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Michael Schennenberger runs the BTI, or the "Breakthrough Institute", which is against taxing carbon, against fossil fuel reduction, and pro-geoengineering. It

by moosey 7y ago

Michael Schennenberger runs the BTI, or the "Breakthrough Institute", which is against taxing carbon, against fossil fuel reduction, and pro-geoengineering. It is ultimately a think-tank, which is just another name for a professional propaganda unit, IMO. This is an article encouraging you to calm down and sit down. It's a careful cherry-pick of data, something that the IPCC report is not, and something that is extremely common in contemporary opinion pieces. We should not be rosy about climate change or other pollution related issues. There exists massive quantities of evidence that can be covered at hacker news, and seeing this disinformation here when we have access to actual scientific information about climate change shocks me.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
He's also a registered lobbyist, founded and runs Environmental Progress - essentially a pro nuclear lobby group, and is rabidly anti-renewables - inventing "facts" to make them look bad. He does far more damage than good, and you basically can't trust a word he says or cites.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  Pro nuclear is a good thing though no? It seems like the solution to climate change and energy production. I know I'm very skeptical of people who claim to be pro-environment then rally against nuclear power.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Sure if done by actual facts and economic or climate advantages. Using it as a basis to spin against hydro or wind - i.e. to prove they are unviable just makes a complete mockery of his claims. TL;DR He lies about it and makes shit up, repeatedly, in all his pieces. What's he afraid of? Nuclear should stand on the reality of the proposition, and indeed should have a place in any low carbon solution if done properly.
  - mantap 7y ago
    Nuclear is a solution in countries such as India and China where it can be constructed for cheaper, but in the west it is dying due to the high cost. If nuclear only compared unfavorablely to fossil fuels the externalities could be addressed by a carbon tax. But because it compares unfavorably to renewables it is really dying.
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      Except renewables cannot deliver a whole network on their own ever, so there is no competition. The cost is a fake issue, because nuclear competes against coal and gas power plants and not renewables. You need a base load capability for smoothing in an electrical grid. Most renewables are the exactly opposite. The exception is biogas or other gasification plants a these cannot handle the required load at all. Not even hydropower. Look at what happens in Australia if you push too much solar energy (same with wind) on the network.
      - bryanlarsen 7y ago
        > Except renewables cannot deliver a whole network, so it does not. Solar and wind need to be paired peaker plants. Conventional nuclear doesn't provide peaking ability. Battery powered peakers are quite expensive, but the need for them can be reduced drastically through over-provisioning and interconnection.
        AstralStorm 7y ago
        If we could overprovision solar and wind, we wouldn't have the problem now? I find that hard to believe. What happens when you need extra load at night or during a country wide lull in wind speed? Nuclear reduces the need for peakers exactly because it can overprovision reliably. You could also make nuclear peakers if you wanted reasonably easily too. Nuclear plants have tunable output to a point, they're just slow and hard to fully stop, so you would make a design optimized for very tunable output and high peak power. (0) Solar and wind cannot suddenly overprovision. The sources either exist or not, you can at most ground them instead of collecting power. 0) IAEA - Non-baseload operation of nuclear power plants: https://www.iaea.org/publications/11104/non-baseload-operation-in-nuclear-power-plants-load-following-and-frequency-control-modes-of-flexible-operation https://www.iaea.org/publications/11104/non-baseload-operati...
- thu2111 7y ago
  You basically can't trust a word he says or cites. He mostly cites the IPCC and climate scientists. Or are you saying those sources aren't trustworthy? I read the article. Every word of it is true. It can be summed up as: Lots of people, especially teenagers, are starting to suffer mental health problems because they think the world is about to end. The world isn't about to end, this is a lie. The people claiming it is are mostly making it up, or misquoting other people, or in one case a journalist misheard "eight billion" as "a billion" and other comedies of errors. It's important that people understand what climate science really says before a teenager does something they can't come back from.
  - xyz0 7y ago
    > Lots of people, especially teenagers, are starting to suffer mental health problems because they think the world is about to end Can you source this? > It's important that people understand what climate science really says before a teenager does something they can't come back from. Are you saying that climate change is so widely accepted and feared that it's causing the rate of suicides to increase? Wouldn't a better indicator of the acknowledgement of (supposedly-overblown) effects of climate change be, you know, individuals and governments taking action to curtail those effects instead of walking out of global accords [1], or actively contributing to the acceleration of those effects [2]? [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40127326 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40127326 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/world/americas/brazil-amazon-deforestation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/world/americas/brazil-ama...
    - thu2111 7y ago
      Can you source this? The first paragraphs of the article give both direct quotes from people saying they had that experience, and then cites a report from British psychologists saying they'd observed this effect at scale. Did you read the article? Are you saying that climate change is so widely accepted and feared that it's causing the rate of suicides to increase. It risks doing exactly that: "Studies from around the world document growing anxiety and depression, particularly among children, about climate change." People aren't scared of climate change as actually observed, they're scared of what they're being fed by people like Greta Thunberg, who is lying about the expected scale of the impact. The fact that journalists, politicians and even a few scientists are saying this despite it being false is what the article is about.
leereeves 7y ago
Do you have a source for your claim that that BTI is "against fossil fuel reduction"? And why do you include "pro-geoengineering" in that list of "bad things BTI believes"? If we aren't going to significantly reduce emissions (and after 40 years of political inaction that should be obvious to everyone), geoengineering may be our best response to climate change.
- moosey 7y ago
  I'm not against geoengineering, and it will be part of the actions that posterity will have to do in order to deal with climate change, but why leave the major changes in lifestyle that will be required to fight it for future generations? We must accept that we need to massively increase energy efficiency, and a huge part of that is abandoning the "everyone gets a car and a McMansion". We should not default to geoengineering. We should default to reduction of carbon pollution, obviously, then when it isn't enough, start geoengineering, which will probably also be necessary. The start with geoengineering faction is just a few steps away from the "it isn't happening" crowd.
the-dude 7y ago
He is trying to counter claims of "4 billion casualties".
- leereeves 7y ago
  And similar claims like "the world is going to end in 12 years".
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    No one has made those claims, can you cite an instance?
    - the-dude 7y ago
      It is in the article.
      - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        No, it very much isn't. "Adults tell children the end of the world is coming" and someone's random unnamed teen friend concludes they have ten years left to live are. Which is significant of nothing at all - mere hyperbole. The only claims based on 12 years I have heard are based on reality of the IPCC reports and their assorted scenarios to track particular temperature changes by 2100. On that there have been claims we have 12 years to get on track - very different to the world ending in 2031. On a Tuesday at 14;00.
        leereeves 7y ago
        > On that there have been claims we have 12 years to get on track In order to meet an arbitrary mark chosen primarily because people like round numbers. Nonetheless, the IPCC report was reasonable, and didn't conclude with "we're all going to die". But then celebrities and social media oversimplified that and people who get most of their information from celebrities or social media came to believe that they're going to die, soon. That's alarmism. And the author called out alarmism, not the IPCC, so pointing out that the IPCC aren't alarmists isn't relevant.
9999px 7y ago
So glad to see this comment here. The entire time I was reading that I kept thinking, "I need to google this guy, he's clearly got skin in the game."

by moosey 7y ago

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

He's also a registered lobbyist, founded and runs Environmental Progress - essentially a pro nuclear lobby group, and is rabidly anti-renewables - inventing "facts" to make them look bad. He does far more damage than good, and you basically can't trust a word he says or cites.

malvosenior 7y ago
Pro nuclear is a good thing though no? It seems like the solution to climate change and energy production. I know I'm very skeptical of people who claim to be pro-environment then rally against nuclear power.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Sure if done by actual facts and economic or climate advantages. Using it as a basis to spin against hydro or wind - i.e. to prove they are unviable just makes a complete mockery of his claims. TL;DR He lies about it and makes shit up, repeatedly, in all his pieces. What's he afraid of? Nuclear should stand on the reality of the proposition, and indeed should have a place in any low carbon solution if done properly.
- mantap 7y ago
  Nuclear is a solution in countries such as India and China where it can be constructed for cheaper, but in the west it is dying due to the high cost. If nuclear only compared unfavorablely to fossil fuels the externalities could be addressed by a carbon tax. But because it compares unfavorably to renewables it is really dying.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Except renewables cannot deliver a whole network on their own ever, so there is no competition. The cost is a fake issue, because nuclear competes against coal and gas power plants and not renewables. You need a base load capability for smoothing in an electrical grid. Most renewables are the exactly opposite. The exception is biogas or other gasification plants a these cannot handle the required load at all. Not even hydropower. Look at what happens in Australia if you push too much solar energy (same with wind) on the network.
    - bryanlarsen 7y ago
      > Except renewables cannot deliver a whole network, so it does not. Solar and wind need to be paired peaker plants. Conventional nuclear doesn't provide peaking ability. Battery powered peakers are quite expensive, but the need for them can be reduced drastically through over-provisioning and interconnection.
      - AstralStorm 7y ago
        If we could overprovision solar and wind, we wouldn't have the problem now? I find that hard to believe. What happens when you need extra load at night or during a country wide lull in wind speed? Nuclear reduces the need for peakers exactly because it can overprovision reliably. You could also make nuclear peakers if you wanted reasonably easily too. Nuclear plants have tunable output to a point, they're just slow and hard to fully stop, so you would make a design optimized for very tunable output and high peak power. (0) Solar and wind cannot suddenly overprovision. The sources either exist or not, you can at most ground them instead of collecting power. 0) IAEA - Non-baseload operation of nuclear power plants: https://www.iaea.org/publications/11104/non-baseload-operation-in-nuclear-power-plants-load-following-and-frequency-control-modes-of-flexible-operation https://www.iaea.org/publications/11104/non-baseload-operati...
thu2111 7y ago
You basically can't trust a word he says or cites. He mostly cites the IPCC and climate scientists. Or are you saying those sources aren't trustworthy? I read the article. Every word of it is true. It can be summed up as: Lots of people, especially teenagers, are starting to suffer mental health problems because they think the world is about to end. The world isn't about to end, this is a lie. The people claiming it is are mostly making it up, or misquoting other people, or in one case a journalist misheard "eight billion" as "a billion" and other comedies of errors. It's important that people understand what climate science really says before a teenager does something they can't come back from.
- xyz0 7y ago
  > Lots of people, especially teenagers, are starting to suffer mental health problems because they think the world is about to end Can you source this? > It's important that people understand what climate science really says before a teenager does something they can't come back from. Are you saying that climate change is so widely accepted and feared that it's causing the rate of suicides to increase? Wouldn't a better indicator of the acknowledgement of (supposedly-overblown) effects of climate change be, you know, individuals and governments taking action to curtail those effects instead of walking out of global accords [1], or actively contributing to the acceleration of those effects [2]? [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40127326 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40127326 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/world/americas/brazil-amazon-deforestation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/world/americas/brazil-ama...
  - thu2111 7y ago
    Can you source this? The first paragraphs of the article give both direct quotes from people saying they had that experience, and then cites a report from British psychologists saying they'd observed this effect at scale. Did you read the article? Are you saying that climate change is so widely accepted and feared that it's causing the rate of suicides to increase. It risks doing exactly that: "Studies from around the world document growing anxiety and depression, particularly among children, about climate change." People aren't scared of climate change as actually observed, they're scared of what they're being fed by people like Greta Thunberg, who is lying about the expected scale of the impact. The fact that journalists, politicians and even a few scientists are saying this despite it being false is what the article is about.

leereeves 7y ago

Do you have a source for your claim that that BTI is "against fossil fuel reduction"? And why do you include "pro-geoengineering" in that list of "bad things BTI believes"? If we aren't going to significantly reduce emissions (and after 40 years of political inaction that should be obvious to everyone), geoengineering may be our best response to climate change.

moosey 7y ago
I'm not against geoengineering, and it will be part of the actions that posterity will have to do in order to deal with climate change, but why leave the major changes in lifestyle that will be required to fight it for future generations? We must accept that we need to massively increase energy efficiency, and a huge part of that is abandoning the "everyone gets a car and a McMansion". We should not default to geoengineering. We should default to reduction of carbon pollution, obviously, then when it isn't enough, start geoengineering, which will probably also be necessary. The start with geoengineering faction is just a few steps away from the "it isn't happening" crowd.

the-dude 7y ago

He is trying to counter claims of "4 billion casualties".

leereeves 7y ago
And similar claims like "the world is going to end in 12 years".
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  No one has made those claims, can you cite an instance?
  - the-dude 7y ago
    It is in the article.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      No, it very much isn't. "Adults tell children the end of the world is coming" and someone's random unnamed teen friend concludes they have ten years left to live are. Which is significant of nothing at all - mere hyperbole. The only claims based on 12 years I have heard are based on reality of the IPCC reports and their assorted scenarios to track particular temperature changes by 2100. On that there have been claims we have 12 years to get on track - very different to the world ending in 2031. On a Tuesday at 14;00.
      - leereeves 7y ago
        > On that there have been claims we have 12 years to get on track In order to meet an arbitrary mark chosen primarily because people like round numbers. Nonetheless, the IPCC report was reasonable, and didn't conclude with "we're all going to die". But then celebrities and social media oversimplified that and people who get most of their information from celebrities or social media came to believe that they're going to die, soon. That's alarmism. And the author called out alarmism, not the IPCC, so pointing out that the IPCC aren't alarmists isn't relevant.

9999px 7y ago

So glad to see this comment here. The entire time I was reading that I kept thinking, "I need to google this guy, he's clearly got skin in the game."