Why catastrophic predictions keep failing
https://industrialprogress.com/why-catastrophic-predictions-keep-failing/
- Why catastrophic predictions keep failing
- Power Hour: How to think about air pollution, the 2020 election, fracking bans, and ethanol mandates
- Highlights from my visit to Youngstown
- The Human Flourishing Project: How I learn from other people’s systems
Why catastrophic predictions keep failing
I was recently interviewed for a Fox News article highlighting 10 failed catastrophist predictions. The published version of the article only used a single quote from the interview, but here are some of my unpublished comments:
One of the main causes of experts being horribly wrong in their predictions is that they hold an extremely dubious assumption as a dogma.
In the case of climate catastrophism and other environmental catastrophism the dogma is the idea that the planet is a delicate nurturer that will take care of us if we don’t impact it, but that will punish us mightily if we do impact it significantly.
Because environmental catastrophists hold this delicate nurturer view of the planet they expect that any impact on climate will be catastrophic, that any emissions into our local environment will be catastrophic, and that any consumption of resources will be catastrophic.
Whereas the much more accurate view of the planet is that it is wild potential. So the planet is not delicate, nor is it a nurturer. It’s wild and often threatening. But if we intelligently impact it, it can be a wonderful place to live.
And that’s what industry has done. It’s taken the wild potential of the planet and made it a wonderful place to live with remarkably low added negative impacts.
Power Hour: How to think about air pollution, the 2020 election, fracking bans, and ethanol mandates
On this week’s episode of Power Hour, Don, Steffen, and I cover seven topics:
- Robert Phalen’s great work on air pollution
- Students skip school to protest climate change
- Oregon says “no” to fracking prosperity
- 2020: The climate change election
- Europe’s largest “renewable” energy source: biomass
- The insane economic theory behind the Green New Deal
- The Trump administration pushes corn ethanol
Listen to the episode:
Highlights from my visit to Youngstown
Business Journal Daily covered my recent speech to the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce. Following the speech, I also did a brief interview with the Journal where I discussed the impact of fossil fuels on human life.
While I was in Youngstown I also had the opportunity to appear on the Dan Rivers Podcast, where we talked about the moral case for fossil fuels and the anti-development movement’s attack on industrial civilization. (My segment starts about 53 minutes in.)
The Human Flourishing Project: How I learn from other people’s systems
On the latest episode of The Human Flourishing Project I discuss, using last week’s interview as an example, how I learn as much as I can as quickly as possible from other people’s successful systems.
- Visit our Facebook page and join in the discussion.
- And for the latest news visit humanflourishingproject.com where you can sign up to receive email updates.
Alex
