The Biden administration and Congressional Democrats still want to ban fossil fuels within 10 years. That is economically and technically not feasible. If adopted, it will turn our economy back 200 years to 1821 and destroy the 18-fold gains in prosperity, wealth, and wellbeing gained over 200 years of the industrial revolution fueled by fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal). All of us will suffer in the costs and availability of transportation, electric power for household appliances, heating, and air conditioning, and the essential goods and services we consume. Green energy (solar, wind, hydro, biomass-ethanol) technology is not sufficiently efficient and cost-effective and available to fill the need.
Up until the industrial revolution powered by fossil fuels, the annual per capita productivity of humans never exceeded the equivalent of about $500. Productivity was strictly limited by the muscle energy of humans and draft animals. After 1821, world per capita productivity rapidly increased to about $9,000 in the late 1900s.
Two excellent books by professionally qualified scientists show why banning fossil fuels to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is futile and unnecessary. “Unsettled” a new book by PHD physicist, Steve Koonin, shows the science does not prove that human burning of fossil fuels justifies such drastic action. “The Whole Story of Climate” by PHD geologist, Kirsten Peters, agrees. Physicists and geologists know a lot about global temperatures and climate because they are determined by basic laws of physics and recorded in geological formations. Global temperature and climate change are caused by many extremely complex natural forces that scientists do not understand. Both temperature and climate have changed radically in cycles over the last 4 million years, long before human burning of fossil fuels was a significant factor. Cycles have been about 100,000 years long with about 10,000 years of warming and 90,000 years of an ice age. We are about at the end of the current warm period and approaching a new ice age if the trends repeat.
Environmentalists and political leaders place great emphasis on computer models that predict disastrous levels of carbon dioxide and world temperatures by 2100. Dr. Koonin was a pioneer in developing computer modeling. He shows that because world temperatures and climate change are so extremely complex, the computer models are still inaccurate and unreliable when tested over 50 plus years of actual recorded world temperatures. Neither author denies world temperatures have increased since about 1850. They emphatically disagree that the science proves it was caused solely by carbon dioxide increase from human burning of fossil fuels rather than natural powers. It is ironic and significant that accurate, reliable thermometers were only developed about 1850. The world experienced a mini-ice age from about 1300 AD to 1800 AD caused by a major volcano eruption.
If carbon dioxide emissions are a serious cause 0f global warming, there are better, more cost-effective, less economically damaging ways to attack it instead of banning fossil fuels. Dr. Kirsten Peters says uncontrolled coal bed fires around the world are major sources of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses. For example, such emissions in China alone equal all carbon dioxide emissions from US vehicles. There are thousands of such fires around the world especially in the US, China, and India. They could be extinguished at reasonable costs. Yet, they get no attention.
Natural gas is a relatively low source of carbon dioxide compared to other fossil fuels and it is cheap at about $3.00 per million BTUs. Because of the lower cost it has already displaced coal to a large degree in US power plants. The technology exists to fuel vehicles with either CNG or LNG. Nuclear power plants emit no carbon dioxide, yet environmentalists adamantly oppose 3149them.
Ralph Coker