CHAUTAUQUA–A joke in agricultural circles is that some people don’t much care–and think they needn’t much care–about agriculture, because they get their food from grocery stores.

A similar joke among electricity producers might go something like this: Some people don’t much care–and think they needn’t much care–about electricity production, because they get their electricity from outlets.

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The recent push by some toward electricity-powered products is often based on the premise that using such products generates no emissions.

The premise would be funny enough to be a joke if it were meant as one.

By and large, however, it’s not meant as one: Many who say that using electricity-powered products generates no emissions really mean it.

But where do they think electricity comes from?

Outlets?

No, power plants, they might concede.

Yet where do they think power plants get it?

Do they even begin to understand how much electricity production comes from using fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural gas?

So even if electricity-powered products themselves generate no emissions, the electricity production does generate emissions.

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But there’s more. Some of the same people who are pushing electricity-powered products are pushing to take–and are, in fact, taking–fossil-fuel-burning power plants off line.

Just where do they think electricity will come from?

The hard truth is that solar and wind aren’t satisfactory replacements, at least not for the foreseeable future.

And we are a long way from harnessing cold fusion.

So is it nuclear power they want?

Somehow, just somehow, one thinks not.

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Natural-gas stoves are one of the recent targets of those pushing electricity-powered products.

Imagine that: Natural-gas stoves.

Think of it this way: If five years ago someone had predicted the targeting of natural-gas stoves, would you have wondered whether the person making the prediction was down a quart?

Then again, how surprising is such folly? The chief occupant of a certain building at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., told us in 2020 of his goal to phase out fossil fuels.

Not just natural gas but all fossil fuels.

Thus, the targeting of natural-gas stoves is by no means the end of the folly.

The only people who should be laughing at such folly are America’s enemies.

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Does any of this mean electricity powered products are never better than products that run on other fuels? No.

Nevertheless, it’s wrong to believe that using electricity-powered products generates no emissions.

It’s also wrong of those who push the statist climate-change agenda to berate others who dare to offer another perspective, especially when the others do so calmly, carefully, and patiently.

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Along that line: Meet Dr. John Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama who has studied climates for decades and is calm, careful, and patient.

At the July 17 Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC, event, Christy showed that he is calm, careful, and patient even with those audience members who misrepresent what he says and then try to turn their strawmen against him.

“All science is numbers,” Christy says, quoting Lord Kelvin, and the numbers show this: The 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries were Earth’s coolest in the previous 10,000 years, and the planet is coming out of that temperature low.

“Without energy, life is brutal and short,” Christy says. That doesn’t stop “climate-alarm groups,” who have billions of dollars invested in their cause.

Point by point by point, Christy addresses assertions of such groups: “All these sad things that we’re told about just aren’t happening.”

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On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of all of its speakers, including Christy.

ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

Dr. Randy Elf’s Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on “How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich,” is at https://works.bepress.com/elf/21.

COPYRIGHT ç 2023 BY RANDY ELF