Oops, he did it again.

I’m referring to Robert Bryce, who writes a Susbstack about energy and economic fairness—a great topic, by the way, if only he would actually address the subject. Instead, he insists on a perspective that focuses on cultural issues and a frankly weird obsession with what he likes to call the “NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex.”

So, here, in an effort not to bury the lede, is my take on Bryce’s writings: Excessively volatile and rhetorically dismissive, fictionalizing the state of the play and players seeking the clean energy transition in order to suggest malfeasance on their part. Issues of fairness around energy economics is what Bryce claims to care about, but he mainly attacks current efforts toward climate progress, and he loves pointing out science-illiterate elites are the enemy to the common man. He doesn’t bother to offer solutions, and that’s simply not helpful. On the other hand, his rhetoric is so flamboyant as to be entertaining.

In his recent piece, “Vaclav Smil on The Two Cultures and Our Fully Post-Factual World,” published June 10, 2024, he once again shows off his negative position on the renewable energy transition by citing that those involved in climate progress fail to appreciate, among other things, The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Bryce likes to present energy transition supporters as know-nothings and as elites motivated either by wrestling control of energy systems from the current producers of energy (often with language of conspiracies and cabals) or with a class-centric disregard for those who would be harmed by such a transition, or, of course, both. His conclusions on important matters regarding climate change are such that I’ve previously wondered if he is simply spitefully angry about something or if he is intentionally trying to muddy the waters about climate in the manner a shill for Big Oil might be expected to do.

But don’t worry. He’s got charts to back him up. His style includes argument by authority (as long as he picks the authorities—and charts!), which, if I remember my philosophy classes, was a favorite technique of both the medieval scholars of yesteryear and the Bible-thumpers of our modern era. The good book—you can add the gospels of Smil and Snow—say so, and thus end of argument. Oh, and did I mention charts?

The irony of his arguments is that for someone who likes to cite scientific facts, the citations are very selective. The last time I looked, this is not actually how good science is done, although it is very convenient.

Bryce’s recent Substack presents other claims about the “NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex,” and it is these claims I want to highlight. Bryce starts out by positing that the world is divided into two camps: the science-based thinkers and those clinging to scientific illiteracy and innumeracy. He starts with some emails with Vaclav Smil about the Canadian author and polymath C.P. Snow’s 1959 essay that discusses the growing disconnect between the culture of the sciences and the culture of the humanities, and of the necessity of bridging that gap to understand and address the world’s problems.

Axiomatic, of course, or, if you are legally minded, so stipulated. There’s no disputing that some people have a poor grasp of scientific principles and processes and that many have to go lie down when trying to parse numbers in the billions and trillions, the counting of decimal points and zeros working to speed one to sleep. However, there is disputing that those supporting renewable energy are intrinsically unable to experience science and math comprehension, although I wouldn’t hazard a guess of the percentage of those who do. I will hazard the guess, however, that the majority of scientists and researchers and policy professionals working on the energy transition have a solid grasp of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and some other key laws of nature.

C.P. Snow’s essay is quoted by Bryce, as follows:

I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups… Literary intellectuals at one pole – at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.

Bryce goes on to quote Snow’s experience of asking a company of “highly educated” literary intellectuals if they could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. “The response was cold” Snow writes. “[and] it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?” But how, exactly, is this the “scientific equivalent” of reading Shakespeare? I dare say that most people can’t name all that many of Shakespeare’s plays or recite the “All the world’s a stage” speech, but so what? I also dare say that most of us will stumble along about describing thermodynamics, never mind other natural laws, but again, so what? The question really is whether scientific principles are applied to the energy transition, and while many, as with quoting Shakespeare, don’t have clear grasp of the science of the energy transition, it is a safe assumption that the scientists involved in the work of the energy transition do have such as grasp, and, even—gasp!—some lay people do, too.

However, to Bryce, what seems adequate proof is that that for most people, he writes, “fundamental physics seems too troublesome to learn,” then adds, “this apathy towards physics is matched, or possibly exceeded, by the lack of interest in mathematics.” But the whole start of Bryce’s essay is straw man, and if you need one quote (and there are so many!) from this piece that clearly shows this, then enjoy the following:

Snow’s seminal lecture matters today because the divides in our culture are widening. Yes, there’s a divide in the sciences. But that divide doesn’t explain why so many policymakers are being bamboozled by the alt-energy mirage that’s being promoted by the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex and their myriad allies in media and academia.

Let’s see what we can draw from the above statement (emphasis mine, below, in case you need help identifying the rhetorical thumb on the scales):

1. policymakers are being bamboozled
2. the alt-energy mirage
3. NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex

There’s that pesky media/academia alliance supporting that whole bamboozling mirage by a very powerful NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex.

Okey-dokie.

Of course, Bryce has some books to promote, including his 2010 Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy And the Real Fuels of The Future, in which he has “written about scientific illiteracy and innumeracy.” It is also easy to understand why he quotes Vaclav Smil:

There has never been such a depth of scientific illiteracy and basic innumeracy as we see today. Without any physical, chemical, and biological fundamentals, and with equally poor understanding of basic economic forces, it is no wonder that people will believe anything.

I guess I should therefore conclude it is just too bad that all the science and math adepts are only found on the anti-energy transition team. I guess one shouldn’t bother to look for any such expertise in science and math in the energy transition camp.

Obviously, this is an absurd conclusion to draw, but then when you’re looking to win arguments rather than understand reality, absurd conclusions can be very tempting. C. P. Snow’s exaggeration—and Smil’s and Bryce’s, too, of course—undercuts Snow’s own argument. His disdain—and Smil’s and Bryce’s, too, of course—contributes little to debate.

In email correspondence between Smil and Bryce, Smil writes clearly of his disdain regarding “the net-zero silliness that is being flogged by the Biden administration, nearly two dozen states, and about 100 cities,” as follows:

All of this goes far, far beyond any two cultures, because now, on mass-scale, we have no particular culture: how else, when people check their mobile 244 [times] a day and spend 3 hours on YouTube and TikTok watching imbecilic videos. Goebbels would be stunned to see with what universal success his slogan of repeating a lie so often it becomes new truth has taken the global root, precisely because the soil is receptive: utterly brainless mass of mobile-bound individuals devoid of any historical perspective and of any kindergarten common-sense understanding.

Jeepers, he must be right, since net-zero is “silliness,” and those supporting net-zero “check their mobile 244 [times] a day and spend 3 hours on YouTube and TikTok watching imbecilic videos,” and the side of energy transition kind of has “such people [that are an] utterly brainless mass of mobile-bound individuals devoid of any historical perspective and of any kindergarten common-sense understanding.”

Well, that settles it, doesn’t it, right? Case closed.

Well, no. Still, let me be clear: There are plenty of idiots on both sides of the debate regarding the energy transition. There are some, for example, so rabidly concerned about global warming that they call for not one more drop of oil to be used and immediately so at that. While I agree about the urgency of the problem of climate change, I know that if we were to close all oil taps today tens of millions of people would die in a shockingly short period of time and a whole lot more in the months and years following. For the record, I’m also opposed to the de-growth radicalism and the geo-engineering projects of wide-scale thermonuclear war, even if it is likely to reduce consumerism and cool the world down in nuclear winter. But see? That’s rhetorical sleight of hand, because nobody other than some very mentally ill individuals seriously considers the option of nuclear devastation to address climate change, and this is just a kindergarten common-sense understanding on my part, without the need for scientifically valid polling.

Hold on, though, because Bryce then takes another right turn when he tells the readers the bigger division in America isn’t even the science-prone versus the science-illiterate. “The most worrisome divide is the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor,” Bryce writes, and gosh darn it but I agree with him that this is a huge issue. I even think there is something to his more specific observation that “it’s the enormous gap between the elites who dominate media, academia, NGOs, and politics, and the working class” that contribute to such problems as Trump. However, I don’t agree with his conclusion drawn from the rich/poor divide, which is that the gap is greatest “in the policies that promote alt-energy and net zero.”

Yes, the so-called elites can often have a tone-deafness, although even here we are falling into a confused definitional space of who’s what and how. Fortunately, Bryce clarifies, as follows:

Every one of the climate policies being enacted by liberal states and the Biden administration screws the poor and the middle class, and in particular, the poor and middle-class folks who live in rural America. You name it—EV mandates, bans on natural gas stoves and heaters, strict emission cuts on power plants, lavish tax credits for Big Wind and Big Solar, or the latest FERC rule on high-voltage transmission— all of them are, in one way or another, regressive energy taxes that fuck the working class.

Of course, I have books to promote, too, and The Steep Climes Quartet, a literary climate fiction series (Hey! Book One, Kill Well, published in August 2023, and Book Two, Dear Josephine, is going on pre-sale within the month), and one of the major themes is the costs for climate progress—and, yes, this progress takes the form, mainly, of the energy transition. The series argues that well-off people haven’t well appreciated the inherent economic difficulties for most people in the transition, and so climate progress is slower by producing fraught political challenges. This isn’t everything the series handles, nor is this point all that hard to imagine.

But let’s look at how Bryce positions the issue as class warfare (emphasis mine):

1. climate policies being enacted by liberal states
2. screws… the poor and middle-class folks who live in rural America
3. EV mandates
4. bans on natural gas stoves and heaters
5. lavish tax credits for Big Wind and Big Solar
6. regressive energy taxes that fuck the working class

And for some reason—maybe because it is in the news recently—he throws in the FERC regulations on high voltage transmission.

So, apparently nothing good can come out of liberal states, or the Biden Administration, for that matter, right? People are getting screwed by such policies, and it’s all mandates and bans, of course, and they’re coming for your stove, and we’re giving money to dubious alternative energy companies, and we’re taking the money from the working class, and thus the case against the energy transition is concluded! Well, while there are plenty of things to complain about the energy transition, there are some serious omissions and exaggerations in Bryce’s list.

Wouldn’t the important issue be whether policies are good or bad, not whether a state’s position on the conservative-liberal spectrum is the concern? Isn’t the poor and middle class of rural America (and everywhere else) already getting screwed by climate change consequences, or are the increased heat waves, tornados and storms, and droughts and floods just coincidental to rises in greenhouse gases? And aren’t EV and other energy efficiency so-called mandates accompanied by rebates and tax credits and grants for the poor?  Shouldn’t the “lavish” and very recent tax credits for solar and wind be compared to subsidies, direct and indirect, and tax credits, and other policy giveaways applied to fossil fuels over the many, many decades? Where is the discussion about progressive tax rates that bring back higher income tax rates for the wealthy more in line with what we saw in past decades (Eisenhower, anyone?), so that additional revenue can be raised without further pressing the poor?

But of course, Bryce isn’t really worried about the poor, because if he was he would attempt to outline how to better address the economic hardship on poor and middle class as we transition to renewable and non-carbon energy. He could, for instance, include how the rising costs climate change (fuel, food, insurance, infrastructure, disease, conflict, and the list goes on) might be better addressed for those with fewer resources. Focusing on the cultural gap between the “normies” and the “elites” is easy, but discussing policy improvements is hard.

Bryce quotes author and former CIA analyst Martin Gurri’s essay “The Revenge of the Normies,” as follows:

On one side we find the normies: ordinary people who defend, naively, the historic principles of democracy such as freedom of speech and assembly, the separation of powers, etc. On the other side stand the elites, masters of the great institutions of wealth, knowledge, and power, who insist that extraordinary measures must be taken to save a depraved and self-destructive society from its own history and its own people…The normies want to get on with life. They want to work, get married, have children—boring stuff. That’s what normal means. The elites, for their part, wish to change everything: sex, the climate, our history, your automobile, your diet, even the straws with which you slurp your smoothie.

Always good to have something so well-spelled out, and Gurri’s excerpt even gets me singing “Gotta Be This or That,” the old Benny Goodman & His Orchestra song that goes, in part, like this:

If you ain’t wrong, you’re right
If it ain’t day, it’s night
If you ain’t sure, you might
Gotta be this or that
If it ain’t dry, it’s wet
If you ain’t got, you get
If it ain’t gross, it’s net
Gotta be this or that

 I guess life is simple. At least it must feel nice when things aren’t complicated and just a matter of “You’re wrong and I’m right,” and add to this the sure sense of what normal people think and want, and, well, you got the world of unassailable understanding on a string. It couldn’t be, could it, that the timeframe for solving the climate crisis (a.k.a. “Net Zero,” along with other strategies) is far longer than the timeline for paying next month’s rent, which should be no surprise to literally everyone, but there’s wholesale ignoring of climate change consequences. Normies are normal boring stuff, Gurri says, but one could wonder if the meaning of “normal” changes when, say, your roof gets blown away or your car gets swept gone, or you can’t work because it is too damn hot, and any of which and more just might make it hard to “get on with life.” It couldn’t be that “the elites, masters of the great institutions of wealth, knowledge, and power,” include much more powerful masters of wealth long-entrenched in the fossil fuel economy, right?

Oh.

Plus, of course, normies are very particular about straws with which they slurp their smoothies, don’t forget.

Some day I hope to find an “anti-elite” who has actually worked a blue-collar job, or, even, who actually just knows a “normie.”

Affordability and cost for working- and middle-class families must be made part of the larger discussion of how we achieve progress against climate change, as does the fairer sharing of the cost burden of the energy transition. Today, these issues remain the weaker part of the climate progress movement. These days Democrats and “elites” are notoriously bad (most of them, as there are exceptions) at speaking normally, both literally and figuratively, and there is the necessary and stronger message to be made much clearer: “Yes, you are being screwed by the system, just look at wealth inequality.”

But Bryce isn’t speaking clearly on this last point but prefers to rabblerouse about nefarious elites coming for gas appliances. This might be good clickbait, or a self-comforting us-versus-them false narrative, but ignoring the realities of an over-burdened combusted atmosphere that isn’t helping anyone now other than the vested interests of fossil fuels.

The real basis of Bryce’s argument is that climate change is just some elite-sourced play to screw over people, including, one should assume, those poor, defenseless, and vulnerable fossil fuel corporations getting crushed by elites, maybe in some sort of power play (ha!) to take over the world for the UN. Bryce brings in Ruy Teixeira, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (no flag here, right?), who points out the elites-versus-working-class dynamic in an essay titled “The Working Class Isn’t Down With The Green Transition.”

Teixeira gets in the following quote:

Nothing defines the Democratic economic strategy more than a single-minded focus on fighting climate change—an “existential crisis” as Biden, other top Democrats and a galaxy of Democratic-leaning pundits have termed it… Democratic elites and activists are very, very committed to this approach and are willing to pay high costs to make it happen.

In the larger picture, Bryce is denying climate change as a significant—or as those silly elites like to put it, existential—threat. He cites (through Teixeira’s essay) some rather questionable polling purportedly showing working class disinterest for the issue of climate change, but if you look at the question, which is described as an “open-ended question [not great for useful polls, by the way] identif[ing] climate change as the biggest concern facing their family,” you’ll see that the yes response is low. Really? You’d expect climate change at the top spot, right, not, say, paying next month’s rent, or getting help for a sick member of the family, or, well, just about any immediate and pressing problem, but somehow this proves that only the elites like climate change solutions?

Teixeira concludes the essay, as quoted by Bryce, with, “Really, it’s madness. Biden needs to do more, not less, on moving the Democratic Party away from its obsession with renewables.”

Or maybe Biden and the Democrats might do more with actions that reduces corporate monopolistic powers and address the obscene wealth inequality—and having tens and hundreds of billions of dollars in personal wealth is obscene. I argue that Biden and many of the Democrats are right to be obsessed, because lack of obsession is not a good trait if the climate crisis is real. Which it is, although you can still find plenty of people who argue otherwise. There is also the matter that as the consequences of climate change continue to worsen, much bigger costs, especially for the poor and middle class, are going to skyrocket, and, indeed, including the cost in the form of sending more and more people prematurely to heaven, for petessake. Science isn’t saying something different, despite all the rhetorical hand-waving Bryce undertakes. This isn’t some elite cabal, unable to add two-plus-two, trying to steal your toaster. There is danger now, and more danger ahead, and the timeline for reducing the threat of climate change is today, and it would have been better if we had acted sooner, because big changes take time.

To more or less quote Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “Methinks, Bryce, thou doth protest too much” about this play on “Much Ado About Nothing.”