The Doomberg Effect

A Hockey Stick Graph I Can Believe In

I wrote one of my favorite sentences of 2023 in an essay titled “The Death of Skepticism.” The sentence referred to a tweet from a PhD student in nuclear fusion engineering and it is as follows:

The tweet was a woke nerd version of the Crash Davis “I believe in the soul…” monologue from Bull Durham, just not as thoughtful or elegant.

Crash Davis is the character played by Kevin Costner, and his short speech covers spirituality, sensuality, sex, sports, literature, politics, and tradition. I will not reproduce it here because some of the words are … raunchy.

My list of subscribers has expanded by 50% since December 22nd. That increase happened because of an appreciative comment I made on a

Doomberg

post: Peak Cheap Oil is a Myth. I referred to one of my own essays, they restacked it, and the flurry began. I’m very thankful.

All through 2023, when I published an essay, I immediately started to think about what to write next. There were occasions when the new idea was there before I published the work I was writing. Sometimes it would take a few days or a week for the new thing to come to me. I’d be outside on a solo run, or scanning through news items, or reading the work of others on Substack, and something—a thought, a few words, a world event—would spark an idea. And I would get to work. I started down a few paths that I didn’t finish, but not often. I completed most everything I started, even if the finished work wasn’t what I initially imagined it would be.

Over the past couple of weeks, as my list of subscribers grew at a rapid pace, I started to feel a little pressure. “Damn,” I said to myself. “Now I’ve really got to write something. But what?”

I told myself to be patient. Inspiration has always shown itself in the past. Christmas visits from my mother and sister, and from our two college boys kept us busy cooking food and attending events, but the little gnawing concern stayed with me, especially when my subscriber list took off for a second time after New Year’s Day.

Most of my most recent subscribers have read my essay “On Self Interest,” because that’s the work I referenced in my Doomberg comment. I wrote that essay in February, quite early in my Substack journey. The number of “likes” and comments has exploded since Christmas. My other essays have not seen the same level of interest, but new readers are going back and reading some of my other work. I noticed some activity around my Skepticism essay with the Bull Durham reference, and it hit me. For my first post of 2024, as a way of further introducing myself to all my readers, I would honor the character of Crash Davis and write my own, “I believe in the soul …” manifesto. Let me begin.

I believe the solutions proposed to avert a climate crisis—so called—would be far more damaging to humanity and the world than anything the climate has in store for us in the foreseeable future. To illustrate, imagine a science fiction scenario where the planet faced a true, existential threat. Let’s say a massive asteroid is detected, and it’s on a collision course with Earth. The new asteroid is estimated to be an order of magnitude larger than the celestial body that created the Chicxulub impact crater that lies at the northern tip of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. The Chicxulub impact is thought to be responsible for the massive extinction event that occurred 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period. This is when the dinosaurs went away. The Chicxulub impactor, which may have been about ten kilometers, or six miles in diameter, caused immediate, widespread devastation and longer-term climatic disruption that is estimated to have killed 75% of all plant and animal life on earth. Our fictional impactor, being much larger than the Chicxulub body, and due to collide with Earth five years after its detection, is expected to do worse.

image by MoFuzzero13

For months after the discovery, scientists work feverishly on strategies to destroy the asteroid or perturb its path. All the calculations come out the same. Even with delivery of nuclear weapons to the surface of the asteroid the body is too large to be destroyed or perturbed sufficiently to change the inevitable. Meanwhile, a geophysicist working in the oil and gas industry does his own calculations every night in his home in Midland TX. The solution he develops is novel, brilliant, and frightening. His calculations reveal that the mass distribution of the earth can be materially changed if humanity immediately ceases to withdraw and combust the crude oil, natural gas, and coal from the earth’s crust that would otherwise have been produced and burned over the ensuing five years. Leaving the resource in the ground will alter the gravitational relationship between Earth and its nearest neighbors, the sun and the moon, such that Earth’s orbit is perturbed in a fashion that removes it from the path of the meteor. He gets an audience with NASA and visiting scientists from around the world, many of them Nobel laureates. They check his work and validate it. There is a way to save the planet and its capacity to support life.

So humanity is faced with a choice. One option saves the planet from widespread destruction but commits humanity to a dystopian path of crop failure, starvation, economic and social breakdown, conflict, and the return of survivors to a more agrarian, low-energy lifestyle. Billions will die. Incredibly, the alternative is worse.

All this is fantastic, I know. If anyone would like to start a discussion about a film option agreement, I’m open. But the point is this. Having to make this choice would be an absolute tragedy. Going cold turkey on hydrocarbon fuels is not a good option for humanity or wildlife. We will burn the last tree and kill every fish and woodland creature if that’s what it takes to stay alive and feed our families. And yet there are prominent people—politicians, scientists, business leaders—who argue for this policy. It’s not just nutters from Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.

Currently, our climatic Sophie’s Choice is presented differently. “End Fossil Fuels” is touted as a necessity, but also as a great benefit to all of humanity and the world. Green energy, green jobs, and green prosperity will abound. Well, maybe not so much green prosperity. There’s usually an element of “you’ll own nothing and like it” slipped in as well, but in general the stakes are low on this side of the equation, but high on the other, climate crisis side. This is backwards. The stakes associated with even a moderate phase-out of hydrocarbon fuels are high. The stakes associated with continued, status quo CO2 emissions may be high, and may not be. Despite what you hear, climate models are just that, models. And if weather prediction models start to get sketchy three or four days out, should we really be smashing the foundations of modern society because the computer says we should?

What is the proper course of action? In this instance, you avoid the certain devastation that is abandonment of the affordable, reliable energy sources that are the foundation of modern society. And then you use that affordable, reliable energy to build prosperity and buttress the technological capability and resilience needed to deal with future problems, should they arise. Energy builds prosperity, and prosperity builds resilience. And if you have reliable energy systems that don’t emit CO2, don’t shut them down (looking at you Germany).

Energy is the master resource, and everything else is derivative — from the Doomberg post Slick Landing

My initial statement did not match the brevity of Crash Davis, who simply said “I believe in the soul,” but now we’re rolling. I believe that electric vehicles, windmills, and solar panels will do little to nothing to change the emissions profile of the world. This is because the energy expectations of citizens in wealthy countries, and the energy aspirations of citizens in less-wealthy countries are inelastic. They want what they want, which means politicians will do what is necessary to keep or turn the lights on. In wealthy countries this means limiting the zero-inertia contribution of renewables to the grid, and making sure there is always firm back-up (coal, natural gas, nuclear) for those days with no wind or sunshine. Economic development in poorer countries requires reliable base-load power to support manufacturing and industrial development. Wind turbines and solar panels don’t cut it. To support their growing economy, China alone has double the current U.S. coal generation capacity either under construction, or in the permitting/planning phase. And EVs, as I’ve written before, are just horses that don't poop. They’re fine in certain circumstances, but don’t force me to buy one. A recent article by Art Berman is titled EVs Will Have No Effect on Oil Demand.

I believe the scientists, engineers, and business professionals in the oil and gas business are no more self-interested than any other group of humans. Consider those who call themselves climate scientists. Whenever a researcher who is prominent in the climate space writes or expresses an opinion that downplays the likelihood of disaster they are immediately suspected and accused of being in the service of “Big Oil,” or fossil fuel interests, or “climate deniers.” If you wish to remain part of the club, you are not allowed to step off the bus for any reason. To do so is to place at risk the web of self-interest the climate community has created for itself—grant money, teaching jobs, salaries, travel, and scientific status and reputation.

I believe that elections are a great defense against climate tyranny. As long as politicians have to answer to all citizens, and not just activist citizens, it will be difficult to implement policy that forces radical change in the way people live their lives. The United States is a good example. For all the climate emergency rhetoric emanating from the Biden administration, and campaign promises to stop the heating of the planet caused by fossil fuel emissions, the fact is the United States is currently producing more crude oil per day, about thirteen million barrels worth, than any other nation, ever. Other policies, like wind and solar mandates, have so far only caused electricity prices to rise. Their more dangerous effects, like grid-destabilization, have not yet caused a real disaster, though Texas might argue differently about the winter storm in 2021. Heads will roll in the event of a real disaster, and there will be frantic efforts to deflect blame.

Smart politicians are perennially keeping a watchful eye on the price of gasoline and residential heat, understanding at a visceral level that their career prospects are tightly correlated with these measures — also from the Doomberg post Slick Landing

For an example of what happens when an activist politician chooses a radical path unilaterally, I present Sri Lanka. I wrote an essay, The New Malthusians, in August of 2023 and presented some details of an agricultural plan forced on the country by then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. In 2021, as part of his plan to transition his country to “organic” agriculture, Rajapaksa banned the import and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, effective immediately. The fall-out was swift, and predictable. Crops failed, the economy took a massive hit, and half a million people fell back into poverty. Rajapaksa resigned in July 2022, and was convicted of economic mismanagement in 2023. Take heed, politicos.

I believe CO2 sequestration projects will have about as much effect on the future weather as wind turbines, solar arrays, and EVs—little or none. The business case for CO2 sequestration is based on two pillars, both shaky, but one decidedly more compromised than the other. The weaker of the two cornerstones is virtue-signaling by companies who must answer to shareholders. The other is government largesse, courtesy of you and me. It is much harder to get rid of. The state of Louisiana currently has 27 CO2 injection projects in the permitting phase. This flurry of activity is the result of companies jockeying to take advantage of the tax credits available in section 45Q portion of the tax code, just as renewable energy requirements, investment tax credits, and production tax credits spurred the development of U.S. wind power over the last decade. The 45Q amounts were upped in 2022, to $85/tonne CO2 for carbon capture and storage, and $60/tonne CO2 for carbon capture and storage via utilization.

There is one good reason to inject CO2 into the earth. CO2 is an effective agent for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Injection of CO2 into oil reservoirs assists production by adding pressure to the reservoir, and by mixing with the oil and reducing its viscosity, allowing it to flow more easily to producing wells. In 2012 the Institute for 21st Century Energy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated that EOR using CO2 could unlock 67 billion barrels of oil that would be economically recoverable at a price of $85/barrel. Then, as now, the primary hurdle preventing widespread application of this technology is the availability of CO2 and CO2 infrastructure at prices that yield positive rates of return. The $60/tonne tax credit can be used here, so expect to see more EOR activity going forward.

A person who commented on one of my essays suggested that I go beyond discussing what is wrong with climate and energy policy, and address what should be done to make things right. Point taken. I believe all the gatekeeping and name-calling in the world of climate science should go away. If the stakes are high it is imperative that all voices are heard. We could squander trillions on a non-problem, or the wrong problem, when there are myriad other issues in the world that deserve our resources and attention. And if continued, unfettered research and empirical evidence indicate that CO2 alarmism is warranted, I believe the search for practical solutions should be equally broad. I’m sure we can do better than wind turbines, solar arrays, and Malthusian notions of degrowth and depopulation.

In 2024 and beyond, I believe we can, with words, evidence, and votes, make inroads into the doom narrative inflicted on the entire world. It is particularly cruel to poison children and young people with this virus. What should take its place is an acknowledgement that humanity, given the freedom to dream and create, can make the world a better place.

If God represents the promise of the next world, then people, rightly, are the promise of this one — author Dean Koontz, from the second of his Jane Hawk novels, The Whispering Room

Oh, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, windless snowstorms that last three days.

“🖤 Like” this essay or I’ll write twenty more “I believe” paragraphs.