
Google Talk: The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels - ardoise
https://youtu.be/s6b7K1hjZk4
======
glloydell
From the pdf intro you can download off the authors site :

" Those who claim to care about a livable climate for the future should strive
to understand the mechanisms by which industrial capitalism has already made
our climate the most livable in history.

If they did so, they would learn from such thinkers as Ayn Rand and Ludwig Von
Mises how capitalism, by permitting only voluntary associations among men,
unleashes the individual human mind—and that billions of such minds, free to
associate and trade however they choose, will engage in stupendously
intricate, collaborative planning for everything from how to make sure they
can always get groceries to how to account for nearly any weather contingency.

Armed with an understanding of individual freedom and individual planning, the
climate-concerned would suspect that any preventable problem in dealing with
weather—such as widespread vulnerability to flooding—is caused by government
interference in voluntary trade, such as taxpayer-financed flood insurance
that encourages people to live in high-flooding areas. "

I'm still reading through it, but it seems like a steady devolution into a
patchwork of increasingly impressive logical fallacies with some half formed
libertarian dogma slapped on top of it for style points.

Dude's also a hardcore climate change denier.

Just saying.

~~~
ardoise
Did you watch the video?

I didn't get that he was denying climate change, merely arguing against sloppy
thinking on the subject.

@08:29: "We can't be sloppy. So, for example, if you say, 'Oh, there's sea
level rise. CO2 levels contribute to sea level rise.' Well, is it a one foot
contribution in the next century, as one of the major UN organizations says?
Or is it 20 feet, as Al Gore says in 'An Inconvenient Truth'? Those magnitudes
make an enormous difference."

@08:54: "It would be like you're deciding whether to vaccinate your child---
and you say, 'Well, how significant are the side effects?' And they just say,
'Vaccine side effects are real.' And you say, 'I know, but I want to know the
magnitude.' And they say, 'What are you, a vaccine side effect denier?'

The first 15-20 mins is presenting a framework for thinking about the subject.
He suggests that typical discussion about fossil fuels focuses solely on their
drawbacks and ignores their tremendous benefits (particularly their unique
benefits), and prioritizes "low environmental impact" above "human
flourishing"\---i.e. anti-human.

@14:53: "So, I describe my framework, if you want two terms would be: (1) full
context---you want to look carefully at the positives and negatives; and then
(2) human flourishing---we measure goodness by maximizing human flourishing,
not minimizing human impact."

@16:02: "We need to look at both the potential unique benefits of fossil fuels
(access to energy, maybe CO2 could have some benefits) and then potentially
unique risks (the risks of CO2 pollution, and then depletion---running out of
them or running out of other resources)."

