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If anybody doubts that such questions lead to moral opprobrium, check out the online comments on my most recent column. That piece noted that the claim that 2014 was the “hottest year on record” was highly uncertain (as now confirmed by the British Met Office) or, if true, not particularly surprising. I also refuted the notion that for 13 of the past 15 years to be “the hottest years on record” was no more astronomically implausible after a period of warming (man-made or otherwise) than that a person would be taller as an adult than a child.

My reward for these observations was a tsunami of moral outrage. I am apparently not just scientifically ignorant but plain stupid. I am in the pay of the fossil fuel industry, or at least trying to drum up more advertising for the Post from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. One commentator even suggested that I was probably also opposed to gay rights.

The fundamental “moral” assumption behind all this sturm und drang is that fossil fuels – which are above all a proxy for capitalism — are “unsustainable” and thus morally “bad.” This assumption is well challenged in a recent book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, by Alex Epstein.

Mr. Epstein does an excellent job of outlining the astonishing benefits that the development of coal, oil and natural gas have delivered to mankind: improving health, lengthening lives and facilitating a vast expansion in both material welfare and leisure possibilities. He also notes, with copious data, that fossil fuel development has – contrary to conventional wisdom – gone along with a cleaner environment (China will get there eventually, once it embraces democracy). He explains clearly and logically why wind, solar and biofuels are technological dead ends. He lays out convincingly why attempting to force these technologies on developing countries amounts to a death sentence.