Alex Epstein Profile picture
Sep 22, 2021 15 tweets 12 min read Read on X
You may have noticed that the media aren't covering the Great Barrier Reef much this year, after reporting its imminent death incessantly for years. The reason is not no news but good news. The GBR has been rapidly improving—which doesn't fit the catastrophist agenda.

THREAD
The New York Times has for years been “reporting” on the Great Barrier Reef with these ominous headlines. Yet now that the reef has been dramatically improving, @nytimes is mute. My research team has been unable to find one story about the GBR’s improvement.
Readers of The New York Times, I encourage you to reach out to @nytopinion and @nytimes climate reporters @jwilliamsNYT @damiencave @JustinHGillis @livia_ar and ask "Why are you denying the improvement of the Great Barrier Reef by not covering it?"
aims.gov.au/reef-monitorin…
The Washington Post has, like the Times, been "reporting" on the Great Barrier Reef with ominous headlines for years. And they, too, aren't reporting at all on the reef's dramatic improvement. Why is the improvement of the Great Barrier Reef not news, @WashingtonPost?
Readers of The Washington Post, I encourage you to reach out to @PostOpinions and @washingtonpost climate reporters @chriscmooney, @themadstone, @bydarrylfears and ask “Why are you denying the improvement of the Great Barrier Reef by not covering it?”
aims.gov.au/reef-monitorin…
Background: From 2016-2020, the mainstream media expressed extreme concern about the fate of the Great Barrier Reef--a huge, beautiful underwater landscape, formed by corals and brimming with life--portraying it as in irreparable decline due overwhelmingly to our CO2 emissions.
The Great Barrier Reef *was* experiencing significant bleaching, but there were many causes, including unusually warm local waters, predatory starfish, storms ravaging the reef, plus bleaching from the reef's natural lifecycle.
Instead of looking at bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in an evenhanded way, the climate media downplayed all factors except for global warming--which they claimed would do irreparable damage by leading to warmer waters that corals couldn’t recover from.
It didn't make much sense that global warming would lead to irreparable decline of the Reef given that corals have been around for 100s of millions of years, are adaptable to extreme events, are resilient thanks to a high reproduction rate, and can grow faster in warmer temps.
Given the media’s professed concern for the Great Barrier Reef, you would think that an improvement in the reef would be cause for widespread celebration. But the reef has experienced a dramatic improvement in the last years, and the never-quiet climate media have nothing to say.
The climate media’s evasion of the Great Barrier Reef improvement confirms that they have no interest in the truth about what’s happening with climate and why. They are interested in attacking fossil fuels, attacking capitalism, and justifying vast expansions of government power.
Any science editor that covered the decline of the Great Barrier Reef but not its improvement should commit to correcting their failures--or be pressured into resigning. This includes the editors of the @nytimes, @washingtonpost, @cnn, @guardian, @usatoday, and @natgeo.
Why does it matter so much that the climate media only cover negative stories and ignore positive ones? Because it contributes to deadly energy policy by catastrophizing the side-effects of the fossil fuels that modern life depends on, while ignoring their massive benefits.
If you want to know more about why I believe fossil fuels are so crucial, and why climate catastrophizing is so dangerous, read my recent Congressional testimony.
energytalkingpoints.com/alex-epstein-c…
Please share the story of the improving Great Barrier Reef with everyone who has publicly catastrophized about the GBR, such as @LeoDiCaprio, @MarkRuffalo, and @adriangrenier. Hopefully they will celebrate, share the good news, and walk back their climate catastrophism.

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More from @AlexEpstein

Oct 2
LCOE must die.

If you ever hear anyone favorably compare solar and wind to coal, gas, or nuclear by citing a low LCOE—"Levelized Cost of Energy"—you are being scammed.

LCOE explicitly ignores "reliability-related considerations" and is therefore a garbage metric. 🧵👇 Image
You've heard it over and over: "Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels."

You might suspect something is wrong here, because if solar/wind were so cheap their developers wouldn't always be asking for subsidies, or claim the sky is falling when subsidies are taken away. Image
The suspicious claim that "Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels" is usually justified using an intimidating-sounding metric called LCOE: "Levelized Cost of Energy."

LCOE is used all the time in prestigious publications and in government.
Read 18 tweets
Oct 1
Our “knowledge system”—the people and institutions we rely upon to research, synthesize, disseminate, and evaluate expert knowledge—consistently ignores the massive, life-or-death benefits of fossil fuels.

A summary of Fossil Future, Chapter 1 🧵👇 Image
Save the World With…Fossil Fuels?

I am going to try to persuade you of something that might seem impossible: that one of the best things you can do to make the world a better place is to fight for more fossil fuel use—more use of oil, coal, and natural gas.
Questioning the “Expert” Moral Case for Eliminating Fossil Fuels

We're told rapidly eliminating fossil fuels is the expert consensus, but consider: 1) sometimes the alleged “expert” view is wrong, and 2) eliminating fossil fuels is a radical and potentially disastrous change.
Read 32 tweets
Sep 20
Apple, Google, Meta and hundreds of other companies claim be "100% renewable" while using mostly fossil fuel electricity.

How is this possible?

Because an FTC rule called the "Green Guides" lets them buy so-called "credits" to count others' solar and wind use as their own. 🧵👇 Image
No significant US company is close to being "100% renewable," since all such companies rely on the mostly fossil fuel electricity grid.

But in 2012, the Obama FTC rewrote a guidance document called the "Green Guides" to let companies falsely claim to be "100% renewable" anyway.
The FTC has published the "Green Guides" since 1992 to specify what constitutes deceptive environmental marketing claims under The FTC Act.

In particular the Green Guides specify when it is misleading—and therefore illegal—to claim to use a given amount of "renewable" energy.
Read 20 tweets
Jul 1
Senate fails to terminate Green New Scam

The Senate bill *looks like* it has a 2027 "placed in service" cutoff for new solar/wind subsidies.

But one last-minute paragraph makes it worthless—because projects making a recoverable 5% investment in the next 12 months are exempt!

The idea of a 2027 "placed in service" cutoff was that new subsidies would actually end during the Trump administration.

But under the last-minute carveout, Big Green has 12 months to initiate as many subsidized projects as it wants using the insanely-easy-to-meet "construction" threshold. (All you need to do is commit 5% of expected project cost to buying re-sellable assets like solar panels.)

Once they declare "construction"—e.g., in July 2026—they'll have 4 years (e.g., July 2030) to "place in service." And then some of those projects, e.g., most wind projects, will get 10 years of subsidies.

So we'll still have wind subsidies on Donald Trump's 94th birthday!

Here's how much worse the Senate bill just got:
* Two days ago: "Placed in service" by 12-31-27—with new subsidized solar/wind projects stopping very quickly, and Trump being able to let subsidies truly end.

* Today: "Placed in service" by JULY 2030—with new subsidized solar/wind projects absolutely spamming the rid and ripping off taxpayers like never before, and Trump having no control over whether the subsidies end.

The current Senate bill is arguably worse than the original Senate Finance one. At least that bill decreased solar/wind subsidies starting in 2026 to 60%. The current bill just increased them to 100%.

The current bill is a solar/wind lobbyist's dream. It does not terminate the Green New Scam in any way, shape or form. It absolutely perpetuates it. And offensively so, I might add, by keeping the "placed in service" cutoff language so many people courageously fought for, then totally undoing it with a single last-minute paragraph that makes it worthless.

If the Senate wanted to extend the Green New Scam it should have said so, not insulted our intelligence by trying to bury the extension in one sneaky little paragraph.

PS Several Senators have already told me they didn't know about or understand this last-minute paragraph. If that's the case they should do whatever they can to fix the situation.Image
And just to be clear, NOTHING good will come out of extending the Green New Scam.
More on how a "construction" cutoff—e.g., the Senate's new "construction" by July 2026 "cutoff"—is not a cutoff but an extension.

Lobbyists love “construction” by a certain “cutoff” because they get 4 more bonus years of eligibility: a 4-year "safe harbor."

E.g., a solar/wind developer can just put a small amount of money down (5%, most of it recoverable) and it gets 4 more years to cash in the subsidy.

With the earlier Senate 2027 “placed in service” cutoff—no exceptions—new subsidized solar/wind projects would slow to a crawl by early 2026. And President Trump could ensure that subsidies would terminate during his term.

But under the final Senate bill's exemption for projects in "construction" by July 2026—which TOTALLY EXEMPTS PROJECTS FROM "PLACED IN SERVICE" BY 2027—these new unreliable projects will spam our grid at least through 2030 (4 years after the "construction" pseudo-cutoff).

Using the 10-year PTC (Production Tax Credit) subsidy, wind farms will still be collecting subsidies on President Trump’s 94th birthday in 2040!

This disaster for our grid and our budget is unfortunately the best-case scenario for the Senate bill.

Realistically, by extending eligibility for new subsidies well beyond President Trump’s term, the proposal makes it likely that future administrations and Congresses will extend solar and wind subsidies yet again—just as previous ones have done for over 30 years!Image
Read 5 tweets
Jun 30
Dear US Senators,

Here is a refutation of every lobbyist lie that more solar/wind subsidies are good for electricity.

FACT: SUBSIDIES HAVE PROVABLY REDUCED CAPACITY + RELIABILITY—AND INCREASED PRICES.

More subsidies can only make things worse.

Vote against extending them!

⚡️
Senators are deluged by lobbyists who say solar/wind subsidies have been great for America—and that the Senate needs to pass @joniernst's amendment to extend them.

But the Administration's top experts know the truth: these subsidies are a disaster the Senate needs to terminate. Image
@SecretaryWright @SecretaryBurgum Chris Wright, Secretary of Energy, this year called IRA solar and wind subsidies “lunacy,” “a big mistake,” and “political posturing that results in higher costs and less reliable electricity.”
Read 22 tweets
May 13
Republicans ran on a pledge to "terminate" the trillion-dollar Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, aka "the Green New Scam."

But their proposed budget keeps almost all the subsidies, while falsely claiming to save money through easily-reversed “phaseouts” starting in 4 years!
🧵 Image
If you’re just joining the conversation about the IRA subsidies, here’s what you need to know: they are subsidies for inferior forms of energy that cost a fortune, raise energy costs, and make our grid unreliable—especially the solar/wind subsidies.
The IRA subsidies should all be fully repealed.

It is possible that some sort of compromise is absolutely necessary to repeal most of the IRA.

However, the current proposal from House Ways and Means does not repeal the IRA subsidies in any meaningful way due to 3 fatal flaws.
Read 18 tweets

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