

How Fossil Fuels Will Save the World - ccozan
http://www.wsj.com/articles/fossil-fuels-will-save-the-world-really-1426282420#

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dreamweapon
_The environmental movement has advanced three arguments in recent years for
giving up fossil fuels: (1) that we will soon run out of them anyway; (2) that
alternative sources of energy will price them out of the marketplace; and (3)
that we cannot afford the climate consequences of burning them._

Supposed argument (1) is definitely a straw man. What environmentalists
generally warn of is not that we will "run out" of fossil fuels -- there
always seem to be more reserves out there, deeper and deeper in the ground
somewhere -- but that the environmental costs of _extracting_ them are
becoming ever greater, and are ultimately unsustainable.

Argument (2) I don't know much about, so I'll pass. But is clearly of lesser
importance.

And (3) is standard pseudo-scientific libertarian denialism. It may help to
understand the first source the author cities (Patrick Michaels) does paid
advocacy work for the energy industry on climate change issues, for example:

[http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cato_Institute#Ca...](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cato_Institute#Cato_Fellow_Patrick_Michaels_Runs_Climate_Denial_PR_Firm)

