los angeles times published an article Perhaps unintentionally, Friday raised the central proposition of the mythical energy transition: whether our expectations should evolve in the name of preventing climate change.

The article is aptly titled, “Will Occasional Power Outages Help Solve Climate Change?” This is a headline that tacitly acknowledges the truth about the transition that renewable energy advocates have carefully avoided making public. The idea is that very low energy density power sources like wind and solar cannot be expected to be viable alternatives to very high energy density power sources like natural gas, nuclear and coal. This is a concept that goes against the laws of thermodynamics and physics, they are laws, not propositions that can be discarded for convenience or, as in this case, in pursuit of hyperpolitical ends.

This kind of propaganda aims to condition readers to accept declining living conditions in the name of saving the climate or, as the writer claims, “preventing climate catastrophe.” This is the kind of propaganda that Americans and people around the world are being bombarded with as we go through our current hot summers. (Related: David Blackmon: The backlash against net-zero policies is finally starting to take shape)

It’s probably no coincidence that this article in the Los Angeles Times was published just days after the New York Times. published a work “Why Should We Politicize the Weather?” by economist Paul Krugman. The propaganda theme is clear. Most traditional media have followed Krugman’s advice throughout the summer at the behest of climate change activists.

Propaganda in the name of hyping a “climate catastrophe” (which until just a few years ago was just an “emergency” and then just a few years ago was just a climate “change”) is rampant and, indeed, everywhere.

Meteorologists in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere are now encouraged to report land temperatures rather than ambient temperatures, which they always base their reports on. This is because land readings are typically a few degrees warmer than the air we breathe. Many weather reporters in EU countries have started reporting temperatures in Fahrenheit instead of Celsius, as the Fahrenheit scale produces larger and more frightening numbers.

All in the name of climate change hype. All in the guise of politicizing the weather and conditioning the population to accept a diminished quality of life. Plus, you can feel good about yourself in a dark living room that smells of rotting meat in a broken refrigerator, sweating and gasping. Because we suffer from all this in the name of ‘doing something’ about climate change.

On this subject, the climate change alarm movement has remained relatively quiet until this year. But the message began to change in January as it became increasingly clear that rising energy demand was still outstripping renewable energy’s ability to replace fossil fuels and nuclear, despite billions of subsidies enacted by Western governments. Governments in China, India and most other developing nations are pursuing national energy prosperity and security, even as governments in Europe, Canada and the United States force their citizens to accept a steady decline in grid reliability and quality of life, burdening future generations with mountains of debt in the process.

This dynamic explains why US climate change emperor John Kerry’s recent visit to China to try to revitalize the moribund bilateral climate talks has predictably failed. China intends to do China good, regardless of the climate-warning propaganda that Prime Minister Kerry amplifies at every opportunity.

Americans, Europeans and Canadians are watching all this happening and are wondering why they should continue to lower their living standards when the rise in emissions from China alone far exceeds the reductions achieved by the West. This is a question that the climate change warning movement has no good answer to other than continuing to ramp up its scare tactics and propaganda.

That’s why this previously quiet part of the energy transition agenda has risen to the top of alarming messaging platforms in 2023. No one should think that the rhetoric will lead to anything other than a gradual upward trajectory from here.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent his 40 years in the oil and gas business, specializing in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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