By The Numbers

     If it cannot be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. – Robert A. Heinlein

     I only recently became aware of this Prager U video:

     It’s an excellent, facts-and-figures based refutation of the “renewable energy” con the enviro-Nazis have been promoting. And therefore, the Left has put a lot of effort into refuting it…but seldom with facts or figures. That’s an indicator to prioritize. It suggests that the available facts and figures are on the side of “conventional” energy sources – and they are.

     There are other indicators of importance, of course: the shrillness of the anti-fossil fuels community; their use of tendentious “models” that embed all manner of questionable assumptions; their habit of hiding their supposed data and falsifying the rest; their continued insistence that “we’ve got to act now!” to eliminate fossil fuels, when the available data say no such thing. Remember Al Gore’s claim that the polar ice caps and the glaciers would be melted by now, and Earth’s coastal cities, where approximately a third of Mankind resides, would be under twenty feet of water? He won an Oscar for that, didn’t he? I don’t suppose there’s any prospect of getting him to admit that he was wrong, though.

     One way to control a people is to control some vital commodity on which their lives and livelihoods depend. Dispatchable energy capacity, often abbreviated as “cap” in discussions of the Earth’s energy budget, is vital to virtually everything we do. “Cap” is essential to:

1. Heating and cooling our homes and other environments;
2. Operating our consumer-convenience equipment;
3. Operating our capital equipment;
4. Powering our vehicles.

     Those four headings subsume virtually everything of importance to human existence. Unless you’re a beach bum in some tropical land where food hangs from the trees, free for anyone to pluck and eat, you’ll almost certainly employ energy for items 1 and 2 each and every day. If you’re a worker of any sort, you’re almost certain to employ energy for items 3 and 4, as well.

     The famous “renewable” sources of wind and solar energy are only irregularly equal to items 1 and 2. They can’t cope with items 3 and 4 at all. Physics, weather and climate, and other stubborn facts of life are against it.

     But really, the enviro-Nazis aren’t against fossil fuels and nuclear power as such. Their real target is capitalism itself. The smart ones won’t say so out loud. Moreover, they’re constantly trying to distance themselves from the socialists, communists, Luddites, and “back to nature” goons who do say so out loud.

     Herewith, a few words about the criteria by which modern Man selects his energy sources. In assessing an energy source, we look for two things above all others:

1. Concentration: that is, the amount of extractable, easily employed energy per unit mass;
2. Undesired byproducts: otherwise known as wastes.

     As it happens, these characteristics are related. Waste output varies inversely with energy concentration. In other words, the more concentrated an energy source, the less massive its waste output tends to be. When it comes to generating electrical power, nuclear power is the indisputable champion: gigantic energy output for very small amounts of waste. We ought to be exploiting it far more than we do at present.

     But we can’t use nuclear power to propel our cars, trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes. (All right, naval warships are an exception.) What does that leave? The fossil fuels have the next greatest concentration of energy per unit mass. Moreover, we’ve gotten really good at capturing their waste products before they can foul the air or water.

     This is where the enviro-Nazis do most of their shrieking. “Sooner or later we’ll run out, and what will we do then?” they cry. But once again, the facts are against them. Each and every year, the world’s proven reserves of the fossil fuels, measured in how many years of human consumption they would support, increases. The figure currently stands at 50 years of consumption at current rates. Offshore and ocean drilling, hydrofracturing, and the recent advances in techniques for reviving “exhausted” oil wells will increase those reserves even further.

     This sort of hard data absolutely infuriates the enviro-Nazis. They’re Cause People, you see. When you undermine their Cause, you’re undermining their self-concept and sense of personal worth. That makes it personal to them – quite as personal as if you’d attacked their religion…which, in a sense, you have.

     My advice is to carry a copy of Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource with you wherever you go. It’s chock-full of hard data about such matters. The smarter enviro-Nazis will shy away upon seeing it in your grasp. You can hit the others with it…renewably, at that.