Irresistible March of Energy Realism

Trillions in pork is doing nothing to influence CO2 or climate change

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Excerpts:

"Energy sources are additive and symbiotic, he writes [French energy historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz]. Coal, oil, gas, wood, nuclear and renewables all grew together, they didn’t replace each other.

An increase in coal provided steel piping to enable oil and gas production. More wood than ever was consumed to support British coal mines. The world’s biggest maker of wooden barrels at one time was John D. Rockefeller. A car in the 1930s consumed more coal via its required steel than it would consume in fossil fuels in its lifetime.

In the U.K. today, a single wood-burning electric plant consumes more wood than Britain’s entire 18th-century economy and yet accounts for a small fraction of Britain’s current energy output. The only transition has been to more energy consumption."

"subsidies for green energy, adopted globally by the Obama imitators in lieu of carbon taxes, only end up subsidizing more energy use, including copious fossil energy to make batteries, wind turbines and solar panels.

"The faulty assumption here is that phasing out fossil energy will be any easier in 50 years when the world is consuming twice as much energy and half is still fossil energy, producing the same emissions as today. A likelier outcome: When the green subsidies stop, as inevitably they must, the result will be a burst of emissions as the formerly subsidized users shift to fossil energy to stay solvent."

"An Oxfam report finds up to $41 billion in World Bank climate spending, backed by U.S. taxpayers, unaccounted for."

"In the peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a study finds that of 1,500 “climate” policies announced around the world, a mere 63, or 4%, produce any reduction in emissions."

"Last year, by one accounting, global emissions topped 40 billion tons for the first time."