Here’s Why Chevron Couldn’t Make Biofuels Work
According to this article in Renewable Energy World, “Chevron Corp.’s attempts to turn plants into alternative fuels for profitable, large-scale production have failed.” The author goes on to note:
The second-largest U.S. oil company by market value spent “significant sums” and assigned some of its best scientists to evaluate more than 100 kinds of feedstock and 50 techniques for converting them into fuels without success, Chevron Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Watson said during an address to the Economic Club of Minnesota in Minneapolis today. The smartest minds in my company and others haven’t yet cracked the code on pairing the right feedstock conversion technology and logistics in an economic and scalable package,” Watson said.
Maybe this is true because the concept is essentially folly in the first place. Not a single species evolved so as to retain more chemical energy than it needs to live, grow, and reproduce. Given that, the reason Chevron couldn’t find a plant that would serve as a workable feedstock for us to power our one billion cars and trucks is not all that hard to guess: none exists. The process of evolution worked very hard over the past four billion years to ensure precisely that.
Now that we have behind us, let’s see where Chevron goes. If they’re people of integrity, there is only one path they can possibly take (after they repair the damage they caused in Ecuador), and that is getting on board solving the world’s energy problems in a realistic way. Here’s a hint: look up. Our Earth receives 6000 times more power from the sun than all of humankind is consuming. We need a solution, or a set of solutions, that harvests 1/6000th of that power.
It’s a challenge we can—and will—surmount. If Chevron wants to help, that’s all good.
Perhaps, they should invest their billions in modular molten salt nuclear technology as well (and in lawyers needed to change the communist style anti-industrial policies which the U.S was so eager to impose).
Too bad Chevron picked the wrong approach, but then that’s the way it goes when they or anyone picks the wrong approach.
To harvest 1/6000 of the solar energy to meet human needs would require the use of more than 1/6000 of the earths surface. After subtracting out most of the ocean’s surface and polar regions you would be required to use way too much of the land mass that is already allocated to food production and other good purposes. You wouldn’t just have the desert tortoise fan club picketing your home.
How about a mixed bag of generation including 3rd or 4th generation nuclear, geothermal, and hydro.
With hydro we get a twofer. We need a lot more storage capacity to trap storm water before it reaches the sea. We can recharge our aquifers from impounded water. Yes, hydro is actually solar without the blessing of the environmentalists. Hydro does not limit the land to just one use. You get aquaculture, water storage and recreation all in one package.
The alternative which is recommended by fringe eco folks is to reduce human population. They must be salivating at the possibility of a significant Ebola outbreak on a global scale.
It is cheaper to extract millions of years of fossil fuel accumulations, especially when you have paid for politicians to make it free of charge to destroy centuries of ground water. Those political donations must be a great investment, especially if their politician becomes an incumbent. The real cost of the extracted gas is staggering when the ground water becomes un usable. At least they aren’t selling it overseas and depleting our nation’s last fossil fuel energy reserve.
Great points, Larry, made with your usual wry humor, which I always appreciate. And what you say about hydro is particularly interesting.
I thought that my comments about hydro might resonate with folks in California since you guys are running out of water right now. The luxury of protecting slugs and grubs at the expense of watching billions of gallons of fresh water rush into the estuaries is not going to last much longer IMO.
Of course conservation should be the first line of attack on resource problems. Irrigating golf courses has been near the bottom of my priorities. But the hole we dug is so deep (and dry) that we are not going to crawl out without some change in priorities regarding the sourcing of energy and essential resources like water.
Craig,
Natural Gas extraction technology doesn’t always involve the practice of Hydraulic fracturing nor does correctly managed Hydraulic fracturing affect subsurface water tables.
It’s important when reviewing any technology, to remain objective and free of prejudice ideological bias.
With the final collapse of the failed socialist states in 1989, much of the academic world, and leftist ideologues were left without any creditable economic existence. Instead of admitting they got it wrong, they moved into the environmental movement.
The left had always been active in the environmentalist movement, largely as as anti-corporate, anti-capitalists. Environmentalism, provided a safe haven for the fuzzy ideology of the old left, and they brought highly developed political organizing skills.
Between 2003 and 2011, the idea of “peak oil” , that had been kicking around since the late ’40’s when Hubbert first expounded his theory, became a doctrine of environmental extremists. In fact the only thing that peaked, was the enthusiasm for the the theory itself.
Earnest publications, and a legion of ardent exponents, waiving “scientific” papers, formed a new religion with “peak oil ” as one of its most sacred tenet’s. After all, it sounded so right, a finite planet, must have finite resources !
But, as the leading advocate of peak oil, the publication “The Oil Drum ” discovered, that’s the problem with all doomsday prophesies. Sooner or later, technology, will make fools of all such prophets !
By 2014, the world is experiencing a glut of hydro-carbon products. Not only have entire new reserves been discovered, but older, depleted reserves, have returned to productivity.
New technology has allowed exploration and exploitation of hydro-carbons, on a previously unimagined scale. Not only has this technology allowed a vast expansion of proven reserves, but dramatically reduced the economic cost of discovery, and exploitation.
Bio-fuels as replacement technology for hydro-carbon energy, has proved unsuccessful. The logistic’s are just unworkable, and the environmental destruction wrought by the US corn-based ethanol industry, has proved far worse than the hydrocarbon energy it was hoped to replace. (not to mention the vast economic waste of public money).
Real environmental progress, can only be accomplished by objectivity, which means abandoning ideology.
“By 2014, the world is experiencing a glut of hydro-carbon products. Not only have entire new reserves been discovered,
New technology has allowed exploration and exploitation of hydro-carbons, on a previously unimagined scale.”
We were fracking during the Arab oil embargo late 1970s. Back then we knew that when fossil fuels were depleted enough and prices rose high enough that the Marcellus shale and other formations would be fracked…and we knew that would be the last, and more difficult reserve of fossil fuels that exists.
Peak oil and gas are coming soon when it costs more to get it out than it is worth.There will be no technological miracles.
Groundwater is expensive and usually impossible to clean up when polluted with heavy metals and chemicals.
This is not liberal or conservative. This is real science, math. Since the last oil embargo we have had bad or no planning, policy written by corporate and foreign funding of US politicians.
We should have done energy efficiency, renewable energy. We knew it back then ( the best scientists) also knew CO2 was an even bigger problem) when we were richer and could have afforded it. Its do it now time and it may be too late.
Biofuels are cost effective at a large scale, when organic household waste is converted to methane and landfill costs are avoided.
It is frustrating that after 45 years energy efficiency and renewables still have not happened in the US, while Germany, Holland, China,,,, and other countries are doing it and selling our own US funded researched products back to us……
By the way I feel bad for the Hong Kong protestors and am seeing the true face of the Chinese government that sells so much to the US and has put so many of our factories out of business…………….
Craig,
Hydraulic fracturing is not a new technology, but like most technology, it has dramatically improved since it’s early development. Nor is shale extraction the only technical advancement in Hydro-carbon exploration and extraction. The advent of Nano-robots, graphene, multi-well pad drilling (” octopus “) advanced computerisation, etc, are revolutionising the oil/Gas industry.
Not only has all this new technology increased production, but dramatically reduced the price of exploration and extraction. This year the Saudi’s will add another, previously unrealised, 250 billion barrels to their proven reserves, while counties like New Zealand previously thought to contain little in the way of oil, are now showing evidence of possessing vast reserves of oil and gas, accessible through rapidly emerging technology.
Bio-fuels, Solar, Wind etc, all rely upon naive governments, subsidising inefficient generation for largely political or ideological reasons. The technology underpinning alternate energy, is far to immature to be compatible with the needs of industrialised nations.
What works on a small scale, simply doesn’t translate to large scale production. Power generation, and national grids are designed to produce “power supply on demand”, not , ” demand when power is available ” !
The best investment in alternate energy generation for any nation, (and the environment), is the much misunderstood technology of Thorium reactors. This technology will produce relatively safe, economic, clean, green, environmentally beneficial, reliable power generation, without most of the downsides of the older Nuclear power generation technologies. Unfortunately, this totally rational power generation technology, has been stymied by totally misinformed public and political hysteria.
Almost equally ignored has been the potential for Hydrogen as a source for energy storage. This technology has shown great potential in Maritime usage. ( Shipping is the largest single source of carcinogenic and climate change pollution. One ship equals 50 million cars).
Instead the world has invested vast sums of both public and private money on inefficient technologies, that may have ideological appeal, but very little practical value.
It’s not that bio-fuels, Solar, Wind etc, don’t work, it’s just that the logistic of up-scaling these technologies is logically impractical and uneconomic without massive public subsidies.
Germany, Holland, PRC, haven’t made the technologies viable either. Since closing it’s Nuclear industry, Germany has been forced to recommission old coal fired power generators, and buy ( Nuclear generated ) power from France and the Czech Republic.
The PRC (China) is building three new “mega” coal fired power stations a fortnight !
Alternate power advocates, tend to look through rose tinted glasses that filter out reality !
I’m quite proud of the experimental bio-mass/solar/geo-thermal generating plant I built on my family estate in the UK. We run the entire estate on our own power, and supply most of the needs of two villages with our own mini-grid. However, I wouldn’t suggest that my model could be used elsewhere, nor would it prove an economically viable investment .
I do a lot of business in the PRC (despite being well known for my life long support of Nationalist Taiwan). The CCP is in a very difficult position, on the one hand while it tolerates a certain amount of debate, and even dissent, it can’t tolerate too much. Like the student demonstrators in Tainanmen Square, the students in Hong Kong are viewed by the vast majority of PRC citizens as just spoiled brats, with too far too many privileges.
Americans should recall the disaster of Kent State, and the Chicago Democratic convention, when working class police and National Guardsmen, confronted privileged students.
To succeed, the demonstrators must be able to build a broad coalition of support from all sections of society, and a clear and achievable goal. Otherwise, in the words of the Rolling Stones :),
” I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, “We’re gonna vent our frustration
If we don’t we’re gonna blow a 50-amp fuse”
Lets talk about energy from a different kind of plant – a Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant – a completely proven technology, up and running here and across the world, that today is already busy harvesting clean and safe modern sunshine to make electricity for homes and businesses.
In order to make all the electricity that we now use, everywhere across our country, using CSP, the total area needed is less than 1/3 of 1% (0.003) of the lower 48 states. That’s an area only about the size of the little northeastern state of Vermont, in comparison to the rest of the nation.
Imagine a dotted line from southern California to Georgia. CSP plants can be placed anywhere in our sprawling Sunbelt region within a couple hundred miles north and south of that line. High Voltage Direct Current power lines can take that sun energy all over our entire country. Proven storage technologies – such as molten salt and pumped hydro – will bank and stabilize that clean, safe sunshine electricity for all of us to use at any hour, rain or shine.
How much for the whole nationwide system from plant to plug? About $167 a month, for every man, woman and child in the US, for 10 years. That’s about equal to the billions we’re now paying to other countries (many of whose populations have grown hostile to us because of our incessant manipulation of their leadership) to get that dirty and dangerous prehistoric sunshine we call crude oil.
At $600 million per square mile, those ten thousand square miles of CSP plants will total $6 trillion (plus a few hundred billion for infrastructure improvements). It sounds like a lot of cash, but that’s less than ten years of our foreign oil expenses (and that’s without even mentioning any of the military savings) – and it’ll put in place a permanently maintainable and renewable system that provides cheap, clean and sustainable energy for all our nation’s electricity.
“If that’s true,” you say (and it is true), “why aren’t we doing it?”
Ask why seat belts took decades to become a required standard in cars.
Ask why US vehicle fuel efficiency still drags behind Japan and Europe, and even they are still far behind the standards that we ourselves achieved decades ago during WWII.
American broadband speed and coverage are yet further examples of the willful restraint of technology that’s been inflicted on us by entrenched vested interests.
Unless they’re forced by law to behave otherwise, corporations will do only whatever increases profit, no matter what the consequences for humanity and the biosphere.
CSP is completely doable and is, in fact, inevitable. It’s already pouring energy into the grid in California, Arizona, Spain and the United Arab Emirates, and a growing number of other places around the globe.
The vast majority of the material needed is concrete, steel and glass. The present barriers against this elegant solution are not technical nor resource-based, nor even financial – they’re purely political barriers erected and reinforced by bribery, and by the fossil interests that do the bribing.
Isn’t it about time We the People stood up, and put an end to bribery, and an end to the ruin it spreads across our society and the world?
Cameron,
Like all new technologies, Solar Thermo-electricity shows a great deal of promise, but without massive government subsidies, isn’t economically viable. Nor is it without environmental downsides.
Storage of electricity is possible on a large scale by building nitrate storage, but these are still very experimental and come with there own environmental hazards.
But, what scare me about your proposal is the idea that any government should “force” any unproven technology on it’s citizens, simply to appease the enthusiasm of a small minority of citizens, (however well-intentioned).
Even more dubious is the idea that the already debt-laden US government should borrow vast sums to spend on a massive project, based on a false premises.
The US does not buy most of it’s oil from ” hostile foreigners” (unless you think Canada’s hostile !). In fact the small percent of US oil exports from the middle east, are economically beneficial to the US economy ! The US exports more manufactured products to oil nations than the value of oil imports. Even then, most imported oil is refined (value added) in the US, and re-exported, further helping the balance of trade.
Nor would Solar power reduce the need for oil, coal maybe, but not oil. The oil industry produces more than 350,000 products. Everything from ceramics, to medicine. Buy an electric Tesla model S ? 28% of the cars components are oil products ! The black-top you drive on is a product of the oil industry, your keyboard is a product of oil, etc etc Those are just industrial products, soon oil will replace super-phosphate as the world’s primary fertilizer source.
The oil industry directly, or indirectly, is the single most important component of the US economy (28%) employing over 40 million Americans. The oil industry and finances the US retirement and superannuation industry.
Oh, and by the way, the auto-industry tried hard to introduce seat-belts, Both Ford and Chrysler offered seat belts in the late fifties, but consumers paid to have them removed !
(some myths are harder to get rid of than others )
The US can’t afford any more Taxpayer funded “experiments” Don’t believe me ?
check out , http://www.usdebtclock.org/
since the southwest is increasingly short of fresh water, and floods wreak serious damage throughout the west and mid west, the proponent for hydro electric power, while abaating flood damage and recharging aquifers is , as earllier suggested , an idea whose time is here. Triple wins!
Marcopolo you must have a lot of time.
I was talking of biomass on a much larger scale than your property.
I don’t have time to look up the exact numbers but we need to discover the oil equivalent of a new Saudi Arabia every year just to stay even with diminishing reserves.
The end of oil is a much less important issue now than climate change. We are passing climate tipping points. Watch the best documentary film “Chasing Ice”
The chinese leaders, more than 15 years ago, were on a hidden camera, on 60 minutes TV. They said they used political prisoners in factories. They were asked “what if they do shoddy work?” They said”Oh we just put them to death”…..
If they continue to copy the car lifestyle etc they will not be sustainable.
I would like everyone on the planet to treat each other like we want to be treated, and be good sustainable earth stewards. The UN Declaration of Human Rights is a beautiful document. Everyone has to start or the climate will fry us all. You can’t fool the climate.
Craig,
I think you missed the point of my reply. There is no economically viable bio-fuel. The logistics simply don’t allow for viable feedstock, except in certain special circumstances.
Do you remember the ‘Club of Rome’ ? When I was at university in the late sixties-early 1970’s, there was an absolute consensus among academics and scientists that 1977 was destined to be ” The year the Stork passed the Plough ” !
The UN passed resolutions, the Catholic church was castigated for it’s family planning policies, and it was widely agreed that the only way to avoid a long term, disasterous world wide famine, was a draconian reduction of population, and industrial activity.
Earnest films were made, and much passionate advocacy, and hand-wringing, took place. To the embarrassment of all those for passionate believers, If you recall 1978 was the year the world (especially Europe) experienced a massive food glut …,!
That’s the problem for prophets of doom, especially those with passionate ideological convictions, the ideology prevents seeing problems in proper perspective. Worse it prevents people understanding priorities. It ignores rapid advances in technology.
The idea that we need to discover a new Saudi Arabia every year is obviously absurd.
Currant reserves are estimated at 1,246 Billion barrels, with consumption of 32 billion barrels per year. However, that’s conventional oil. In the last 5 years most reserves have almost doubled in size due to new technology, while hydrocarbon reserves are expanding even quicker..
Perhaps you should read: ” http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/what-if-we-never-run-out-of-oil/309294/
But, let’s suppose the prophets of doom are correct, and both oil depletion and climate change are the serious problems that just can’t wait.
What should we do ? Pour even more vast sums of borrowed public money into unproven, impractical (but ideologically pure) technologies that will achieve nothing ? Impoverish Western nations with even more draconian laws, creating greater economic chaos ?
The only practical method of quickly reducing climate change emissions, is the abolition of shipping rigged for the use of Marine grade no.6 fuel (bunker oil). This can be easily accomplished with an agreement between only 11 strategic Western, maritime democracies. The PRC and all other nations would be forced to comply, or find their shipping (trade) uneconomic.
Within 5-7 years, the worlds climate change emissions would have dropped between 6-8 %, (maybe more).
The US and Europe should encourage the rapid deployment of Thorium reactors. This would render coal uneconomic. India and the PRC would have to also build Thorium reactors or find their manufacturing sector becoming uncompetitive.
It’s about priorities…….
Marcopolo
Your facts are so incorrect.
The book “limits to growth” was correct.
As I and smarter people than me have said t is more and more difficult and expensive to extract oil and gas. Soon it will be too expensive…………………
How do you get the time and money to write that incorrect information.
For the record, this “Craig” is not Craig Shields.
Craig,
Long discredited ideologies, often have adherents whose faith is not dispelled by the failure of the doomsday date’s arrival. The earnest adherent just extends the prediction further into the future.
We live in a world of 7 billion people (and rising). The idea that 7 billion people will abandon aspirations of prosperity, in favour of an unachievable, idealised lifestyle is absurd.
Societies with large populations, demand solutions which are practical on a global scale, and can be adapted to industrialised infrastructure.
The examples I provided, are practical, affordable, and can realistically achieve sufficient political support to implemented on a large scale, within a foreseeable time-scale.
Complaining about Chevron’s candid admission that attempts to ” turn plants into fuel “, has resulted in an expensive failure, is neither helpful, nor practical.
I have no love for the Communist Party of China, (or any communist party). However, I understand that in order to persuade the CCP to abandon their more abhorrent policies, I must first understand the pressures the PRC officials face, and have some kind of practical alternative, that they can adopt.
Craig, I spend a lot of time travelling. Contributing to alternate energy publications is a form of relaxation, to relieve the tedium of travel.
I am just as concerned as you, about the sort of environment that will be inherited by my grandchildren. As a merchant banker and analyst, I’m responsible for ensuring the practically of projects.
Over the last 3 decades, I’ve been astonished at the appalling waste of public and private money, on projects and technologies, driven by philosophic and political ideology. I dislike the philosophy of all “noble experiments “. Invariably these project lead to vast human misery, and create only harm.
Worse, these impractical projects detract from support for more practical solutions.
“marcopolo” – In your comment of October 5th, find it quite interesting that you talk of Ford and Chrysler in the late fifties, when it was a generation earlier in the 1930’s that plastic surgeon Claire L. Straith argued passionately for the use of seatbelts, and prominent physician C. J. Strickland joined him in that crusade.
In 1946 Preston Tucker formed his corporation to develop the innovative Tucker automobile. Tucker and his designers were impacted by Straith’s accounts of mutilating injuries and planned to offer seat belts. Though Tucker believed in their worth, an assistant of his persuaded him that seatbelts would make customers view his car as less safe. Early Tuckers were made with seat belts, but they were excluded in later production.
Nash included seatbelts for a year beginning in 1949, but stopped in 1950. There were some accounts of customers removing them, and only 2% of Nash seatbelt customers used them routinely.
However, when you assert it is a “myth” that auto manufacturers delayed inclusion in all models and fought against the regulation requiring them, you are making an inaccurate and misleading statement.
My statement was, “Ask why seat belts took decades to become a required standard in cars.”
The very first seat belt law was a federal law, Title 49 of the United States Code, Chapter 301, Motor Vehicle Safety Standard. It took effect on January 1, 1968, and required all vehicles (except buses) to be fitted with seat belts wherever in the vehicle it was intended that a passenger or driver may sit.
You might find the following quote enlightening,
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” – James Madison
Further, allow me to point out several errors and omissions across various elements of your other stated positions in that comment.
You state that Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is not economically viable. Let me point out the reality that fossil fuels are not economically viable, and the only factor keeping this reality hidden is the externalization of costs on a massive scale.
These conveniently externalized costs include pervasive health impacts for the biosphere (including us humans) as results of the extraction and use of these materials on such a massive scale. The great carelessness and inefficiency with which these poisonous materials are extracted and used only compounds these costs.
Also included in these quietly shifted colossal expenses are the geopolitical costs and military expenditures (both in money and blood) associated with enforcing cheap access against resource nationalization. This enforcement has nominally been accomplished by overthrowing – politically or militarily – independent governments, and thereby subverting the will of the national populations that support them.
All that is laid in the balance without even touching on the pressing reality of our collective disruption of the planet’s climate – a fact both well-recognized and rationally feared by the world’s insurance companies and investment bankers.
Compare that with the safe, clean energy that is very close to free once the harvesting and distribution infrastructure is constructed. Add to that the fact that all the elements of that infrastructure are proven, constructed and working today – not theory, fact – and investment is growing.
When you talk of a “small percent of US oil exports” from the Middle East, your words are inaccurate and misleading.
According to the DOE, the top five source countries alone yield 81% of our crude imports. Of these, about 28% of our crude imports are from the Middle East – that’s far from small. Saudi Arabia is #2 and Iraq is #5 (with the as yet undiscussed Kuwait just behind at #6).
Iraq is surely not properly considered an ally (particularly considering the understandable sentiments of their population), and Saudi Arabia is an ally in name only when you consider the vast and continuous financing of a variety of extremist groups in the region by the intensely corrupt Saudi royals. Certainly our long and bloody history of military and political involvement across the region (overt and covert) isn’t driven by a need for sand.
Venezuela – #3 supplier of crude to the US – has not exactly been welcomed as an ally either, particularly by extremists like televangelist, diamond mine owner, oilman, and GOP presidential candidate Pat Robertson, who repeatedly recommended the assassination of that country’s democratically elected president, and when Robertson made that threat, he did so stating that his reasoning turned on Venezuela’s oil reserves.
The environmental impacts of CSP are miniscule in comparison to that of the various fossil fuels. This is true whether reviewing any single one of the records of a) tragically routine oil spills or the periodic massive dumping of oil, or b) the vast devastation of mountaintop removal for coal and strip mining for tar sands, or c) the enormous losses of freshwater to fracking (not to mention the potential threat to precious aquifers), in an insane exchange of permanently poisoned potable water for a temporary energy boom.
When you talk of the need for oil not being supplanted by solar, your position is either uninformed or disingenuous. Electric vehicles may currently include components made from oil, but alternative sources exist for each of those components. The major continuing usage of petroleum products by vehicles – fuel – would certainly be replaced by clean, safe, cheap solar energy. Moreover, the DOE tells us that
36% of our consumption of energy is directly from oil (mostly for transportation), and 18% from coal (mostly for the generation of electricity). Together, transportation and electricity generation account for 68% of our total energy use.
With a moonshot attitude, fully 68% of our energy usage could be clean, safe, cheap solar energy. This reality is, in fact, inevitable.
The questions remaining, “marcopolo,” are these…
1) How long will that rarity – a desirable inevitability – continue to be delayed, when it has now already emerged over the horizon, and pleads with reason to become present?
2) How many of our brave and honorable men and women in uniform will be traumatized, crippled and killed to maintain access to toxic resources that we can supplant with clean?
3) How much of the blood of other peoples will be spilt, innocent and otherwise, because of the blind mulishness of ignorant and deceptive deniers within our own borders?
Wow. Thanks for the history lesson! I can’t add more to the discussion in terms of facts; that’s for certain.
We could price in the externalities, but I don’t think we will; nor do I think it’s critical. I believe that we’re already seeing the beginnings of economic conditions that will form a sort of tipping point in which fossil fuels are simply too expensive, vis-a-vis all the stuff that is happening to bring down the cost of renewables, storage, smart grid, advanced nuclear, etc., and that simultaneously, we’re seeing an upwelling of consumer sensibilities on environmental issues. People don’t care about the exact cost of the aromatics of coal of the U.S. public annually ($700 billion per Harvard Medical School), but they are starting to realize that they’ve been lied to by the fossil fuel industry about the major issues, especially climate disruption, and they’re extremely cheesed off at that. (I urge you to Google this latter point, and prepare to be amazed.) Rank and file American voters aren’t rocket scientists, but they really don’t like being overtly deceived on matters that concern the health and safety of their children.
Over the years, Marcopolo (whose presence here I sincerely appreciate, as it creates spirited conversation) has ridiculed me as a “Chicken Little” on the basis that most of the doomsday predictions of the past haven’t materialized. (I say “most” because I’m sure there was some dude in Pompeii who warned that Vesuvius was about to erupt.) In any case, let me point out that the future ALWAYS looks like the past–until it looks completely different.
Humankind needs to solve this problem in the next 20 – 30 years if we are to avoid disaster of biblical proportion here. I may be wrong, but the vast bulk of the evidence suggests otherwise.
Craig,
I would never “ridicule ” you ! We all, in our enthusiasm have our “chicken little” moments.
Society needs a continual debate between, idealists and pragmatists. My main concern with so many of our fellow environmentalists, fall into the category of ” when all is said and done, there’s a lot more said than done ! ”
I try to analyse the most practical, and achievable, methods of aiding the environment.
I think the general public has grown weary of so many hysterical, advocates seeking to use environmental issues to peddle other political/ideological agendas.
The public have grown wary of grand schemes, which always collapse, in a massive waste of tax-payer (and private) funding.
The public want clear, practical, and workable solutions. They will support economically viable propositions, even if it cost a little economic pain. But, they will no longer be panicked into utopian dreams, that would sound absurd to the most enthusiastic undergraduate.
Cameron,
Thank you for your reply. I’m sure that you are a very sincere person.
However, I think you see all problems to the prism of your own philosophic ideology. The result is that you ignore reality, opting for a “blue sky” utopian approach.
In order to explain why your ideology is not eagerly adopted by others, you attribute such reluctance to a conspiracy theory.
Eg; The car makers offered seatbelts, the consumers rejected seat belts, ergo , it must have been a conspiracy by car makers, to prevent the adoption of seat belts!
The net import share of total U.S. energy consumption is 14%, (mostly oil) in 2014, compared 30% in 2005. By 2020, it will be 3%.
The trade balance in favour of the US with oil importers, is $4 :1, a very important boost to US employment and the US economy.
(You would appear to either out of date, or selective. )
But, that’s not really the crux of your argument, is it ?.
Once we cut through all the emotional hyperbole, I think what you are trying to say, is that Solar Power could, and should, replace fossil fuels. You propose that, if constructed on a grand enough scale, and a massive government enforced social re-organisation was imposed, this would avert the ravages of climate change ?
Firstly, no solar technology is capable of accomplishing what you envisage, for an industrial society. Even if it did, no government could survive the political/economic chaos such a disruption would create.
Nor would it prevent the PRC, India and other over-populated emerging nations, from increasing pollution emissions.
Cameron, wouldn’t it be easier, cheaper, and fair more realistic, to simply end the use of Marine grade N0.6 fuel. (bunker oil) ? The result of such abolition would produce an internationally dramatic reduction in climate change (and toxic, carcinogenic) emissions ?
Again, wouldn’t it be simpler, much cheaper, and less disruptive, to just replace existing coal and uranium power stations with Thorium technology ?
Both these measures, would achieve the same results you seek, but have the advantage of having a realistic chance of working, and being copied internationally.
Not very idealistic, but practical !