Unpicking Rhetoric
I read a climate denier's article so you don't have to
Another day, another article just chock full of bullshit.1 I'm hesitant to engage with this shit2, because of Brandolini's Law, the fact that it’s unlikely to change anyone’s opinion3 and honestly this shit is tiring. But I think this one is worth pulling apart because it has great coverage of a lot of the current climate denying tropes and rhetoric scattered throughout it.
Also, I don’t want to get too deep into ad hominem attacks, but why do the authors of this genre look like they’re figurines from an alternate universe where Mattel makes a range of fascist Ken dolls?
The straw man
The article starts out with a story about a young Sierra Leonean inventor who developed a piezoelectric device which converts the kinetic energy of pedestrian footsteps to usable electricity. His age, his background, his resourcefulness and the need for low cost clean energy solutions in Africa meant that he received plenty of accolades, especially from the West.
But then apparently there's no evidence of follow up — did the device actually work efficiently? Was it scalable? There appears not to be any evidence to that. And the author asserts that mainstream and progressive organisations were willing, nay, wanting to heap undeserved praise on this inventor because of his background.
It's worth pointing out that taking advantage of existing kinetic energy and combining it with the piezoelectric effect is not a wild or brand new concept — there are plenty of novel designs and whole classes of proposed inventions, however the efficiencies are low and none of these designs are exactly scalable in a way which might single-handedly address the climate crisis.4
Up to this point, the article’s discussion is all well and good — maybe the young inventor's device didn't work, maybe his heaping praise was undeserving. But the sixth paragraph is where the author shifts and we discover this entire setup is just a straw man argument.
The tale of Thoronka’s device captures well the wishful thinking that dominates the worldview of Western green elites. They are determined to believe that there are quick and easy routes to decarbonising the economy. That it’s possible to meet people’s energy needs today without using fossil fuels or nuclear power. That the transition to clean, green energy is just around the corner, and the only thing standing in its way are the evil fossil-fuel companies.
The pivot here is whiplash inducing. If we can't utilise piezoelectric devices in Sierra Leone, how can we possibly meet society's energy needs?
Uh, how about wind and solar numbnuts? Did you forget about the commercially demonstrated viability and scalability of these technologies? Or did you really just spend the first five paragraphs setting up the racist dog whistle of a straw man to knock it down and mislead. This is honestly below the sophistication of a high middle school debate team.5
The elites
In the seventh paragraph the author introduces one of my favourite climate denying tropes, which has become persistent in the new generation of arguments against climate action, and which dovetails in to the broader culture wars nicely.
Climate change action is something the [progressive] elites want — it is a costly change thrust upon us by lofty intellectuals sitting in their urban ivory towers. They might be able to afford Teslas and fancy Germany induction stovetops, but climate change action will hurt ordinary people, not to mention the poor.
Setting aside the fact that this article opened up with a story about a clean energy entrepreneur from a country with a GDP in the bottom 5-10% globally, or the fact that climate change will cause much greater harm to poorer countries; this entire concept of only leftie elites playing puppet master completely ignores this hilarious idea that elites don’t exist on the other side of the aisle, nor do they try to alter public conversation.
In completely unrelated news here’s a picture of Lachlan Murdoch and family on just one of his super yachts.
Also unrelated is this picture of a holiday house in Aspen, Colorado sold by an oil heiress not long ago for USD $60M.6
But don’t worry, there’s no such thing as right wing elites. These are just humble individuals trying to quietly enjoy their modest accoutrements; they wouldn’t ever try to sway public opinion, alter the narrative or protect legacy industries.
All about the percentages
Moving along from rhetoric, the turns his hand to maths and informs us that renewable energy production has barely increased in 40 years.
The truth is that our societies are still massively dependent on fossil fuels. For all the talk of the advances made in renewable energy, the proportion of our electricity production reliant on fossil fuels has barely changed over the past 40 years. In that time, only nuclear power has declined as a source of electricity.
Let’s recut the same data.7
It’s pretty clear that renewables have experienced explosive growth in the last decade and a bit; generation output from both solar and wind have been growing at between 10 and 20% year on year.
A much better way of thinking about it is that coal has remained roughly steady at ~40% of our total energy usage whereas solar and wind have gone from literally nothing to a combined 12% over the same period. Oil, nuclear and hydro have all experienced reductions in their contribution to the global electricity generation mix.
It’s easy to forget, or easy for the author misleadingly and deliberately reframe the development of renewables against other generation technologies as equivalent over the last four decades. The first wind turbines in Australia didn’t appear until the late 80s. And those units were experimental in nature. The first actual wind farms didn’t connect into the electricity grid properly until the early 2000s. Commercially viable utility-scale solar was another decade slower.
So yes, our society of today is massively dependent on fossil fuels. But the future is coming a lot faster than you think. Unless, you know, maths isn’t your strong suit.8
Linear technology
This last section of the article probably my favourite. It leans heavily on the trope of energy poverty — the idea that developed nations are pulling up the new energy ladder behind them.
The premise of the argument is that the developed world benefitted from cheap carbon-intensive energy, enabling rapid and massive economic development. But by discouraging developing nations from utilising these same low cost forms of energy we’re depriving them of the same development path that rich nations benefitted from.
Except, the cheapest and most efficient technologies that drove the Industrial Revolution are not the cheapest and most efficient technologies in this century.9
If you want to talk about 'green colonialism' (great term by the way), how about considering that excluding South Africa, Africa is not exactly rich in coal reserves. Which means that these countries would be heavily dependent on energy imports. That sounds like just good old regular colonialism to me.
What Africa does have however, is high irradiance.
What does sound like innovation and empowerment is encouraging African nations to take advantage of an abundant resource utilising a generation technology with one of the lowest available levelised costs of electricity (LCOE). It also sounds like choosing the right approach for the circumstances, unlike say shoehorning in historical approaches, which yeah, sounds a lot more like colonialism.
But my favourite passage of the entire article is this one:
Make no mistake, the West’s prosperity rests on fossil fuels. The Industrial Revolution was fuelled by the exponential growth in available energy. In 1870, British steam engines generated four million horsepower, the equivalent amount of work done by 40 million men. Feeding such a workforce would have required three times Britain’s entire wheat output. But in 1870, all it took to generate one horsepower was a pound of coal.
Amazing. This backwards argument is actually beautiful. Let’s take an alternate scenario, where the steam engine is not invented; it's a pretty safe bet that the Industrial Revolution either wouldn't have occurred, or at the very least would have taken a wildly different course. The author is trying to present some kind of wild steampunk vision imagining millions of horses, eating millions of tonnes of chaff, turning engines to produce work.
Technology does not progress along linear pathways like this — you can't extrapolate backwards from our current point in time (and rarely can you accurately extrapolate forwards).
Many of the author’s points — that a large proportion of the developing world doesn't have access to electricity and instead relies on harmful things like burning kerosene, wood or dung — are completely true. These are challenges we need to address. But arguing that the only path forward is through a significant expansion in fossil fuels is extremely disingenuous.
Although the bit about how much horsepower could be produced by men fuelled by wheat (Weetbix sponsored content opportunity) is honestly good maths. I take my negative comments back.
The crux
The article is full of lots of sane, sensible and apparently data-driven claims. It purports to tread the high road of practicality and pragmatism. That’s actually a trope of the climate change deniers — that they’re the sane and rational ones and the climate change alarmists are hippies detached from reality (or inner city elites, also detached from reality, depends kind of on their mood I guess).
But underpinning this entire article is just lots of rhetoric, weasel words and a healthy misunderstanding of how science and technology work (also some racist dog whistling that would make Liberal MPs blush).
Tearing down Mattel Hans Gruber’s article probably hasn’t changed anyone’s mind — most readers of this newsletter won’t need convincing that the article is garbage. And in fact perhaps a few of you reading think I’m a bratty little irrational climate alarmist.10
But, as someone who cares very much about the energy transition and decarbonisation (including what happens if we fail), it’s important to understand the barriers to the transition. Some of these challenges are technical, some economic. The rhetorical misdirections and tropes in the article reviewed are worth understanding and acknowledging as another set of frustratingly dangerous barriers.
Things Happen
TBM FLORENCE IS ALIVE! The Snowy 2.0 construction team looks to have managed to stabilise the loose ground around TBM Florence and she should be back tunnelling shortly, pending environmental approvals.
Separately, the construction costs of Snowy 2.0 have blown out to AUD $12 billion. The project was originally pitched as a 4 year, $2 billion undertaking, by the same man who helped ‘reduce’ the costs of the NBN rollout. Raise your glasses in irony.
AEMO released their annual Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO) and this one was much bleaker than previous editions. However, these reports typically lean conservative - if you’re worried about the sky falling, make sure you have plans to turn down the AC and head to the pub!
Meme of the Week
Please enjoy this extra niche meme.
The article is hosted on a site dedicated to all your favourite alt-right and culture warrior bullshit, so you know this is going to be good. Also, yes, it’s over a month old now. I’ve been busy.
Well, I try to be. But let's not kid ourselves. I'll happily press play on Fortunate Son and pick up the flamethrower whenever this stuff wanders into my LinkedIn feed.
But I will get to dunk on this guy. So there’s that.
Which is actually not the point. We shouldn’t be expecting a singular technological panacea, and we should be embracing a multitude of solutions adapted to different environments and applications.
Like, the first speaker. Grade 8 third speakers are more sophisticated than this.
PS that article is worth a read, if only for the heavy dose of schadenfreude and realisation that the dealings of the astronomically wealthy are just as petty as ordinary people.
The Energy Institute 2023 Statistical Review of World Energy, formerly known as the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.
Maybe looking at charts is. Look at fucking chart.
Also, maybe we should do something about child labour this time around.
You’re probably in the wrong place, FYI. Here’s a picture of a wind turbine on fire to calm you.
As someone whose debating career ended in Year 8 as the first speaker I feel personally attacked
I'm actually crying Alex, as always your wicked sense of humour and strong grasp on sarcasm shine through in your writing, like Jack Nicholson opening a door with an axe (shining reference).