Fossil Fuels: The Big Picture
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Should the world stop using fossil fuels—oil, coal, and natural gas? Or should we embrace them as an essential part of modern life? Alex Epstein explores these questions.
Script:
The world needs more fossil fuels—more oil, coal, and natural gas. Not less.
Does that sound crazy?
It’s actually not—not if you employ one common-sense principle.
It’s the same principle you use when you decide whether to take a prescription drug.
Carefully weigh the benefits and the negative side effects.
If the benefits of using fossil fuels outweigh the negative side effects, then we should keep using fossil fuels. If the negative side effects outweigh the benefits, then we should stop using fossil fuels as soon as possible.
Which is it?
It turns out that the benefits of fossil fuels far outweigh the negative side effects.
The reason that most so-called experts, including many climate scientists, are against fossil fuels is that they violate this principle. They ignore the benefits of fossil fuels while overstating their negative side effects.
To know the truth about the benefits and side effects of fossil fuels, you need to understand eight essential facts.
Fact One: Cost-effective energy is essential to human flourishing.
This is almost never discussed, but no one can dispute it.
Low-cost, reliable, versatile energy makes modern life possible. There’s a simple reason for this. Energy powers the machines that allow us to be productive and prosperous—from the combine harvesters that allow one farm worker to do the work of 1,000 to the incubators that save the lives of millions of premature babies. Everything depends on energy.
Thanks to the unprecedented availability of cost-effective energy—overwhelmingly fossil fuel energy—the world has never been a better place for human life. Life expectancy has risen sharply. And extreme poverty (those that earn less than $2 per day) has plummeted from 42% in 1980 to less than 10% today.
Fact Two: Billions of people are suffering and dying for lack of energy.
Most of us take cost-effective energy for granted. But much of the world doesn’t have that luxury.
For the full script, visit: https://l.prageru.com/3mATLad
#fossilfuels #gas
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Good thing "PragerU" doesn't spell out university, because they'd be sued for fraud. It's clearly not educational, but right wing industry propaganda. How much money is big oil giving to fund BS videos like this? The reason the vast majority of scientists are warning of continued fossil fuel extraction and use is because they've done the research — you know, facts and science? — not because "they ignore common sense." smh I sure hope young people aren't listening to this well-designed and super-expensive disinformation campaign. For the sake of our planet.
There is just nothing behind those eyes
This is such a big lie. The world is burning up. Stupidity 101!
This is the most idiotic piece of content I have ever had to watch. I'm so sorry to people who will be getting brainwashed by this.
Just wanna mention yall, prager gets alot of their money from oil and gas companies and also fails to mentiom how climate change will lead to more heat deaths, plants and animals will die bc plants that they eat are dying leading to mass famines, and more heat causes more rain to fall in places ie more hurricans typhoons and tsunamis, and less water in areas that should have water thats why only recently las vegas had been on water scarity due to snow melting on the Colorado mountins going down to lake mead but the snow tops arent getting the rain it needs to replenish the mountains.
If they really wanna help las vegas without losing their private company funds just blow up mt whitney
Also i think over 100 ppl died during that snowstrom in texas as the energy went out as it was mostly based on coal and gas the windmills were fine tho only a bit if them went out
3:40 yeah ok buddy, are you eating out of an oil executives hand? That’s like Seattle turning into phoenix. Look it up. I personally don’t like widespread extinction, loss of biodiversity, and the possible extinction of the human race, but if your to greedy to do some deep thinking I guess that’s just you
3:41 you do realize that 5°f is catastrophic right
Thank you very much!
I totally agree that fossil fuels are needed at the moment-we need them to safeguard people’s lives. The problem is that there are small island nations in the South Pacific, where I live, who don’t have the money to safeguard themselves against sea level rise, and subsistence farmers who are facing more unpredictable weather. We must love our brothers and sisters in Christ enough to change the way we live to safeguard their livelihoods. We also are called to be stewards of Gods creation, and rule it with him, not harm it.
We obviously need to keep using fossil fuels, but we should be prayerfully considering how we can reduce our dependence on them
He's 100% spot on. I don't have to be a climate scientist to know it.
So many of the comments don't seem to understand that oil is so good, we'd have to invent it if it didn't exist. The main motivation behind the reasoning for a green transition in the first place is a disdain for capitalism. Oil is not going anywhere, not without an alternative and the only reason we're looking for one is because of this weird environmental religion built up around controlling people. The God that failed is alive and well.
This video is totally not funded by conservative billionaires, trying to get you to keep fossil fuels around longer through literally lying to you.
No money in it for the billionaires that donate to prageru as showcased in their tax/donations files available for viewership online.
Nope, none of that.
If you buy this stuff, you're an idiot. If you agree with this garbage, you're an idiot, do actual research, follow the money.
who has more incentive to lie to you, the fossil fuel industry responsible for milking you dry and ruining your environment, or climate scientist and the decades of decades of data that back their claims including the same data fossil fuel companies hid from you even though they knew about it back in the 1970s.
Prager U is a cancer.
That last bit should have been "don't take the pill" if the analogy holds that big pharma is as dishonest as the climate catastrophists.
This is propaganda
What a load of crap. More propoganda from a company beholden to billionaires rather than truth.
such a hot take yet again
nuclear power is better, rationally it outweighs fossil fuels
“Earth sea level will rise 3 feet over the next hundred years and that’s not a big deal.”
Dude, that is objectively a massive deal.
"Global Warming Slows Down and Levels off"
Tell that to Venus.
this is the dumbest agrument ive heard in a while bro if an area is cold for hundreds of years and suddenly gets warmer it has negative afects on everything because they are'nt addapted to heat and humans can just leave but in enviormant cant ☠
This is propaganda. Is Koch paying these guys to say this?
What I love is the hypocrisy of Hollywood and politicians telling us to cut back on fossil fuels, walk, drive electric cars, install solar panels, windmills, etc. While their mansions, weekend homes in Aspen use of fossil fuels in a day is what the average American uses in a month. And they drive gas guzzling luxury cars as well
He’s got some real balls to say that fossil fuels helps “protect us” from climate change lmao. I guess when weighing the risk vs benefits of fossil fuels, not considering the end of modern society doesn’t count as a risk. Or the fact that our fossil fuels are not renewable and will likely run out this century.
Did a fourth grader write this?
Watch out for the climate shills trying to sell you their "science". The payroll is huge for this BS
Re, Fact 1: cost effective energy is essential to human flourishing – the issue here is the argument that humans are the problem. Many who campaign for “green” energy see human existence as secondary to all other life on earth.
All perfect points n facts, and I think going nuclear is a positive too especially if we phase in the use of the nuclear plant model made in the 60s that uses recycled nuclear waste (which can be recycled time after time) or go the thorium type plants
Fact Seven: The “greenhouse effect” is a diminishing phenomenon.
As we’re so often told, the “greenhouse effect” means that the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the warmer the climate. But that’s not the full story.
As CO2 levels rise, warming slows down and levels off. This is mainstream climate science. But it’s rarely communicated to the general public because it contradicts the climate catastrophe narrative.
please share Climate Science links that support this fact
Who in the F is downvoting this?
Well CO2 levels are increasing, CO2 is NOT the only thing plants need to survive. Plants also need an increase in minerals to grow, which is not increasing. Also warmer temperatures mean more droughts and floods that cause soil erosion and plants need soil to grow.
Fact 5 is so misleading. Degrees of Celsius change on a global scale can wreak havoc. Similarly, the global temperature lags behind CO2 levels, meaning even if we stop emissions entirely at 2 degrees, the atmosphere will continue to heat up for some time. 1 or 2 degrees doesn’t sound like a lot, but when out into perspective of the average global temperature, you realize that 2 degrees is not small.
The climate movement has it backwards. Fossil fuels created the unprecedented economic growth that led to the modern world. It's the modern world that keeps us safe. Poverty kills vastly more people than warming ever could and all climate policies induce greater poverty.