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How global warming saves more people than it dooms

Published

1 year ago

6 minute read

From Energy Talking Points by Alex Epstein

This is Part 3 of a 4 part feature where I cover 4 of the top energy issues that will be discussed this summer, especially as politicians return home for August Recess.

Warmer temperatures are less of a threat than cold ones, and fossil fuels make us safer from both.

  • Anti-fossil fuel politicians love summer because hot temperatures give them the opportunity to portray the world as “on fire”—and offering anti-fossil-fuel policies as a solution.In reality, cold is a bigger problem than heat—and anti-fossil-fuel policies make both worse.¹
    temperature-headlines
  • Anyone commentating responsibly on summer temperatures must acknowledge 3 facts:1. Heat-related deaths are far less prevalent than cold-related deaths
    2. Earth is warming slowly—especially in warm places
    3. Fossil fuels make us safer from both cold and heat
  • 1. Heat-related deaths < cold-related deaths 

    When our leaders discuss the warming of the planet, they treat warming as obviously bad. But while they portray the planet as already “too hot,” the fact is that far more human beings die of cold than of heat.²

    lancet-cold-deaths
  • Study after study has found that deaths from cold outnumber deaths from heat by 5-15 times. On every continent cold is more dangerous than heat. Even in many countries we think of as especially hot, such as India, cold-related deaths significantly exceed heat-related deaths.³
    lancet-warming-saves-lives
  • 2. Earth is warming slowly—especially in warm places 

    So far we’ve had ~1°C of warming from a cold starting point in Earth’s history 150 years ago. Future warming will be limited by the diminishing nature of “the greenhouse effect”—as well as being concentrated in colder places.⁴

  • Warming so far has been slow and benign. But will future warming make the world unlivably hot? No, given 2 facts almost universally acknowledged by climate scientists: 1) the diminishing warming impact of CO2 and 2) the concentration of warming in colder places.
  • The warming impact of CO2 diminishes (“logarithmically”) as it increases in concentration.Every new molecule of CO2 we add to the atmosphere has less of a warming effect than the previous one. Warming will diminish as emissions increase—the only question is at what rate.⁵
    climate-sensitivity
  • Climate warming is concentrated in colder areas of the world (such as the Arctic), during colder times of day, and during colder seasons.This means that future warming will occur more in cold situations where it saves lives than in hot situations where it causes problems.⁶
  • All reporting on the warming of the Earth should specify not only that humans are far more endangered by cold than by heat, but also that Earth is warming slowly—and less in warm places. That virtually no reporting acknowledges this shows that much “reporting” is propaganda.
  • 3. Fossil fuels make us safer from dangerous temperatures 

    Not only is the warming from fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions slow and in many ways beneficial, the uniquely cost-effective energy we get from fossil fuels makes us both safer from cold and heat.

  • The key to being protected from dangerous temperatures is to master them by producing different forms of temperature protection, such as: insulated buildings, heating, and air-conditioning. All of these things require energy—which means for most people they require fossil fuels.
  • Fossil fuels are the only source of low-cost, reliable energy that for the foreseeable future can provide energy to billions—in a world where 3 billion people still use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator.⁷
  • On a planet where people die much more from cold than from heat, but both are major threats, the key to safety is to have energy be as affordable and plentiful as possible so as many as possible can afford heating and air conditioning. For now this means more fossil fuels.
  • People who blaming pro-fossil-fuel politicians for hot temperatures evade that:1. Cold is more dangerous than heat
    2. Warming is slow, especially in warm places
    3. We need fossil fuels to protect us from cold and heat
  • Reducing CO2 emissions in a humane and practical way means focusing on liberating alternatives—especially the most potent, nuclear—to try to truly outcompete fossil fuels in the future. Depriving us off fossil fuels now and pretending China will follow is immoral and impractical.

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Mortgaging Canada’s energy future — the hidden costs of the Carney-Smith pipeline deal

Published on December 21, 2025

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By Dan McTeague

Much of the commentary on the Carney-Smith pipeline Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has focused on the question of whether or not the proposed pipeline will ever get built.

That’s an important topic, and one that deserves to be examined — whether, as John Robson, of the indispensable Climate Discussion Nexus, predicted, “opposition from the government of British Columbia and aboriginal groups, and the skittishness of the oil industry about investing in a major project in Canada, will kill [the pipeline] dead.”

But I’m going to ask a different question: Would it even be worth building this pipeline on the terms Ottawa is forcing on Alberta? If you squint, the MOU might look like a victory on paper. Ottawa suspends the oil and gas emissions cap, proposes an exemption from the West Coast tanker ban, and lays the groundwork for the construction of one (though only one) million barrels per day pipeline to tidewater.

But in return, Alberta must agree to jack its industrial carbon tax up from $95 to $130 per tonne at a minimum, while committing to tens of billions in carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) spending, including the $16.5 billion Pathways Alliance megaproject.

Here’s the part none of the project’s boosters seem to want to mention: those concessions will make the production of Canadian hydrocarbon energy significantly more expensive.

As economist Jack Mintz has explained, the industrial carbon tax hike alone adds more than $5 USD per barrel of Canadian crude to marginal production costs — the costs that matter when companies decide whether to invest in new production. Layer on the CCUS requirements and you get another $1.20–$3 per barrel for mining projects and $3.60–$4.80 for steam-assisted operations.

While roughly 62% of the capital cost of carbon capture is to be covered by taxpayers — another problem with the agreement, I might add — the remainder is covered by the industry, and thus, eventually, consumers.

Total damage: somewhere between $6.40 and $10 US per barrel. Perhaps more.

“Ultimately,” the Fraser Institute explains, “this will widen the competitiveness gap between Alberta and many other jurisdictions, such as the United States,” that don’t hamstring their energy producers in this way. Producers in Texas and Oklahoma, not to mention Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, or Russia, aren’t paying a dime in equivalent carbon taxes or mandatory CCUS bills. They’re not so masochistic.

American refiners won’t pay a “low-carbon premium” for Canadian crude. They’ll just buy cheaper oil or ramp up their own production.

In short, a shiny new pipe is worthless if the extra cost makes barrels of our oil so expensive that no one will want them.

And that doesn’t even touch on the problem for the domestic market, where the higher production cost will be passed onto Canadian consumers in the form of higher gas and diesel prices, home heating costs, and an elevated cost of everyday goods, like groceries.

Either way, Canadians lose.

So, concludes Mintz, “The big problem for a new oil pipeline isn’t getting BC or First Nation acceptance. Rather, it’s smothering the industry’s competitiveness by layering on carbon pricing and decarbonization costs that most competing countries don’t charge.” Meanwhile, lurking underneath this whole discussion is the MOU’s ultimate Achilles’ heel: net-zero.

The MOU proudly declares that “Canada and Alberta remain committed to achieving Net-Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.” As Vaclav Smil documented in a recent study of Net-Zero, global fossil-fuel use has risen 55% since the 1997 Kyoto agreement, despite trillions spent on subsidies and regulations. Fossil fuels still supply 82% of the world’s energy.

With these numbers in mind, the idea that Canada can unilaterally decarbonize its largest export industry in 25 years is delusional.

This deal doesn’t secure Canada’s energy future. It mortgages it. We are trading market access for self-inflicted costs that will shrink production, scare off capital, and cut into the profitability of any potential pipeline. Affordable energy, good jobs, and national prosperity shouldn’t require surrendering to net-zero fantasy.If Ottawa were serious about making Canada an energy superpower, it would scrap the anti-resource laws outright, kill the carbon taxes, and let our world-class oil and gas compete on merit. Instead, we’ve been handed a backroom MOU which, for the cost of one pipeline — if that! — guarantees higher costs today and smothers the industry that is the backbone of the Canadian economy.

This MOU isn’t salvation. It’s a prescription for Canadian decline.

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Daily Caller

Paris Climate Deal Now Decade-Old Disaster

Published on December 21, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Steve Milloy

The Paris Climate Accord was adopted 10 years ago this week. It’s been a decade of disaster that President Donald Trump is rightly trying again to end.

The stated purpose of the agreement was for countries to voluntarily cut emissions to avoid the average global temperature exceeding the (guessed at) pre-industrial temperature by 3.6°F (2°C) and preferably 2.7°F (1.5°C).

Since December 2015, the world spent an estimated $10 trillion trying to achieve the Paris goals. What has been accomplished? Instead of reducing global emissions, they have increased about 12 percent. While the increase in emissions is actually a good thing for the environment and humanity, spending $10 trillion in a failed effort to cut emissions just underscores the agreement’s waste, fraud and abuse.

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But wasting $10 trillion is only the tip of the iceberg.

The effort to cut emissions was largely based on forcing industrial countries to replace their tried-and-true fossil fuel-based energy systems with not-ready-for-prime-time wind, solar and battery-based systems. This forced transition has driven up energy costs and made energy systems less reliable. The result of that has been economy-crippling deindustrialization in former powerhouses of Germany and Britain.

And it gets worse.

European nations imagined they could reduce their carbon footprint by outsourcing their coal and natural gas needs to Russia. That outsourcing enriched Russia and made the European economy dependent on Russia for energy. That vulnerability, in turn, and a weak President Joe Biden encouraged Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.

The result of that has been more than one million killed and wounded, the mass destruction of Ukraine worth more than $500 billion so far and the inestimable cost of global destabilization. Europe will have to spend hundreds of billions more on defense, and U.S. taxpayers have been forced to spend hundreds of billions on arms for Ukraine. Putin has even raised the specter of using nuclear weapons.

President Barack Obama unconstitutionally tried to impose the Paris agreement on the U.S. as an Executive agreement rather than a treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate. Although Trump terminated the Executive agreement during his first administration, President Joe Biden rejoined the agreement soon after taking office, pledging to double Obama’s emissions cuts pledge to 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Biden’s emissions pledge was an impetus for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that allocated $1.2 trillion in spending for what Trump labeled as the Green New Scam. Although Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduced that spending by about $500 billion and he is trying to reduce it further through Executive action, much of that money was used in an effort to buy the 2024 election for Democrats. The rest has been and will be used to wreck our electricity grid with dangerous, national security-compromising wind, solar and battery equipment from Communists China.

Then there’s this. At the Paris climate conference in 2015, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated quite clearly that emissions cuts by the U.S. and other industrial countries were meaningless and would accomplish nothing since the developing world’s emissions would be increasing.

Finally, there is the climate realism aspect to all this. After the Paris agreement was signed and despite the increase in emissions, the average global temperature declined during the years from 2016 to 2022, per NOAA data.

The super El Nino experienced during 2023-2024 caused a temporary temperature spike. La Nina conditions have now returned the average global temperature to below the 2015-2016 level, per NASA satellite data. The overarching point is that any “global warming” that occurred over the past 40 years is actually associated with the natural El Nino-La Nina cycle, not emissions.

The Paris agreement has been all pain and no gain. Moreover, there was never any need for the agreement in the first place. A big thanks to President Trump for pulling us out again.

Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer. He posts on X at @JunkScience.

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