Alex Epstein - Human Flourishing and Energy Progress

Alex Epstein is author of "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels."

Recorded live at Energy Disruptors, May 15, 2018.

[shaohenyong]

What a great talk. Human flourishing is definitely our goal.

[ridealone]

Great talk, Alex. We need more clear thinking people like you, especially in energy. Keep up the great work!

[rabbalam]

Alex, this is one of your better presentations.. clear, concise...and absence of superfulious adjectives.

[dks]

Alex's work is critically important !! Thank you, Alex.

[davideagen]

GREAT speech. I do one to put one tip that maybe can help in the future. Close to the end ~28 you say something along the lines of "I will TELL you where to get more resources on that" in references to survival metrics. What about using words like "I can show you" or "I have some more unbiased sources that you can refer to". I find people, especially Americans, hate the words "tell you". They say stuff like don't tell me what to do or I don't care what you tell me. Alex you can walk between rain drops and you keep improving all the time. Best of luck to you in the future.

[SWOBIZ]

Great point about the “greenness” of North Korea.

[bpoladsky]

Yes Barbara, Philosophers, who needs them.

[annemouse]

Intermittent audio. I have headset on and still can't hear.

[spacescatatford]

In March 2021, Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that renewables are the cheapest power option for 71% of global GDP and 85% of global power generation.

[annemouse]

It isn't just looking at its side effects, but only looking at its negative side effects.

[dks]

Alex, British college kids need you bad !!! Take klennexs for them, and guards for you !!!

[Minder]

I'm 32 and I just decided to become a philosopher.

[Japbread]

I like what he’s saying, but I want to see more facts and stats. Even science he’s found for his basis of his stance which I think is a great stance.

[WillyWanka]

Alex could debate the average person, who supports "climate change" and hates fossil fuel, and tear them to pieces for 5 hours straight

[sapito]

lol the north korean analogy was very funy

[stanleymcomber]

But Apple hires philosophers, as programmers, just for this very reason, how to think properly.

[thomasross]

There are a number of misleading terms surrounding the energy issues. There is “off grid “, there is the “ renewable grid” and there is the “mainstream grid” Off grid is really distributed generation, where energy is produced on site for the needs of the residents. This in the developed world is generally “ cottage country”, where the wealthy have vacation homes in remote areas or planned communities, cooperative groups often focused on religious or other common beliefs. The majority of people in the first world are connected to the main electrical grid. Only the scheduled mainstream grid has the energy density and dependability required for industrial development. In the the developing world communities are moving to distributed generation, producing power for the use of households with minimal distribution, house hold or community solar wind and hydro. Only hydro can provide energy for industrial development. The renewable grid doesn’t actually exist, it’s, our old distribution system, with large centralized solar and wind generation sites. We know that renewable energy sources with the exception of hydro cannot support the industrial grid. We are asking the developing world to give up industrial development to remain in the renewable power world . California is discovering what it takes to remain a developed economy . Unfortunately the present political climate is moving California away from development . Where I’m writing from still hasn’t figured out that we can’t even heat our homes without the industrial grid. We must decide whether to live in an industrial society or decide who gets live.

[Cspacecat]

Lets first look at this from incoming light. The Sun, with an effective temperature of approximately 5800 K, is an approximate black body with an emission spectrum peaked in the central, yellow-green part of the visible spectrum. Of that, about 55% of incoming sunlight to Earth is infrared photons. They strike the Earth and are reradiated back out into the atmosphere. The other 45% is white light and of that, about 30% of that is reflected which is what you would see if you were to look at the Earth from outer space. That should leave about 31.5% of the total light being white, to strike the Earth and be reradiated in the Earth's black body 255k infrared range back into the atmosphere. That would mean 55% infrared photons coming in and 86.5% total infrared photons going out. As we increase secondary greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we block more incoming infrared photons, slightly cooling off the planet. Being there are more outgoing infrared photons than incoming, we should trap more outgoing infrared photons than reflecting incoming photons. That being said, all things being equal, the planet must heat.

[TheAutoChannel]

Earlier this year, I published a rebuttal to Alex Epstein's book titled "The Immorality of Arguing That There's a Moral Case for Fossil Fuels." At the same time it also rebuts a book by Kathleen Hartnett White of a similar title and proposition.

It is preposterous to claim that there is anything moral about fossil fuels, and to claim that we owe any debt of gratitude to gasoline/diesel/coal for enhancing our lives. If a debt of gratitude is owed, it is owed to the inventions that utilize various fuels...regardless of what those fuels are. The inventions were all created without consideration to any specific fossil fuel. Internal combustion engines, for example, were created before the invention of either gasoline or diesel petroleum fuel. The steam engine was not created because coal was available.

The fact is that fossil fuels have been the cause of wars, disease, and ecological and environmental disasters. Every significant war in the past 104 years has been caused by petroleum oil. Tens of millions of people; no, make that hundreds of millions of people have been killed in these wars. To the war dead-toll we have to add the people who have died as a result of the illnesses caused by the use of petroleum oil fuels. Then there's the life-long injuries and disabilities suffered by untold millions more. There's nothing moral about any of this.

Previous attempts to rebuke Mr. Epstein and Ms. White, such as the one written by Jody Freeman, have failed because the writers have as little understanding of history, fuels, energy, and real solutions as Epstein and White do.


Marc J. Rauch
Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher
THE AUTO CHANNEL