By Jo Nova
The clean energy revolution is failing, and everyone knows it
In a radical move, the CEO of an oil giant actually defended oil. For a brief moment the space-time continuum opened a worm hole to reality, and leaders of some of the world’s largest corporations briefly said sensible things.
The energy transition is falling apart so fast, even the prime targets of hate, the Big Oil Men themselves, are now openly pointing out what a waste of time and money solar and wind power are. BP was trying to cut oil production 40% until very recently when it flipped to increasing it. But now we have a whole conference of Big Oil.
Saudi Aramco CEO says energy transition is failing, world should abandon ‘fantasy’ of phasing out oil
By Spencer Kimball, CNBC
HOUSTON — Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said Monday that the energy transition is failing and policymakers should abandon the “fantasy” of phasing out oil and gas, as demand for fossil fuels is expected to continue to grow in the coming years.
“In the real world, the current transition strategy is visibly failing on most fronts as it collides with five hard realities,” Nasser said during a panel interview at the CERAWeek by S&P Global energy conference in Houston, Texas.
We spent trillions of dollars and we have nothing to show for it:
Nasser said alternative energy sources have been unable to displace hydrocarbons at scale, despite the world investing more than $9.5 trillion over the past two decades. Wind and solar currently supply less than 4% of the world’s energy…
Meanwhile, the share of hydrocarbons in the global energy mix has barely fallen in the 21st century from 83% to 80%, Nasser said.
This is the graph he was surely thinking of — the one that shows how irrelevant, inconsequential and trivial the whole “renewable energy transition” has been so far. See that black line…?
OWID https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
The free market cut six times as many emissions with energy efficiency measures as the socialists did with wind and solar and billions of your dollars:
The CEO said efficiency improvements alone over the past 15 years have reduced global energy demand by almost 90 million barrels per day oil equivalent. Wind and solar, meanwhile, have substituted only 15 million barrels over the same period, he said.
And they say they care about CO2…
For thirty years it’s been obvious that we could make bigger reductions in emissions by burning coal at hotter temperatures, and using shale gas when we could, but instead of “saving the world” the Eco-Worriers really wanted to prop up their crony industries instead.
Australia is about to bolt headlong into a renewables quagmire that the rest of the world is starting to back away from. Spread the message!
https://assets.ctfassets.net/008uhrl7fe4e/2qH7NAi82gf5wzpuTQTF0o/46ad428eb9c6df8a4d51a59c0dcd7454/White-Paper-Petrosynthesis-15-11-21.pdf
https://www.zero.co/
The idea of making a zero carbon to atmosphere synthetic fuel at a similar price to existing fuels will become a reality. Exxon owns a vast book of patents to “cover off” this possibility. They have been working on this for 50 years. This can be done using Australian invented technology at a lower price than zero.co or if they get large enough, they will simply buy. Probably after Exxon buys them. While our governments act and think like children our IP will “walk to the money”.
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1) There is no need for “zero carbon”.
2) The technology you link to seems to involve the reduction of CO2 from air to C and the electrolysis of water to make hydrogen to generate synthetic fuels. That requires an enormous amount of energy. That is a fundamental thermodynamic limitation. There is no way to get around that.
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Except by knowing how to manipulate a covalent bond. It means you need to fully understand just what forces pair electrons (para) and how much energy it takes to unpair (ortho) them.
The next problem is feeding enough electrons into a system without melting the conductors. Run a process at 10MW and it works. Run it at 100MW and the conductors melt. To scale up to a mass produced chemical using electricity requires a new type of conductor. It must be inexpensive and be manufactured using existing technology. A near superconductor at ambient.
In Australia no one invests in unscaled technology. They all expect the government to do it. No problem getting the funding overseas. So the IP walks.
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None of that negates the fundamental thermodynsmic reality that those processes require enormous amounts of energy, at whatever scale they are performed. Unless new physical laws relating to that are discovered (unlikely) then nothing will change.
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True. That is what I actually said. That is the reason why that IP needs to remain here.
05
Both links you provided involve synthetic fuels made from reduction of CO2 and water.
Both require enormous amounts of energy.
The processes portrayed are just a slight variation on the “green hydrogen” model with electricity coming from solar and wind plantations.
The difference appears to be a carbon source from CO2 in the air instead of coal with sequestration such as discussed at https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/11/japanese-funded-500m-project-to-extract-hydrogen-from-victorian-coal-is-at-risk-sources-say.
Neither are economically viable.
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Without knowing what process Zero have I cannot comment. All I know is I have something that works and its economic. If someone else appears and its viable, then its ok for me to start appearing without getting an “unbeatable offer” from some government.
07
Geoff, it doesn’t matter what the process is.
The fundamental physical limitation is thermodynamics. There is no getting around basic physical laws.
The chemical reduction of both water and CO2 require enormous amounts of energy.
The reverse of that process, oxidation of hydrogen and carbon (to give H2O and CO2) liberates an enormous amount of energy.
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Agreed. You have to “steal” the energy from a natural process. Then you end up with lots of unpaid, useful energy. There better be plenty of unpaid natural energy that is not going to affect the local environment. Otherwise the local citizens are going to stop you doing it. The only possible source of such natural energy is the Sun. So you need to lower the temperature of something heated by the sun and use that energy to split water.
06
Instead of fueling cars with hydrogen and the expensive infrastructue required
Fuel them with CO2 that has been reformed into methane and then liquid longer chain fuels
Research
A new method developed by a team of Waseda University scientists led by Professor Yasushi Sekine may contribute to reducing the use of fossil fuels and help prevent global warming in the long-run.
The conversion of carbon dioxide to valuable chemicals such as methane has drawn great attention for use in supporting carbon capture and utilization. Especially, methane can be used not only as fuel but also as a hydrogen carrier, transporting town gas to existing infrastructure. For instance, some plants in Germany have already been launched based on the Power to Gas concept, which allows energy from electricity to be stored and transported in the form of compressed gas.
“To recycle carbon dioxide into methane, an established industrial method involves the reaction of hydrogen and carbon dioxide using a ruthenium-based catalyst at temperatures of 300 to 400 degrees Celsius, but this method limited how much and when methane could be produced since it requires such high temperature,” Sekine says. “Additionally, operation at low temperatures was demonstrated to be favorable to improve carbon dioxide conversion and increase the amount of methane produced.”
In this newly-developed method reported in Chemistry Letters, carbon dioxide can be converted into methane more efficiently and quickly in the 100 degrees Celsius range.
With this novel method, methane could be produced from carbon dioxide collected from the atmosphere, possibly enabling an unlimited amount of methane production by recycling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere released from factories into valuable energy resources.
https://www.waseda.jp/top/en/news/73353
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Nuclear Energy solves the energy problem of converting CO2 to methane
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Clearly you are not a lawyer. Simply ban the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
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The Universe formation banned the second law of thermodynamics. So I am not sure we completely understand what happened. However, I am yet to defy that law by creating something from nothing, although it must have occurred at some point to get something. Energy is NOT FREE. There is a lot of energy everywhere. Transferring it from one form to another, efficiently, is the tricky bit. Otherwise you have to pay for it. Better to steal it from something else. In simple terms it means you get more order while the other thing freezes. a force is applied to make this happen. Its best not to pay much money for that force.
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Excellent work Geoff. This is your fifth comment and you still haven’t said anything.
🙂
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All I have said is that the CEO of Exxon and Aramco talk at CERA is hypocritical. They know that someone is going to cut their lunch but cannot develop their own technology as an alternative.
Whether we need environmentally better energy is debatable. Certainly not at a far higher price. We are on the brink of a runaway fiat meltdown. Every 100 days the US creates US$1T. Quite soon it will be every 10 days. If we cannot drop the price of energy we are screwed.
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Exxon ie Standard oil, ESSO have been filing patents on every conceivable method of making useful products from hydrogen and carbon for a very long time. They do not have factories making those products. They await the time when someone (they have failed) makes hydrogen inexpensively. Almost no-one will buy raw hydrogen as it is not easy to transport and they generally do not want to own a very large hydrogen plant on their site.
Exxon’s strategy is well thought out. As a business person I have to admire them.
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The 2nd law is white, racist and supports Trump.
Poof! Gone! 😆
But seriously, barely a week goes by without a new material being discovered, a new phase of matter, a new discovery that voids current beliefs and knowledge.
This week, a material harder than diamond, dark matter rejected and a new way of producing Hydrogen from waste, and 2 dozen more hit the feeds.
Things are only impossible or unviable until they’re not.
We are apes looking up at the black monolith of future knowledge.
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What a scofflaw! I’m with Homer on this one.
https://youtu.be/tuxbMfKO9Pg
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From your first link, “a typical field crop is 22 times less efficient than a solar panel” – if the rest is equally reliable, put your money elsewhere.
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Have to ask Zero.co CG. Nothing to do with me.
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Geoff, after reading your post there didn’t seem to be much point in going to the links.
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Just interesting that someone else is moving along the same route.
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Exxon may sue them for patent infringement.
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No. It won’t.
The Fischer-Tropsch water gas shift reaction is between 28% to 40% efficient from an energy balance viewpoint of energy input vs. energy content output for synthetic liquid hydrocarbons. It requires CO and H2 inputs at high temps and pressures with catalysts. The only reason to ever use this process is if petroleum isn’t available.
To get the CO and H2, you need methane, natural gas, or coal gas to begin the process. Anything else requires additional energy.
There is no magic way of synthesizing hydrocarbon fuels unless the energy to do so is actually “free”, and it isn’t.
If you use “green hydrogen” then the energy efficiency of the FT process is around 14%.
SynFuels are “possible” but not “economical” because of the PChem limitations.
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SynFuels are “possible”
SynFuels to fuel Tiger tanks and ME109s were made from coal as a source of carbon by German Chemists in WW2 – Sourcing carbon from CO2 is just an extra step in the process.
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The Kellogg process of coal gasification that South Africa built Sasol II from to make oil from coal – been done – and can be done again when no oil available as long as you have coal – which they and Australia do in large quantities
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Okay Geoff, so we just ignore the lie that CO2 causes warming, as promulgated by our scientists, academics, politicians, media and more and go on living in a corrupt world on the hope that in the future the dishonesty will fade away while we go looking for pots of gold at the end of rainbows ?
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Not sure what you are saying?
Not that interested in CO2. Good idea to increase it to 700ppm in our atmosphere to grow stuff. Zero intend using it to make a fuel. I would not go down that path because see 700ppm statement. However, lots of people think CO2 in the air is a problem. All of them want the government to fix the problem. I have a very low opinion of government and would not wish them to “fix” anything. No doubt with guv@work we will get to 700ppm faster than anytime in history.
This does not stop me from making a low cost, liquid (at ambient) fuel using an electrolytic process. Just like Zero’s outcome but I don’t need to extract CO2 from anything because my fuel has no carbon in it.
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People must wake up and understand the devastating environmental and economic impact of so-called “renewables”.
We already have environmentally-friendly energy generation technologies such as coal, gas, nuclear and real hydro (not SH2).
All offer affordable, clean, reliable energy with minimal land use and minimal visual impact.
A transition back to coal, gas, nuclear and hydro would liberate the environment for vast areas of valuable farm land or forest being cleared for solar and wind, stop clearances for interconnecting cables, save bird, bat and insect life and save people from energy poverty (including death from cold).
Most importantly, a return to coal, gas, nuclear and hydro would stop the greatest misallocation of financial, engineering, scientific and othee resources in history. (Albeit the engineering and scientific resources are corrupted by the whole process because no ethical and honest engineer or scientist would think wind and solar is a good idea except for niche usea like remote scientific monitoring stations etc..)
Finally, note that the whole renewables scam has with it, by necessity, huge amounts of lies, censorship and indoctrination of children to keep the scam going, including the exploitation of school dropouts like the “world’s leading climate scientist”, the “demonic little gremlin”, Dr Greta Thunberg, an idol of the Left and ignorant people everywhere.
None of that’s healthy in a free society. Such lies could and should be abandoned as should be the whole scam. Liberate people from this renewables madness and let’s revert to progressing mankind.
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Have you seen the god news out of France regarding onshore industrial wind turbines?
France’s Council of State decries industrial wind turbines, calling them illegal, requiring full environmental assessments
170
On January 15, 2024, Bruno Le Maire, Minister of Economy, who is now also in charge of energy, reaffirmed the importance of nuclear power in decarbonising the French economy and industry through low-carbon electricity.24 Jan 2024
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It’s funny how an expert in the energy industry will be ridiculed, dismissed, and accused of “big oil” bias by activists while they continue to listen to a myriad of non-experts and charlatans recommending renewables as the universal energy panacea.
He is undoubtedly biased (who isn’t?), and his motivations are likely much wider than personal (or familial) wealth, but the CEO of Aramco would never need to work a day in his life again if he didn’t want to, even if he denounced oil and gas and was fired tomorrow.
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“Big Oil” is much more credible than “Big Wind”, “Big Green” and “Big Subsidy Farmer”.
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Big Wind would be good nickname for Chris Bowen
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“Saudi Oil Giant CEO says world should abandon the fantasy of living without oil”
Perhaps the fantasy may be the concept of purchasing oil with $US?
/sarc.
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“Russia has announced plans to dramatically increase its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production from 33 million tons in 2023 to 110 million tons by the year 2030, according to a report by Russian news agency Tass.” “
The ambitious target that aims at bolstering Russia’s position in the global LNG market and diversifying its gas supplies was revealed by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.” (energy@aa.com.tr)
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Hopefully Russia can send some LNG to Australia because Australia has a gas shortage due to 1) exploration being illegal in many places, 2) fracking being illegal in Victoria, 3) Howard selling off much of our gas supply to the Chicomms at world’s cheapest prices with no provision for market prices or inflation and on a bizarre 30 year contract, still running.
Of course, gas is banned in new houses in Victoria as well, maybe we don’t need gas after all, LoL.
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/how-australia-blew-its-future-gas-supplies-20170928-gyqg0f.html
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There is absolutely no scientific truth behind the claim that human origin CO2 is a danger to the planet.
The concept of death by incineration due to Global warming from human origin CO2 is a malicious fiction that cannot be supported in the real world.
Global Warming is nothing more than a media push that tries to cover the scientific truth that co2 induced Global Warming is falsified through basic atomic physics, astronomy, atmospheric reality, thermodynamics and quantitative analysis.
P.V = n.R.T rulz!
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Fossil fuel will run out. The rapid growth is going to meet head on with shrinking supplies, regardless of replaceables all manufactured with fossil fuel power. How are we going to make replaceables and their transmission lines and cover world shipping with solar and wind and hydro? Places like Australia with all that power in the ground will be indefensible.
What has been obvious for decades has been the need for thorium for nuclear and then Fusion power. If only some of the $1,300,000,000,000 a year spent on replaceables was spent on real R&D. Perhaps the most egregious is Australia’s Snowy II which is the most ridiculous, expensive, uncertain, slow and worthless mega project ever undertaken by the country. And costing more than four coal power stations in Victoria which could power the country at no cost for hundreds of years.
Australia has been captured by fake science nutters. And you can list them. Starting with Chris Bowen. Followed by Malcolm Turnbull and Simon Holmes a Court. And thousands of Canberran public servants who have silently engineered massive carbon taxes which even the politicians do not understand. Australian companies, even the MMBW for their sewage now have to but Australian Carbon Credits from people growing trees for a living. It’s Green insanity.
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Fossil fuels will eventually run out but not any time soon. And when liquid and gas fuels run out there is still plenty of coal that can be converted to liquid or gas fuels. That will also eventually run out and then new technologies for generating liquid or gas fuels will have to be developed, probably using plentiful inexpensive power from nuclear fission or in the future fusion reactors.
Liquid fuels can also be produced biologically but take up large amounts of otherwise useful farmland. So, eat or drive. It’s probably doable if the West stops growing food for Third World countries.
Anyway, there will be no shortages anytime soon, except due to political reasons.
300
Fossil fuels won’t run out — it’s not like a fuel tank suddenly being empty — we can go on scrounging for it in more and more difficult ways. We’ll only give up when the value of the fuel doesn’t beat the cost of extraction. That could come because the costs get too high or, as TdeF says, because breakthroughs in other energy technologies mean the value falls. But some of the stuff will still be there when we stop using it.
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Robert,
We need “fossil fuels” for way more than fuel . Most things we use contain something derived from hydrocarbons . When the “price” of extraction and processing these resources becomes expensive then the market will decide what happens to them . If the government interferes in that process we end up with waste and cost skyrockets . The current issues stem from wealth concentrations (the rich) manipulating the media and the markets . What is the point in having billions of dollars but power ?
80
But we are running out! Fast. Half the front page in the Australian today!
Not enough gas, certainly in Victoria. Any winter energy crisis and we are totally exposed.
Despite being the largest exporter of LNG in the world, Victoria in particular is running out of gas quickly as Bass Strait rapidly disappears. And more exploration is banned. Huge land based known zero cost reserves ready to use are banned. LNG companies like Santos cannot supply Australia when people overseas will pay more. And our gas is shipped to Singapore to avoid using Australian Maritime unions.
So gas power plants will start using diesel to generate electricity. Or Victoria has to import gas/oil to keep the lights on while our coal and gas stay in the ground. Presumably for someone else. The entire situation has been fabricated by the Victorian Government, the Greens and the complicity of both Labor and Liberal parties. Laws are being passed which make no sense except to cripple Australia.
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TdeF we are not at all running out of coal or gas in Australia, that’s just propaganda mate.
Victoria has vast clean gas reserves in the onshore Gippsland basin close to Sale, the distribution site for
Bass Strait offshore oil and gas now declining, it’s just the ideology driven Victorian government refuses to recognise it.
Secondly, Victoria has 10’s of billions of tonnes of remaining brown coal resources, also unwanted due to `climate change’.
Thirdly The Sydney-Bowen basin Permian steaming and coking coalfields extend for 2000km in NSW and Qld, with only some of the exposed resources being mined, there is enough there for centuries of current levels of production. Then there is the younger Jurassic productive coal and gas basins overlying it.
Then there are the huge gas and oil reserves in WA mainly offshore, we are exporting.
This is all without fracking our tighter oilshale resources mostly in Qld and NT.
If we were clever, we would be using all these resources, and managing them to produce required cheap reliable energy, with advanced technology to have low-emissions, and sufficient hydrocarbons for industry transport and agriculture. The climate change bullshit industry is driving this country to the wall, and too many people are cheering it on, time to wake up Australia and face reality. If we don’t stop this crazy transition to renewable part-time energy, we will be the poor white southerners of Asia, being dictated to by our Chinese masters!
20
However, carbon based fuels will never run out because they can produced by:
– Photosynthesis either by nature or by industrial processes
– by converting CO2 into methane and longer chain fuels using energy from nuclear power stations.
30
Eventually, yes. The “Peak Oil” claims have been made for 80 years or more. There is more oil remaining in historical fields than has been extracted. When the price of extraction is high enough, the remaining oil will be extracted. When the price of oil is high enough, more exploration, drilling, development, and production will happen.
In theory, yes, someday oil won’t be available at reasonable market prices. But that won’t happen for a century or more.
There’s lots of technology and engineering that haven’t yet been applied or discovered so far. Predicting the future based on limited existing/past knowledge has never been a sound investment in the oil industry. Or the information industry, or several others. It’s deja vu all over again.
The only provable reality is that petroleum based products will become more expensive.
70
Petrol products may get more expensive, but just relieving the taxes from it should fix that.
40
“The clean energy revolution is failing, and everyone knows it”. Everyone except BOBowen and that Forrest bloke from WA. Gas generators may be forced to burn diesel to keep the grid running after authorities warned states to face a catastrophic supply shortfall. Dutton’s nuclear push triggers the usual anti-science fallout. Peter Ridd laments “As I contemplate the desecration of pristine bush to make way for wind farms here in north Queensland, I would take a nuclear power station instead any day”.
370
Whenever will the world wake to the fact that the CO2 scam is just another, and very successful, way to destroy the West. It has nothing whatsoever to do with saving the planet but every thing to do with a power grab by socialists many of whom are rich beyond calculation yet still want more. Meanwhile the rest of humans are merely financial slaves. Every person has God given rights which are recognised in English common law but every day those rights are taken away from the majority to favour the minority. A classic example is the Victorian governments process of ignoring the rights of farmers and rural communities to build more useless renewables to favour a few city elites.
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People just can’t put the science and the politics and corruption of the Global Warming thing together.
Perhaps an analogy might help.
Just imagine half time at the football with a packed stadium of twenty thousand people.
Five paper shredders are set up on the field hooked up to a portable generator.
A truck comes in and places a stack of hundred dollar notes near each shredder and the referee blows the start whistle.
The first shredder operator to get through his million dollar pile is the winner, and scores the unshredded notes as the prize.
Nuts, yes, but that’s basically the renewables thing in a nutshell.
Now think, immigration in its current form, Kovid, Genderism, Equality, Kolonialism, white supremacy and reparations.
210
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/17/swedish-wind-farms-facing-bankruptcy/
One of their biggest headaches is the fact that, unless they build extra large and expensive batteries or synchronise wind velocity with demand, renewable energy cannot be saved. It’s a case of use it or lose it!
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Every decade we are told that oil will run out, and prices reflect those forecasts.
Eventually it must come true, but no signs currently.
120
Be careful with the wording. We are not told that oil will run out. We are told that we will reach Peak Oil, which is a very different thing. As David Maddison defines it in this thread, Peak Oil is when “the time of maximum extraction of oil is reached after which it declines”. That is a long long way from “running out”. After Peak Oil, oil is still likely to be used for many decades, possibly even centuries, it’s just that it won’t be flowing at 100+ million barrels a day or whatever the peak actually is.
It looks like the next few years are going to be crucial in telling us whether we are nearing Peak Oil (although we will not know for sure until some years after the peak). There is a distinct possibility that global oil production will struggle to increase by much from now on – see
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-production-by-country?country=~OWID_WRL
The USA has almost single-handedly kept global production rising over the last few years. Maybe Russia or Canada or Venezuela can overcome politics and keep it rising for a few years more. But it still looks to me like Peak Oil is likely in the 2040s. And that is NOT when we “run out” of oil!
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One of the important technologies for winning more oil and gas is directional and horizontal drilling.
I wrote an article about it.
https://www.siliconchip.com.au/Issue/2016/July/Directional+Drilling%3A+How+It+Works
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Quoting from my article:
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Here’s one of Andrew Bolt’s best short interviews with Mark Mills trying to explain the problems of TOXIC W & S and the true cost of their so called clean energy transition.
And of course you wreck your onshore and offshore environments FOREVER. This is at the start of COP 28 and Mark Mills laughs at BO Bowen’s claim of how cheap W & S is today. This takes about 11 minutes and starts with the Flannery donkey yapping about permanent Aussie droughts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XymJogShmmU
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There are rare members of the Ignorati who realise that battery operated vehicles are not viable transport options outside of the confines of open air prisons such as “15 Minute Cities”. In such cases they will be good for a dash down to the Government ration distributor to pick up your weekly ration of 500g of insects.
They therefore advocate for transport using “green” (sic) hydrogen or ammonia as transport fuels.
These fuels are absolute nightmares to use, even for NASA and are absolutely not suitable for civilian transport. I don’t think advocates for these fuels realise how impractical and dangerous they are, then again, may be they do….
240
This will never see the light of day in the MSM. The graph well illustrates hoe little has been achieved ar great financial cost, and opportunity cost of human endeavour.
We are amazingly selective about what we choose to learn from overseas, up to overtly looking away when it doesnt suit “the message” The development of nuclear power in Finland and it’s long history in France vs statements on the topic from Bowen are great examples
110
Joe Biden and his agencies missed the memo: from Fox News:
In a joint announcement Wednesday, the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled the most aggressive multi-pollutant emission standards ever finalized. While the regulations target gas-powered vehicles, they are explicitly designed to push wider nationwide adoption of electric vehicles (EV) and, according to officials, are expected to ensure nearly 70% of all new car sales are zero-emissions within a few years.
110
Why doesn’t the EPA impose a tax on the f@rts of vegans?
160
These people are delusional.
Imagine you’re a builder. You’ve just realized that the blueprints you’re trying to follow were drawn up by M.C. Escher.
All you can do in this situation is hope that the voters don’t re-elect Escher.
110
This is where the likes of Bjorn Lomborg and his arguments are so resonant. It’s a shame he’s a warmist and believes in the mistaken belief that CO2 has an important impact on world climate. But just put that aside for the moment. His powerful arguments point out the absurdity of all the climate policies of world government to attempt to solve a problem, which is really not a problem. That all those trillions of $ spent on renewables, subsidies, carbon taxes etc. etc, etc could have been better spent on so many other worthwhile projects. Or as Mr Nasser rightly points out “The free market cut six times as many emissions with energy efficiency measures as the socialists did with wind and solar and billions of your dollars”. Just imagine in Australia if all the old coal fired power stations had been gradually upgraded to HELE, UC or USC standard with upgraded environmental controls. We could have had clean, even more efficient coal. Just last week another correspondent on this blog pointed out that in the 1980’s there was a proposal by the Victorian SEC to increase efficiency of coal with a new fluidised bed combustion system to fire the boilers and dramatically increase efficiency. So, a lot of these upgrades are essentially ” off the shelf”. Contrast that with all the fantasy projects aiming to replace hydrocarbon fuels. Hydrogen, pumped hydro, big batteries, thorium, EV’s, wave power. Even nuclear to a certain extent is fantastical for Australia, with the smaller alternative of SMR’s not really commercially tested in any country. You might as well talk about the flux capacitor from the movie ” Back to the Future”.
130
“Even nuclear to a certain extent is fantastical for Australia, with the smaller alternative of SMR’s not really commercially tested in any country”
Its an interesting argument isnt? They are happy to go full steam ahead with wind and solar when it is demonstrably failing in other places like Germany. UK and California to deliver anything but a complement to real energy. So they chose certain failure over possible failure. Very foward looking.
40
Yarpos,
There is a SMR in every nuclear sub and most aircraft carriers . Utter shenanigans – shipping could be using this easily , and now there are mobile nuclear generators in ships . More gaslighting by the usual suspects….
100
Dick Smith claims we will suffer blackouts in the near future, unreliables just aren’t up to supplying a 21st century 24/7 economy.
130
But, but, we need all those mirrors and windmills to stop the planet boiling. We’re all going to die don’t you know …
30
Mmmmm we are, but thats another topic
40
AGAIN here’s the world’s total energy share by source and in 2022 W & S combined were just 2.13%. Very simple sums but very few so called scientists or pollies etc understand or care about these TOXIC, UNRELIABLE disasters.
Amazing that these 2 so called global energy sources are almost straight horizontal biro lines at the very bottom.
Here’s the OWI Data link so everyone can see, but you’ll have a hard time trying to explain this Energy graph to the delusional types like BO Bowen or Albo or the rest of the ALP or the stupid Greens.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy-share-inc-biomass
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Interesting to look at the above graph for “total global energy share by source and start with your mouse on Hydro and then move down to Nuclear, Wind, Solar, modern biofuels and other renewables.
It sure doesn’t look very impressive or thicken the horizontal line by much either.
But for this wastage of endless TRILLIONs of $ flushed down the drain our energy experts are very happy to carry on.
60
AGAIN here’s all countries co2 emissions since 1988 or when the Dr Hansen donkey started this lunacy via his Washington DC talk 36 years ago.
Endless TRILLIONs of $ WASTED for DECADES and for NOTHING. Just add up the very simple sums and see if anyone can’t understand it.
The OECD countries’ co2 emissions per year show a very slight increase in 2022, while China, India and the NON OECD countries have increased by a further 14 + BILLION tonnes per year in the 34 th year or 2022.
We must also add about 1 bn Ts extra for shipping and air travel per year to equal the 2022 global total of 37+ bn Ts per year.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=Non-OECD+%28GCP%29~OECD+%28GCP%29
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I followed “The Science” and it led me to “The Money”… It’s a coordinated, sosialist move to redirect the flow of money to new, preferred Industries. Nothing more, nothing less – the environment and the people be damned. The UN spokespeople are quoted as saying this – anybody who don’t take them by their word has rocks in their heads. If people were serious about the environment and CO2, we should have spent that billions on building Nuclear Reactors.
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China and Blackrock – Biden EPA Rolls Out USA Auto Mandates Forcing EVs to Make Up Two-Thirds of Passenger Vehicles – Who Benefits?
March 20, 2024 – Sundance
The backstory is so transparently corrupt it requires an explanation, so we’ll go down the full rabbit hole and explain how China knew – to a demonstrable certainty – their multi-billion dollar investment in Mexican EV plants would be useful.
Always remember, there are trillions at stake.
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Historic electric vehicle crackdown changes everything
Joe Biden has finalised a major crackdown on petrol cars in the most aggressive attack on internal combustion of any country in the world.
Diana Glebova – New York Post
The Biden administration finalised its crackdown on petrol cars Thursday, with America’s Environmental Protection Agency announcing drastic climate regulations meant to ensure more than two-thirds of passenger cars and light trucks sold by 2032 are electric or hybrid vehicles.
The EPA rule imposes strict limits on tailpipe pollution, limits the agency says can be met if 56 per cent of new vehicles sold in the US are electric by eight years from now, along with 13 per cent that are plug-in hybrids or other partially-electric cars, the New York Post reports.
That would be a huge increase over current EV sales, which rose to 7.6 per cent of new vehicle sales last year, up from 5.8 per cent in 2022.
Despite the relatively low demand — which has led to auto manufacturers scaling back planned investment in electric vehicle manufacturing — the EPA insisted that carmakers have not had any “change in … intentions regarding PEVs generally or specifically”.
The announced comes after the Australian Federal government last year announced its own proposed new carbon emissions standards for petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.
These regulations, aligned with ‘Euro 6d’ standards, are scheduled to be enforced starting in 2025, accompanied by upgrades to the quality of locally sold petrol.
The overarching goal is to bring Australia in line with emission standards already embraced by Europe.
The current emissions standards in Australia, lingering since 2009, fail to meet those adopted in Europe a decade ago and Australia’s petrol quality stands as one of the dirtiest among developed nations.
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Another reason for the Good Old Boys to elect Trump.
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And yet like a typical Leftist hypocrite, before Biden became senile he took great pride in his 1967 Corvette.
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The untenable costs of net zero
The national electricity grid is already stretched. A roll-out of wind energy would push us past breaking point
UK TELEGRAPH VIEW
The debate around decarbonisation has focused mainly on the efficacy of electric cars or the cost of replacing oil and gas-fired boilers with heat pumps.
What is less appreciated is the unprecedented expansion of infrastructure needed to bring offshore wind energy to homes and businesses.
The National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) has proposed a £58 billion programme to boost grid networks to accommodate the expected growth in electricity demand and an increase in renewable power projects. The scale of this investment exposes the unrealistic “net-zero” ambitions of both major parties. The Government aims to decarbonise the power network by 2035, but Labour says it will achieve this goal by 2030.
Judging by the plans set out by ESO, the former target is achievable only with massive levels of funding and disruption, while completing this transformation within six years is not possible. Yet a Labour spokesman responded: “We said 2030 for decarbonising the grid and we meant it.”
Plucking dates out of thin air without any realistic prospect of success is wilfully misleading.
More than 1,000 miles of new overhead lines supported by an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 new pylons, some more than 600ft high, will be needed. Where are they to go? Politicians must be far more honest with the public about the practical implications of their net-zero policies.
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Unprecedented surge in offshore wind needed for Starmer’s net zero plan
2030 target so ambitious that Britain could risk running out of steel for undersea cables, report claims
Labour would need to build offshore wind farms at an unprecedented rate in a scramble to hit net zero targets, energy experts have warned.
Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to make Britain carbon-neutral by 2030 would require a five-fold increase in turbine installations and a massive expansion in port capacity, according to a confidential report commissioned from leading analysts Aurora Energy.
The scale of the expansion is so ambitious that it could even put Britain at risk of running out of steel for the undersea cables to connect them to the grid, Aurora said.
Since 2015, offshore wind has expanded by about 1.4 gigawatts per year – equivalent to about 150 to 200 turbine installations annually.
Labour’s targets would mean increasing annual installations to 7.5Gw or 750 turbines, a huge task in itself. Aurora warned that such a rapid expansion also risked a series of knock-on effects.
The study said: “Labour’s aim of deploying 60GW offshore wind by 2030 will require significant expansion of the transmission network and a rapid scaling up of supply chains.
“Installing 60GW of offshore wind by 2030 would require increasing the yearly deployment rate by a factor of 5× between 2024 and 2030, at a time when supply chains are increasingly constrained due to the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and rising global demand.”
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Do not forget the Trillions of GBP required for back-up batteries during winter when the wind does not blow and solar energy output is next to zero.
https://stopthesethings.com/2024/03/21/mega-battery-owners-rolling-in-cash-whenever-wind-solar-output-collapse/
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What the Aramco CEO says about oil is to be expected. Oil is the major Saudi income earner after all. However, The hard, unpalatable truth for the NetZero renewables only luvvies is that he is right. Let the anti-carbon NetZero luvvies do without oil derived carbon based lubricants for a reality check. Won’t work. Even Teflon is carbon based.
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“Fossil Fue,” is a misnomer.
Coal may be, but oil and gas look more like liquid and gaseous ores…
Just saying…
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The carbon and hydrogen, necessary for the formation of hydrocarbons, can originate from organic compounds, located in subducted sedimentary rocks, and from the dissociation of carbonates (CaCO3 ), and the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and water (H2O) that seeps into subduction zones, or deep into rifts and fractures.
Furthermore, CO2 can be released from cracked olivine and pyroxene in lithospheric and basaltic rocks. The reduction of CO2 to carbon (C), and H20 to hydrogen (H2) is probably catalyzed by oxidizing ferrous iron (Fe+2 ) present in mafic minerals to ferric iron (Fe+3 ). The combination of C and H2, at 300-500°C, has formed paraffinic and naphthenic compounds (both present in the oils of the Middle East).
The continuous formation of hydrocarbons by this process, and the field locations along, near, or above subduction/rift zones, would account for the continuous increase in oil reserves, would explain why hydrocarbons are found close to those zones, and why the reserves are modest in Syria, Turkey, and Oman, relative to the huge oil reserves found in the countries along the Gulf.
https://www.offshore-mag.com/home/article/16762472/middle-east-geology-why-the-middle-east-fields-may-produce-oil-forever
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Over the last two decades several $Trillion have been spent on failed attempts to reduce man made CO2 emissions (while ignoring natural ones).
What if this money had been spent to produce carbon based fuels from CO2 in the atmosphere economically and so “closing the loop”?
Unfortunately a religious cult and idiot politicians have pissed all this money up against the “green” wall.
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Yes, while coal is undoubtedly of plant origin, it’s becoming questionable that that is the case for some or all oil and gas deposits.
The science is certainly not settled on that. Indeed, science by its very nature is never settled despite what warmists think.
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I propose the end of Aviation & the End of Oil
I propose a global network of Hypersonic Zero Emission Trains based on my Invention plus the Inventions I have not filed yet.
The reason why I didn’t do it is because they stopped me destroyed my life and ruined me.
And I can’t do it alone… I won’t do it alone.
I want as many people as possible to get involved.
Show me that you earned it… that you earned your Freedom or be a slave forever… I don’t [SNIP] care… because I am sick and tired doing all the dirty work… getting all the abuse and no reward.
So if you help me I help you and that’s the deal, no compromise.
You can’t stop an Idea for which the time has come.
And I truly believe the time is now.
Every City every Country and every Continent will be connected with my Train.
And even if they don’t want it I don’t care… we force it upon them… we are the Future.
Long Journeys will be a thing of the past and all emissions from Travel will be reduced to absolute zero. The maximum travel time between anywhere will be 1h.
Carbon Footprint? My [SNIP]
Carbon Tax? My Arse.[SNIP]ID? I fucking shove it up their [SNIP]and push it up to their throat with a red hot Iron Rod.
We create a Zero Emission World and we pay no taxes.
Going from New York to LA will be faster than you go to the Airport by taxi now.
All transportation of goods and people will be done at Hypersonic speed with ABSOLUTE ZERO EMISSIONS FOREVER… beat that.
https://fritzfreud.substack.com/p/the-future-according-to-fritz-freud
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No thanks.
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I find your use of language offensive and not in keeping with the usual standards of Jo’s blog.
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I’m doing the big ‘Queen’s Wave’s this morning as finally technology has caught up a little.
Ah, finally!
Somebody is looking into the technology that I was creating!
Inversion technology is what I was calling it.
The Revolutionary Design of Cycloidal Propellers is what they are calling it.
The Revolutionary Design of Cycloidal Propellers — disq.us
Definitely greater torque in water by 200% by they’re estimating… I’m past that using 100%of water efficiency to torque.
I’m more advanced already as I’ve been studying it and understanding it far, far longer as being ignored for decades gives me the advantage.
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Lost the link I was putting up.
Here it is…
https://youtu.be/Lqy_7lr6wuE?si=5MWItQkH4F5aLYpv
Inversion technology is what I was calling it
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Durkin’s new Climate the Movie is available to watch at this link.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/20/climate-the-movie-watch-here/
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So what were the “five hard realities?”
Or did I miss it?
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Here is another graph. One wonders why it is currently only updated to 9-2021. (Increasingly more difficult to find on the IEA site)
Make note of the composition of the aggregated “other” category for perspective. It is that tiny little orange bit at the top.
“Other includes geothermal, solar, wind, tide/wave/ocean, heat and other sources.”
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/world-total-energy-supply-by-source-1971-2019
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Thanks for that Ossqss and TOXIC W & S are the “others” at the top and of course SFA and completely useless, unreliable and they have to be replaced every 15 to 20 years.
And they wreck our environments and Bolt still insists we’re only about 10% completed and about 25,000 klms of transmission lines yet to be built across Australia.
Of course Tony from OZ tells us that Capacity factor for Wind is about 30% and Solar about 14.5%, so the entire TOXIC mess is an economic joke.
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[…] By Jo Nova […]
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