Dr. David Kreutzer, an economist formerly with the Heritage Foundation and now with the Institute for Energy Research, was Cornwall Alliance’s livestream guest July 27 to discuss why President Joe Biden’s “Net Zero by 2050” plan not only won’t succeed but can’t. (You can watch it on Facebook or YouTube.)

When I announced this on Facebook, a friend from back in high school days—a fellow Christian and sincere person—commented, “No, thank you. I prefer to hear and read people with expertise who aren’t bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry.”

Lots of folks see that as an argument stopper. But I saw it as an open door. So I replied:

Hi old friend. Nice to her from you. A few thoughts in response:

David Kreutzer is an outstanding economist with multiple peer-reviewed publications. He’s a recognized expert on the economics of energy production and distribution.

That the Institute for Energy Research is funded (in part) by the fossil fuel industry is a good reason to approach it with skepticism—as we should all sources of information. (“Test all things, hold fast what is good”—1 Thessalonians 5:21). It is not a good reason to write it off without such testing. Doing so is committing what logicians call the fallacy of ad hominem circumstantial: Jones stands to gain if he persuades Smith of a given conclusion, therefore Jones’s argument can be dismissed without further testing. Try that when your oncologist, who stands to benefit from the payment you and your insurer will make when he does the surgery if you accept his advice, advises surgery. Sure, get a second opinion, but don’t just conclude that since he stands to gain, his reasoning cannot be sound.

Do you treat information from organizations funded by renewable energy corporations with the same skepticism you do that from organizations funded by fossil fuel corporations? If not, why not?

Do you suppose being elected to political office, or passing the civil service exam so one can hold a civil-service appointment, automatically sanctifies and removes all personal pursuit of personal interest through one’s political or bureaucratic position? Why should we trust government sources any more than private ones?

Beware claims of “settled science.” They can be wrong—even tragically, catastrophically wrong. See [the tragedy of a Nobel Prize awarded to the scientist who pioneered the use of frontal lobotomies to treat psychosis—a therapy later condemned as scientific work proved it far more harmful than helpful] for an example. But examples could be multiplied:

For thousands of years everyone, including geologists (the field gaining definition around, say, 1700) was sure continents couldn’t move (hence their name); when Alfred Wegener opined otherwise in the 1950s, he was ridiculed—until the evidence finally proved they did, and every mind changed in the 1960s.

For over a century, pretty much all doctors thought stomach ulcers were caused by excess stomach acid, itself caused either by too much acidic food or too much stress or both. In the 1970s and early 1980s, two Australian doctors floated the hypothesis that they were caused instead by a bacterial infection. They were laughed out of the room—until their empirical research finally demonstrated it, and later they won the Nobel Prize for their discovery.

You’ll find many more examples in Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Beware also of claims of scientific consensus. Consensus is a political value, not a scientific value. You determine who won an election by counting votes (consensus). You determine how much lower-atmosphere warming comes from X amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere not by counting votes but by doing the necessary careful empirical and theoretical work in physics, chemistry, meteorology, climatology, hydrology, and more fields. Heard that 97% of scientists (or at least of climate scientists) agree about climate change? The claim’s been decimated over and over again, but one good example is by the longest-serving director of the National Hurricane Center, veteran meteorologist/climatologist Dr. Neil Frank.

So, I’d invite you to tune in anyway, as an experiment. Test for yourself, and see what you think. Or at least spend some time reading some things at the Cornwall Alliance’s website (and, by the way, we receive no funding from fossil fuel corporations), particularly our Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor 2014, which was the work of a Ph.D.’d climatologist and a Ph.D.’d environmental and climate economist, both with multiple peer-reviewed publications—and both, like me, Christians committed to following the Christ who claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life.

One other thought: Suppose you were the producer of a product that served millions of people in ways that greatly enhanced their lives over a period of 50 years (for fossil fuels, it’s more like 150 years), and suddenly producers of a competing product began claiming that yours was causing grave harm. Now suppose that you were convinced that your product wasn’t causing nearly so much harm as claimed, and that its benefits greatly outweighed the harm. Would you feel free to try to defend your product in the court of public opinion? And if it cost you a lot of money to do that, would you feel free to spend that money? And suppose you encountered someone who thought about your product as you did, and she were an expert at communicating to an important segment of the public. Would you feel free to fund that person’s efforts? And if someone else then charged that that person’s statements couldn’t be believed because you had funded them, what would you think?

So, don’t let “follow the money” be an argument stopper for you. Yes, it’s cause for careful testing. But, no, it doesn’t justify rejecting any argument. Only facts and logic do that.

Photo by Alexander Mils on Unsplash.