amy Standen, “Here, Drink a Nice Glass of Sparkling Clear Wastewater,” National Public Radio, Nov. 7, 2013, www.npr.org/2013/11/07/ 243711364/here-drink-a-nice-glass-of-sparkling-clean-wastewater.

  CHAPTER 7:

  REDUCING RISKS AND SIDE EFFECTS

  1.Flora Felsovalyi, Bennett Jap, Anthony Robilotto, and Gary Tong, “Delayed Effects of Hydrofluoric Acid Burn,” Cornell University Library eCommons, Jan. 7, 2001, http://hdl.handle.net/1813/262.

  2.Robert Bryce, Smaller, Faster, Lighter, Denser, Cheaper (New York: Perseus Book Groups, 2014), 192.

  3.Simon Parry and Ed Douglas, “In China, the True Cost of Britain’s Clean, Green Wind Power Experiment: Pollution on a Disastrous Scale,” London Daily Mail, Jan. 26, 2011, www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html.

  4.Stephen Mosley, “Public Perception of Smoke Pollution in Victorian Manchester,” in Technologies of Landscape: From Reaping to Recycling, ed. David E. Nye (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 163.

  5.Ibid.

  6.Steve Tracton, “The Killer London Smog Event of December, 1952: A Reminder of Deadly Smog Events in U.S.,” Washington Post, blogs, Dec. 19, 2012, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/the-killer-london-smog-event-of-december-1952-a-reminder-of-deadly-smog-events-in-us/2012/12/19/452c66bc-498e-11e2-b6f0-e851e741d196_blog.html.

  7.BP Global, “Deepwater Horizon Accident and Response,” Gulf of Mexico Restoration, Dec. 13, 2013, www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/gulf-of-mexico-restoration/deepwater-horizon-accident-and-response.html.

  8.Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 34.