After many days of consideration, and hesitation due to the fact that my parents are staunch anti-catholic protestants, I will officially declare myself Catholic. Trent, you had the biggest impact on the beginning of my conversion, thank you.
Please think again, Why do you want to follow an Unbiblical faith? You are converting to a Pagan, man made, man centric faith. Please make a U turn. Praying for you.
@@philosopher-2007 Sorry buddy, I never refer to Jesus as "man", yes, HE was a man for 33 years and 33 years only, just so you know, Jesus is God. When I say man/men, I meant your popes, bishops, fathers, cardinals, saints etc. making stuff up (outside Bible, unbiblical). That is what I meant. You believe in so much outside Bible stuff (like Mormons), you believe in Bible plus other doctrines like catechisms, declarations, pontifications, encyclopedias etc. You guys are on a ever changing slippery slope (vs never changing Sola Scriptura). Hope that clarifies. I hope you realize one day, what a mistake it was to embrace a non Christian faith like Catholicism.
It's literally a moral issue that has to do with the life of millions. If this doesn't have to do with being a good Catholic, why are less impactful things seen as crucial?
I'm all for green energy (especially nuclear power) and environmental attention. This earth is a gift from God, and we are supposed to take care of it. I'm even in favor of big investments for the environment. What i don't like is the allarmism and the agenda behind environmentalism.
As a faithful Catholic who works on wind turbines I don’t think very many people even realize just how much carbon emissions it takes to make transport and keep the turbines running. Petroleum based oils in gearbox’s and hydraulic systems as well as the gas trucks needed to continue to maintain them.
@PiOfficial mining the rare earth elements needed for the USA's wind and solar requires tens of thousands of mining trucks that run on gallons of diesel per mile, and shipping the material overseas from the third world (where it is mined) to the first world also burns billions of gallons of diesel because of how heavy the ore is. this has to happen constantly to supply the raw materials for new and replacement parts for green energy tech since green energy tech has a short lifespan. All green energy does is reduce emissions at home and increase emissions in the third world, all while charging higher prices at home for the same amount of energy. the only exception is nuclear, but everone hates nuclear because no one understands how a reactor or fuel rods, when at the bottom of a pool of water, cannot leak any radiation, since radiation cannot travel in water. pure carbon can be absorbed by life and the ocean, the only problem with fossil fuel exhaust is that it's not pure carbon, it has other material in it that is causing lung cancer and smog. this is why we should use exhaust scrubbers. they are a more thorough power plant version of catyictic converters, they filter fossil fuel exhaust so it only outputs pure carbon. no one uses them because everyone wants to demonize fossil fuels (while still burning a similar amount of fossil fuels, just in a different location that isn't their home country) instead of filtering the exhaust better.
@@PiOfficial natural gas plants which can be peak or base power production is actually almost as clean as wind over 30 years which is the typical life span of most wind farms. If people really wanted the most green per Megawatt of energy produced they would support nuclear energy as a majority base power producer with hydro and geothermal peak in the north west. Solar as a peak in the south west. Wind and natural gas in the middle of the country where the wind corridor is for peak and hydro in the east as a peak as well. In college I could never justify wind and solar at more then 24% of total production for the US without major outages or exorbitant cost to consumers including the lower and middle classes. Maybe those numbers have changed over the last 7 years but I doubt by much.
@@TheKj85Building and maintaining nuclear plants is a lot more carbon intensive than building solar and wind farms. So I don’t know where you’re getting this information from but it doesn’t reflect actual data.
@@PhillipCummingsUSAThis HAS to be the dumbest way to refute anything ever. "Rice cookers are the best way to make rice, except for when they arent!!" "Knives are the best way to cut fruit, except for when arent!!"
@@PhillipCummingsUSA If you're referring to events like Chernobyl, that was 40years ago in the USSR. The USSR. I shouldn't have to say more, but they knew it was going to meltdown and told no one, and they had no standards for safety.
@@shreddedhominid1629 Ahh yes because by saying that without giving any evidence for why you know what you are talking about you demonstrate your expertise on the matter.
Its not only storage of nuclear waste, but also the treatment of it making it even less harmful that has advanced a lot, despite the political opposition. If you are truly concerned about waste and environment nuclear is the way to go even with 40 year outdated tech. Imagine what gains are possible with Gen IV Nuclear power, virtually limitless clean power for all our industrial processes.
Not to mention that solar, wind, and batteries are not able to be recycled because their is no infrastructure in place for it; the strip mining required to get the rare earth metals needed for solar panels and electric cars and batteries expend far more energy than they put out.
@@ralphwoodruff The EROI for solar is 3-10, wind 10-15 depending where you install them for Nuclear its 50-80. Estimations for Gen IV nuclear exceed 100
My instinct (though I may be wrong) is that a geothermal powerplant is less expensive than nuclear. For the development of places like Indonesia, the Philippines; to enhance energy production if possible in places like New Zealand and the west coast of Latin America...if it's easy, I don't understand why Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and northern Utah don't get all their electricity from it.
Aside from political polarization, alarmism, and virtue signaling, I think it's best for Catholics to focus on the faith and moral implications of this entire situation. How are we being good stewards of the Earth? Are we then, additionally, being good stewards of our towns? Neighborhoods? Marriage and family life? The Church and Her faithful should be more concerned with the inner life, converting souls, and evangelizing individuals and families, than overly concerned with the "shiny" and trendy political problems "out there". If we desire to be good stewards and take better care of the Earth, that needs to come from a place of inner peace and desire for justice and the good of others. I think many Catholic leaders don't think about that; they're simply concerned with their outward image in a political sense, and virtue signaling about the same things everyone else is.
Of course we need to be good stewards of the environment. The problem is that I think most Catholics in this country don't really know what that means, even though bishops and lay people parade that phrase constantly. It shouldn't be surprising that this happens because Catholics in the U.S. are so used to living comfortably that it's very hard for us to understand more about how we should look at the environment and live a life that is less consumerist and more fulfilling.
Thank you, Trent Horn, for your defence of the poor. The climate policies such as reducing fossil fuels, are making them poorer and reducing their ability to resist extremes of normal climate activity. The solar and wind renewables, which produce unreliable power, and are environmentally disastrous, are not the answer. I support nuclear power, which is the cleanest reliable energy available today, and which will lower energy costs for the poor.
That green energy is a ploy devised by elites to control world population and he serves them and not God. But all their plans will come to naught, for they will all cast into Hell and we will see the renewed world and the Era of Peace (Rev 19:19-20:6). Let us be alert and not be deceived, and pray, do penance, hold fast to the ages old teachings of the Church, and persevere to the end (Matt 24:13). Amen!
@@YourHeartIsTheKey I'd argue swift action will harm more than help in this scenario, we frankly don't know enough about the causes of climate change and how our responses to it will affect things. Anybody who says otherwise is guessing or has something to sell you.
Hey Trent! Thanks for this vid, I agree with some points and others are complicated. I’m Catholic, conservative, and also an Electrical Engineer working primarily in the renewable energy industry. From my perspective, The green new deal types have effectively convinced most conservatives that wind and solar are not economically viable, but these projects when built by private entities, are always profitable - they’re building them to print money selling electricity with zero fuel cost. Not trying to put them in locations where their output would be too small because the votes needed to pass it dictated which congressional district it should be built in. Or throwing panels on a roof - which only really makes sense for south facing roofs with a shallow pitch in the sun belt. I am satisfied with working on these projects. The end of lifecycle issues and unethical sourcing of materials plague conventional generating stations as well. Gas is pretty good but the coal plants that are getting phased out (mostly by gas) are horrible to live near. But I also know a 100% wind and solar grid is a pipe-dream from people who have never heard or understood what capacity factor means. And I completely agree, Electricity being affordable and reliably available 24/7/365 is also really great for humanity. And NUCLEAR! Yes!
As Electrical Engineer in Training (it's a Canadian licensing thing), I've been saying for years if the environmentalists won't consider nuclear as an option, then they aren't serious about solving the problem. It is frankly too useful to ignore
@@vincentthendean7713 I’m not an authority on that, I deal with designing the new stations not O&M on the stations once they’re built nor on decommissioning, but my understanding from doing “repower” projects (building new stations where the decommissioned equipment was taken out, is the old fiberglass blades end up in landfills and PV cells are doped silicon and should be treated as e-waste same as any other semi-conductor to avoid leeching into the soil but sometimes they end up in landfills too. A lot of the useful steel, aluminum and copper would be scrapped but yes, more and more of the first generation renewables are hitting their ~25 yr lifecycle and people are realizing there is waste from these. Green new dealers are hippy-dippy not very business savvy so they don’t realize there’s waste from all projects at the end of their lifecycle. On the other hand you could generate by coal, gas, nuclear, hydro - and still have the same “some of this stuff ends up in landfills” dilemma - it’s not a unique problem to wind or solar. Their big selling point for me is that they have no fuel cost, you build them with enough up-front capital and your only costs after that are O&M, no volatility from fuel prices. Nuclear is great but it does not have that going for it. (Unfortunately nuclear stations not being built is partly PR and the unseriousness of environmentalists, but also because investors calculate a 60 year nuke plant lifecycle usually doesn’t see a ROI until about year 55, and there’s not enough pessimism that the technology won’t be obsolescent by some new breakthrough generation source by then. Also of interest, natural gas becoming a cheap, abundant byproduct of fracking for oil has done way more to decommission coal plants early than any Obama era regulations (suffering coal miners are in my prayers, but I do have to see the silver lining that the rates of black lung and water pollution from failed fly ash ponds are way more prevalent than risks associated with gas, nuclear, hydro, wind or solar).
I have plenty of critiques of this video, but I'll save talking about the harshest ones for later. For now I'll just say that I feel the section on Nuclear Power was pretty good, but strawmans Environmentalists as anti-nuclear. Most aren't. Greenpeace is, as far as I know, but plenty of environmentalists are completely fine with nuclear. There's also a false dichotomy that we can only either have nuclear *or* renewables when we can and should have both. Simon Clark makes a great video talking about the pros and cons of nuclear vs renewables and why we need both. I plan on going into environmental engineering in college next year, so it's nice to see an engineer here too.
Get it man. Nuclear is awesome. I did eng. physics and ended up in optics (much better with wave physics) but it was the other option. There's a lot more money floating around now too. Going navy is an option for this too.
This is somewhat unrelated but since you're interested in the subject I'd love to know if you think the US really used nuclear bombs on Japan in WWII. The damage seemed to be the same as other Japanese and German cities the allies were decimating at the end of the war. I really don't know. I'm interested though.
@@c.b.s.3495Hi C.B.S.. There is overwhelming evidence that this did happen. I cannot engage in a long discussion, but maybe I could help you take a step or two. One way to help confirm things is to look for indirect evidence. For example, you could visit the Trinity test site, where you personally can collect pieces of ‘glassified’ (vitrified) rock. You could visit Hiroshima, where there is a museum. [If you go, maybe you could attend a Hiroshima Carp baseball game.] Talk to people around Hiroshima about it, but try to be very respectful (they suffered a lot). You could visit a large library with a collection of old newspapers, and read the news articles. You could buy an old book on the effects of the atomic bombs. You can go inspect the plane that dropped the 1st atomic bomb, the Angola Gay, (reassembled) at the National Air and Space Museum, and compare it with old pictures and films. You could also read about the psychological problems the crew had after the war. Of course you can look at videos, which were originally old fashion film, of the explosions and after effects, as well as Japanese documentation. I suppose you *might* even be able to go to the Bikini atoll site to look for glassified rock, if it’s not too radio active. This was a post war nuclear explosion test site. A few countries have set off nuclear bombs since WWII, and almost all of them have some public documentation (Russia, U.S., China, India, etc…). Russia set one off in 1949, soon after WWII, so a second country had the technology just after the war. You could try to go to the Los Alamos historical archives, but they probably won’t let you in without the proper clearance. However, you can look at old pre WWII physics journals to see for yourself whether the physicists knew enough to try to construct the nuclear devices (they did know enough). Maybe Chicago University has a WWII archive you could visit. They were part of the ‘Manhattan Project’. There are other direct and indirect methods of knowing, but these are a few ideas. Good luck.
@@c.b.s.3495 Are you serious? Yes this is absolutely true, the fallout deaths and tons and tons of film and photos and medical records of radiation burns and after effects are pretty absolute on this. Aside from the completely insane assertion it would be a lie in the first place. Why would this even enter your head? Or are you a bot?
My only critique about your chart is that America just outsources our pollution to China and other Countries. I don’t know how you would calculate this. Take our imports and subtract the amount of carbon it took to make these items from China’s (and elsewhere) and add it to America’s? I mean technically these other Countries are creating the pollution, but manufacturing for the United States. Thoughts?
Also his graph doesn't show how much of those carbon are used up by e.g. trees and other greeneries. If he includes that then China would also top that chart.
Yes, but the consumption in China and the rest of the developing world has also been skyrocketing. The population of Africa is rising and doesn't seem to be slowing down even when standards of living increase.
@@vincentthendean7713 Oh, I thought you meant that China has more greenery. I believe Singapore has the most greenery per square footage, but that is because they have insane laws that say if you remodel or build, you mist plant and equal amount of square footage of greenery to the amount of square footage you are building or remodeling. So the people there plant shrubs and foliage on their building and properties. It is illegal to chew gum in public (you get a large fine) and if you get caught with drugs, you could be jailed for 20 years or be put to death depending how much you have.
I have got impression that pope's statements are overinterpreted and used to force aggressive eco agenda. Btw. the problem with renewables is that they require stabilisation by fossil fuel plants or energy storages.
Our new home in California was required to have new solar panels, and SunPower installed them. We got a 30% federal tax credit for installing them (which means the price was artificially high)...and SunPower just filed for bankruptcy!
and if you ever have a very overcast day, you’re not gonna get much energy from those solar panels. and at night, the sun has gone “to sleep. “ so how are you going to have energy at night?
@@femaleKCRoyalsFan In our part of SoCal during peak summer, we get a ton of clear skies and direct sunlight, so the panels do help to a large degree, but our main production is before 4:00 p.m...and SoCal Edison charges us more for kilowatt hours between 4:00 and 9:00 p.m. 🙂
@@killianmiller6107 California changed their payout plan for solar just after we got our panels installed, and you basically need to buy a battery on the new plan to make it worthwhile...except getting the battery basically doubles the upfront solar cost 😮
when it comes to lithium ion battery that EV vehicles (and most of our modern electronics are dependent on) a crucial resource in the battery production is cobalt. majority of the world's cobalt comes from the DRC. while there are some legal mines there a significant amount of the cobalt is mined with unregulated child labor there. Just one example that there's no moral panacea to resource extraction in this world.
Open and expand mining in the US. There easy fix. There's tons here. Also, those mines bring tons of financial resources into those communities. Just shutting them down makes ending child labor in those communities difficult.
Those issues can be worked on. The broader point is that green energy is necessary to stave off global warming, which if allowed to continue unchecked will result in a number of environmental catastrophes that really dwarf any problem we have seen up until now. Heat waves and storms are not significant compared to the long term desertification of entire countries and the mass migration of hundreds of millions of people. So are there mines that might have child workers in them? Maybe...it is clearly not the broader concern. And the church is right to point this out. If you care about other people and the future of humanity, you are more or less obligated to care about climate change, though there are many solutions!
@@radscorpion8 What do you base your claims on. We can do nothing about the weather. Which can be severe or not each season. What do you know of the long term but that which is spread by alarmists and "scientists" funded to reach the conclusions of the funders.
Something I noticed about the Pope's encyclical on climate is that he only quoted the UN IPCC's summaries for policy makers, not the scientific attachments. The alarmism is all in the policy summaries and is not substantiated by the science. It is political, pure and simple. Scientists like Koonin, who have read both volumes of the IPCC report, have pointed out the discrepancies. I doubt the Pope read the 1100+ page scientific appendix. I doubt whether his lieutenants read the scientific appendix. Moreover, if they did, why didn't they quote it? Why quote only the alarmist summary?
I’m more worried about microplastics and forever chemicals to be honest. Which goes back ti what I believe is the heart of the message. Let’s be good stewards to His gift that is the earth.
I remembered you said you were covering this! I've been trying to share your videos at any opportunity, and guess what? Someone brought your last video up to me yesterday again, before I ever mentioned it! I didn't get to comment because the comments were off at the time, but thank you for your awesome video defending Mary as the mother of God right before the Feast Day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary! I prayed for you, your family, and everyone here at Mass Thursday and on Sunday! And pray every day in my Rosary! God bless you, Trent! And your recent videos on Science, "It's Not Always Demons" with Jimmy Akin and "The Emptiness of 'Political Christianity" are a few of my all time favorite videos! Hope you and your family have a light-filled peaceful joyful blessed week!
Nuclear energy is cheap, clean, and powers a huge area. Therefore we will never see it be the primary energy source because governments and corporations are always run by the worst among us
Thank you Trent. I picked up Pope Francis’ first encyclical, because I heard a quote from it on the Catholic Radio station about “Corruption,” that I though was great! But, sadly when I opened to that chapter and began reading, what Pope Frances defines as corrupt and what I define corrupt are two different things. It’s been a couple years since I read it, so I won’t try to paraphrase what he says. But, if anyone wants to read it, I donated my copy of the book to my local Goodwill : )
The Church would be in better shape if bishops and popes would stop inserting themselves into controversial prudential matters and actually carry out the mission Jesus gave them.
I paid $33,000 for a slightly used Tesla. It is a really nice mode of transportation. I charge it in my driveway. I have solar panels on my home. I seldom drive over 100 miles in a day. My Tesla operates for free and does not emit pollution.
That is a nice option to be able to have. My car was 6,000 bucks. I live in an apartment. Nowhere here to charge a car or put solar panels. However, you must remember that the battery in that thing, and the materials in your solar panels, came with their own environmental impacts.
what are you going to do if there’s ever a flood and you can’t drive your Tesla? If you don’t understand what I mean, look up Tesla and Florida hurricane.
@@peterv7258 This is a red herring. Literally everything humans produce has an environmental impact. You're only saying this because you're against renewables. Why?
@@peterv7258 I would not recommend Tesla's for folks without charging stations at their residence. Too much of a hassle. I've long ago learned if Trent says something it's probably not true. I lack the knowledge to determine if the environmental impacts from batteries and solar panels are worse than the ones from burning fuel.
The waste from large nuclear facilities can and is used in mini-nuclear plants where that waste can be used over and over, no more burying it in the ground.
Opportunity cost is real. Ever dollar invested in climate programs is not invested elsewhere and thus harms the poor, if climate change itself doesn't cause more poverty on the long run.
@@cromi4194 I don’t understand this “decrease in economic power” narrative. Fossil fuels are on their way out, even with the billions of and billions of subsidies the industry receives they are failing to remain cost competitive with renewables. Poor countries adopting large scale renewable infrastructure will unlock their development potential insulate their economies from the market volatility of fossil fuels.
@@shreddedhominid1629 Well if it is as you say, there is nothing more to debate. However if it were so, renewables would have or will win in the market anyway. It doesn't seem to be that way though. Trent here also doesn't apparently agree with you.
@@cromi4194 Trent has a very poor understanding of this topic, and listening to all the arguments made in the video it’s clear he either hasn’t throughly researched or hasn’t bothered to, opting in favour to regurgitate some low hanging fruit talking points commonly heard from climate deniers and fossil fuel lobbyists. The market has been and will continue to prove the superiority of renewables, even in developing countries. Morocco has renewable energy projects that make up 40% of its installed energy capacity, India has the fastest growing rate of renewable electricity growth of any major economy, and over 2bn in financing has gone towards renewable energy investments in subsaharan Africa. Poorer countries adopting renewables is mostly a question of access to financing - transforming the high up-front capital outlays to long term development benefits requires access to finance. That requires cooperation from developed countries. There is nothing inherently more expensive about renewables as opposed to developing fossil fuel infrastructure, apart from the fact that renewables are becoming cheaper fast while fossil fuels are gradually becoming more expensive.
I went with a group on pilgrimage to Walsingham back in 2015. The church (local Catholic parish) had a lot of solar cells on its roof. Given the high latitude (almost 53 degrees north) and the cloudy English climate, I wasn’t sure whether this was prudent, but I’m sure it’s made some people feel better.
I'd add that there are other realms of stewardship towards the natural world aside from energy policy. Many people live in secular, hyperindividualist societies where consumerism and other systems of immediate gratification have replaced principles like natural law and stewardship which have long term fulfillment and the common good as their goals. A lot of resource consumption and pollution is driven by secular indoctrination of materialist demands rather than filling existing, healthy needs. There's a need for a moral, community-centric socioeconomic model like distributism.
I feel like there is a good marketing slogan between the similarities of "reforge your swords into plows" and changing nuclear weapons into nuclear energy somewhere...
That last segment about nuclear power made me realize we can actually kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Like what Trent said, use nuclear materials from existing bombs to generate nuclear power. While only a handful of countries own nukes, by raising the demand of nuclear power all over the world they might be tempted to decommission more of their stockpiles faster in exchange for money.
Fun fact: It was warmer 1,000 years ago than it is today. They did try saying recently that we had finally surpassed the record temperatures, but that's because they were conflating ground level temperatures with the air temperatures usually recorded.
Thanks for bring up nuclear. I'm a catholic nuclear engineer and some of the stuff we are working on in the field is amazing. The technology has been safe in the west at least since it's inception, but the next generation is incredible.
Trent, this might be one of my favorite videos of yours. Thank you for laying out the points about nuclear energy, as "true clean energy". Thank you for the info and the clear presentation.
This is the proper way to engage the Pope's teachings: constructive criticism and respectful disagreement over issues that are not infallibly taught. We are living through a 'crisis' because many critics of the Holy Father do not know their basics and simply shout 'heresy' over issues that are merely theological opinions or matters of practice and policy. I hope you can cover that topic someday. Thanks and well done.
Excellent video Trent. I really like the point about disease. There are so many other natural phenomenon making people's lives miserable. As Catholics, we must be careful not to fall for the fads and fashions of the secular society.
Francis needs to study electromagnetic radiation and the quantum physics of CO2. He will come to realize that any temperature increase caused by increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere cannot be more than about 1 degree C. He will also find that the climate models are so far away from describing reality that they only serve to show that the climate scientists do not know or understand all the independent variables that influence the climate.
Unsure where you got the 1 deg C part (would be interesting if true), but totally agree with the second half! If you look into the climate models many are completely unreasonable!
Thank you for thinking through this complex issue in ways that others haven’t, and for presenting your thoughts in a well-organized way that is consistent with Catholic teachings.
I liked the editing in this one. Not too ‘in your face’ or distracting, just displaying the useful information on the screen, and letting Trent do the talking. Lovely.
As a new convert, I can’t thank you enough for addressing this an explaining the reality and hierarchy of this topic (financially, morally and politically). Doing “real good in the world” vs climate change is spot on!
It was Saint John Chrysostom who said it originally. The full quote is "the road to hell is paved with the skulls of priests and the skulls of bishops are the lamp posts that light the way".
We had a wonderful Bishop, who a few years back, said Catholics can not vote for pro-choice candidates. He was told to stay out of politics. What has changed? And he was supporting Catholic doctrine.
This is objectively true, and this is what most environmentalists propose. Anyone who says environmentalists are anti-nuclear is mostly strawmanning: there are some who are against it, namely greenpeace, but not most. Simon Clark makes a great video talking about the pros and cons for renewables and nuclear.
Wind and solar power plants require stabilisation. This cannot be done with nuclear. You can only use fossil fuel plants or (expensive) energy storages. Water power plants are also a very good solution but cannot be used widely. Wind and solar could help lower energy prices as long as you can stabilise them without emitting CO2 Otherwise too much wind and solar will result with high energy prices, CO2 emission and huge recycling/waste problem.
I have heard very few bring up lowering our energy demand. I wonder how many solar/wind proponents would be up for giving up comfort instead. Simple example: if research in a few years would propose that we abandon mega server farm services like Facebook for environmental reasons, will these proponents follow this advice? I think this will be an interesting topic one day.
I understand this is a catholic case against green energy, but would love to see a video of the catholic case for green energy. You are a great debater and I think it would be good to balance the discussion.
He gave the case for green energy in the video. Nuclear is the future and he stated the need for affordable energy to help lift the poorest among us out of poverty
Many other Catholics already are going with the secular flow for green energy because it's the globalist agenda, so there is no need to reiterate arguments easily found. It is currently harder to find these arguments against green energy, so this video is valuable and the one you propose is not.
If you watch the video Trent gives a great case for green energy when discussing nuclear power. Even at their costs other forms of “green energy” oftentimes cause more waste long term.
This is spot on. I'm an Electrical Engineer and I've been in nuclear power plants. They indeed are the most green energy source we have until fusion becomes commercially available. All other "green" sources are well intentioned but will not come close to the low CO2 of nuclear power. The best advice I would give to people is to stay away from activists who seek to make a change through alarmism. It is disingenuous to scare people into going along with their agenda. With all due respect, the Holy Father is speaking out of his area of expertise when it comes to climate change and "green" energy. I can only guess that he took the word of his advisors on this matter. Regarding AOC's famous clip about the world ending in 2030, this type of mentality comes from people that have never built a real thing in their life. They have no idea what they are talking about. Anyone with actual engineering, construction, planning, experience would know that if the clock stops in 2030 "if we don't address climate change now", it's already too late. I believe that one day humanity will have energy production that is way better than even nuclear is today. But that time is many decades away at least. These things take time to develop especially when there is any risk to the health and safety of human beings (rightfully so).
When I was a young boy in London I remember that the Houses of Parliament used to be black - or so I thought! It was actually soot and carbon deposits from all the fossil fuels that were being burnt and it took a great deal of sand blasting to clean it up. You can imagine what the inside of our lungs looked like but unfortunately no sand blasting was available there! If for no other reason, I’m in favour of cleaner energy to prevent the widespread pollution that was so common back in the 60s and 70s. As others have said, Genesis 2:15 tells us that we are stewards of this planet so we have to take care of it.
How did they shape those blades that are being buried? Most solar panels are squared or rectangular, how do they make those shapes? How do they make the glass covering? How do they shape the quartz? How do they make the wires? They heated the materials using "green energy"? There were no emissions of CO2 during the process? Imagine the amount of energy needed to shape all the materials for solar and wind farms for entire world! Food for thought!
Everyone should have an exercise bike in their house that is directly connected to their electricity. This would literally give people money to exercise and supplement the electricity coming into their house. I'd be interested to see how much utility cost and materials would be saved by doing this. Also, look up gravity batteries. They could be one of the best answers for clean energy. Lastly, while Catholics do have a duty to take care of the planet, the Earth that God made is very resilient. There was an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico years ago that scientists thought would take until mid century to clean up. But then natural bacteria ended up eating the oil in about six months, making it safe again for wildlife. The world balances itself out. I don't think fossil fuels will have the effect people think.
The bike idea isn't bad but you'd need a system to store and then safely discharge the generated electricity. So not exactly cheap. Not to mention it probably wouldn't decrease your bills enough to offset the costs of the system, so not sure if it's viable. Good idea though!
The amount of electricity that could actually generate is negligible. You can power a mini-TV so you can watch TV while you exercise, but that's about it.
It's always interested me to know how things are made, and the implications of resource use and management. It's something that was encouraged for our consideration when I was in high school in the late 1970s. (Honestly it surprises me when my former classmates promote the climate agenda on social media these days, and then I remember that these particular classmates openly admit that they don't remember much from high school because they were always buzzed). When green energy first appeared on my radar, I looked into it by researching the details from resource acquisition of the raw materials used to produce the machinery or media used to convert sun or wind into electricity, as well as the manufacturing process, the construction and development of electricity generating stations, transmission through wires, and factors such as average number of days of enough sun or wind to produce electricity. Then do the cost comparison. In the end, it amounts to the Village of the Wise Fools running the show, with the Wisest of the Wise Fools making decisions like when the village awoke to find that diamonds had fallen from the sky overnight, but they were very cold diamonds that were easily crushed, so they wanted to issue an order to the villagers to remain indoors until the diamonds could be harvested. They didn't have phones, they only had the village crier, so they decided to send him out to cry the order. But the very Wisest of all the Wisest of the Wise Fools objected, because the crier would crush the diamonds as he walked through the village. And so they all decided they would have the village crier stand on a table carried by 4 strong Fools. So he wouldn't crush the diamonds. And that's basically the plan for dealing with eliminating carbon.
Terrifying to me, is in the first 46 seconds. How a man would prefer to see oil leaders etc excommunicated before coming to "repentance". The legalism in that authors throat will cost them heavily.
9:06 The prisoners dilemma in the real world. If only one country acts to try and stop climate change, they’ll lose money and resources and global warming won’t even be stopped. So there’s no benefit. All countries act to stop global warming. Then it likely could be stopped and all countries would take the hit. No countries act and they won’t lose the short term money and resources but global warming in isn’t stopped. So it’s best if all countries act, but since that trust doesn’t exist between countries, and it’s better to not act if other countries also aren’t acting… that’s how we got here.
One very disingenuous measure is cited (that the US has twice the per capita CO2 emission than China - at about 8:45 in). It is disingenuous because it ignores that the amount of CO2 emitted has to be measured in proportion to the good done (a primitive measure of which might be GDP). China's per capita GDP is 6.5 times smaller than the US so that one might argue that the value of China's CO2 emissions are roughly 3 times smaller than the US. Said differently, China produces 3 times more CO2 pollution per capita than the US for a given economic output.
Tough stuff to cover Trent. Glad you cover these topics as an inquiring Catholic, cause there arent lots of video based sources that cover what you cover ❤
I have a strong interest in natural history and paleontology. One thing in my reading that jumped out at me is that in the past few million years, the planet has had periods during which the average annual global temperatures have been 5C-10C warmer than in the last several centuries. During those warm periods life flourished, the planet was a global forest. The global biomass during the warm periods was noticeably heavier than today. The global warming alarmists and the climate scientists who egg them on with dire predictions never bring up this fact - dis/mis/malinformation by exclusion. For one thing, counterintuitively, hotter weather worldwide means more precipitation, not less, because the warmer temperatures accelerate the evaporation cycle - what goes up must come down. Climate change does mean changes in weather patterns which will be neutral in some parts of the world, beneficial in others and detrimental in still other regions. We need to curtail carbon emissions over the long run, but the world will hardly come to an end if we do not achieve true carbon neutrality by 2050 or 2060 or even 2100 - we have time to allow carbon free energy technologies, especially carbon free technologies that do not involve massive toxic pollution, to mature and be implemented in a careful, systematic economically rational process.
Hi Trent, I greatly appreciate your videos. I am also interested in your opinion on the three chapters controversy since many non catholics view this as the strongest argument against the papacy. Would you consider a video on this topic?
The issue of how we use and create the structures of the world around us, and the systems of material movement through those structures is a complex and interesting one. Basic economics is a major element in figuring it out also. Everything has a cost. The prevalent use of synthetic polymers and the downstream effects of plastic waste and the chemical effects of those plastics on our bodies is a big environmental problem. We use plastic so much because it is so versatile and useful. Though consider the plastic versus paper shopping bag issue. Paper is biodegradable and renewable, and there are other plants better than trees that can be made into paper, like bamboo. I, personally, really like older architecture, like the stuff from the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s, in terms of solidness and beauty, and I wonder what we could do to move back to that ideal (though traditional Japanese architecture is really nice too). I mention this because so much of modern building materials are made from petroleum products, and it's just ugly and flimsy. How we manage all the factors with charity and justice is the question. We definitely need to get more people into science and engineering fields to invent clever new ways to solve the problems of pollution, energy production, material use, packaging, environment design, but the changes need to happen gradually. The trick to implementing any of it is marketing. Make it easy, affordable, and something that works better or just as good as what is already there, and people will buy it. There are even ways around some of the traditional routes of economics, which can be seen in crowd sourcing and such. If something workable gets invented and someone with the right charisma promotes it, things can happen. But as long as people are trying to ram certain changes down everyone's throats with no regard for the damage it will cause. The climate is not the kind of emergency which requires a devastating response. We are not going to crash the car into a tree to avoid hitting a deer.
Coal, oil and gas have the best ROI, thus are the cheapest and most reliable sources of energy. Banning them basically means causing expensive energy for masses. Especially for the poorest ones.
Levelized Cost of Energy "LOCE" for wind (on shore) and solar (PV) is now cheaper than fossil fuels. Fossil fuels should not be banned, and it's hard to imagine they will be. But moving towards cheaper energy would be smart if one accepts the science, now essentially confirmed that the heat retention directly caused by fossil fuel use will continue if we keep increasing the concentration of heat trapping gas in the atmosphere. That won't be easy (for various reasons too numersous to detail here) and there are trade offs, environmentally, but I'm convinced it will be a mistake to not decarbonise. If external costs are included (see for example the BMJ's estimate of annual deaths/ damage due to fossil fuel use) fossil fuels, in addition to costing more, are even less desirable. Tough problem. Too many are against nuclear |(which is quite expensive in LOCE terms compared to renewables) for it to be brought on-line in a timely way, which could provide ramp-up capacity to supplement renewable energy so that production conforms to demand.
@@rogerdittus2952 Every accounting of the cost of wind and solar has ignored things like capacity factor, storage, transmission infrastructure, ect. This silliness with wind, solar, ocean waves and all that needs to stop before we end up with an electric shortage so bad that people die
@@joecummings1260 well, people are already dying due to fossil fuels as explained in the BMJ study I referenced: they currently are responsible for millions of deaths worldwide. Yes, all those issues with renewables are things that would have to be overcome. Also, I'm skeptical you are correct regarding the cost and feasibility of moving towards renewables. There are large hurdles to phasing in renewables but their Levelized Cost of Energy is Already Below that if fossil fuels, especially coal. And to ignore all the problems with fossil fuels, including the ongoing warming, which will not magically stop is the silly thing to do. Wait till 2050 if there's continued business as usual, and there's a power outage during a heatwave in the US SW and you'll really see some people die.
@@joecummings1260 this is my second attempted reply, don't know why my original was removed. So being briefer. You bring up some calud hurdles with addressing the reality of global warming l, but I'm very skeptical that "every" analysis finds renewables infeasible. Rather, there are wide ranging conclusions. To ignore the problem of a heating earth is the silly thing to do. Wait until 2050 or worse, 2075, under a business as usual energy production scenario, and there's a power outage during a heatwave due to constant air conditioner running in the SW US and you will see some actual dead people.
@@rogerdittus2952 levelized Costs with what? With the so called CO2 allowances? Just playing with numbers an masking huge terrible Opportunity costs. By the way: hydrocarbons in nature all around us are the way energy is stored in massive amounts. Energy is not naturally stored in electrochemical batteries, that are way less energetically dense than hydrocarbons.
Day by day, do the little goods you can for your neighbour, don't let the 'greater good" for mankind be a hindrance to this responsibility. Leave the "greater good" to God. The arrogance of humanity to believe that we can destroy God's creation by our actions or inaction. Do you not know that He is with us.
I think the nuclear scare period that we saw in the 1980s from Chernobyl and Three Mile Island are going to be behind us soon. If we are to have a future that depends on electricity, I can think of a few things better than nuclear. I think we have learned the hard lesson that it needs to be monitored well.
Pet peeve: “The case…” implies there are no other arguments to be made from this position. Hence if one finds a way to reject this argument, they feel as though they have rejected all available arguments.
Can you please do a response video to Allie stuckey’s most recent video on Catholics? It’s crazy how she gets Catholicism so wrong every time. Especially the part where the speakers response to the question “why isn’t sola scriptura mentioned in the Bible?” His response was “it isn’t necessary” 🙄
Pope Benedict did some work toward going green that gets overshadowed by Pope Francis, but here’s what really bothers me. Vatican carbon neutral by 2050. Sounds ok, but apple is saying carbon neutral by 2030. Honda also says 2050, but they make cars. It sounds to me like more kicking the can down the road.
I can't wait for Trent's "Catholic Case for More Tax Cuts for Billionaires" and his "Catholic Case for More Off-Shore Drilling" and of course "The Blessed Virgin Was Pro-Flat Tax"
After many days of consideration, and hesitation due to the fact that my parents are staunch anti-catholic protestants, I will officially declare myself Catholic. Trent, you had the biggest impact on the beginning of my conversion, thank you.
Congratulations! 🎉❤
Good luck on your journey into the Church!
Please think again, Why do you want to follow an Unbiblical faith? You are converting to a Pagan, man made, man centric faith. Please make a U turn. Praying for you.
@@eddyk4062if by man made you mean made by a man who came and died for my sins,( who also happens to be God) then yes.
@@philosopher-2007 Sorry buddy, I never refer to Jesus as "man", yes, HE was a man for 33 years and 33 years only, just so you know, Jesus is God. When I say man/men, I meant your popes, bishops, fathers, cardinals, saints etc. making stuff up (outside Bible, unbiblical).
That is what I meant. You believe in so much outside Bible stuff (like Mormons), you believe in Bible plus other doctrines like catechisms, declarations, pontifications, encyclopedias etc. You guys are on a ever changing slippery slope (vs never changing Sola Scriptura). Hope that clarifies. I hope you realize one day, what a mistake it was to embrace a non Christian faith like Catholicism.
I like the idea of green energy in principle, but it has nothing to do with whether or not someone is a good Catholic.
Green is only good for the end user. It wrecks the lands involved in producing materials.....materials with diminishing returns and no way to recycle
Well, we do have a moral obligation to conservation, moderation, and sustainable development. The question is the means.
I'd argue that we are called to be enviromental stewards.
God created this earth. we need to be kind to it.
It's literally a moral issue that has to do with the life of millions. If this doesn't have to do with being a good Catholic, why are less impactful things seen as crucial?
There’s no principle, it’s cynical profiteering. It’s a racket.
I'm all for green energy (especially nuclear power) and environmental attention.
This earth is a gift from God, and we are supposed to take care of it.
I'm even in favor of big investments for the environment.
What i don't like is the allarmism and the agenda behind environmentalism.
I wonder if the Jews thought that Jesus' preaching on hell and repentance from sin was "alarming" with an "agenda"
Only nuclear power is green energy. Everything else is a scam
Those are two completely separate things, one involves God and the other involves Socialists seeking subjugation.
@@jarrahe
I’m a big fan of energy diversification rather than getting rid of other energy sources.
@jarrahe are you comparing the words of God with scientific community policy?
Please pray for my brother Giovanni’s health he’s in the hospital I’m not sure what happened to him
🙏
I have prayed for him
Prayers assured
Praying for him.
May God help him get better soon, he is in my prayers 🙏🙏🙏
As a faithful Catholic who works on wind turbines I don’t think very many people even realize just how much carbon emissions it takes to make transport and keep the turbines running. Petroleum based oils in gearbox’s and hydraulic systems as well as the gas trucks needed to continue to maintain them.
It's all very minimal compared to the coal/gas burning alternative.
@PiOfficial mining the rare earth elements needed for the USA's wind and solar requires tens of thousands of mining trucks that run on gallons of diesel per mile, and shipping the material overseas from the third world (where it is mined) to the first world also burns billions of gallons of diesel because of how heavy the ore is. this has to happen constantly to supply the raw materials for new and replacement parts for green energy tech since green energy tech has a short lifespan. All green energy does is reduce emissions at home and increase emissions in the third world, all while charging higher prices at home for the same amount of energy. the only exception is nuclear, but everone hates nuclear because no one understands how a reactor or fuel rods, when at the bottom of a pool of water, cannot leak any radiation, since radiation cannot travel in water. pure carbon can be absorbed by life and the ocean, the only problem with fossil fuel exhaust is that it's not pure carbon, it has other material in it that is causing lung cancer and smog. this is why we should use exhaust scrubbers. they are a more thorough power plant version of catyictic converters, they filter fossil fuel exhaust so it only outputs pure carbon. no one uses them because everyone wants to demonize fossil fuels (while still burning a similar amount of fossil fuels, just in a different location that isn't their home country) instead of filtering the exhaust better.
@@PiOfficial natural gas plants which can be peak or base power production is actually almost as clean as wind over 30 years which is the typical life span of most wind farms. If people really wanted the most green per Megawatt of energy produced they would support nuclear energy as a majority base power producer with hydro and geothermal peak in the north west. Solar as a peak in the south west. Wind and natural gas in the middle of the country where the wind corridor is for peak and hydro in the east as a peak as well. In college I could never justify wind and solar at more then 24% of total production for the US without major outages or exorbitant cost to consumers including the lower and middle classes. Maybe those numbers have changed over the last 7 years but I doubt by much.
@@TheKj85Building and maintaining nuclear plants is a lot more carbon intensive than building solar and wind farms. So I don’t know where you’re getting this information from but it doesn’t reflect actual data.
Nuclear power is the way, by far the safest and most effective method.
How do you safely store nuclear waste?
Except for the examples where it's not.
@@PhillipCummingsUSAThis HAS to be the dumbest way to refute anything ever. "Rice cookers are the best way to make rice, except for when they arent!!"
"Knives are the best way to cut fruit, except for when arent!!"
May we learn to embrace the peaceful atom
@@PhillipCummingsUSA If you're referring to events like Chernobyl, that was 40years ago in the USSR. The USSR. I shouldn't have to say more, but they knew it was going to meltdown and told no one, and they had no standards for safety.
Anytime you see someone advocating for clean energy without bringing up nuclear, you know they've not done their research.
Thanks for this.
Or.. they are just deceptive intentionally
Correction: its not that they haven't done their research, its that clean energy isn't the actual goal.
@@jrozi3872 bingo
Ironic, because you posting this comment tells me you don't know much about energy.
@@shreddedhominid1629 Ahh yes because by saying that without giving any evidence for why you know what you are talking about you demonstrate your expertise on the matter.
Its not only storage of nuclear waste, but also the treatment of it making it even less harmful that has advanced a lot, despite the political opposition. If you are truly concerned about waste and environment nuclear is the way to go even with 40 year outdated tech. Imagine what gains are possible with Gen IV Nuclear power, virtually limitless clean power for all our industrial processes.
But see that actually solves the problem. The climate cult cannot actually solve the issue otherwise their money from the grift would dry up.
Not to mention that solar, wind, and batteries are not able to be recycled because their is no infrastructure in place for it; the strip mining required to get the rare earth metals needed for solar panels and electric cars and batteries expend far more energy than they put out.
@@ralphwoodruff The EROI for solar is 3-10, wind 10-15 depending where you install them for Nuclear its 50-80. Estimations for Gen IV nuclear exceed 100
Moreover, nuclear waste can be reprocessed both to produce fuel for Gen IV reactors and to obtain valuable metals for industry.
My instinct (though I may be wrong) is that a geothermal powerplant is less expensive than nuclear. For the development of places like Indonesia, the Philippines; to enhance energy production if possible in places like New Zealand and the west coast of Latin America...if it's easy, I don't understand why Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and northern Utah don't get all their electricity from it.
Aside from political polarization, alarmism, and virtue signaling, I think it's best for Catholics to focus on the faith and moral implications of this entire situation. How are we being good stewards of the Earth? Are we then, additionally, being good stewards of our towns? Neighborhoods? Marriage and family life? The Church and Her faithful should be more concerned with the inner life, converting souls, and evangelizing individuals and families, than overly concerned with the "shiny" and trendy political problems "out there". If we desire to be good stewards and take better care of the Earth, that needs to come from a place of inner peace and desire for justice and the good of others. I think many Catholic leaders don't think about that; they're simply concerned with their outward image in a political sense, and virtue signaling about the same things everyone else is.
Of course we need to be good stewards of the environment. The problem is that I think most Catholics in this country don't really know what that means, even though bishops and lay people parade that phrase constantly. It shouldn't be surprising that this happens because Catholics in the U.S. are so used to living comfortably that it's very hard for us to understand more about how we should look at the environment and live a life that is less consumerist and more fulfilling.
Thank you, Trent Horn, for your defence of the poor. The climate policies such as reducing fossil fuels, are making them poorer and reducing their ability to resist extremes of normal climate activity. The solar and wind renewables, which produce unreliable power, and are environmentally disastrous, are not the answer. I support nuclear power, which is the cleanest reliable energy available today, and which will lower energy costs for the poor.
They want to make people slaves.
"You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy."
Thank you for talking sense! "Be not afraid!" has to be our motto as Christians. Alarmism has no place among Catholics.
But some situations calls for swift action to prevent injustice and immorality.
I have no idea how Catholics or any Christians can believe that God is going to let us destroy the world with plastic before He can with fire.
Yes ! and this horrible demonic Woke Mafia that is attacking Jesus's people
That green energy is a ploy devised by elites to control world population and he serves them and not God. But all their plans will come to naught, for they will all cast into Hell and we will see the renewed world and the Era of Peace (Rev 19:19-20:6). Let us be alert and not be deceived, and pray, do penance, hold fast to the ages old teachings of the Church, and persevere to the end (Matt 24:13). Amen!
@@YourHeartIsTheKey I'd argue swift action will harm more than help in this scenario, we frankly don't know enough about the causes of climate change and how our responses to it will affect things. Anybody who says otherwise is guessing or has something to sell you.
Hey Trent! Thanks for this vid, I agree with some points and others are complicated.
I’m Catholic, conservative, and also an Electrical Engineer working primarily in the renewable energy industry.
From my perspective, The green new deal types have effectively convinced most conservatives that wind and solar are not economically viable, but these projects when built by private entities, are always profitable - they’re building them to print money selling electricity with zero fuel cost. Not trying to put them in locations where their output would be too small because the votes needed to pass it dictated which congressional district it should be built in. Or throwing panels on a roof - which only really makes sense for south facing roofs with a shallow pitch in the sun belt.
I am satisfied with working on these projects. The end of lifecycle issues and unethical sourcing of materials plague conventional generating stations as well. Gas is pretty good but the coal plants that are getting phased out (mostly by gas) are horrible to live near.
But I also know a 100% wind and solar grid is a pipe-dream from people who have never heard or understood what capacity factor means. And I completely agree, Electricity being affordable and reliably available 24/7/365 is also really great for humanity. And NUCLEAR! Yes!
As Electrical Engineer in Training (it's a Canadian licensing thing), I've been saying for years if the environmentalists won't consider nuclear as an option, then they aren't serious about solving the problem. It is frankly too useful to ignore
@@Pieflavourman87 good luck on your P. Eng buddy! I just got my Indiana PE last month!
Asking as a layman here. How do you deal with the photovoltaic cells and wind blades once the generator is decommissioned?
@@vincentthendean7713 I’m not an authority on that, I deal with designing the new stations not O&M on the stations once they’re built nor on decommissioning, but my understanding from doing “repower” projects (building new stations where the decommissioned equipment was taken out, is the old fiberglass blades end up in landfills and PV cells are doped silicon and should be treated as e-waste same as any other semi-conductor to avoid leeching into the soil but sometimes they end up in landfills too. A lot of the useful steel, aluminum and copper would be scrapped but yes, more and more of the first generation renewables are hitting their ~25 yr lifecycle and people are realizing there is waste from these. Green new dealers are hippy-dippy not very business savvy so they don’t realize there’s waste from all projects at the end of their lifecycle.
On the other hand you could generate by coal, gas, nuclear, hydro - and still have the same “some of this stuff ends up in landfills” dilemma - it’s not a unique problem to wind or solar. Their big selling point for me is that they have no fuel cost, you build them with enough up-front capital and your only costs after that are O&M, no volatility from fuel prices. Nuclear is great but it does not have that going for it. (Unfortunately nuclear stations not being built is partly PR and the unseriousness of environmentalists, but also because investors calculate a 60 year nuke plant lifecycle usually doesn’t see a ROI until about year 55, and there’s not enough pessimism that the technology won’t be obsolescent by some new breakthrough generation source by then.
Also of interest, natural gas becoming a cheap, abundant byproduct of fracking for oil has done way more to decommission coal plants early than any Obama era regulations (suffering coal miners are in my prayers, but I do have to see the silver lining that the rates of black lung and water pollution from failed fly ash ponds are way more prevalent than risks associated with gas, nuclear, hydro, wind or solar).
I have plenty of critiques of this video, but I'll save talking about the harshest ones for later. For now I'll just say that I feel the section on Nuclear Power was pretty good, but strawmans Environmentalists as anti-nuclear. Most aren't. Greenpeace is, as far as I know, but plenty of environmentalists are completely fine with nuclear. There's also a false dichotomy that we can only either have nuclear *or* renewables when we can and should have both. Simon Clark makes a great video talking about the pros and cons of nuclear vs renewables and why we need both.
I plan on going into environmental engineering in college next year, so it's nice to see an engineer here too.
As a mechanical engineer in college who would like to work in nuclear energy I approve this message!
Get it man. Nuclear is awesome. I did eng. physics and ended up in optics (much better with wave physics) but it was the other option. There's a lot more money floating around now too.
Going navy is an option for this too.
This is somewhat unrelated but since you're interested in the subject I'd love to know if you think the US really used nuclear bombs on Japan in WWII. The damage seemed to be the same as other Japanese and German cities the allies were decimating at the end of the war. I really don't know. I'm interested though.
@@c.b.s.3495you think the A bombs were fake? Seek mental help
@@c.b.s.3495Hi C.B.S.. There is overwhelming evidence that this did happen. I cannot engage in a long discussion, but maybe I could help you take a step or two.
One way to help confirm things is to look for indirect evidence. For example, you could visit the Trinity test site, where you personally can collect pieces of ‘glassified’ (vitrified) rock. You could visit Hiroshima, where there is a museum. [If you go, maybe you could attend a Hiroshima Carp baseball game.] Talk to people around Hiroshima about it, but try to be very respectful (they suffered a lot). You could visit a large library with a collection of old newspapers, and read the news articles. You could buy an old book on the effects of the atomic bombs. You can go inspect the plane that dropped the 1st atomic bomb, the Angola Gay, (reassembled) at the National Air and Space Museum, and compare it with old pictures and films. You could also read about the psychological problems the crew had after the war.
Of course you can look at videos, which were originally old fashion film, of the explosions and after effects, as well as Japanese documentation. I suppose you *might* even be able to go to the Bikini atoll site to look for glassified rock, if it’s not too radio active. This was a post war nuclear explosion test site. A few countries have set off nuclear bombs since WWII, and almost all of them have some public documentation (Russia, U.S., China, India, etc…). Russia set one off in 1949, soon after WWII, so a second country had the technology just after the war. You could try to go to the Los Alamos historical archives, but they probably won’t let you in without the proper clearance. However, you can look at old pre WWII physics journals to see for yourself whether the physicists knew enough to try to construct the nuclear devices (they did know enough). Maybe Chicago University has a WWII archive you could visit. They were part of the ‘Manhattan Project’.
There are other direct and indirect methods of knowing, but these are a few ideas. Good luck.
@@c.b.s.3495 Are you serious?
Yes this is absolutely true, the fallout deaths and tons and tons of film and photos and medical records of radiation burns and after effects are pretty absolute on this. Aside from the completely insane assertion it would be a lie in the first place. Why would this even enter your head?
Or are you a bot?
My only critique about your chart is that America just outsources our pollution to China and other Countries. I don’t know how you would calculate this. Take our imports and subtract the amount of carbon it took to make these items from China’s (and elsewhere) and add it to America’s? I mean technically these other Countries are creating the pollution, but manufacturing for the United States. Thoughts?
Also his graph doesn't show how much of those carbon are used up by e.g. trees and other greeneries. If he includes that then China would also top that chart.
@@vincentthendean7713trees only store carbon for the life of the tree
Yes, but the consumption in China and the rest of the developing world has also been skyrocketing. The population of Africa is rising and doesn't seem to be slowing down even when standards of living increase.
@@vincentthendean7713 Oh, I thought you meant that China has more greenery. I believe Singapore has the most greenery per square footage, but that is because they have insane laws that say if you remodel or build, you mist plant and equal amount of square footage of greenery to the amount of square footage you are building or remodeling. So the people there plant shrubs and foliage on their building and properties. It is illegal to chew gum in public (you get a large fine) and if you get caught with drugs, you could be jailed for 20 years or be put to death depending how much you have.
@@Shua01 chew gum? Or is it illegal to litter like spitting the gum on the ground
I always feel uncomfortable when the Church gets drawn into these debates
I have got impression that pope's statements are overinterpreted and used to force aggressive eco agenda. Btw. the problem with renewables is that they require stabilisation by fossil fuel plants or energy storages.
Well the Church is called to be the force for justice in the world, but getting involved in petty politics is never the way.
Our new home in California was required to have new solar panels, and SunPower installed them. We got a 30% federal tax credit for installing them (which means the price was artificially high)...and SunPower just filed for bankruptcy!
and if you ever have a very overcast day, you’re not gonna get much energy from those solar panels. and at night, the sun has gone “to sleep. “ so how are you going to have energy at night?
Mega-batteries!
Which we don’t have the tech for yet
@@femaleKCRoyalsFan In our part of SoCal during peak summer, we get a ton of clear skies and direct sunlight, so the panels do help to a large degree, but our main production is before 4:00 p.m...and SoCal Edison charges us more for kilowatt hours between 4:00 and 9:00 p.m. 🙂
@@killianmiller6107 California changed their payout plan for solar just after we got our panels installed, and you basically need to buy a battery on the new plan to make it worthwhile...except getting the battery basically doubles the upfront solar cost 😮
@@ShiloStigen if I'm recalling correctly, the change to their payout plan was from federal interference/pressure.
It's a good thing the climate change truth adviser was placed on this video. How would I function without it? Very well done video Trent.
I know my wife sure wishes I'd decrease my CO2 emissions around the house.
Go work on your marriage then
@@justsomevids4541 we're working on it: I told her I'd stop emitting so much if she'd stop making beans.
@@RealSeanithanthats methane not co2
eat less beans
@@RealSeanithan Beano works.
when it comes to lithium ion battery that EV vehicles (and most of our modern electronics are dependent on) a crucial resource in the battery production is cobalt. majority of the world's cobalt comes from the DRC. while there are some legal mines there a significant amount of the cobalt is mined with unregulated child labor there. Just one example that there's no moral panacea to resource extraction in this world.
Open and expand mining in the US.
There easy fix. There's tons here.
Also, those mines bring tons of financial resources into those communities. Just shutting them down makes ending child labor in those communities difficult.
Those issues can be worked on. The broader point is that green energy is necessary to stave off global warming, which if allowed to continue unchecked will result in a number of environmental catastrophes that really dwarf any problem we have seen up until now. Heat waves and storms are not significant compared to the long term desertification of entire countries and the mass migration of hundreds of millions of people.
So are there mines that might have child workers in them? Maybe...it is clearly not the broader concern. And the church is right to point this out. If you care about other people and the future of humanity, you are more or less obligated to care about climate change, though there are many solutions!
@@radscorpion8 What do you base your claims on. We can do nothing about the weather. Which can be severe or not each season. What do you know of the long term but that which is spread by alarmists and "scientists" funded to reach the conclusions of the funders.
@@radscorpion8 Global Warming is beneficial to humans, livestock and crops. You are WRONG.
child slave labor helps create the battery for the EV and unfortunately, the electronics that many of us use.
This is such a great video. Thank you for taking the time to address this issue, all without dragging down the magisterium
Something I noticed about the Pope's encyclical on climate is that he only quoted the UN IPCC's summaries for policy makers, not the scientific attachments. The alarmism is all in the policy summaries and is not substantiated by the science. It is political, pure and simple. Scientists like Koonin, who have read both volumes of the IPCC report, have pointed out the discrepancies. I doubt the Pope read the 1100+ page scientific appendix. I doubt whether his lieutenants read the scientific appendix. Moreover, if they did, why didn't they quote it? Why quote only the alarmist summary?
I’m more worried about microplastics and forever chemicals to be honest. Which goes back ti what I believe is the heart of the message. Let’s be good stewards to His gift that is the earth.
Then you should be concerned about fossil fuels, as plastics are derived from petrochemicals.
Based Trent Horn
I remembered you said you were covering this! I've been trying to share your videos at any opportunity, and guess what? Someone brought your last video up to me yesterday again, before I ever mentioned it! I didn't get to comment because the comments were off at the time, but thank you for your awesome video defending Mary as the mother of God right before the Feast Day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary! I prayed for you, your family, and everyone here at Mass Thursday and on Sunday! And pray every day in my Rosary! God bless you, Trent!
And your recent videos on Science, "It's Not Always Demons" with Jimmy Akin and "The Emptiness of 'Political Christianity" are a few of my all time favorite videos!
Hope you and your family have a light-filled peaceful joyful blessed week!
Nuclear energy is cheap, clean, and powers a huge area. Therefore we will never see it be the primary energy source because governments and corporations are always run by the worst among us
Thank you Trent. I picked up Pope Francis’ first encyclical, because I heard a quote from it on the Catholic Radio station about “Corruption,” that I though was great! But, sadly when I opened to that chapter and began reading, what Pope Frances defines as corrupt and what I define corrupt are two different things. It’s been a couple years since I read it, so I won’t try to paraphrase what he says. But, if anyone wants to read it, I donated my copy of the book to my local Goodwill : )
The Church would be in better shape if bishops and popes would stop inserting themselves into controversial prudential matters and actually carry out the mission Jesus gave them.
I paid $33,000 for a slightly used Tesla. It is a really nice mode of transportation. I charge it in my driveway. I have solar panels on my home. I seldom drive over 100 miles in a day. My Tesla operates for free and does not emit pollution.
That is a nice option to be able to have. My car was 6,000 bucks. I live in an apartment. Nowhere here to charge a car or put solar panels. However, you must remember that the battery in that thing, and the materials in your solar panels, came with their own environmental impacts.
I'm sure the Congolese children mining cobalt for your car battery applaud you
what are you going to do if there’s ever a flood and you can’t drive your Tesla? If you don’t understand what I mean, look up Tesla and Florida hurricane.
@@peterv7258 This is a red herring. Literally everything humans produce has an environmental impact. You're only saying this because you're against renewables. Why?
@@peterv7258 I would not recommend Tesla's for folks without charging stations at their residence. Too much of a hassle. I've long ago learned if Trent says something it's probably not true. I lack the knowledge to determine if the environmental impacts from batteries and solar panels are worse than the ones from burning fuel.
The waste from large nuclear facilities can and is used in mini-nuclear plants where that waste can be used over and over, no more burying it in the ground.
Much appreciated video. Thank you Trent for taking the time to make this video.
Opportunity cost is real. Ever dollar invested in climate programs is not invested elsewhere and thus harms the poor, if climate change itself doesn't cause more poverty on the long run.
Investing in climate change mitigation IS helping the poor, as they will be effected the most. Your logic is backwards.
@@shreddedhominid1629it is true, if and only if they aren't harmed more by the decrease in economic power that is created in meantime.
@@cromi4194 I don’t understand this “decrease in economic power” narrative. Fossil fuels are on their way out, even with the billions of and billions of subsidies the industry receives they are failing to remain cost competitive with renewables. Poor countries adopting large scale renewable infrastructure will unlock their development potential insulate their economies from the market volatility of fossil fuels.
@@shreddedhominid1629 Well if it is as you say, there is nothing more to debate. However if it were so, renewables would have or will win in the market anyway. It doesn't seem to be that way though. Trent here also doesn't apparently agree with you.
@@cromi4194 Trent has a very poor understanding of this topic, and listening to all the arguments made in the video it’s clear he either hasn’t throughly researched or hasn’t bothered to, opting in favour to regurgitate some low hanging fruit talking points commonly heard from climate deniers and fossil fuel lobbyists.
The market has been and will continue to prove the superiority of renewables, even in developing countries. Morocco has renewable energy projects that make up 40% of its installed energy capacity, India has the fastest growing rate of renewable electricity growth of any major economy, and over 2bn in financing has gone towards renewable energy investments in subsaharan Africa. Poorer countries adopting renewables is mostly a question of access to financing - transforming the high up-front capital outlays to long term development benefits requires access to finance. That requires cooperation from developed countries. There is nothing inherently more expensive about renewables as opposed to developing fossil fuel infrastructure, apart from the fact that renewables are becoming cheaper fast while fossil fuels are gradually becoming more expensive.
I went with a group on pilgrimage to Walsingham back in 2015. The church (local Catholic parish) had a lot of solar cells on its roof. Given the high latitude (almost 53 degrees north) and the cloudy English climate, I wasn’t sure whether this was prudent, but I’m sure it’s made some people feel better.
I'd add that there are other realms of stewardship towards the natural world aside from energy policy. Many people live in secular, hyperindividualist societies where consumerism and other systems of immediate gratification have replaced principles like natural law and stewardship which have long term fulfillment and the common good as their goals. A lot of resource consumption and pollution is driven by secular indoctrination of materialist demands rather than filling existing, healthy needs. There's a need for a moral, community-centric socioeconomic model like distributism.
I feel like there is a good marketing slogan between the similarities of "reforge your swords into plows" and changing nuclear weapons into nuclear energy somewhere...
That last segment about nuclear power made me realize we can actually kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Like what Trent said, use nuclear materials from existing bombs to generate nuclear power. While only a handful of countries own nukes, by raising the demand of nuclear power all over the world they might be tempted to decommission more of their stockpiles faster in exchange for money.
Fun fact: It was warmer 1,000 years ago than it is today. They did try saying recently that we had finally surpassed the record temperatures, but that's because they were conflating ground level temperatures with the air temperatures usually recorded.
What’s your source
@@JamesMathison98 d a a n s g a a r d 1984 a v e r y 2009 but without the spaces in each name, lol.
Assuming the above comment doesn't disappear, I would do a Google Image search for those terms and it should be the first result.
@@Vic2point0 thanks!
By the way, switching from oil and coal over to natural gas will reduce CO2 emissions by about 40%. The greens prefer to build more bird choppers.
This is one of the best analyses I’ve seen on this issue. Thank you!
Thanks for bring up nuclear. I'm a catholic nuclear engineer and some of the stuff we are working on in the field is amazing. The technology has been safe in the west at least since it's inception, but the next generation is incredible.
Trent, this might be one of my favorite videos of yours. Thank you for laying out the points about nuclear energy, as "true clean energy". Thank you for the info and the clear presentation.
This is the proper way to engage the Pope's teachings: constructive criticism and respectful disagreement over issues that are not infallibly taught.
We are living through a 'crisis' because many critics of the Holy Father do not know their basics and simply shout 'heresy' over issues that are merely theological opinions or matters of practice and policy.
I hope you can cover that topic someday.
Thanks and well done.
This was a brave video to make. You did very well with it. Kudos.
Excellent video Trent. I really like the point about disease. There are so many other natural phenomenon making people's lives miserable. As Catholics, we must be careful not to fall for the fads and fashions of the secular society.
Francis needs to study electromagnetic radiation and the quantum physics of CO2. He will come to realize that any temperature increase caused by increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere cannot be more than about 1 degree C. He will also find that the climate models are so far away from describing reality that they only serve to show that the climate scientists do not know or understand all the independent variables that influence the climate.
Unsure where you got the 1 deg C part (would be interesting if true), but totally agree with the second half! If you look into the climate models many are completely unreasonable!
"Quantum Physics of CO2?" Did CERN start colliding particles of CO2 without telling the world? What "Quantum Physics" are there of "CO2?"
@@Pieflavourman87 Read the work on this by physicist William Happer
@@theien5929 You mean known climate denier and psudeoscientist?
Excellent distinctions. Very much appreciated. Well done!
Thank you for thinking through this complex issue in ways that others haven’t, and for presenting your thoughts in a well-organized way that is consistent with Catholic teachings.
I liked the editing in this one. Not too ‘in your face’ or distracting, just displaying the useful information on the screen, and letting Trent do the talking. Lovely.
As a new convert, I can’t thank you enough for addressing this an explaining the reality and hierarchy of this topic (financially, morally and politically). Doing “real good in the world” vs climate change is spot on!
If anyone is interested, another great resource for the data Trent presents in this video is Michael Shellenberger’s book “Apocalypse Never”.
Many thanks Trent Horn for a useful and relevant talk.
Fulton sheen said that “the road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops”… Sadly, I am seeing that to be more and more true
It was Saint John Chrysostom who said it originally. The full quote is "the road to hell is paved with the skulls of priests and the skulls of bishops are the lamp posts that light the way".
We had a wonderful Bishop, who a few years back, said Catholics can not vote for pro-choice candidates. He was told to stay out of politics. What has changed? And he was supporting Catholic doctrine.
I work for a coal mining company and I am very proud to work here.
You should be, since a lot of electrical vehicles are powered by coal.😊
God made coal.
Coal makes steel; steel makes modern life possible.
Nuclear Energy and Reneable Energy. Together is the best option.
This is objectively true, and this is what most environmentalists propose. Anyone who says environmentalists are anti-nuclear is mostly strawmanning: there are some who are against it, namely greenpeace, but not most. Simon Clark makes a great video talking about the pros and cons for renewables and nuclear.
Wind and solar power plants require stabilisation. This cannot be done with nuclear. You can only use fossil fuel plants or (expensive) energy storages. Water power plants are also a very good solution but cannot be used widely. Wind and solar could help lower energy prices as long as you can stabilise them without emitting CO2 Otherwise too much wind and solar will result with high energy prices, CO2 emission and huge recycling/waste problem.
I have heard very few bring up lowering our energy demand. I wonder how many solar/wind proponents would be up for giving up comfort instead. Simple example: if research in a few years would propose that we abandon mega server farm services like Facebook for environmental reasons, will these proponents follow this advice? I think this will be an interesting topic one day.
I understand this is a catholic case against green energy, but would love to see a video of the catholic case for green energy. You are a great debater and I think it would be good to balance the discussion.
Exactly. Not sure why in his first video on the topic, he chose to side with the negative rather than the positive in light of Church teaching
He did a debate on this already
He gave the case for green energy in the video. Nuclear is the future and he stated the need for affordable energy to help lift the poorest among us out of poverty
Many other Catholics already are going with the secular flow for green energy because it's the globalist agenda, so there is no need to reiterate arguments easily found.
It is currently harder to find these arguments against green energy, so this video is valuable and the one you propose is not.
If you watch the video Trent gives a great case for green energy when discussing nuclear power. Even at their costs other forms of “green energy” oftentimes cause more waste long term.
Thank you Trent!
Great inside. Thank you Trent
I thought the primary goal of the Church was to spread the Faith and save souls.
You’ve been on fire Trent!
Yes, a dumpster fire. 🔥
This is a black eye on an otherwise great record of videos.
@@efs797 liberal spotted 🫡
This is spot on. I'm an Electrical Engineer and I've been in nuclear power plants. They indeed are the most green energy source we have until fusion becomes commercially available. All other "green" sources are well intentioned but will not come close to the low CO2 of nuclear power. The best advice I would give to people is to stay away from activists who seek to make a change through alarmism. It is disingenuous to scare people into going along with their agenda. With all due respect, the Holy Father is speaking out of his area of expertise when it comes to climate change and "green" energy. I can only guess that he took the word of his advisors on this matter.
Regarding AOC's famous clip about the world ending in 2030, this type of mentality comes from people that have never built a real thing in their life. They have no idea what they are talking about. Anyone with actual engineering, construction, planning, experience would know that if the clock stops in 2030 "if we don't address climate change now", it's already too late. I believe that one day humanity will have energy production that is way better than even nuclear is today. But that time is many decades away at least. These things take time to develop especially when there is any risk to the health and safety of human beings (rightfully so).
Best ways to solve climate change
1. Nuclear fission
2. Nuclear fusion
3. Hydroelectric directly form the ocean
very well argued, I like application of catholicism to political issues like this!
Thank you, Trent! We need some clear and wise words from Catholics.
When I was a young boy in London I remember that the Houses of Parliament used to be black - or so I thought! It was actually soot and carbon deposits from all the fossil fuels that were being burnt and it took a great deal of sand blasting to clean it up. You can imagine what the inside of our lungs looked like but unfortunately no sand blasting was available there! If for no other reason, I’m in favour of cleaner energy to prevent the widespread pollution that was so common back in the 60s and 70s. As others have said, Genesis 2:15 tells us that we are stewards of this planet so we have to take care of it.
Excellent video Trent. 100% agree with you. Thanks!
You have good points Trent. Thanks for sharing. I'm thinking you and Gavin Ortlund could have a helpful back and forth about this topic. God Bless.
How did they shape those blades that are being buried? Most solar panels are squared or rectangular, how do they make those shapes? How do they make the glass covering? How do they shape the quartz? How do they make the wires? They heated the materials using "green energy"? There were no emissions of CO2 during the process? Imagine the amount of energy needed to shape all the materials for solar and wind farms for entire world! Food for thought!
Great pod cast.
Everyone should have an exercise bike in their house that is directly connected to their electricity. This would literally give people money to exercise and supplement the electricity coming into their house. I'd be interested to see how much utility cost and materials would be saved by doing this.
Also, look up gravity batteries. They could be one of the best answers for clean energy.
Lastly, while Catholics do have a duty to take care of the planet, the Earth that God made is very resilient. There was an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico years ago that scientists thought would take until mid century to clean up. But then natural bacteria ended up eating the oil in about six months, making it safe again for wildlife. The world balances itself out. I don't think fossil fuels will have the effect people think.
The bike idea isn't bad but you'd need a system to store and then safely discharge the generated electricity. So not exactly cheap. Not to mention it probably wouldn't decrease your bills enough to offset the costs of the system, so not sure if it's viable. Good idea though!
@Pieflavourman87 I think if multiple people used it each day, it would make a difference. And it could use battery storage like solar panels do.
Why don’t we just get a giant hamster wheel and generate electricity through that?
@@femaleKCRoyalsFan I like it. Everyone on your street/building can take shifts.
The amount of electricity that could actually generate is negligible. You can power a mini-TV so you can watch TV while you exercise, but that's about it.
Thank you, Trent. I've been looking for a reasonable critique of the Pope's environmental encyclicals. This was perfect.
Fantastic video. Thanks
It's always interested me to know how things are made, and the implications of resource use and management. It's something that was encouraged for our consideration when I was in high school in the late 1970s. (Honestly it surprises me when my former classmates promote the climate agenda on social media these days, and then I remember that these particular classmates openly admit that they don't remember much from high school because they were always buzzed). When green energy first appeared on my radar, I looked into it by researching the details from resource acquisition of the raw materials used to produce the machinery or media used to convert sun or wind into electricity, as well as the manufacturing process, the construction and development of electricity generating stations, transmission through wires, and factors such as average number of days of enough sun or wind to produce electricity. Then do the cost comparison. In the end, it amounts to the Village of the Wise Fools running the show, with the Wisest of the Wise Fools making decisions like when the village awoke to find that diamonds had fallen from the sky overnight, but they were very cold diamonds that were easily crushed, so they wanted to issue an order to the villagers to remain indoors until the diamonds could be harvested. They didn't have phones, they only had the village crier, so they decided to send him out to cry the order. But the very Wisest of all the Wisest of the Wise Fools objected, because the crier would crush the diamonds as he walked through the village. And so they all decided they would have the village crier stand on a table carried by 4 strong Fools. So he wouldn't crush the diamonds. And that's basically the plan for dealing with eliminating carbon.
Terrifying to me, is in the first 46 seconds. How a man would prefer to see oil leaders etc excommunicated before coming to "repentance".
The legalism in that authors throat will cost them heavily.
Oh my god one minute and already a information fact check🫵😭
9:06
The prisoners dilemma in the real world.
If only one country acts to try and stop climate change, they’ll lose money and resources and global warming won’t even be stopped. So there’s no benefit.
All countries act to stop global warming. Then it likely could be stopped and all countries would take the hit.
No countries act and they won’t lose the short term money and resources but global warming in isn’t stopped.
So it’s best if all countries act, but since that trust doesn’t exist between countries, and it’s better to not act if other countries also aren’t acting… that’s how we got here.
One very disingenuous measure is cited (that the US has twice the per capita CO2 emission than China - at about 8:45 in). It is disingenuous because it ignores that the amount of CO2 emitted has to be measured in proportion to the good done (a primitive measure of which might be GDP). China's per capita GDP is 6.5 times smaller than the US so that one might argue that the value of China's CO2 emissions are roughly 3 times smaller than the US. Said differently, China produces 3 times more CO2 pollution per capita than the US for a given economic output.
Tough stuff to cover Trent. Glad you cover these topics as an inquiring Catholic, cause there arent lots of video based sources that cover what you cover ❤
Great video, you nailed it :)
Thank you Trent for speaking the truth.. I pray Pope Francis listens to your podcast
Thank you Trent Horn!! Great video and thank you for the accurate points on nuclear power. Excellent video.
Also your books are awesome!!!
I have a strong interest in natural history and paleontology. One thing in my reading that jumped out at me is that in the past few million years, the planet has had periods during which the average annual global temperatures have been 5C-10C warmer than in the last several centuries. During those warm periods life flourished, the planet was a global forest. The global biomass during the warm periods was noticeably heavier than today. The global warming alarmists and the climate scientists who egg them on with dire predictions never bring up this fact - dis/mis/malinformation by exclusion. For one thing, counterintuitively, hotter weather worldwide means more precipitation, not less, because the warmer temperatures accelerate the evaporation cycle - what goes up must come down. Climate change does mean changes in weather patterns which will be neutral in some parts of the world, beneficial in others and detrimental in still other regions. We need to curtail carbon emissions over the long run, but the world will hardly come to an end if we do not achieve true carbon neutrality by 2050 or 2060 or even 2100 - we have time to allow carbon free energy technologies, especially carbon free technologies that do not involve massive toxic pollution, to mature and be implemented in a careful, systematic economically rational process.
Great episode
Hi Trent, I greatly appreciate your videos. I am also interested in your opinion on the three chapters controversy since many non catholics view this as the strongest argument against the papacy. Would you consider a video on this topic?
The issue of how we use and create the structures of the world around us, and the systems of material movement through those structures is a complex and interesting one. Basic economics is a major element in figuring it out also. Everything has a cost. The prevalent use of synthetic polymers and the downstream effects of plastic waste and the chemical effects of those plastics on our bodies is a big environmental problem. We use plastic so much because it is so versatile and useful. Though consider the plastic versus paper shopping bag issue. Paper is biodegradable and renewable, and there are other plants better than trees that can be made into paper, like bamboo. I, personally, really like older architecture, like the stuff from the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s, in terms of solidness and beauty, and I wonder what we could do to move back to that ideal (though traditional Japanese architecture is really nice too). I mention this because so much of modern building materials are made from petroleum products, and it's just ugly and flimsy. How we manage all the factors with charity and justice is the question. We definitely need to get more people into science and engineering fields to invent clever new ways to solve the problems of pollution, energy production, material use, packaging, environment design, but the changes need to happen gradually. The trick to implementing any of it is marketing. Make it easy, affordable, and something that works better or just as good as what is already there, and people will buy it. There are even ways around some of the traditional routes of economics, which can be seen in crowd sourcing and such. If something workable gets invented and someone with the right charisma promotes it, things can happen. But as long as people are trying to ram certain changes down everyone's throats with no regard for the damage it will cause. The climate is not the kind of emergency which requires a devastating response. We are not going to crash the car into a tree to avoid hitting a deer.
Coal, oil and gas have the best ROI, thus are the cheapest and most reliable sources of energy. Banning them basically means causing expensive energy for masses. Especially for the poorest ones.
Levelized Cost of Energy "LOCE" for wind (on shore) and solar (PV) is now cheaper than fossil fuels. Fossil fuels should not be banned, and it's hard to imagine they will be. But moving towards cheaper energy would be smart if one accepts the science, now essentially confirmed that the heat retention directly caused by fossil fuel use will continue if we keep increasing the concentration of heat trapping gas in the atmosphere. That won't be easy (for various reasons too numersous to detail here) and there are trade offs, environmentally, but I'm convinced it will be a mistake to not decarbonise. If external costs are included (see for example the BMJ's estimate of annual deaths/ damage due to fossil fuel use) fossil fuels, in addition to costing more, are even less desirable. Tough problem. Too many are against nuclear |(which is quite expensive in LOCE terms compared to renewables) for it to be brought on-line in a timely way, which could provide ramp-up capacity to supplement renewable energy so that production conforms to demand.
@@rogerdittus2952 Every accounting of the cost of wind and solar has ignored things like capacity factor, storage, transmission infrastructure, ect. This silliness with wind, solar, ocean waves and all that needs to stop before we end up with an electric shortage so bad that people die
@@joecummings1260 well, people are already dying due to fossil fuels as explained in the BMJ study I referenced: they currently are responsible for millions of deaths worldwide.
Yes, all those issues with renewables are things that would have to be overcome. Also, I'm skeptical you are correct regarding the cost and feasibility of moving towards renewables. There are large hurdles to phasing in renewables but their Levelized Cost of Energy is Already Below that if fossil fuels, especially coal. And to ignore all the problems with fossil fuels, including the ongoing warming, which will not magically stop is the silly thing to do. Wait till 2050 if there's continued business as usual, and there's a power outage during a heatwave in the US SW and you'll really see some people die.
@@joecummings1260 this is my second attempted reply, don't know why my original was removed. So being briefer. You bring up some calud hurdles with addressing the reality of global warming l, but I'm very skeptical that "every" analysis finds renewables infeasible. Rather, there are wide ranging conclusions. To ignore the problem of a heating earth is the silly thing to do. Wait until 2050 or worse, 2075, under a business as usual energy production scenario, and there's a power outage during a heatwave due to constant air conditioner running in the SW US and you will see some actual dead people.
@@rogerdittus2952 levelized Costs with what? With the so called CO2 allowances? Just playing with numbers an masking huge terrible Opportunity costs.
By the way: hydrocarbons in nature all around us are the way energy is stored in massive amounts. Energy is not naturally stored in electrochemical batteries, that are way less energetically dense than hydrocarbons.
Day by day, do the little goods you can for your neighbour, don't let the 'greater good" for mankind be a hindrance to this responsibility. Leave the "greater good" to God.
The arrogance of humanity to believe that we can destroy God's creation by our actions or inaction. Do you not know that He is with us.
You're one of the best representatives of Christianity and conservatism.
Great logic!
I think the nuclear scare period that we saw in the 1980s from Chernobyl and Three Mile Island are going to be behind us soon. If we are to have a future that depends on electricity, I can think of a few things better than nuclear. I think we have learned the hard lesson that it needs to be monitored well.
Pet peeve: “The case…” implies there are no other arguments to be made from this position. Hence if one finds a way to reject this argument, they feel as though they have rejected all available arguments.
Can you please do a response video to Allie stuckey’s most recent video on Catholics? It’s crazy how she gets Catholicism so wrong every time. Especially the part where the speakers response to the question “why isn’t sola scriptura mentioned in the Bible?” His response was “it isn’t necessary” 🙄
Well said.
Pope Benedict did some work toward going green that gets overshadowed by Pope Francis, but here’s what really bothers me.
Vatican carbon neutral by 2050. Sounds ok, but apple is saying carbon neutral by 2030. Honda also says 2050, but they make cars. It sounds to me like more kicking the can down the road.
Great commentary! Thanks much.
It's not even possible to solely rely on solar and wind, since it's dependent on the weather.
I hope one day we will manage to produce power without using fossil fuels. Unfortunately this day is still far in the future.
We can’t do that unless people are willing to embrace nuclear, and even then you need someway to power the lights in a nuclear plant
Trent thank you for your down to earth discussion on the Global warming. Wish Pope Francis could see this podcast.🙏🏻s for you
I can't wait for Trent's "Catholic Case for More Tax Cuts for Billionaires" and his "Catholic Case for More Off-Shore Drilling" and of course "The Blessed Virgin Was Pro-Flat Tax"
great points