DeSmog keeps a “climate disinformation” database that provides biographies on the world’s leading voices in “climate denial.”

This activist website appears to define “climate denier” as anyone who at any time in their career has stated anything that deviates from the position that climate change is an unparalleled horror in human history and wind and solar are glorious technologies that will save us from our doom at the hands of evil, greed oil companies.

The list includes people like Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., Dr. Judith Curry, Dr. Sterling Burnett, Steve Goreham, Frank Lasee, Ryan Maue, Mark P. Mills, Tony Heller, and Steve Milloy.

Because it casts a wide net for its derogatory appellation of “climate denier,” it’s become almost an honor to be listed on it, in the same way that minority groups end up adopting slurs used against them. DeSmog’s database is a dogmatic effort to advance anti-fossil fuel policies through nothing more than ad hominem arguments.

The list is also a fantastic Rolodex for reporters wanting to break free of the Wretched Hive. Many of the experts listed are people I have interviewed at one time or another. This got me thinking…Why am I not on the list?

Granted, I don’t have a background in research, no published books, and a humble following on social media. I may not be the most accomplished “science denier,” but I have extended the reach of those Desmog smears.

For that reason, I reached out to DeSmog to humbly ask that I be considered for inclusion on the list. You can read my email below, and I will let you know if DeSmog responds.

Dear DeSmog Editor:

My name is Kevin Killough, and I’m the energy reporter with Just the News. I also covered energy and climate for Cowboy State Daily between September 2022 and October 2023.

I became interested in this beat when I saw that there was an overwhelming monoculture throughout the media that reported certain positions as indisputable fact. These are facts you would say are only disputed by illegitimate sources with no credibility because they are disputing indisputable facts about climate and energy.

These positions fall under the following categories:

1. Climate change is an apocalyptic crisis threatening the very survival of our species, or at the very least, it will lay waste to our civilization without urgent action to get rid of fossil fuels.

2. The only reason we use fossil fuels is because evil Big Oil companies made us into slavish addicts, and they will stop at nothing to prevent us from using alternatives.

3. Wind and solar are glorious technologies that will save mankind from its doom, and there are no legitimate concerns about their impacts on the environment, communities and the electricity grid.

From my first day at Cowboy State Daily, I was interviewing people who disputed one or all of these positions. I didn’t necessarily find all their arguments convincing, but I practice an ancient form of journalism in which I select sources not by how much I agree with them or think they’ll advance my preferred agendas.

Instead, I only ask if they’re contributing a perspective that readers should consider in drawing their own conclusions about climate and energy. And I present those perspectives as fairly and accurately as I can, regardless of how politically popular they are. While that includes people who support net-zero policies and the “climate crisis” narrative, it includes those who are critical of them.

In other words, I practically invite thousands of readers to engage in what you would call “science denial,” and I commit obscene acts of what you call “climate disinformation” on a daily basis.

And it should be noted, sometimes I do find the arguments of these “climate disinformation” experts to be quite convincing. Thus, I am a bonafide “science denier” myself.

As such, I’m wondering why I haven’t been included in your climate disinformation database. Granted, I don’t have the extensive research background like those of Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. and Dr. Judith Curry. I haven’t written informative books disputing the efficacy of net zero, like Alex Epstein and Steve Goreham, and I haven’t gained the kind of following on X that Tony Heller and Steve Milloy have.

I may not be the most accomplished “science denier,” but I have extended the reach of those who are.

I have interviewed Dr. Sterling Burnett without mentioning that the Heartland Institute received some money from an oil company decades ago. I interviewed Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. on a number of occasions, and I never mentioned that time he was investigated for having allegedly received money from Big Oil, an investigation that turned up nothing.

And I have quoted people like Alex Epstein and Tony Heller without suggesting they’re white supremacists or something, even though they’re both Jewish.

In other words, I have left readers with the impression that these people are credible sources who deserve a seat at the table in the great debate on climate and energy issues. Think of the impact that may have on advancing, as you call it, “climate disinformation.”

Therefore, I would like to humbly ask that you consider me for inclusion in future updates of the Climate Disinformation Database. Most of my background is available on my LinkedIn page, and my articles can be found on MuckRack. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out.

Thank you for your consideration, and have a wonderful day.

Regards,

Kevin Killough

“The Expanse” novels and television series are set a couple centuries into the future when mankind, using fusion-powered drives, has been able to colonize the solar system. I’ve been a big fan for years.

Besides writing engaging plotlines and vivid character development, authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who write under the pen name James S.A. Corey, show an astounding amount of scientifically accurate detail in their world building. The authors describe every minute aspect of sub-light-speed space travel and life in zero-gravity environments — from medical care to hair styling. It’s clear they spent many hours meticulously researching the physics of, well, everything.

So, it was disappointing to read in the fifth book, “Nemesis Games,” a description of a solar-powered cargo ship off the coast of New York. Most likely, the authors read about such wonders in the legacy media, where theoretical “green” technologies are presented without challenge by credulous reporters. Committed to advancing net-zero goals, reporters writing these misleading articles leave readers with the impression such things are entirely plausible.

While Abraham and Franck are fiction writers, journalists aren’t supposed to be — at least that’s what I was taught in j-school. It takes very little due diligence or educational background to know what questions a reporter writing articles on green tech should be asking. But they don’t.

What the media won’t tell you

The most efficient solar panels today, which operate at 25% efficiency, will produce 250 watts per square meter in full sunlight. A large cargo ship 350 meters long and 150 meters wide, covered with panels bow to stern, will get 13.125 megawatts during direct sunlight.

A large cargo ship will burn the equivalent of 144 megawatt-hours over the course of one hour. (More on the math in a minute.)

That means, theoretically, these solar panels provide a little less than one-tenth of the total power needed for a large cargo ship. And this doesn’t factor in the added weight of all those panels, nor their cost.

Even allowing for the possibility that future technology could increase that efficiency to nearly 100%, the panels would still produce only 52 megawatts — not even half what the ship needs. The only way to get more would be to attach a massive solar panel many times larger than the ship itself. I’m no seaman, but I’m pretty sure that would cause stability issues.

Oh, and then there’s nighttime and clouds.

Science fiction writing becomes journalism

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal about battery-powered cargo ships (h/t Irina Slav) provides a case in point of just how few questions Wretched Hive reporters will ask when presented with some fantastic “clean” technology.

The article is written by Ed Ballard, who “covers climate change and the energy transition” for the Journal. His article is about Fleetzero, a startup that aims to power cargo ships with batteries.

“How much of the shipping industry could run on batteries is debated, but the fact there is a debate shows how rapidly batteries have improved,” Ballard writes.

Or it could show that there is a highly visible, well funded movement desperate to get rid of fossil fuels, and it doesn’t consider the costs or complications of these hairbrained schemes. I’m not sure why Ballard thinks that if people are talking about a technology, that technology is demonstrably feasible. When I was a kid we were talking about vacations on the moon by the year 2000.

Battery-powered ferry tales

Ballard goes on to explain that batteries, like those used in cars, were once considered too heavy and bulky for ships. “Now they are powering ferries in Norway’s fjords and container ships on China’s rivers,” Ballard writes.

Ballard shows in that statement no inkling of the concept of scalability. A ferry crossing short distances is very different from a massive cargo ship transporting tens of thousands of 20-foot shipping containers across entire oceans.

After noting that the batteries the company uses are manufactured in China, we finally get to some numbers — the few that Ballard provides. The proposed ship is a hybrid, meaning the diesel engine will be backed up by battery power. The batteries contain the capacity of 200 Tesla Model 3s, which will give the ship a 500-mile range without using the diesel engine, according to Ballard.

Math is hard but necessary

Will it, now? Let’s do some math, shall we. Ballard doesn’t say which version of Tesla 3 model batteries are going into this hybrid cargo ship — and I bet he didn’t ask — but to be generous, I went with the long-range version. They have a capacity of 75 kilowatt hours each, for a total of 15 megawatt hours for all 200.

Cargo ships are powered by heavy fuel oil, which is a thick tar-like substance. It’s inexpensive, but it produces a lot of emissions. But since we’re talking about the vessels that ship the materials and products that make our modern life possible, cheap is really good.

But when it comes to green technologies, cheap is just a matter of getting enough subsidies to pay for it all. Right?

Now, a large cargo ship will consume 13 metric tons of this heavy fuel oil per hour. Each kilogram of heavy fuel oil contains approximately 40 megajoules of energy. So, at 13,000 kilograms per hour, a large cargo ship requires the equivalent of 144 megawatt hours of energy to propel it forward. (That’s joules divided by 3,600 to get to watt hours.)

That means, these batteries will at most provide 10.4% of the power needed to propel this ship for one hour. However, Ballard claims these batteries will allow the ship to go 500 miles.

Vague but inspiring

Ballard doesn’t provide any information on the size of the ship that will supposedly go 500 miles on these 200 Tesla 3 batteries, but he does mention it’s harder to electrify smaller ships because they “carry less tonnage for their size.” Fascinating physics, that. It’s almost like batteries weigh something, I guess. Anyway, we can assume, he’s not talking about a small skiff.

In case you’re wondering, by the way, those 200 Tesla batteries weigh 96 metric tons. That’s seven times more weight than the fuel a large cargo ship burns every hour.

Ballard then goes into some serious Rube-Goldberg engineering to explain how to deal with the limitations of this green tech — and there are always massive limitations. Ships could make more port stops for charging, Ballard writes, because that wouldn’t be expensive at all. Or smaller battery vessels, Ballard proposes, could tow the cargo ships. He links to an academic study on this proposal, guys. That’s like solid proof it’ll work, man!

And what do these battery systems cost? Ballard doesn’t say. Instead, he writes, “Absent tougher regulations, greener options must be cheap.” Seems like there’s a law I read about somewhere concerning this.

So either we have the government force people into greater energy poverty, or drive down the price of batteries…somehow. Ballard includes a point on how Trump canceled a global tax on ship emissions. That big jerk! Making global shipping cheaper.

Ballard provides a handy chart showing that average packs of lithium-ion batteries have come down from over $800 dollars per kilowatt-hour to just over $100 per kilowatt-hour in 12 years.

Here in South Dakota, I pay retail rates of about $0.135 per kilowatt-hour. So, in other words, batteries have come down in cost from mindblowing, astronomically, painfully expensive to just astronomically, painfully expensive. Maybe in a few decades they’ll come down to painfully expensive.

Ballard includes a quote from the founder of Fleetzero, saying, “Even if Fleetzero goes away tomorrow, in 20 years every ship being built will have batteries.” Because no pie-in-the-sky green fantasy would be complete without physics-defying hubris that only a green tech guy could conjure.

Just asking questions

Mind you, my math may be off considerably. There’s a lot of nuance, no doubt, when it comes to translating heat energy units into electricity energy units, and then determining how that plays out in the torque of an engine and the friction of a hull over the water. That’s all way beyond my capabilities.

My point is not to provide a precise mathematical calculation of the challenge of battery-powered ships compared to fuel-powered ships. It’s to demonstrate that a reporter with no engineering or science background can easily do some back-of-the-napkin calculations to arrive at some questions you might want to ask these green-tech guys you’re interviewing. That’s called doing a journalism, and for some reason many Wretched Hive reporters just prefer fantasy over scrutiny.

Being a Journal reporter, Ballard’s salary surely rivals my own by a considerable amount. So, he has no excuse for not asking these questions. I’m not sure Fleetzero would have appreciated the scrutiny, but that’s the job, man.

The Washington Post editorial board Wednesday argued that, by pursuing impractical goals of the climate agenda, the United Nations is alienating half of Americans who haven’t completely been on board with “plant-based” diets and electric vehicles.

The WaPo is the same publication that just three years ago tried to smear Alex Epstein, an advocate for fossil fuels, as a racist over something he wrote in college, a move that ultimately failed when Epstein fought back.

The WaPo has been one of the nation’s most ardent advocates for the rapid elimination of fossil fuels, but even it has had to rethink its commitment to that cause as the narrative crumbles.

This shift in public discourse on climate and energy issues leaves me wondering what will become of Covering Climate Now should this trend toward more diversity in perspectives on climate and energy continues.

Abandoning traditional values

If you’re not familiar, CCN is a nonprofit organization that’s partnered with over 500 media outlets across the globe. The total audience of these outlets, according to CCN, is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 billion people.

While appearing as a resource for journalists covering climate and energy, CCN is funded by anti-fossil fuel groups, such as the anti-fracking Park Foundation. Covering Climate Now encourages reporters to abandon wholesale any commitments to objectivity in service of the climate agenda. According to CCN, there is no legitimate dispute of the “climate crisis” narrative, and reporters have a duty to advance the climate agenda.

It is the ultimate resource for reporters of the Wretched Hive. Sadly, calling for media to reject traditional journalism values was perfectly acceptable to the over 500 media outlets that agreed to partner with this organization. This includes names like Bloomberg, The Boston Herald and MSNBC.

I haven’t seen any evidence that the shift in coverage of climate and energy happened because the outlets returned to traditional values of objective journalism. They likely found that overtly biased fearmongering stories about climate change weren’t selling anymore, and so the voices of dissent were becoming harder and harder to ignore. It’s also quite possible more reporters have quietly realized the narrative was flawed.

Hurtling toward irrelevance

Whatever the cause, this puts CCN in a very difficult position. They’re not paid to be a resource. They’re paid to be an advocate for net zero.

In a recent newsletter, the organization encouraged activist-journalists to go after what it calls “climate hushers.” The piece laments that politicians and influential voices are no longer badgering people about the end of the world and focusing more attention on issues like energy affordability.

This addition to the CCN advocacy playbook claims that “civilization is hurtling toward irreversible catastrophe,” which it insists is a “scientific reality.” Color me doubtful. It opens up by criticizing Bill Gates for his heretical statements last year, saying that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise.”

Covering Climate Now found the statement so scandalous it brought in Sammy Roth for a last-minute webinar to arm reporters with the talking points they needed to challenge Gates’ claims. Roth is the former Los Angeles Times’ climate columnist. He once stated frankly in a webinar hosted by the Society For Environmental Journalists that he refuses to talk to “climate deniers.”

Judging from his editorials, that would be anyone who doesn’t share his anti-fossil fuel views. He has argued, for example, that Americans should get used to blackouts in service of the climate agenda, and destroying 100-year-old Joshua trees to make way for a solar farm is much better than the horrors of climate change. So, of course, he’s the perfect addition to a CCN webinar panel.

The “climate hushers” article also repeats their 89 Percent Project. Last year, CCN conducted a poll that asked people if governments should do more about climate change. It’s kind of like asking if the government should do more to protect puppies. Practically everyone would agree it should.

However, the devil is in the details. If you ask people if they’d support puppy protection if it means an increase in their taxes, support will drop. Polls consistently show that support for government action to address climate change drops precipitously the more people are asked to pay for that action. Of course, CCN didn’t bother to ask that question in their global survey.

Blocking is communication

The “climate hushers” article also quotes Katharine Hayhoe, lead scientist The Nature Conservancy, an anti-fossil fuel activist group. Hayhoe encourages activists to talk to people who don’t believe in climate change. She once gave a Ted Talk on how to reach this group.

The funny thing about Hayhoe is that she avoids that kind of engagement like the plague. She preemptively blocks anyone who might disagree with her on X. I had never heard of the woman before my friend Jusper Machogu, a Kenyan farmer who advocates for fossil fuels in Africa, posted on X about her.

He was looking for her on X and discovered she had blocked him. Jusper was surprised because he couldn’t recall ever interacting with her. I looked her up and discovered she had blocked me as well before I even knew who she is. Many others have said they too have been preemptively blocked. Apparently I’m on a list somewhere. I wish I could see this list. I would share it proudly.

Hayhoe even has a thread explaining why she blocks people. She claims she does so because of “vile” and “disparaging” comments she gets as a female climate scientist, and I’m sure some comments are horrible. Welcome to the internet. I get them too.

However, she’s being very insincere in blaming these remarks on her rampant blocking, as most people she’s blocked have never had the opportunity to engage with her or her followers. This science communicator who presents herself as an expert in engaging people with whom she disagrees is, in fact, terrified of engaging anyone with whom she disagrees.

“Seeing denial also encourages people to engage with it. But as I explain here, it’s largely a waste,” Hayhoe states in her thread. In other words, seeing different perspectives might lead people to engage with and possibly be persuaded by those points of view. She simply has no confidence in her positions.

Fake it ‘till you’re broke

I would argue this is another reason the “climate crisis” narrative is dying. Those who promoted it believed, like Hayhoe and Roth, that they could just dismiss anyone who disagrees and those voices would lose all persuasive power. It would appear that strategy hasn’t been effective.

I don’t expect that CCN will reconsider that strategy anytime soon, much less will it abandon its mission. The only way the latter would happen is if they lost their donors. There’s a lot of dollars flowing into the anti-fossil fuel crusade. In 2024, the Park Foundation had over $384 million in net assets, and that’s just one of CCN’s supporters.

It’s going to be interesting watching CCN scream at the walls in the coming years. I’m not sure if it will ever seem more sad than it is entertaining.

These days, climate and energy reporters in the Wretched Hive are sounding like a guy dating a woman who shows signs her commitment to the relationship is waning. He just can’t come to admit to himself that she’s just not that into him anymore, so he’s always looking for signs that she still loves him as much as she did when they first got together.

Such was the case this week for Amy Harder, national energy correspondent for Axios. In her piece “The world’s great climate collapse,” she tries to come to terms with signs that people aren’t that into the “climate crisis” narrative anymore. By the end of the article, she manages to find reasons to hope that the “climate ambition” isn’t collapsing entirely.

The narrative

Before I unpack this article, when I say “‘climate crisis’ narrative,” I’m referring to a set of ideas that were a few years ago accepted as unassailable fact across the legacy media. Anyone who disputed these claims was deemed “science denier” or an otherwise illegitimate source, and almost no reporters in the Wretched Hive would ever quote them. These reporters were and remain oblivious to the “deniers” arguments.

These tenants of the faith were:

1. Climate change is not just real with future risks to consider and address. It’s an absolute crisis that’s unparalleled in human history, and it’s making weather more extreme than it’s ever been. This crisis demands urgent action, and reporters have a duty to help advance net zero.

2. Oil companies are evil, psychopathic organizations that produce products that are inherently destructive.

3. We could easily replace those evil products with alternative technologies that have no environmental impacts we need to worry about and are actually economically superior, despite needing mountains of ongoing subsidies for their very survival.

I got into energy reporting because I saw journalists were failing wholesale to provide a diversity of perspectives on energy and climate. When I took on the position of energy reporter for Cowboy State Daily in fall of 2022, I specifically sought sources with a range of perspectives disputing one or all the above commandments.

The Columbia Journalism Review didn’t appreciate the diversity I brought to the discourse.

Stunning fall from grace

Harder begins her Axios article by saying the climate agenda’s “fall from grace over the past year has been stunning.”

Yes, for people who believed there was no legitimate dispute for that agenda and isolated themselves from anyone who would voice those disputes, I’m sure it’s all pretty stunning. If they had been speaking with and trying to understand — as opposed to dismissing wholesale — people with differing perspectives, they might have been aware that these dissidents had arguments some readers might find compelling.

While the Wretched Hive of the legacy media slept, audiences accessed these “climate misinformation” perspectives through other channels — largely thanks to Elon Musk buying Twitter — and the shift in public sentiment now leaves those reporters blindsided.

Harder lists various examples that the discourse on climate and energy is shifting, including President Trump’s dismissals of climate concerns to Bill Gates rejection of a more alarmist position. She also points to some tepid shifts in climate policy in Europe.

Culture, Harder observes, is also veering away from the climate commitment. A few years ago, Adam Kay was directing the Netflix feature “Don’t Look Up.” This climate-crisis satire is about a pair of astronomers warning mankind of an approaching comet that will destroy civilization. Leonardo DiCaprio, a private-jet loving climate elitist, plays one of the astronomers, and that character is based on the climate celebrity Dr. Michael Mann.

Today, Audiences are enjoying “Landman” on Paramount+.

She still loves me

After reporting on the examples of the collapsing narrative, Harder reaches deep to find reasons to hope. China, Harder writes, is “plowing ahead on cleantech funding from batteries to fusion.”

I will never understand the Wretched Hive’s love of China. The communist, authoritarian country couldn’t build enough coal plants to attract their gaze away the country’s wind and solar farms. A full exploration of this love affair is probably worth an article.

Other indications that hope remains, Harder wrote, are European investment firms “ditching” American firms who won’t commit to the economic suicide of sustainable investing, and Trump is supporting nuclear fission and fusion, which Harder says could have the “unintended consequence” of lowering emissions. Oops.

Harder also includes a graph that she seems to think helps her case. The graph shows a rapid decline in “cleantech” investment since 2021. But Harder bolsters hope by pointing out that in 2025, investments were up 4.5 times over what they were 2015.

My analysis

There are a number of reasons the “climate crisis” narrative has collapsed. A big reason is that promises of low energy costs from super-duper cheap wind and solar never materialized. You can report time and again that renewables are the cheapest form of energy, but your articles will never be as persuasive as a utility bill.

This is what I call the “Iron Law of Energy Reporting,” which is similar to what Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. calls the “Iron Law of Climate Policy.” When policies focused on economic growth run counter to policies that seek emissions reductions, economic-growth policies will win every time.

I would argue another reason is what I call the Extinction Rebellion delusion. Groups like Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and Climate Defiance believed that their emotional performances and hysterical antics would be persuasive. The world was coming to an end and they were the righteous saviors of it. They enjoyed this performance, because it gave their lives meaning and purpose.

If they weren’t having so much fun larping, they wouldn’t have been blind to the damage they were doing to their own agenda. They were only raising doubts about the sincerity and credibility of their movement. I knew this all along but kept quiet about it. After all, you never want to stop an opponent from making mistakes.

The end result is discourse on climate and energy is shifting. And while many reporters are still enjoying the “climate crisis” performance, audiences willing to applaud this narrative are shrinking every day.

The Wretched Hive this month appeared to execute a coordinated attack on Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Multiple outlets, including E&E News and its parent Politico, CPR News, and Yale Climate Connections, produced reports explaining how Wright’s citing of IPCC research to defend his positions is in fact a new form of “climate denial.”

“This one is hilarious. Accurately citing the IPCC is now climate denial,” said Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., retired professor of environmental science and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“The Bat Signal went out to media outlets to criticize Energy Secretary Wright for his entirely correct views on climate change policy,” meteorologist Ryan Maue said.

There’s plenty that’s wrong with these articles, but people with backgrounds in climate science do a much better job than I could explaining how Wright’s views are, in fact, consistent with IPCC reports.

I want to zoom in on particularly egregious instance of plain bad journalism in the E&E News article. The report lists out Wright’s alleged influences without any evidence that they have influenced Wright other than they share similar views. The notion that Wright could have come to his conclusions independently of others who share them entirely escapes the E&E News reporter’s consideration. It’s almost as if he’s trying to get readers to think that dissent against the “climate crisis” narrative is the product of some sinister cabal, as opposed to a cultural-wide shift in thinking about climate and energy issues.

The E&E News article states that Epstein “minimizes the threat of climate change.” The reporter quotes testimony Eptein gave at a Senate Banking Committee earlier this month in which Epstein stated that the “death rate from climate-related disasters has fallen 98 percent over the last century.”

E&E News wasn’t about to let readers factor this scientific data into their understanding of the impacts of climate change. “The death rate has declined substantially in the last century primarily because the technology used for storm and disaster prediction has vastly improved, as have the methods of communication,” the E&E News reporter wrote.

This is climate advocacy masquerading as journalism. The reporter is responding to data inconvenient to the official “climate crisis” narrative with a climate-activist talking point.

It’s an undeniable fact that your chances of dying in a climate-related natural disaster are about one-fiftieth what they would have been if you were born 100 years ago. There’s nothing wrong with adding facts to an article that give more context to another fact. So, for example, if unemployment is rising but other economic indicators show an improving economy, a reporter should include facts that add value to readers’ understanding of the broader picture.

But facts supporting the idea we are in a “climate crisis” or “global boiling breakdown apocalypse” don’t actually exist. So the reporter is arguing why consideration of a fact should be minimized. That’s especially hypocritical in an article that criticizes Epstein for minimizing the threat of climate change. In a very argumentative, biased way, the reporter is deliberately maximizing the threat of climate change.

Now let’s consider this reporter’s statement for what it is — rhetoric in support of net zero emissions by 2050. As an argument in support of that political objective, the “that’s just because of technology” argument is dumb. I usually don’t call arguments I find unconvincing to be stupid, because it’s sloppy thinking. But there really isn’t a more apt word for this line of reasoning.

It’s a lot like someone claiming we’re in a smallpox crisis. The virus, he says, is more deadly than ever, and we need to act urgently to address this crisis. Well, being the smallpox denier that I am, I would point out that no one dies of smallpox anymore. To that, the smallpox alarmist says, “That’s just because of vaccines.” That’s true, but the scientific data on deaths from smallpox today still make any claims of a smallpox crisis nothing more than mindless hysteria.

What makes the “that’s just because of technology” line of reasoning even more irrational is the complete lack of awareness of what makes this mysterious “technology” possible. One piece of the many technologies that make us safe from climate is doppler radar, which is a 90-foot tower made of steel, concrete, plastics and a host of other materials. All these materials are derived from petroleum or made with energy from fossil fuels — which is true of literally every product we consume.

The E&E News reporter would no doubt say we could replace all that energy and those petroleum-based materials with non-petroleum alternatives. He would be oblivious to the scale and scope of that mission, because he’s likely has never set foot on a farm or worked in a factory, much less developed even the most rudimentary understanding of how industry works. So, to him, it’s just a matter of doing it.

Rapidly eliminating fossil fuels would make industry far more difficult, expensive and in many cases impossible. That means you get fewer doppler radar towers and all the other technologies that have made us safer from climate. So, the insanity of the “that’s just because of technology” argument is that it’s meant to advance policies that would make those technologies far more scarce.

It would be like the smallpox alarmist arguing we need to address the smallpox crisis by getting rid of modern medicine. So, as they deny the science on increasing climate safety, they advocate for policies that would undermine it.

There are people who are concerned about climate change and want to address the risk they believe it poses. They also understand that it’s important to do so without creating more harm than good. But climate activists don’t truly care about climate change. They just hate fossil fuels. Unfortunately, many climate and energy reporters fall into that latter group, and the line between their advocacy and reporting is often hard to find.

Not only does the “that’s just because of technology” argument hold no merits as a rhetorical strategy, it’s not appropriate for journalists to insert talking points into their articles. It’s bad journalism, and it’s very unfortunate a publication with this much reach would have editors that allow such writing to go to publication. The Wretched Hive is a sorry thing to behold, and trust in the media will continue to decline so long as these practices are allowed.

When a study published in Nature came to the conclusion that the world would be $28 trillion richer were it not for people using fossil fuels, the legacy media lapped it up like kittens with a saucer of milk.

The researchers, Dartmouth geography professor Justin Mankin and Stanford postdoctoral fellow Christopher Callahan, recently gave an interview in which they frankly, and in my opinion shamelessly, explain the political objectives behind the study.

Even though the researchers make no secret about their political agenda, legacy media journalists reporting on the study made no attempt to scrutinize how the researchers’ political objectives might bias the research.

Old-school journalism

If these reporters were dedicated to the old-school journalism values of objectivity, they would have asked the obvious question — If fossil fuels are costing the world trillions of dollars, how did the globe become exponentially wealthier over the last 60 years while exponentially increasing fossil fuel use? Yet, most reporters covering this study didn’t perform even that most basic scrutiny, nor did they interview subjects critical of the study who might present these critical questions.

That’s because most climate and energy reporters are themselves climate activists aligned with the researchers’ motivations, and many publications directly or indirectly receive money from climate advocacy foundations. They’re paid not to ask critical questions that support the “climate crisis” narrative.

The lead paragraph in a report in the Associated Press, for example, compares using fossil fuels — which are the basis for over 80% of the globe's energy and thousands of consumer products — to using tobacco. Associated Press climate reporter Seth Borenstein wrote that the study will “make it easier for people and governments to hold companies financially accountable.”

Or as many legitimate critics would put it, the study’s conclusions, with the media’s help promoting it, will make it easier for climate activists to extort money from from fossil fuel companies, costs that will be passed onto to all consumers in literally every product we buy.

Paid advertising

Instead of impartial sources, Borenstein quotes Dr. Micheal Mann, who was recently sanctioned by a D.C. court in his libel suit against two bloggers. The judge said Mann “acted in bad faith when they presented erroneous evidence and made false representations to the jury and the Court.”

In 2022, the Associated Press received $8 million in funding from anti-fossil fuel advocacy groups, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. The outlet said that these are just "philanthropy partners," and it insists it maintains editorial control over its content. So, we’re supposed to believe that the overt anti-fossil fuel bias in the AP’s articles is merely a spooky coincidence and not connected to the fact the outlet’s survival depends on them keeping these funders happy.

Borenstein quotes climatologist Friederike Otto, who co-founded the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative. The WWA developed the"attribution science," which the Dartmouth study relies upon for its conclusions. In an article about the field, Otto told Politico in 2019, “Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind.”

The unambiguous way in which these anti-fossil fuel researchers state their political objectives tells you just how little scrutiny, pushback or criticism they receive from reporters. They could blow their nose in a tissue, claim its a study finding that oil companies cause all known cancers, and Borenstein and his ilk would just report it as gospel.

Helping lawyers win cases

The Dartmouth study’s authors also consulted with Michael Burger, a lawyer of counsel at Sher Edling. The firm is heavily involved in litigation against oil companies.

The firm has been accused of being part of a dark money campaign, The Washington Free Beacon reported, and it was the focus of a Congressional probe in 2023, seeking more information on the “wealthy liberals” who are funding the lawsuits “aimed at bankrupting oil and gas companies.”

In a recent interview with The Dartmouth, Callahan, the co-author of the study, explained quite openly that he and Mankin produced this study to help advance climate litigation against fossil fuel companies. Callahan said:

This has partly been motivated by these legal cases and ‘polluters pay’ bills that have been emerging both in the United States and around the world. There is an emerging push for emitters to pay the costs of their emissions, and so one of the goals for the study was to evaluate the scientific support for that idea.

The reporter asked the researchers how they can use their studies to “hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their emissions.” Mankin said that he doesn’t think the litigation against these companies will force an energy transition away from fossil fuel use, but it will advance litigation and retroactive fines against the companies that are producing legal products that people willingly purchase every day. Mankin said:

I can imagine that this science is going to be essential to informing the implementation of the superfund laws and the legal challenges that they sustain. I can imagine that this is going to be essential for liability cases going forward.

Helping lobby for climate policies

The Maine legislature this month was considering bills to enact a climate superfund, similar to those passed in Vermont and New York. In case you’re not familiar, these laws fine companies billions of dollars for the past production of fossil fuels, even though the activity was entirely legal. The Department of Justice is suing Vermont and New York to try to stop this racketeering effort.

Mankin testified before a Maine House committee on Monday in support of the superfund law. Mankin told the committee:

Our goal is to improve our understanding of the consequences of warming for people and the things they value and to inform the difficult decisions those consequences will compel.

One of the things people value is affordable, reliable energy from fossil fuels, which Mankin, Callahan and their fellow anti-energy activists masquerading as researchers seem to be entirely indifferent to. What are the consequences of driving up the cost of energy and increasing energy poverty? Mankin and Callahan never ask that question, nor do the reporters trumpeting their research.

Fortunately, state officials in Maine are urging legislators to hold off on passing the bill due to the Trump administration’s lawsuits against Vermont and New York.

Callahan responds

I reached out to Callahan when I reported on this study for Just the News. To his credit, he did respond. Often these kinds of researchers won’t respond. Dr. Michael Mann and J. Timmons Roberts, who I’ll be writing about soon, are two examples of researchers who cowered in the face of my scrutinizing questions. Cornell LNG researcher Dr. Robert Howarth, like Callahan, did engage me, and when people respond, I make it a point to share their answers fairly and accurately.

Callahan claimed that “attribution science” is in line with a “consensus” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He said neither he nor Mankin stand to benefit financially from climate litigation. You can read more of his arguments defending these study in the Just the News article.

When I asked Callahan why they focused their research on oil companies, he said that this kind of research could later be developed to go after other large emitters. That would include utilities, cement and steel producers, the agriculture industry, or the shipping industry.

To me, that reveals something very sinister about this entire effort. If every industry producing the products that our lives and prosperity depend on must pay the climate industrial complex billions of dollars every year, no one will be able to afford anything. Wealth will be transferred from consumers to the climate lobby, which will use it to further their agenda. Meanwhile, we all get very poor. This is a war on our civilization, and the media are cheerleading our destruction.

The Washington Post editorial board this week called on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to support offshore wind development.

It’s not surprising a notoriously anti-fossil fuel publication would lobby for offshore wind development, but I continue to be astounded with the disingenuous arguments that renewable energy proponents will make.

The board writes:

The knives are out for wind energy in America. President Donald Trump has said he wants a future in which “no windmills are being built.” Hours after taking his oath of office, he signed an executive order pausing leases for any new wind projects on federal land and in U.S. waters. Opponents of wind power — many of them tied to the fossil fuel industry — have taken note and are furiously lobbying the government to block projects already under construction as well.

If you follow the link about “furiously lobbying,” it takes you to Heatmap News, an anti-fossil fuel activist publication. The article refers to CFACT and the Heartland Institute, which at some point in the past received money from oil companies. Those are the companies that provide products your life literally depends on. Renewable energy proponents will see no problem with Big Wind giving money to environmental organizations who defend offshore wind, but if an organization has ever received a dollar from oil companies, its entire work is tainted for life.

More than that, WaPo and Heatmap imply that the opposition to offshore wind comes from these national organizations. So they smear the larger anti-wind opposition from grassroots organizations up and down the East and West coasts with the claim they’re just a front of fossil fuel interests.

This conspiracy theory is often repeated by advocates for wind and solar because they simply can’t believe that anyone would ever oppose their righteous and mythical energy transition — nor can they address their arguments.

In order to believe that opposition to offshore wind is part of a vast conspiracy of fossil fuel interests, you’d have to believe that oil companies, many of which invest in offshore wind projects, secretly fund opposition to their own investments. And they do this, according to the conspiracy theory, because the industry they’re investing in is a threat to their hydrocarbon investments. This is the crap renewable proponents actually believe.

More than that, the theory goes, these devious oil companies forgot to tell these grassroots organizations they’re allegedly paying to oppose the offshore wind projects, which those funders have invested in, that they’re not to supposed to oppose offshore oil and gas drilling. Yet, the many groups I’ve talked to, including Ack 4 Whales and SaveLBI, are opposed to any industrialization of their coastlines by any industry.

But that’s the difference between me and the so-called journalists of the Wretched Hive. I actually talk to the people who are opposing these projects, even those in small, grassroots organizations. I have yet to find a single example of a legacy media outlet advancing this conspiracy theory who actually talked to the people in these community organizations they’re smearing.

I’ve asked anti-offshore wind activists if they are funded by oil companies, and they have said they’re not. One of them was Mandy Davis, who founded the National Offshore-wind Opposition Alliance (NOOA), a coalition of anti-offshore wind community groups. She said they turned away support from one organization because it had received money from oil companies in the past.

“It ended up being a very uncomfortable conversation for the board of directors. We had to make some very clear decisions. We're vetting everybody,” Davis said.

Of course, all these people could be devious, greedy people who have no problem lying about their funding sources, and I’ve no doubt many proponents of renewable energy would fanatically conclude as much. More rational individuals would find such an claim hard to believe. But Davis’ diligence in distancing NOOA from any fossil fuel interests speaks to how this conspiracy theory has been weaponized against community opposition to offshore wind.

Besides lacking any plausibility, those pushing this conspiracy theory have a double standard when it comes to their own funding. I once wrote a story on a hit piece by Propublica and Floodlight Media. The article focused on opposition to solar development in Ohio, claiming it was just a front for fossil fuel interests.

As an example of the evidence the article presents to substantiate its accusations, members who organized opposition to solar in Knox County, Ohio, had previously worked at a company that supplies equipment to natural gas producers. This employer, by the way, is the largest employer in the county. I’m not kidding. This was one of their primary pieces of evidence.

More than that, both these media organizations are funded by anti-fossil fuel activist groups, including the Park Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Sunrise Project, and of course, the Rockefeller family funds.

When I asked representatives of ProPublica and Floodlight how they can weave such conspiracy theories about renewable energy opposition based on tentative connections to the oil and gas industry while accepting funding from anti-fossil fuel activists, they told me they are independent of their funders. So, they claim, they can directly receive money from anti-fossil fuel interests and it has nothing to do with the fact they constantly attack anyone who opposes industries competing with fossil fuels. Talk about an astounding lack of self-awareness.

Did I mention that Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, who owns the WaPo, founded the Bezos Earth Fund, which funds anti-fossil fuel opposition, including litigation against fossil fuel companies? Bezos’ foundation creates some interesting web of anti-fossil fuel activism. As Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. explains on his excellent “The Honest Broker” Substack, the National Academy of Sciences established a committee to study Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and their Impacts. Pielke writes:

The new NAS committee is sponsored by NOAA, NASA, the Bezos Earth Fund, and a private individual who sits on the board of the Climate Central advocacy group.

In 2014, Climate Central led the creation of and housed another advocacy group called World Weather Attribution (WWA) which, according to its founder, was to create studies of “event attribution” that connect climate change to individual weather events to support climate lawsuits…

Today, WWA is funded by the Bezos Earth Fund, which — remarkably — is also funding the new NAS Attribution committee. Sitting on that new NAS Attribution committee is a representative of WWA.

Since Bezos is so comfortable building these conflicts of interest in federal scientific research in support of his own anti-fossil fuel activism, it’s safe to conclude he’d have no qualms about using his publication to promote his anti-fossil fuel activism. So it’s pretty rich for the editorial board of the paper he owns to advance the conspiracy theory that opposition to offshore wind comes from oil companies.

The editorial goes on to claim that there’s no evidence that offshore wind is killing whales. Of course there is evidence that offshore wind may be killing whales. It might be fair to say there’s no conclusive proof, but there is evidence pointing to a possible link. When it’s the oil and gas industry, any link, no matter how tentative, is cause to ban offshore operations. For example, the Washington Post had no problem reporting that the elusive Rice Whale might go extinct as a result of offshore oil and gas drilling.

In supporting its anti-fossil fuel activism, The WaPo editorial board mentions:

China’s capacity for wind power is already three times that of the United States. Denmark derives about 60 percent of its total energy from wind.

Denmark may get 60% of its electricity from wind, but it gets about 26% of its total energy from wind. One of the qualities of the Wretched Hive is they often know very little about energy. So, the WaPo board doesn’t know the difference between primary energy and electricity. And in pointing to China as a bastion of clean energy, the WaPo conveniently ignores that the country’s unabated coal-fired power plant buildout. Energy expert Robert Bryce writes:

As seen above, China is building 173 gigawatts of new coal-fired capacity, which will be added to its existing capacity of 1,147 GW!

This is the problem with the media and energy today. To promote wind and solar as adequate and affordable replacements for fossil fuels, media in the Wretched Hive have to engage in this kind of intellectually dishonesty.

I think it’s possible to defend wind and solar as valuable energy sources without being disingenuous. The problem with the WaPo editorial board and other renewable promoters is they don’t actually care about finding the best ways to produce the most energy at the best price for the most people. They just hate fossil fuels. So, in their minds, offshore wind opponents are not just people with different perspectives on the best ways to produce energy. They’re heretics who are consorting with the Devil.

Sammy Roth, the Los Angeles Times’ Climate Columnist, dedicated some 2,000 words to explaining why he hates the Paramount+ television series “Landman.” I haven’t seen the show myself, but according to Roth, it’s full of “propaganda” about the oil and gas industry. From the clips I’ve seen, one character offers up sober remarks on energy.

I find it quite amusing that a single show presenting a favorable view of the oil and gas industry solicited so much angst from the L.A. Times’ full-time renewable-energy promoter. Political advocacy organizations posing as philanthropy groups, such as the Rockefellers and Bloomberg Philanthropies, are flooding media we consume every day with “climate crisis” narratives and anti-fossil fuel positions. This includes directly funding media outlets such as the Associated Press, nonprofits that provide journalists “education,” such as Covering Climate Now, and Good Energy Stories, which provides “consulting” services to Hollywood on how to insert climate change narratives into movie and television scripts.

Roth gets exposed to one show presenting a challenge to his pervasive prejudice of fossil fuels, and it sends him into a tizzy. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise, however, when you look a bit deeper into how Roth formulates his perspectives on climate and energy.

Roth was on a training webinar in 2023 hosted by the Society for Environmental Journalists, which itself is funded by anti-fossil fuel activist groups. During the question period, one listener asked a question about objectivity in climate reporting and the need to include a range of perspectives. Roth called these “red herrings” and said, “I definitely don't include climate denial voices in my stories.”

Climate activists like Roth call anyone who disputes the “climate crisis” and “energy transition” narratives a “climate denier.” In other words, Roth actively insulates himself from any perspectives that would challenge his world view. He arrives at his conclusions on climate and energy by simply deeming any perspective that would dispute it beneath his contempt. So, when he comes across a show that not only isn’t actively hostile to oil and gas but (gasp!) friendly toward the industry, he just can’t handle it.

You can see just how insulated Roth is from the real world in his arguments against the positions the shows protagonists express. Roth writes:

As with all the most effective misinformation, it was built on kernels of truth.

Lithium mines can in fact cause environmental damage — not that it’s anywhere near as bad as the heat waves, fires and floods of the climate crisis. Cows are indeed major sources of heat-trapping carbon emissions.

Roth overlooks the fact that cows are also the source of tasty, tasty steaks. He is displaying here what energy expert Alex Epstein calls the “anti-impact” framework. This is a perspective that views any human impact on nature as intrinsically immoral and inevitably self-destructive. It often uses vague environmental terminology to disguise its anti-human goal of eliminating human impact, and it operates on the assumption that Earth is a delicate nurturer that significant human impact inevitably destroys.

Operating in this framework, climate activists find themselves in a Chinese finger trap when it comes to energy. All technologies have impacts, including wind and solar, which gobble up far more land than fossil fuels. This is how climate activists proclaim doomsday is on the horizon because of greenhouse gas emissions, only to turn around and oppose nuclear energy and hydroelectric dams.

Their goals are not affordable, reliable energy. It’s minimizing human impact. So in his op-ed, Roth begrudgingly admits that wind and solar have impacts, but then argues that climate change is much, much worse. The energy source that is most widely used, because it’s the most beneficial to mankind, also has the most impacts. So the goal is not abundant energy. It’s minimizing human impact.

Roth has made a career out of espousing positions based on this anti-human framework. He once defended razing hundreds of century-old Joshua trees to make room for a solar farm. He once argued that we should accept blackouts as the necessary cost of stopping climate change.

I would argue that we should carefully evaluate the impacts of all energy sources by carefully considering the positives and negatives. Wind and solar have huge impacts on the environment and provide only unreliable, expensive energy. For all the impacts of fossil fuels, their reliable, affordable energy has resulted in the most prosperous, healthiest and safe civilization in the history of mankind.

Roth continues to display this framework as he continues:

And yes, solar and wind farms can harm birds — although not nearly as much as global warming, which is why the National Audubon Society supports such projects.

As for offshore wind farms killing whales? It’s an absurd lie spread by President-elect Trump and other fossil fuel supporters, despite being repeatedly debunked by scientists and journalists.

By “repeatedly debunked,” Roth means he has never and will never consider research showing that wind farms are hurting whales and birds.

Lastly, Roth repeats the claim that wind and solar are the cheapest form of energy:

The lies fly fast and furious as they debate how to respond to society’s burgeoning demand for climate-friendly power. One attendee, for instance, insists that wind energy “is twice as expensive as natural gas, and solar four times as expensive.” False: Wind and solar are actually cheaper than gas, according to the investment bank Lazard, which publishes widely cited annual reports on energy costs.

You can tell from the text here that Roth has never actually read the Lazard report. If he had ever bothered to fully understand its methodology, he would have come across this important footnote on page 5.

Other factors would also have a potentially significant effect on the results contained herein, but have not been examined in the scope of this current analysis.... Therefore, this analysis is not a forecasting tool and should not be used as such, given the complexities of our evolving Industry, grid and resource needs. Except as illustratively sensitized herein, this analysis does not consider the intermittent nature of selected renewables energy technologies or the related grid impacts of incremental renewable energy deployment.

The Wretched Hive is full of climate and energy reporters who will blindly cite the Lazard report without any scrutiny. It says what they want to hear, and they haven’t a speck of curiosity as to how it comes to its conclusions. If deliberately spreading energy illiteracy, while excluding perspectives that counter it, isn’t propaganda, I don’t know what is.

I can’t fault Roth for not being particularly entertained by a show whose characters espouse a political position that he finds objectionable. Throughout the last several years, entertainment has become saturated by progressive left narratives, and I rarely watch television or movies anymore.

However, Roth’s editorial on the political messages in “Landman” says far more about his own anti-human dogma than it does the quality of the show. I’ll be starting a Paramout+ subscription very soon.

Back in the summer 2017, I was the victim of Facebook’s censorship. I describe it that way since it seems to be a fashionable rhetorical tool to characterize every complaint as a grand injustice. So, yes, thanks to Facebook’s censors, I know exactly what Anne Frank went through. Not really, but the experience was the first of many that led me to seek other platforms to share my perspectives on climate and energy.

On the “We Love GMOs and Vaccines” page, which is dedicated to the “follow the science” philosophy on a range of topics, the administrators posted some alarmist article about climate change. I don’t remember what the post was about specifically, but it was something about death and destruction and Big Oil. You get the idea.

To give the apocalyptic discussion some context, I shared a graph by Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, showing that deaths from climate-related natural disasters have plummeted since 1920. The graph is based on the widely respected International Disaster Database, and that source is clearly indicated in the chart.

The “We Love” page’s followers, who are ardent adherents to The Science, were quite upset with my suggestion that the Climate Rapture isn’t truly upon us. I ended up with hundreds of comments with the usual response by climate activists (“That’s just because of technology!” “What’s the source? Show me the source!!!” “There’s an overwhelming consensus that climate change is real!!!”) explaining why I should stop being a science denier by presenting science that should be denied.

Some comments, as you can imagine, weren’t very civil. One person called me a pedophile, which got dozens of likes. I quoted that comment in a reply with the remark, “This is how the ‘follow the science’ crowd responds when you show them science that doesn’t support their narrative.”

Within an hour, Facebook notified me that I had violated “Community Standards” with my comment, and I was sent to Facebook jail for seven days. I figured the algorithms had thought I was calling someone a pedophile, so I reported the comment I had quoted. Three days later, Facebook informed me that the person calling me a pedophile had not, in fact, violated any “Community Standards.” So I served out my sentence for quoting someone who called me a pedophile, which violates community standards, while the person calling me one got off scot-free. There were many such instances on Facebook to follow, and today I hardly use the platform and never for politics.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that, in an effort to make Facebook more accommodating of a wider range of perspectives, he was ending third-party fact checking, moving its content moderation office to Texas, and implementing a community notes-style moderation feature similar to that on X. In other words, the country is ditching the woke left, and Facebook doesn’t want to loose more than half of its remaining users.

Climate activists, especially the ones calling themselves journalists, are not happy about the decision. E&E News’ ClimateWire warned readers on Wednesday that Zuckerberg was inviting “climate disinformation” by tossing out the sagely guardians of truth.

The announcement is the latest twist in a long-running battle between fact-checkers and those who refuse to acknowledge the scientific consensus that humanity’s use of fossil fuels is heating up Earth.

Social media sites often have served as a haven for climate disinformation and misinformation, and climate denial groups have treated the platforms as a way to reach new audiences.

In typical fashion, the climate-activist reporters at ClimateWire characterize fact checking as a service that purges incontrovertible false information from the internet, as opposed to removing opinions they don’t like. The quote above links a Politico report about how these benevolent Facebook mavens failed to block an editorial by the CO2 Coalition that was originally published Washington Examiner. The post was free to share with anyone…oh the horror!

I don’t necessarily agree with the CO2 Coalition’s perspective, which is, to put it simply, that increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a net positive. However, I’m an Old School reporter who adheres to the principle that my job is not to tell people what is and is not true. I regularly quote people with whom I disagree, and I’m quite comfortable letting my readers sort out the right of it.

That takes a trust in humanity, and I think that’s what most young reporters today are sorely lacking. When you believe the world is full of evil bigots destroying the planet, you’ll have no faith in people’s ability to think for themselves.

So, I’ve interviewed CO2 Coalition Executive Director Gregory Wrightstone, as well as coalition member Tony Heller, who happens to be a fellow resident of Cheyenne, Wyoming. I often interview Steve Milloy, who has similar ideas. I find them all to be interesting people with perspectives that, whether correct or not, contribute something valuable to the conversation.

For the climate-activist reporter today, that just can’t be allowed. So, Zuckerberg’s announcement has them terrified that a wide range of unchecked perspectives will flood the internet, leaving the average person to interpret the Church of Climate Bible for themselves without the guidance of its knowledgeable priests.

Who are the wise experts that ClimateWire warns are concerned about Zuckerberg’s decision? They include rabid climate alarmist Andrew Dessler, who once lost a debate (in my opinion) to energy philosopher Alex Epstein and later participated in a hit piece on Epstein in the Washington Post. The ClimateWire piece also quotes Michael Khoo, climate disinformation program director at Friends of the Earth. Because what’s more objective than a hard-core climate activist?

There’s nothing wrong with interviewing Dessler and Khoo, but the ClimateWire “reporters” never bother to get any other perspectives. For example, there’s Dr. Roger Piekle, Jr., who was deplatformed on Facebook for what Pielke says is an “unknown thought crime,” meaning the company never explained why.

They didn’t bother to interview Dr. Matt Wielicki, who left academia over the ostracization he experienced as a result his heretical views, or Dr. Judith Curry, also deemed a heretic by the Church of Climate. They might provide a nice range of perspectives on this topic. I don’t know Curry ever used Facebook to express her views, but she once told me in an interview that, prior to Elon Musk taking over Twitter, she felt like she was “speaking into a void” as her posts on that platform never had any engagement. So, she could definitely speak to censorship in social media.

The ClimateWire reporters selected the experts that will support the narrative they want and excluded those that don’t. This is how you manufacture consensus.

The ClimateWire so-called reporters also don’t make any mention of glaring mistakes the Facebook censors made in the past. The site suppressed the sharing of posts about the origin of covid being a lab in Wuhan, a theory that even the New York Times is today willing to platform. The site also suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was prompted by the federal government, and turned out to be entirely true.

Over on “The Honest Broker,” Pielke recounts another instance of wise “fact checking” declaring indisputable facts as false:

One of my favorites was the time that MIT’s Kerry Emanual, working for Facebook at a group called Climate Feedback, confidently claimed: "economic damage, normalized by world domestic product... from weather-related natural disasters have been increasing greatly." That claim is of course is undeniably false. Kerry is a good scientist and a decent person, which shows that getting wrapped up in pathological practices does not require malintent.

The bias-weaved blindfold the ClimateWire reporters wear has left them oblivious to the fact that the fact checkers actually have no influence on the very people they’re trying to reach. A hyper-partisan group of people declaring something untrue and believing they’re changing minds is an act of pure vanity. Without any perceived credibility among your target audience, you’re only galvanizing those you wish to reach. Whether your facts are correct or not, the audience will dig in and ignore anything you have to say. To change their minds, they have to trust you — and they don’t.

The climate activists masquerading as journalists can’t grasp this. They pretend that fact checkers are just unassailable, benevolent and objective guardians of truth doing a righteous service. The ClimateWire article is really just another example of why so much journalism today is nothing more than political advocacy. And despite declining trust in media, like the fact checkers, the climate-activist reporters are oblivious to their growing irrelevancy.

The Associated Press reported recently on a scheme to reduce emissions in shipping by returning to ancient seagoing technologies. The article displays all the characteristics of bad energy reporting that are so common among the wretched hive.

Before I dig in, it’s important to remember that the AP is an activist-funded publication. Political advocacy groups pushing a transition away from fossil fuels regularly fund media outlets directly and indirectly through groups like Covering Climate Now and the Society for Environmental Journalists.

News outlets usually disclose these direct funding sources, but they disguise the political nature of those funders by referring to them as “philanthropy organizations.” When faced with questions about how agenda-pushing funders might compromise the outlets’ objectivity, the go-to response is to declare they remain independent of their funders. And the AP is no exception.

So, in other words, we’re supposed to believe it’s merely a spooky coincidence that the AP consistently reports with an anti-fossil fuel bias and never platforms perspectives that challenge the “climate crisis” narrative. Sure. Totally believable.

Their paid-for bias was on display in “Climate solution: Sails make comeback in shipping, to dent its huge carbon footprint.” Cue eyerolls.

AP reporter John Leicester opens the article by introducing “burly” French mariner Yann Jourdan, who feels so guilty about the emissions stemming from shipping goods across the ocean that he established a shipping company that primarily uses sail to power its boats. Leicester writes:

The international merchant fleet of more than 100,000 ships transports more than 80% of global trade. But it’s also responsible for about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Without a quick switch from dirty fuels to cleaner energies, its pollution is forecast to soar.

Wretched Hive reporters like Leicester often deploy moralistic language in describing energy technologies as righteously clean or maliciously dirty, and this complete lack of neutrality is precisely what the AP’s funders want to see.

Mariners pushing for wind power say investors used to view them as something of a joke. But as they pioneer a comeback for sail-powered cargo ships, they’re having the last laugh.

This “last laugh,” by the way, is a minuscule shipping company satisfying a niche market, while the vast bulk of goods are shipped by diesel-powered ships. It’s a lot like a video-rental store swearing it can bring back the days of VHS rentals. When they get a few customers, the store owners declare they’re having the last laugh against their critics who say VHS will never make a comeback over streaming services.

After dismissing critics of this wind-powered scheme without ever quoting any of them or in any way platforming their arguments, Leicester provides some hard data. How much does Jourdan’s powerful sail-powered boat carry in one trip? 350 tons. How does that stack up against a diesel-powered monster shipping vessel? Leicester completely leaves out any mention of how much weight one of those will carry.

A Panamax cargo ship will hold 65,000 to 80,000 tons. So, Jourdan’s “last laugh” dingy holds 0.4% of the weight of a vessel powered by fossil fuels. It would take 250 of Jourdan’s boats to ship the amount of cargo a single Panamax could carry, something Leicester never gets around to mentioning.

How about speed? Leicester provides only this detail:

The speediest of its four crossings so far to New York took 17 days, and just 15 days on the return trip to Saint-Malo.

First…four crossings? Jourdan needs to make 246 more to ship as much as one diesel-powered cargo can ship. Being generous and assuming he can make 1.5 trips per month, it’ll take him another 14 years.

Secondly, how does that compare to diesel-powered shipping? I grew up in deserts and saw the ocean for the first time in my mid-20s. So my knowledge is limited here. According to my sophisticated Google search of “how long does it take a cargo ship to cross the Atlantic,” a cargo ship crosses the Atlantic in about 10 to 20 days. So, Jourdan’s “speediest” is the same as the fossil-fuel powered average.

The question Leicester never answers is, what is Jourdan’s average? Because of course he doesn’t. Another question Leicester never explores is the cost. There’s no mention how much Jourdan’s per-ton shipping costs stack up to the bulk carriers. If these details supported his “glory of sail” narrative, I’m sure the AP reporter would have included them. No doubt, they would sink the narrative, so Leicester just excluded them. And sadly, his editors never questioned the omissions.

Leicester tosses out this little detail:

But wind — unlike engines — can’t be switched on at the touch of a button.

Oh, really? Wow. I spent my whole life landlocked and surrounded by cacti, and I knew this. But I’ll assume Leicester knows his fans better than I do, and I guess they needed this information.

Leicester also reports that some giant carriers are using sails to reduce their fossil fuel use. This may have value, but the devil is in the details. And, of course, Leicester provides few. According to Leicester slim details, an ore-shipping vessel using wind technologies saves 8% of its fuel on a 40-day voyage between Brazil and China. Okay, but how much did that cost?

In the mind of the Wretched Hive reporter, there is no consideration to be had other than how much of the evil, demonic petroleum substance wasn’t used. So, if a company spends $1 million dollars to reduce 1 gallon of diesel, that’s a win in their mind.

The AP reporter cites data from Clarksons Research showing that 165 cargo ships are using wind power to some degree. That’s 165 out of the 100,000 ships worldwide, but an experimental cost-saving measure has to start somewhere. So, perhaps wind power can provide supplemental power and save companies money.

With ESG pressures, however, these shipping companies might be implementing these wind technologies for the ESG cred and not because they make any financial sense. With Leicester’s scant details and narrative-serving reporting, it’s hard to tell.

The article concludes with Jourdan vowing never to return to 100% diesel-powered shipping. There’s nothing wrong with a small businessman serving a niche market, and even if his costs are higher, some people will pay a premium on feel-good “green” goods and services. That’s the beauty of capitalism. The smallest needs are a market to be satisfied. I wish the “burly French mariner” the best of luck.

However, Leicester, I must say, displayed an astounding amount of anti-fossil fuel bias with omissions that can reasonably be characterized as dishonest. This is what the AP’s funders pay for. Audiences, on the other hand, are more and more getting tired of this crap.

Two Washington Post reporters Wednesday attempted to portray President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for energy secretary as a “science denier.” The whole piece just oozes with a desperation to prop up the dying “climate crisis” narrative.

Last month, I wrote about how Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy, is distinct among energy champions. He doesn’t just advocate for affordable, reliable energy. He understands that human flourishing depends on it. And so there’s a moral case to be made for the use and production of more fossil fuels, especially on a planet with massive energy inequities.

This argument is articulated in Liberty Energy’s ESG statement, “Bettering Human Lives,” which is about the only example I know of where an oil and gas producer defends with pride the product it produces.

Well, over at the wretched hive known as The Washington Post, they were about to let anyone tell them that fossil fuels have benefits, and that even if climate change poses risks, energy poverty has deadly consequences that need to be considered when developing policies to address those risks. In a rather sad and tortured effort, they try to refute the “Bettering Human Lives” arguments. Let dig in.

First they begin with a gross and indefensible mischaracterization of Wright’s position, because of course, you can’t defend the “climate crisis” narrative with any degree of honesty.

Wright cites scientific studies to argue that global warming “alarmists,” as he calls the majority of climate scientists, have it all wrong.

Um, no. At no time anywhere in the “Bettering Human Lives” report does it argue any such thing. At all. WaPo writers Evan Halper and Peter Whoriskey literally made this up, and I don’t believe that they just made an innocent mistake. So, right off the bat we have an outright lie, and I’m left wondering how these people can defend what they do. They continue:

He [Wright] rattles off data to support his contention that a warmer Earth has reduced deaths from cold weather. And he points to published research to assert that hurricanes and other major storms are not growing in intensity, despite observations by meteorologists.

Halper and Whoriskey quote Jim Kossin, a contributor to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR6 report, stating that Wright is “flat-out wrong” about statements he made in a video on LinkedIn and, “it is all there in black and white. There is no gray area.” Citing the IPCC report, Wright says:

We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods despite endless fearmongering of the media, politicians and activists.

Without referring to the WaPo article but quoting from it, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., retired professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, defends Wright’s statements in a post on X by quoting the AR6 report and a climate scientists who reiterates what’s in the report.

“There is low confidence in most reported long-term (multidecadal to centennial) trends in TC frequency- or intensity-based metrics.” Compare Kerry Emanuel who plays things straight: "At present, there is little scientific consensus about trends in global or regional [tropical cyclone] activity, either in the past, as detected in observations or in climate model simulations, or in the future as our climate continues to change.”

Update: Pielke expands further on the WaPo piece and what’s happening with hurricanes over at “The Honest Broker.”

Halper and Whoriskey specifically sought out one expert who would prop up their narrative but don’t bother to include quotes from other experts, such as Emanuel, who would dispute it.

The WaPo reporters also attempt to refute Wright’s claim that, while heat-related deaths are up, cold related deaths, which kill far more people, are down. So there’s a net annual decrease of 166,000 deaths from extreme temperatures. Halper and Whoriskey write:

The numbers in his testimony omit the other reasons for the reduction of cold deaths — such as better clothing, better heating, car travel and other advancements. It’s misleading, they say, to attribute the reduction in cold weather deaths entirely to global warming.

As is the case in the wretched hive, they are utterly oblivious to where “better clothing, better heating, car travel and other advancements” actually come from. These are the result of fossil fuels. This distortion is really amusing when you consider how Wright trolled The North Face, which refused to make apparel with an oil company’s logos on it. As Wright pointed out in their “Thanks, North Face” campaign, literally all The North Face’s clothes are made with materials derived from petroleum, making them a valuable customer of the industry they hate.

So basically, Halper and Whoriskey, whether they intend to or not, are conceding in this sentence two things Wright argues: 1) global warming has some positive impacts and that disputes the “climate crisis” narrative, and 2) even though climate change poses risks, fossil fuels have benefits. In considering how to address the risks of global warming, we need consider the impacts of the absence of fossil fuels.

In furthering their tortured effort to refute Wright’s positions on energy, while unintentionally supporting them, the WaPo writers quote Kristie Ebi, a professor at the Center for Health and the Global Environment, stating that Wright cherry picks data to support his argument. Ebi then cherry picks deaths from specific heat dome events to refute the scientific data showing total deaths from temperature extremes are down.

Halper and Whoriskey also quote Hannah Ritchie, a researcher with Our World in Data, trying to refute Wright’s claim that deaths from climate-related natural disasters are down 98% since 1920, as shown in these graphs on Our World in Data, using data from EM-DAT, CRED.

“You can’t just extrapolate from that previous trend at a time we know climate risk is increasing,” she [Ritchie] said. “If we want the trend to continue, we need to increase climate resilience. If we don’t do that, the number of deaths could go back up again.”

First, you can’t refute a 100-year data trend with future predictions. In terms of deaths, we are safer from climate-related natural disasters than any generation before us. Secondly, Wright doesn’t argue against increasing climate resilience. He argues that fossil fuels have played a major role in increasing it. How exactly rapidly eliminating fossil fuels will increase climate resilience, neither Halper and Whoriskey — nor any of their sources — bother to explain.

Ritchie has at times shown herself to be an astute and honest data researcher. However, she’s rapidly anti-fossil fuels and oblivious to their benefits and necessity. So, the article concludes with this complete falsehood:

Ritchie acknowledged energy poverty in the Global South but said her research does not conclude electricity from fossil fuels is the answer. “There is a strong argument that it could be cheaper and more efficient to skip fossil fuels and go straight to renewables in these places,” she said.

The claim that wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels is demonstrably false. They are very cheap under ideal weather conditions, which is about 30% of the time. The other 70%, they’re very expensive. More than that, there isn’t a single example town of only 20,000 people running its electricity grid effectively and affordably on wind, solar and batteries — a renewable demonstration project proposed by Francis Menton — much less an entire nation. And beyond that, there isn’t a undeveloped nation successfully developing its economy on these expensive, intermittent energy sources.

Without exception, every single developed nation on Earth created its prosperity with fossil fuels, and to advocate for depriving the world’s poor of the same opportunity, I argue, is not just wrong. It’s immoral. My friend Jusper Machogu also has a few words about that.

The effort these wretched-hive reporters put into maintaining a narrative is so glaringly obvious. This article is devoid of any diversity of perspectives, distorts Wright’s positions in dishonest ways and displays an astounding lack of knowledge about energy. The Washington Post is a dumpster fire, and this article demonstrates its reporters have no intention of making any changes. Sit back and watch this sad publication burn.

When trying to illustrate for readers how much electricity a certain wind or solar project will produce, energy reporters love to use the “will power x number of homes” metric. This metric, while simple and concise, is completely and totally misleading, and it’s furthered energy illiteracy. 

A St. Louis NPR affiliate reported Tuesday on a small solar project in East St. Louis: 

The more than 3,000-panel facility, located on the north side of town near the Gordon Bush School, will produce nearly 1.4 megawatts of power that can energize 650 homes in the region, according to the company.

CBS News affiliate WCCO in Minnesota reported on a ribbon-cutting event Tuesday for a solar project, which Minnesota Governor and former vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz attended: 

In the completion of phase one, there are about 500,000 solar panels at Sherco Solar. By 2026, the number is expected to triple to 1.5 million across 5 acres of land, which will be enough to power 150,000 homes across the Upper Midwest.

The article included this rather amusing sentence, which somehow didn’t give the reporter pause to claim that the project would effectively power homes: 

The sun was hard to find, but its power was still harnessed in Clear Lake.

The dedication to the ideology of green energy would be impressive were it not so delusional. 

These are just a couple examples from this week, but a Google search will turn up a dozen such claims every month. It is a very common practice to characterize electricity produced by intermittent wind and solar projects by taking the nameplate capacity of the project in watts and dividing it by some average electricity consumption rate of the average home over an unspecified amount of time. 

As many of you know, this is completely and totally false. In terms of the scale and inaccuracy of this practice, it is perhaps second only to the claim that wind and solar are the cheapest form of energy. 

The total number of homes that can be powered by any wind or solar project regardless of its size is 0.0. It doesn’t matter if the project’s capacity is 2 gigawatts or 1 megawatt, it is always precisely zero. 

Well, I shouldn’t say that. It is possible that there are households out there in the developed world that are connected to the grid and will happily shut off their refrigerators when the wind stops blowing. Perhaps there are homes where the residents are happy to sit in a dark house on a hot summer evening and read by candlelight as sweat drips down their face. I don’t know of any such people, but if they do indeed exist, they are exceedingly rare. 

Since most readers, as well as many reporters covering the development of wind and solar projects, don’t know what a watt is, it’s important to try to illustrate what it means that an offshore wind project, for example, will produce 2 gigawatts of power when it’s operational and all the whale carcasses have been removed from the beaches.

To be fair, it’s not an easy to explain how much power that is in any clear, concise format. Such is the state of energy reporting today, however, many energy reporters will just parrot the number of homes homes to be powered by these projects – numbers that usually come from government officials or the project developers – without ever scrutinizing them. 

As someone who won’t regurgitate information, I’ve tried to find a more accurate means of illustrating megawatts and gigawatts of nameplate capacity without long paragraphs explaining nameplate capacity, watts and watt hours. To get an idea of the challenge, let’s have a look at the math. Say you have a solar project whose nameplate capacity is 100 megawatts, meaning that with a happy sun lighting the panels, the solar farm will produce 100 megawatts of electricity.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average U.S. home consumes 899,000 watt hours per month. Using an average per month for the nation is problematic, because the average varies greatly by region. A home in Hawaii averages 6.4 megawatt hours per year, and a home in Louisiana averages 14.4 megawatt hours per year. I’m not sure why Louisianians use so much power, but apparently, they do. 

You could use a regional average rate of residential electricity consumption to explain how many homes are powered by a 100 megawatt solar farm to address that issue, but since this solar farm is hypothetical, I’ll use the U.S. average. So you take 100 million watts and divide it by 10.8 megawatt hours, and you get 9.3 households. Right?

Wrong. You’re using two different measurements – watts and watt hours. A 100 megawatt solar farm will produce 100 megawatt hours with one hour of good sunshine.

So, let’s try using the same factors. So, how many megawatt hours per year does the 100 megawatt solar farm produce? Well, it’s not 100 megawatts times 8,760 (24X365) hours, because of course that pesky sun goes down every night. Also, so many things solar panels would have done, but clouds got in their way.  

A solar farm typically operates about 20%-25% of the time. So, why not take 22.5% and multiply it by 8,760 hours? That gives you 1,971 hours. So, you then multiply 1,971 hours by 100 million watts, to come to 197.1 gigawatt hours per year. Now, divide that number by 10.8 megawatt hours the average American home consumes, and you get 18,250 homes. 

Sounds pretty good, right? Well, not really. You’re still assuming all these homes will just stop using electricity when there’s no sunshine. So, to say, 18,250 homes will be powered by a 100 megawatt solar farm is still highly misleading. 

One way I’ve attempted to use the “homes powered by” metric is to say that the wind or solar farm will power x number of homes when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. But that’s still misleading. Homes use different amounts of electricity at different times of day. Most homes consume the most electricity between 5 p.m and 8 p.m. That happens to correspond with that pesky sunset thing that happens every 24 hours. Surface winds typically are highest at night, when the energy demand is at its lowest. 

To provide a truly accurate illustration of what a megawatt or gigawatt of wind and solar energy is, the method I use is to use the Killough-watt Method ®, which illustrates the electricity-generation potential of a wind or solar project with x number of light bulbs powered per hour of sunlight or wind. So, a 100 megawatt solar farm will power 1 million 100-watt light bulbs for one hour when the sun is shining for one hour. A 1 gigawatt offshore wind farm will power 100 million 100-watt light bulbs for one hour and kill 1.3 whales when the wind is blowing is blowing for one hour. 

By telling readers that a certain number of homes will be powered by a wind or solar project, energy reporters are obscuring the biggest problem with wind and solar energy — they’re intermittent. Homes, businesses and industries need 24/7 power, without exception. This misleading metric furthers the “100% wind and solar energy is possible” myth. My method may not be a vivid as the “x number of homes” method, but it’s at least accurate. 

If you have any suggestions of a better way to concisely illustrate a wind or solar project’s nameplate capacity figures, please leave them in the comments.

President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination for Secretary of Energy, Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, is a powerful statement that there’s a new sheriff in town. 

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick to head the Department of the Interior, is an energy champion, and the management of America’s natural resources will be better off with such a person leading it. But Wright is among a circle of energy champions who understand that the argument for increasing fossil fuel use is not just a political issue. It’s a moral imperative, and Wright hasn’t been afraid to promote that message.  

In 2021, Wright trolled outdoor apparel maker The North Face in what has got to be one of the most courageous acts of defiance against the climate crisis narrative I’ve seen. As I explained when I interviewed Wright in 2022 for Cowboy State Daily: 

In the summer of 2021, Innovex Downhole Solutions Inc., a competitor of Liberty, wanted to give its employees co-branded apparel from The North Face for Christmas. North Face refused because it didn’t want its brand associated with petroleum companies.

Wright found it peculiar that North Face, a company with very few products that aren’t derived from oil and gas, wouldn’t want to be associated with companies that produce it. 

“It’s so ridiculously hypocritical,” Wright told Cowboy State Daily. “I spent 15 years speaking on energy and climate change. I love this discussion and debate, and I think the public in general is just ignorant on it.”

After North Face turned its back on Innovex, Liberty launched a campaign to thank North Face for being such a great customer of the oil and gas industry, which included YouTube videos that went viral and billboards in downtown Denver. 

Wright said it took two months to find a billboard company willing to sell him space for the ads. 

On top of that clever stunt, the company’s ESG statement actually defends the product they produce, and argues that fossil fuels have a net-positive impact on the world:

This report covers in some detail the profound changes in the human condition — life expectancy, emergence from poverty, nutrition, rising education, and more — brought about by the emergence and spread of hydrocarbon energy. A thriving society must be energized by affordable, reliable, and secure technologies. So far in modern history and for the foreseeable future, hydrocarbons are essential to this goal.

Compare this to Exxon CEO Darren Woods, who told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump shouldn’t withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Trump had pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in his first term, and President Joe Biden reversed the decision. Trump is expected to reverse the reversal upon taking office. 

Woods argued the “stops and starts” are bad for business, because it “creates a lot of uncertainty.” While regulatory uncertainty is a problem for any business, it’s odd Woods would want a stable policy that will require Exxon to either stop producing oil and gas or make its products enormously expensive to use. 

Over the past several decades, as well-funded activist groups convinced the world that fossil fuels were destructive, expensive and the cause of all bad weather, oil, gas and coal companies’ public relations strategy was to capitulate to the activists. Either they remained silent, refusing to defend the life-giving value of their product, or they conceded the activists’ claims that fossil fuels are harmful and should be dispensed with, hoping that they would be the last one eaten.

Without these companies standing up for the product they produce, there wasn’t much opposition to climate hysteria. Policies seeking to destroy fossil fuel companies flowed unimpeded, which included massive subsidies to support these allegedly cheaper energy forms. Soon, the oil companies were among the lambs feeding at the net-zero subsidy trough that the wolves kept filling.

Elmer “Bud” Peter Danenberger, an engineer who spent 38 years in the Interior Department's offshore oil and gas program, speculated on his “Bud’s Offshore Energy” blog that Woods’ comments may have been motivated by Exxon’s interest in carbon capture subsidies.

Exxon projected a $4 trillion carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) market by 2050. The company was a primary driver behind the late additions to the 2021 Infrastructure Bill. That bill authorized carbon disposal on the OCS, exempted such disposal from the Ocean Dumping Act, and authorized $2.5 billion for commercial CCS projects.

The outcome of the U.S. election creates a fertile landscape for a philosophical shift away from anti-humanist ideologies that are driving self-destructive energy policies of the West. Woods’ comments in the Journal had me concerned this opportunity would be squandered. 

However, oil companies never needed a voter mandate to stop apologizing for being oil companies. Even at the height of climate hysteria, which appears to be in retreat as far as public opinion is concerned, they could have fought back successfully. If they had, the West wouldn’t be so energy illiterate. 

Another energy champion who understands the moral case for fossil fuels is Alex Epstein, who articulated the philosophy in his book “The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels,” which was followed up with “Fossil Future.” In my personal opinion, these are the two best books on energy ever written. Like Wright, Epstein is not afraid to defend his positions. 

In 2022, Washington Post anti-fossil fuel reporter Maxine Joselow set out to destroy Epstein’s reputation. Epstein’s clear methodology on energy issues makes it very hard to refute his arguments, so Wretched Hive activists like Joselow resort to ad hominem smears. 

Documented, a liberal publication that’s very secretive about who funds it, dug up an article that Epstein wrote in college when he served as editor and publisher of a conservative student newspaper. In this article, Epstein wrote that students should be required to take courses on Western civilization, because its values are superior to those of “anti-reason cultures.” These values, Epstein argued, have facilitated greater human improvement than cultures, such as those in Africa. 

Locke, Aristotle, and Newton have no equivalents in Africa or Asia, and the advancements in those areas have been almost exclusively due to Western influence. Just compare New York to Chad. No benefit can be gained by focusing an education on anti-reason cultures, their only academic merit lies in contrasting them to Western civilization as models of inferiority.

Epstein argues it’s immoral for developed countries that have grown fat and rich on fossil fuels to deprive undeveloped countries the same opportunity with net-zero policies. It’s something my friend Jusper Machogu, a Kenyan farmer, argues from the perspective of someone who is trying to prosper without access to fossil fuels – an impossible feat. 

Joselow and Documented had hoped they could characterize Epstein’s arguments as being about race and thereby make him out to be a white supremacist. Then, they could discredit his arguments about how net zero hurts the poor without actually having to demonstrate his arguments aren’t sound, something of course they can’t do.

Instead of remaining silent in the face of this smear campaign or offering an apology over something he never said, Epstein went on the offensive. He launched a social media campaign against his accusers and demanded that Joselow and Documented apologize to him. 

Tomorrow the @washingtonpost plans to "cancel" me and my new book Fossil Future by publishing a 100% slanderous hit-piece labeling me as "racist." Please join me in calling for The Post to spike the piece, fire the "journalist," and publicly apologize.

The level of dishonesty with which the campaign operated is astounding. The idea that some races are superior to others is something Epstein repudiated in other writings, which Joselow and Documented just ignored.

In addition to @washingtonpost owing me an apology and owing the world a commitment to stop smearing, @ItsDocumented owes the same. These “journalists” *deliberately ignored my most prominent college writings*. They did not do “research,” they did scumbag activism.

Keep in mind, this was before Musk took over Twitter. Despite operating on a social media platform that was at the time hostile to free speech, including challenges to climate dogma, Epstein’s plight got the attention of Blaze TV, Fox News and Scott Adams. They overwhelmed Joselow’s smear campaign. 

In typical leftist activist fashion, Joselow cried that by defending himself, Epstein was harassing her. There never is any self-reflection among these people. In the end, however, the piece came out much more watered down without any references to racism. Epstein fought climate activists, and Epstein won. 

Climate activists aren’t going to just roll over and go away. They are outrageously fanatical and have even romanticized acts of terrorism to advance their cause. I predict their rhetoric and actions will get worse before they are finally relegated to history’s dustbin of bad ideas. 

Exxon’s Woods and those like him would have made it a lot easier for the activists to find a voice going forward. Trump’s cabinet nominations show that the times, they are a changing.

It’s always funny and perhaps a little sad when the wretched hive’s narrative comes crashing head-on into the wall of cold, hard realities. The New York Times, one of the hive’s elite publications, was recently involved one such incident, and I invite you to behold the resulting twisted pile of steel.

In August 2023, the New York Times, published thousands of words under this headline: 

The piece gushes about the glories of the wind and solar industry, while conspicuously navigating a minefield of pesky facts about the energy mix to maintain its narrative. After providing all kinds of data showing subsidy-driven increases in the amount of wind and solar on the grid, it tosses a passing acknowledgement that the bulk of our energy comes from fossil fuels. 

Even as the pace of change in the United States is surprising everyone from energy experts to automobile executives, fossil fuels still dominate energy production at home and abroad.

Corporations are building new coal mines, oil rigs and gas pipelines. The government continues to award leases for drilling projects on public lands and in federal waters and still subsidizes the industries. After posting record profits last year, leading oil companies are backing away from recent promises to invest more heavily in renewable energy.

Though this admission disputes the authors’ claims about an energy transition, they are not deterred in the least from their narrative. Notice how these “reporters” avoid providing any hard numbers or graphs on the amount of fossil fuel-based energy the globe consumes? The narrative-destroying data is just left out, and I believe that’s intentional.

The NYT writers also assign the cause of this fossil fuel domination to a cruel government that allows evil fossil fuel companies to produce products that billions of consumers across the globe willingly purchase in increasing amounts every year. The Two Minutes Hate can’t be directed at the audience, of course. The whole performance needs a villain, and governments refusing to carry out the economy-destroying climate agenda and maniacal oil companies fit this narrative’s role nicely.

The article goes on to parrot repeatedly the false claim that wind and solar are the cheapest form of energy. 

The cost of generating electricity from the sun and wind is falling fast and in many areas is now cheaper than gas, oil or coal.

The reporters also praise the subsidies the renewable industry is receiving, and they never bother to ask why an economically superior form of energy needs our tax dollars if it is as cheap as proponents claim.  

One of the reporters who wrote this self-contradictory article was technology reporter Brad Plumer, and according to his bio, he writes “about the policies and innovations that governments, companies and people are pursuing to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Last week, Plumer’s biased reporting came careening head-on into a massive concrete wall of facts and reality. 

Oh. How peculiar that all this super, super cheap wind and solar has not resulted in a rapid decrease in fossil fuel use, which Plumer and his colleagues had reported just a year ago was happening faster than we all thought. Plumer wrote last week: 

Even though renewable energy sources like wind and solar are growing rapidly around the world, demand for electricity has been rising even faster, which means countries are still burning more fossil fuels each year. Geopolitical conflicts, from the U.S.-China rivalry to war in places like Ukraine and Gaza, have made international cooperation on climate change harder. And rich countries have failed to keep their financial promises to help poor countries shift away from oil, gas and coal.

For some reason, Plumer sees absolutely no contradiction in reporting that poor countries need “help” from rich countries to transition away from forms of energy that he claims more expensive. He also claims, without any substantiation, that Middle East and Russian conflicts — as opposed to basic physics of electricity generation —are preventing us from realizing the glories of the energy transition. Plumer’s “transition is happening faster than you think” narrative smolders at the foot of unyielding facts, and he still can’t doubt for a moment his energy transition narrative. 

This would be hilarious if were just some clueless, sloppy energy reporters providing us with material to mock. The problem with spreading energy illiteracy is were spending trillions of dollars to prop up this illusions that we can replace fossil fuels with intermittent, expensive, undependable energy sources. These policies that Plumer is helping to advance waste tax dollars, drive up energy costs and undermine economies. This kind of energy misinformation has real consequences, and Plumer and his colleagues are doing real harm.

This week I published a story about the campaign to discredit community opposition to renewable projects by claiming it’s all part of a vast Big Oil conspiracy. 

What’s most surprising about this conspiracy theory is that it’s promoted by organizations that receive direct funding from political advocacy groups promoting a transition to wind and solar. You won’t believe how they defend this hypocrisy. 

This smear campaign uses the same tactic every time. They take a few individuals within a community who are speaking out against a project or the wind and solar industry in general, find some connection between these individuals and the oil and gas industry — it can be a simple as previously working for a company that supplies equipment to the oil and gas industry — and then declare the entire community’s opposition is a concoction of the fossil fuel industry. 

Besides lacking in any thorough analysis and jumping to an obviously predetermined conclusion, this conspiracy theory is advanced by publications who receive direct funding from anti-fossil fuel organizations promoting the wind and solar industry. The accusations are then parroted by other media outlets who are also receiving funding from these same activist groups.

The latest example of this is a hit piece published in ProPublica, Floodlight and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. The article concerns opposition to a solar project in Knox County, Ohio, and it oozes with pro-renewable bias. It has very few quotes from any members of the community who raised objections about the project, misrepresents their primary concerns, and uses the most tortured line of reasoning to conclude the whole opposition was a front for the interests of oil and gas companies. 

I took a close look at who funds ProPublica, Floodlight and the Tow Center, and I proceeded to shatter their glass house. As I explain in the article: 

Propublica is funded by the Park Foundation, which promotes opposition to hydraulic fracturing used to produce oil and gas from shale. The publication is also supported by the The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, both of which advocate for a transition away from fossil fuels. 

Floodlight is funded by the climate activist group The Sunrise Project, as well as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Rockefeller Family Fund, both of which provide extensive funding to projects aimed at eliminating fossil fuels and advancing the wind and solar industry. 

The Tow Center has received funding from Open Society Foundations, which was founded by billionaire George Soros, who has investments in renewable energy.

When I asked the organizations to explain how they smear community opposition to wind and solar this way while being directly funded by proponents of the wind and solar industry, they said it’s different when they take funding from pro-renewable groups because they’re totally independent of their funders. 

Alissandra Calderon, associate director of communications for Propublica, told Just the News that the organization “operates with fierce independence.” 

“Our investigations aren’t driven by partisan or ideological agendas. No donors or board members are made aware of stories before they are published, do not have a say as to which organizations we partner with, and which stories we pursue,” Calderon said. 

Emily Holden, founder of Floodlight, said that the organization is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News and subscribes to its standards of editorial independence and financial transparency. 

“We retain full authority over editorial content. Our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support,” Holder said. 

Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, said the organization hasn’t been funded by Open Society since 2021.

See if you can follow this logic here. ProPublic, Floodlight and the Tow Center are directly funded by groups that demonize fossil fuels and promote the wind and solar industry. Yet they say they are in no way beholden to their funders’ interests — even though their journalistic bias is entirely and consistently in line with those funders’ perspective. But if anyone opposing wind and solar has any connections to the oil and gas industry, then the entire opposition is nothing more than a Big Oil conspiracy. 

Riiiiiiight. 

The lack of self awareness is astounding. I’m sure it’s true that these organizations don’t coordinate their editorial content with their funders. But that just means their blinding bias when reporting on energy is of their own volition. That’s not something to be proud of. 

More than that, if they ever did decide to do any fair, objective reporting on climate and energy, which would mean giving fossil fuel proponents and renewable opponents a fair shake, ProPublica, Floodlight and the Tow Center could kiss their funding good bye. I challenge anyone to find an example of the Rockefellers, Sunrise Movement, Park Foundation, The Hewlett Foundation or the MacArthur Foundation funding journalism that doesn’t demonize fossil fuels and hold the wind and solar industry harmless. 

The Associate Press, which also receives funding from groups promoting the wind and solar industry including the Rockefellers, loves to promote these Big Oil conspiracies to discredit opposition to the climate agenda. The AP too claims to be totally independent from its funders. I really don’t understand how they make that work in their head. 

When I asked Floodlight and ProPublica about this double standard they have when it comes to their own funding, only ProPublica responded. "Our reporting on this story speaks for itself," Calderon said. 

Oh indeed it does. But not the way you think.

The Columbia Journalism Review once wrote a hit piece on Cowboy State Daily, where I was the energy reporter at the time. I consider it one of the greatest moments of my entire journalism career. Not only does the article explain why you should read my articles, it also illustrates why energy reporting today is so absolutely awful. 

Cowboy State Daily gave me the opportunity to do what few energy reporters can or will do. I platformed perspectives who dispute the “climate crisis” narrative, and challenged the status quo. In today’s newsrooms, reporters are expected to regurgitate official government narratives, and I was never good at that kind of obsequious conformity. If I was, I likely would have pursued a career in academia. 

Cowboy State Daily is a Wyoming publication, and it’s been a phenomenal success, dominating the entire Wyoming media landscape. It achieves this success by writing articles people want to read, as opposed to articles that reporters think they should want to read. However, because it appeals to Wyoming’s mostly conservative readers, it’s been the target of liberal outrage, including its rivals at Wyofile, another Wyoming publication that has fallen considerably in prominence in the wake of Cowboy State Daily’s rise. 

The Columbia Journalism Review is a publication of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which is to say it’s a reflection of the newest generation of journalists entering newsrooms today. And from this sad publication, you can see why trust in media is at an all time low. 

In August 2023, the CJR wrote a hit piece on Cowboy State Daily, including whiny quotes from Wyofile’s editors, as if they would be objective sources on their competitors. There’s plenty to say about the whole CJR article, but I’ll focus on what it had to say about my reporting. It didn’t name me, and instead referred to “Cowboy State Daily’s energy reporting.” I really wish they would have named me so people would see the article when they Google my name.  

Anyway, according to the CJR, my reporting “appeared to throw doubt on the reality of man-made climate change, which is the consensus among the global scientific community.” That was rather nice of them to open up with a compliment on my work, but they are exaggerating. 

The CJR reporters offer up a few of the headlines from my Cowboy State Daily articles as examples of my glorious acts of heresy:

“Study Says Climate Change Fear-Mongering Severely Impacting Children’s Mental Health”

 “National Teachers Group Censors Climate Science That Doesn’t Conform to Disaster Agenda”

“Woke Capitalism Takes Another Blow as Vanguard Withdraws from Climate Alliance”

“Is Greta Thunberg Actually Smart or Is She Just a Propped-Up Celebrity Armed with a PR Machine?”

So, the global consensus, according to the CJR, is that we should terrify children by telling them the world is coming to an end without any regard to their mental health, bow to the ESG agenda without question, and glorify the prophet Greta Thunberg. 

The CJR reporters didn’t cite any study or survey or anything demonstrating how these articles challenged any global consensus, but this is what passes for energy journalism at an elite journalism school. They really believe that there’s an absolute scientific consensus supporting whatever ideological positions they hold. As someone who actually reads studies, I’m familiar with Cook et al. 2016, and I assure you, there’s nothing about Greta Thunberg in it.  

There’s plenty of legitimate criticism of the methodology the study uses, and on a few occasions, I did quote people who question this alleged and highly limited consensus on anthropogenic global warming. I didn’t always agree with them, but I have this radical notion that it’s not my job as a journalist to be the arbitrator of truth. So, I’m happy to present perspectives I don’t agree with and let readers decide if those positions hold merits. This goes against what’s being taught in journalism schools today. 

The CJR “reporters” then bring in the Tow Center for Digital Journalism to do an analysis of my reporting in a rather amusing effort to give this politicized hit piece a verisimilitude of objectivity. They tallied up the number of times I quoted organizations that have “links to climate denial.” 

These evil heretics include the Heartland Institute, Manhattan Institute, the Institute for Energy Research and the American Petroleum Institute. The Tow Center then cites DeSmog — an activist website known for publishing political smears against anyone who questions the climate crisis agenda, even those who actively affirm the so-called scientific consensus — to support its claim that these are really bad people and no reporter should ever interview them. 

In the next paragraph they state that these sources I was interviewing are oil and gas industry groups or they have received money from oil companies. That’s an interesting criticism from a publication that is funded by the Rockefeller Family and Associates, an organization that spends millions every year to promote the wind and solar industry, while demonizing fossil fuels. 

Besides showing the shameless propagandizing that academic journalists today think is good reporting, the CJR’s hit piece on me and my colleagues at Cowboy State Daily betrayed a rather sad fact about energy reporters today. Most energy reporters are taught and obey a directive that says that you never, ever talk to anyone with a lot of knowledge, background, expertise and experience in the oil and gas industry. They’re entire understanding of energy is based on speaking exclusively to people who really, really hate the industry and want it destroyed.

At the bottom of Associated Press articles on climate and energy issues is this little footnote.

While it’s good the AP discloses this funding, the outlet is obscuring the political aims of the organizations making these grants. It’s presented as money from neutral charitable organizations who are looking to support journalism as an important institution in our democracy. This is absolutely not the case. 

In 2022, the AP reported it would receive $8 million over three years, which would support 20 climate reporter positions, a beat that overlaps with energy. Five organizations were contributing to this largesse: the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.

While the Howard Hughes Medical Institute promotes scientific education in general, the others are proponents of net-zero emissions climate policies. They actively work to advance this agenda, which is hostile to fossil fuels and supportive of the wind and solar industry. 

Yet, the AP’s “climate initiative” page makes no mention of this fact. Instead, it offers up quotes from these organizations telling readers there are no agendas behind the funding other than objective journalism. 

“Unbiased, fact-based journalism has never been more important or imperiled,” Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, told the AP readers. 

“We are proud to be supporting a trusted nonpartisan global news source to expand fact-based, localized climate reporting at this crucial time,” said Quadrivium Foundation Co-founder and President Kathryn Murdoch. 

The closest the AP gets to honestly revealing these organizations’ agenda is a quote from the aggressively anti-fossil fuel Rockefellers. 

“We really are all in this together and we have to understand that only collective, global action that ensures a more rapid and equitable transition to renewable energy for everyone, everywhere will mitigate the danger,” said Eileen O’Connor, senior vice president for communications, policy and advocacy for the Rockefeller Foundation. 

The AP insists its entirely independent of its funders, and I’m sure the Rockefellers don’t participate in AP news meetings. However, there are at least 20 reporters covering climate and energy whose jobs will go away if the Rockefellers aren’t happy with the money they’re spending. To believe the outlet is independent of its funders is to believe that the AP’s overtly biased coverage of climate and energy reporting is merely a coincidence. 

It’s quite easy to spot how this funding is influencing the AP reporting to be friendly toward renewable energy. Consider this gem from December 2023:

Contrary to politicians’ claims, offshore wind farms don’t kill whales. Here’s what to know.

The article’s lead paragraph sets the stage for what is to come.

“Unfounded claims about offshore wind threatening whales have surfaced as a flashpoint in the fight over the future of renewable energy.”

Notice that they didn’t describe these issues as “controversial claims” or “these experts argue.” No, they tell the readers flat-out that there is no basis whatsoever for the claims that offshore wind is harming endangered whales and no evidence to the contrary should ever be considered. This is bad journalism, and it’s astounding this got past the editors. 

Since 2016, the critically endangered North Atlantic whale population has seen unusually high mortality levels. This increased mortality corresponds to the period in which offshore wind developers began development along these whales’ migration routes. Meanwhile, environmental groups including Greenpeace, federal agencies, and media outlets like the AP continue to deny there’s any connection between the two.

After some information about the number of wind farms under construction, which leaves out the part about where they have to pound 30-foot wide pylons into the seabed floor to erect all these towers, the AP reports write,

Experts say there’s no evidence that limited wind farm construction on the Atlantic Coast has directly resulted in any whale deaths, despite politically motivated statements suggesting a link. Rumors began to swirl…

“Limited wind farm construction,” by the way, means over 2,000 800-foot high towers. Totally limited. And by “experts say,” the AP writers mean “the experts we picked to support our narrative say.” 

Then we come to a rather startling admission:

 “While the exact causes of recent whale strandings along the East Coast mostly are not known, whales do face dangers from human activities.” 

So, after telling us that that there’s no way a flood of sonar vessel traffic or pounding 30-foot pylons into the sea bed floor is killing whales, the AP “reporters” admit the cause is unknown. Maybe it’s some other things humans are doing, they write, such as the fishing operations that have been going on for centuries. It’s definitely not, however, the massive industrialization of the East Coast that was initiated at the same time whales began to die in increasing numbers.

After quoting from cherry-picked experts that support this narrative, the AP reporters then quote a spokesperson from the offshore wind developer Orsted, who assures readers the industry would never, ever hurt a whale. Hear that guys? The offshore wind industry says they’re not hurting whales. All good then.

There’s nothing wrong with quoting industry voices. I quote petroleum industry sources all the time, and I leave it to readers to consider the bias there. But the AP quotes the industry after weaving a narrative in support of that industry. The reporters also take, without question, Orsted’s claim that its “bubble curtains” protect whales. 

Robert Rand, an acoustician whose done research into the effectiveness of these mitigation efforts, has two studies — one of which that was released prior to the AP article — that concluded mitigation procedures are not adequate. The AP has never, ever interviewed Rand or reported on his research. Not once. 

Rutgers professor Apostolos Gerasoulis performed a statistical analysis and found a strong correlation between where whales are dying and offshore wind development. The AP did not do a single story on Gerasoulis’ findings.

As it continues with its press release, the AP reporters quote Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Heritage Foundation expressing concerns about the impacts to birds and whales, which the AP’s reporters dispute with a statement from Orstead’s spokesperson. The AP reporters also quote H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute, who says that offshore wind development should be held to the same standards as oil and gas. The AP reporters also mention there’s some community groups that are opposed to offshore wind development. They never quote any members of these groups, even though they are quite easy to reach and happy to discuss their concerns. 

Finally, the AP reporters suggest the mysterious deaths of whales may be caused by … wait for it … global warming. Of course.

This article is nothing more than a paid advertisement for the offshore wind industry. While it’s true that there is no definitive proof that offshore wind is causing the increased mortality of endangered whales, this article presents final conclusions on the issue that are obviously intended to provide PR for the offshore wind industry.

The Society for Environmental Journalists encourages reporters to exclude voices in the fossil fuel industries. Covering Climate Now, a climate journalism education resource that partners with over 500 media outlets reaching an audience of 2 billion people worldwide, teaches that reporters covering climate and energy should not engage in “both-sides-ing” the issues. These are influential groups and their calls to abandon traditional objectivity are so brazen that it’s likely most of the thousands of reporters who use these resources are supportive of these tactics. 

Both-sides-ing the issue used to be called journalism, and much of my work revolves around an explicit effort to undo the damage groups like CCN and SEJ are doing to journalism. I platform industry voices, people who question the wisdom of net zero, and people who argue that CO2 is actually beneficial. And it makes no difference if I agree with their positions or not. In some cases, I don’t. I have this radical value that my readers ultimately decide what is and is not true. 

When I’m criticizing individuals or organizations on the other side of the debate, such as climate activists and renewable energy proponents, I give them an opportunity to comment. Most often, they won’t respond to my questions, including Dr. climate celebrity Michael Mann and Covering Climate Now. That’s their choice. The articles go out without them.

Then, there’s Howarth

A rare exception to this is Cornell Professor Dr. Robert Howarth. He produced a preprint that was influential in the Biden-Harris’ decision to enact a moratorium on liquified natural gas (LNG) export permits. Howarth has a long history of anti-fossil fuel activism, such as being on the board of directors for the rabidly anti-fossil fuel Food and Water Watch, and his research has been widely panned. The preprint passed peer review and was published this week. 

Howarth has been very forthcoming each time I’ve contacted him, and for that reason, I have developed a respect for him as a person, if not for his positions on energy. 

The first time I reached out to Howarth, I was writing a story comparing the research behind the proposed ban on gas stoves, which was a controversial study by the anti-fossil fuel nonprofit Rocky Mountain Power, and the research that supported the LNG moratorium. In both cases, anti-fossil fuel activists produce research that was the basis for policies with far-reaching effects.

I asked Howarth about a 2012 New York Post op-ed in which Jon Entine, senior research fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University, claimed that Howarth had told him that his research into fracking was designed to further anti-fracking activism. 

I have to say I was surprised when Howarth replied. I had to look twice to be sure the email was indeed a response from this professor and not an automatic reply, like those I get from Mann. Howarth said Entine was lying. He also defended his research and dismissed his critics. 

He then emails about 20 minutes later to say that, though he decided not to take legal action against Entine at the time, the ability to seek legal recourse for falsehoods was much stronger now, and I shouldn’t repeat the claim. The implication was he’d sue me if I did. 

Needless to say, that ended our first exchange. I contacted our lawyers to make sure I had dotted my i’s and crossed my t’s, and we published the story. I included all the remarks Howarth had made and made sure his perspective was fully represented in the story. 

There’s no way I can verify who is telling the truth, and Howarth may have never said any such thing to Entine. It should be noted, however, that Howarth was persuaded by anti-fossil fuel crusader Bill McKibben to release his LNG study prior to peer review so that it could influence U.S. policy decisions. In the Bloomberg article about it, Howarth said, “We need to get rid of all fossil fuels as quickly as possible. Let's just move on and get rid of the gas system.”

Hi, it’s me again

I’m not sure if Howarth felt I represented his position fairly in the article or he just never saw it. Whatever the case, the next time I reached out to him was for a response to an analysis by Jonah Messinger, a senior energy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute. Messinger’s analysis found that Howarth’s research was “riddled with errors.” 

In his response to me, Howarth was dismissive of Messinger’s work with ad hominems about his credentials, and he provided no details as to what exactly Messinger got wrong. Howarth also defended his research and denied that his activism compromises his neutrality in his research. Again, I was surprised I got a response, but I took care to fully include in the article Howarth’s statements. 

The last exchange I had with him was quite lengthy. I had several of questions, and Howarth was very forthcoming in responding to each one. We also had a brief debate about the efficacy of rapidly eliminating fossil fuels. This was for an article about his study being published and a congressional investigation looking into the Department of Energy’s role in the study and how much it relied on it in developing the LNG policy. 

When I wrote the article I made it a point to not only include all his remarks, but also make sure that his response was up higher in the article. I didn’t want it buried where most readers might not see that he defends his research. The guy takes the time to respond, and I want readers to see what he has to say. They can come to their own conclusions about it. 

A sign of integrity

I think it’s a sign of integrity when someone is willing to engage those with whom they disagree. Most anti-fossil fuel crusaders, including Dr. Mann, have blocked me on X and ignore my questions. The reason Covering Climate Now and the Society for Environmental Journalists are so desperate to purge all skeptical voices from the media, I believe, is because they lack the honesty to put forth their political positions into an open arena where they can be scrutinized and criticized. I believe it’s indicative of fanaticism — the ends justify the means mentality — and fanatics will always compromise any values and principles in pursuit of their goals.

As passionate as Howarth is about his positions, I don’t think he lacks integrity. He doesn’t appear to be afraid to have his research and his positions scrutinized. I don’t think that means he’s right, nor do I think it disputes concerns his activism compromises the neutrality of his research. But I do think it means he’s principled, and for that, he deserves respect and courtesy.

By responding to me, he’s also showing me respect as a professional, even if I am in an adversarial role. After this brief debate we had on the efficacy of rapidly eliminating fossil fuels, I thanked him, sincerely, for his responses and told him I’d make sure his perspective was fairly and accurately represented in the article. 

He replied, “I believe in open communication, transparency, and honesty. Those are the traits pounded into me 50 years ago in my early training as a scientist.”

Case in point is the oft repeated claim that renewables are the cheapest form of energy. No amount of widely available evidence contradicting this claim will arouse even the slightest curiosity in reporters who trumpet this myth. A report released this week by a pro-renewable intergovernmental agency granted these reporters yet another opportunity to make this claim without any critical thinking. 

Reuters energy reporter Nina Chestney reported: 

Over three-quarters of new renewable energy capacity added last year was cheaper than fossil fuels, showing the competitiveness of solar, wind and other sources, a report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) showed on Tuesday.

Also…

New renewable power capacity last year reached a record of 473 gigawatts (GW), of which 382 GW or 81% of newly-commissioned, utility-scale renewables projects had lower costs than fossil fuel alternatives, the report showed.

Forbes senior contributor Jeff McMahon, who prides himself on reporting about the “climate crisis,” reported: 

The added capacity, roughly equivalent to 473 nuclear plants, produces electricity at prices most fossil plants can’t match and that the nuclear industry can only dream of: The global average cost of electricity from onshore wind fell to 3.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, 3 percent less than the year before, and utility-scale solar photovoltaic fell to 4.4 cents/kWh, 12% less than the year before.

Every month there are dozens of articles on utilities in the U.S. requesting rate increases from state regulatory regulatory bodies. U.S. electricity prices are rising faster than inflation. Comparisons of energy costs across nations and states show a correlation between the amount of renewable energy in a state or nation’s energy portfolio and how much its residents and industries pay for electricity. 

Energy reporters will gush about the growth of renewables and see no contradiction between the growth of this supposedly cheap industry and rising electricity prices. It’s hard to believe they are simply unaware of the data, which means they are deliberately ignoring this data because it’s inconvenient to a narrative. When they do acknowledge rising energy prices, they blame fossil fuels via the “all bad things are caused by climate change” argument. 

If rising energy costs don’t raise suspicion, the fact this amazingly cheap industry can’t seem to operate without perpetual public support should.

As energy expert Alex Epstein explains:

If these so-called energy reporters were more committed to honesty than advancing the energy transition political agenda, they would dig a bit further into this report, as I did.

Fransesco La Camera, director-general of IRENA explains in the report’s foreword:

Solar PV, wind and hydropower experienced the most considerable cost decreases in 2023. The global average cost of electricity (LCOE) from solar PV fell by 12%, offshore wind and hydropower by 7%, and onshore wind by 3%, with China once again dominating new capacity additions. The global average cost of electricity from utility-scale solar PV fell to USD 0.044 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and onshore wind to USD 0.033/kWh.

The curious and honest reporter might zoom in on “LCOE” and wonder what the hell that is. This mysterious LCOE analysis is the basis of the entire report’s conclusion that wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels. If you asked 10 energy reporters to explain what LCOE is, I doubt eight of them would provide a thorough answer. 

LCOE stands for levelized cost of energy, and I’ve yet to talk to a single engineer working in the electricity industry who says it’s a good way to compare costs across generation sources. One grid expert I interviewed called it “fraudulent.” As the wise green chicken Doomberg explains, LCOE just pretends away intermittency. It creates a fantasy in which people only use electricity when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. If that were the case, wind and solar would be amazingly cheap. The reality is that electricity demand doesn’t correlate well with periods of good sunshine and wind. 

Electricity is not a product. It’s a service. What is an unreliable service worth? B.F. Randall has the perfect analogy for this — Random Uber. Instead of having a ride show up at your location on demand, the driver shows up a day later — or three cars show up two days before your need a trip. What use would that service be? 

Transforming random generators into a reliable service requires the overbuilding of wind and solar farms, investments in storage systems, and construction of power lines, among many other extra costs. As Lee Cordner, a power-grid consultant with 50 years experience, once told me, wind and solar are the cheapest form of energy 30% of the time. The other 70% of the time, they’re very expensive.

The Guardian proudly boasts of having raised $14 million from “private foundations” in support of climate and environment reporting. Many of these “private foundations” are anti-fossil fuel groups, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Park Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Much of the publication’s climate and energy coverage is, therefore, paid political advertisements.

In a recent article, Guardian freelancer Stephen Starr displayed how sloppy reporters can be when they’re paid to advance a narrative. Starr claims that people are moving from Florida to the Midwest because of climate change.

Miami has been dubbed “ground zero” for climate risk and sea levels along Florida’s coast have already risen by as much as 8in (20cm) since 1950.

Shortly after receiving a notice in the mail in 2022 that her homeowner’s insurance would rise to almost $3,000 monthly, she [Laura Rivas, a cybersecurity engineer] saw her stepfather interviewed on local TV. His own property in Fort Myers had been destroyed by a tornado.

Rivas made her mind up right then – it was time to go.

Starr repeats the insurance companies’ PR talking point that climate change is driving up insurance rates, which is highly suspect with weak substantiation. The annual count of strong tornadoes and normalized costs of damages from tornadoes is down.

The reporter then goes on to claim that Puerto Rican “climate migrants” are fleeing the Carribean island for Buffalo, New York, and Californians are fleeing California’s wildfires for the safety of … Duluth, Minnesota.

“It’s probably no coincidence that the majority of our movers to the midwest originate from Texas, California and Florida – states that are disproportionately impacted by climate change,” said Evan Hock of MakeMyMove, an Indianapolis-based company.

If Starr had been more committed to accuracy, he might have done a quick Google search to look up the states that are gaining population to see which states are gaining population. According to Market Watch, Florida, Texas and North Carolina were the states with the most net in-migration. The states losing the most population are California, New York and New Mexico. Other data sources show similar patterns. U.S. Postal Service change-of-address data shows the most out-migration is from California, New York and Illinois, and the states gaining the most residents are Texas, Florida, and South Carolina.

To support his narrative that people are fleeing California because of wildfires, he links to a New York Times article about how Duluth is supposedly “climate proof.” The Times article bases its narrative entirely on anecdotes. A 2021 United Van Lines survey found that retirement, health and jobs, being closer to family, lifestyle and cost of living were the top reasons people moved. Climate change didn’t even rank.

I’ll throw in my own anecdote. I’m a native New Mexican, and I moved away from the state in 2014. Climate had nothing to do with it. After spending 14 months in 2012 and 2013 limping by on freelance and part-time work, I took a job as a community reporter in the heart of North Dakota’s Bakken oil patch. I make annual trips to Albuquerque, and the city’s decline is stark. Homeless tents sprung up all over Albuquerque's parks. My favorite restaurant across from UNM, where I spent many late nights studying and eating green chile cheeseburgers, is no longer open 24 hours because of violence.

People do not move from one state to another because of climate change. While there may be individuals reporters can quote to support that narrative, the data simply doesn’t. And they call me a “science denier.”