In 1999, American climatologist Michael Mann first published a “hockey stick graph” that purported to show an unprecedented spike in global temperature over the past century.
Mann’s graph was featured in the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and was followed by the production of Al Gore’s apocalyptic climate film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
These developments led to a continuous series of doomsday predictions and arbitrary climate policies that seek to replace fossil fuels with alternative sources of energy.
The presumed scientific consensus on cataclysmic climate change hasn't gone unchallenged. In 2005, Canadian researchers Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick raised serious doubts about the principal component analysis in Mr. Mann’s hockey stick graph.
Last summer, American philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein released his second book on the moral case for the use of fossil fuels. In “Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less,” he argued that the looming “climate emergency” and imminent “renewable revolution” have been enormously overstated.
Mr. Epstein asserted that fossil fuels are still the main source of affordable energy in the world and that policies aimed at reducing the use of coal, oil, and gas are creating skyrocketing energy prices, which have already produced rampant inflation.
He acknowledged that over the past 170 years, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have contributed to minor degrees of warming, but their benefits have raised billions of people out of poverty. Largely due to adaptive measures made possible by fossil fuel-powered machines and technology, the world has become more liveable, and mortality related to weather is at an all-time low.
According to Mr. Epstein’s analysis: “Fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective source of energy. Cost-effective energy is essential to human flourishing. Billions of people are suffering and dying for lack of cost-effective energy.”
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