LinkedIn is the premier business-related social media site, and they allow respectful discourse on the climate topic in my case. I have been very active at LinkedIn this year and have shared previous exchanges such as this one at MasterResource.
Here is another example. It began with a LinkedIn post from Favian Le Gay Brerton: “When the Oil and Gas industry talks about planting trees, producing hydrogen, and deploying CCS…. Moral Hazard.” He links to “The Era of the Great Carbon Fraud Is Upon Us” in the Australian newspaper, The Canberra Times. The article begins:
Instead of rushing to end fossil fuels, there is going to be a gold rush for carbon offsets, dirty hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS), all designed not to stop climate change, but to actually drive up the consumption of coal, oil and gas.
To which one responder added:
This is perhaps the final phase. First we had anger, then denial, then Obfuscation and fake news, now the outright rip off in front of our very eyes as the possible means for an effective transition to new forms of economy and energy are used to deceive and strip us of our financial resources for a better future.
To which I responded:
Predictable for trying to phase down the best energies that consumers want. Time to end the anti-CO2 crusade?
Tobias Kenway, an Australian consultant responded to me:
I disagree about any mess associated with wind, solar, batteries. If there was a mess, then I’d still certainly choose it over the peril in store for my children and grandchildren through the carbonisation of our atmosphere.
I responded:
The CO2 fertilization effect is a positive for the next generations, as are warmer winters and warmer nights. Future generations have insurance too against a naturally cooling trend. Even a big outbreak of volcanoes.
Wind, solar, and batteries industrialize the landscape and do not appreciably change temperature and sea level–and will not with the saturation effect of atmospheric CO2 well along.
What is the case for government energy forcing again?
Kenway then goes low:
Until you cease accepting funding from Oil and Gas, this topic is not worth discussing further with you. Your logic isn’t even being supported by your oil and gas clients any more.
To which I responded:
Ad hominem? Let’s debate the climate and energy issues.
As your own words indirectly say (“Your logic isn’t even being supported by your oil and gas clients any more”), I am not beholden to any fossil-fuel funder or industry funder (wind, solar, batteries), or individual funder.
I am a classical liberal, and supporters (we have thousands) generally support consumer-chosen, taxpayer-neutral energies that are better for the environment than dilute, intermittent substitutes.
Are you happy with greenwashing and corporate rent-seeking, by the way? Are you an elitist?
And then, like so many others, he just disappeared. Is mainstream climate ‘environmentalism’ a religion or what?