Power Hour with Alex Epstein

By Alex EpsteinNews News Commentary

Power Hour with Alex Epstein episodes

November 18, 2020 “Where is My Flying Car?” with J. Storrs Hall
On this week’s Power Hour Alex interviews futurist J. Storrs Hall, author of the mind-blowing book Where’s My Flying Car? which gives a brilliant analysis of what has held back many forms of progress, including flying cars, over the last half-century.

Topics they cover include:
- What is the Great Stagnation?
- How did you become interested in analyzing the Great Stagnation?
- What is your basic explanation for The Great Stagnation?
- How does government funding of research promote stagnation?
- How does the “green” philosophy promote stagnation?
- What was the trajectory of nuclear energy before government started criminalizing it?
- What legal/regulatory reforms are necessary to decriminalize nuclear?
- What can we do to liberate human progress from its political and philosophical strangulation?
1 hr 9 min
November 11, 2020 Fossil fuels in India: an insider’s perspective with Vijay Jayaraj
On this week’s Power Hour, I interview Vijay Jayaraj, an up and coming energy/environment researcher based in India.

Vijay has experienced the reality of poverty, including energy poverty, firsthand--as well as India’s rapid rise from poverty using fossil fuels.

Some topics we discussed included:
- Why Vijay decided to study energy and environmental issues professionally.
- Vijay’s experience at the University of East Anglia during the “Climategate” scandal.
- What life in the unempowered world is like for women.
- What sanitation is like in the unempowered world.
- Hunger challenges in the unempowered world.
- How international investment revolutionized India.
- How coal revolutionized India.
- How the less-developed world can tell its energy story.

Toward the end of the episode we began what I hope is an ongoing discussion about how the unempowered/less-developed world can tell its energy story and advocate for its right to use more fossil fuels.

Vijay mentioned at the end of the episode that he’s available to do research and write papers. If you’d like to reach him his email is [email protected].
1 hr 4 min
November 06, 2020 Best of Power Hour: Michael Shellenberger on Apocalypse Never
On this week’s Power Hour, Alex shares some thoughts on the election and then features a “best of” interview with Michael Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never.

Some highlights:
- How Shellenberger went from being a renewables activists to championing nuclear.
- Why Shellenberger decided to stand up against climate catastrophism after years of silence.
- How modern environmentalism is a religion.
- The real motives of most of modern environmentalism.
- How environmental journalists misrepresent environmental science.
1 hr 4 min
October 28, 2020 Boilermakers 154's Shawn Steffee on the Future of Fossil Fuels in Pennsylvania
Recently, Shawn Steffee, an executive board member of Boilermakers 154 in Pennsylvania, was featured on a popular FoxNews segment in which he loudly and proudly advocated for fossil fuels.

On this week’s Power Hour Alex Epstein interviews Steffee about the fossil fuel industry in Pennsylvania and what its challenges and opportunities are going forward.

They cover:
- Why every other form of energy is made using fossil fuels
- How Steffee learned about the case for fossil fuels
- Why utilities should offer a real renewable energy option, where your power gets cut off when sunshine and wind are inadequate
- What happens “behind the scenes” when you turn your lights on
- Common-sense problems with using solar in regions with bad winters
- Why “smart” people can have so many dumb ideas about energy
- The oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania
- The coal industry in Pennsylvania
- The myth of the perfect climate
38 min
October 21, 2020 A climate activist turned climate thinker
Alex Epstein interviews Joakim Book, an up-and-coming economic and environmental commentator.These days Book is writing articles challenging climate catastrophism and explaining the value of abundant energy use.But he used to be a climate activist who thought he was saving the planet from the evil of fossil fuels.

Epstein and Book cover:
- Book’s time as a climate activist.
- Why Book and others never questioned the rightness of opposing fossil fuels.
- How economic thinking changed Book’s perspective.
- How Book was influenced by The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
- What lessons we can learn about persuasion from Book’s experience.
1 hr 3 min
October 14, 2020 Q&A for The Speech That Was Supposed to Be a Debate With Michael Mann
This week’s Power Hour features the wide-ranging Q&A from a recent speech Alex Epstein gave at Lafayette College--a speech that was supposed to be a debate with Michael Mann.

Some of the many topics covered include:
- Does the moral case for fossil fuels uncritically assume that progress is good?
- Do people really choose fossil fuel energy?
- Can the dominance of fossil fuels be explained by a lack of research into other sources of energy production?
- Climate-related damages beyond climate-related deaths.
- Energy poverty in the US
- The value of fossil fuel-based materials
- The “abuse-use fallacy”
- Why the anti-fossil fuel movement is anti-nuclear.
- The “delicate nurturer” vs. “wild potential” view of Earth
- What we can learn from hunter-gatherers
- The psychological motivation for being anti-human
- Electric cars
- Does Alex have a favorite fossil fuel?
1 hr 24 min
October 08, 2020 The Speech That Was Supposed to Be a Debate With Michael Mann
This week's Power Hour features a recent speech Alex Epstein gave at Lafayette College that was supposed to be a debate with Michael Mann. Learn why Mann pulled out of the debate and hear the latest version of the moral case for fossil fuels.
1 hr 32 min
September 30, 2020 Rigged Against Reliables: How Electricity Pseudo-Markets Punish Reliability and Drive Up Costs
It’s common for us to hear that solar, wind are cheaper than coal or gas. Specifically we’ll hear that solar and wind are “bidding” at lower prices than goal or gas. All of this sounds very competitive, like they’re winning on the merits on a free market.

And yet at the same time, something is clearly very wrong. Electricity costs tend to go up the more “cheaper” solar and wind you add. Intuitively we know that it’s wrong to not factor in reliability when you’re comparing prices.

On this week’s Power Hour Alex Epstein interviews Tom Stacy, an electricity consultant who explains how electricity markets are “rigged against reliables”--and what we need to do to make them fair and beneficial.
1 hr 1 min
September 23, 2020 How to Think About Consensus
A couple months ago, a young researcher named Emily Harari reached out to me about my views about the scientific consensus on climate change. She raised some interesting questions I hadn’t commented publicly on, so I agreed to do the interview if we could share it with my listeners.

This week’s Power Hour features that interview.

Some of the topics we cover are:
- The legitimate and illegitimate view of consensus
- How to learn the actual state of consensus
- The National Climate Assessment
- How consensus statements often misrepresent the state of consensus
- The role of the media in distorting science
- How transparent should consensus discussions be
- The obligation of scientists to stand up to false consensus statements
1 hr 17 min
September 16, 2020 The California Wildfires: A Historical Perspective with Chuck DeVore
On this week’s Power Hour Alex Epstein interviews Chuck DeVore, a Vice President at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and former California state assemblyman on the California wildfires. DeVore has extensively studied the history of fires in California, and gives a fascinating historical perspective that points the right path forward.

Questions covered include:
- What is California’s climate like historically in terms of being prone to fire?
- How were forests and fires dealt with by natives prior to the Gold Rush?
- How were forests and fires dealt with subsequent to the Gold Rush?
- What policies have been most responsible for making us Californians vulnerable to dangerous fires?
- How have logging policies affected vulnerability to dangerous fires?
- How have air quality policies affected vulnerability to dangerous fires?
- What are the most important policies to fix the situation?
- How can we as citizens get involved?
59 min