U.S. Will Not Embrace Enough Clean Energy by 2050, and it’s your fault!

In an article posted by David Sydiongco January 20, 2013 on Slate.com it asks the question, Will American Embrace Clean Energy by 2050? The most direct and simple answer is, NO.

The article references a panel discussion that took place at Arizona State University titled, “The Future of Energy: Brown, Clean or In Between?” Good title but the gist of this panel that wasn’t mentioned is that industry expects the Federal Government to step in and pay, footing the bill while they end up reaping the  full benefit of clean energy on their bottom line. How did I come to this conclusion?

Panelists consisted of former Shell Oil President John Hofmeister, director of the Stanford University’s Atmosphere/Energy Program Mark Jacobson, and documentary filmmaker Peter Byck. Byck made a documentary film called, Carbon Nation.

Let me work backwards. Carbon Nation is a well intentioned documentary offering more solutions and much less finger pointing. Kudos to Byck. The film mentions pine borer beetles but what so many people fail to do is go back far enough to see what, not just a warmer climate, has lead up to the problem – lack of diversity in the forests. Here in Colorado where I live there use to be 58 native species of trees. Non-pine trees were cut down to build homes, for heating and cooking. What was left were pine trees who quickly exploited the opening in the canopy and took over creating a mono-crop of trees. Without diversity the beetle is able to exploit the huge amount of food available to it and now things are getting warmer it is able to do it for more months each year. Climate change started with the cutting down of the world’s forests which left next to nothing to take up the increasing amount of carbon being released.

The energy solutions he offers are the same ones that have been talked about for more than a decade – biodiesel, ethanol,  algae and so on. I will say this only once – We Can Not Grow Our Way Out Of Future Energy Shortages or Replace Oil! It is elementary math all you have to do is do it to see exactly the same thing. Carbon Sequestering is a joke and only a way to make schleps like you and me pay more for industries mistakes and waste (externalities). Plant trees! They are a far better answer to carbon sequestering. A number of other topics the film covers I won’t bother with because if part of the answers provided don’t work, the rest are not real answers to the pressing problem of our need for energy.

Next in line is Mark Jacobson. This professor has published on climate change and the topic of energy. In his website biography it mentions ideas like hydrogen fuel cells, air pollution from various sources, and on. What his biography sounds like is that he is pushing the same old industries and ideas that have not panned out. Hydrogen Fuel Cells will never make it mainstream. 1) Wherever you plan on getting the hydrogen from is going to be expensive, very expensive; 2) hydrogen is an energy carrier not an energy source(!); 3) fuels cells are expensive, not recyclable and need frequent replacement (have you heard of the million dollar fuel cell car – no, look it up). I would think a professor would have done his homework to find the same information I did but then again no one said a professor is smart just because they have a title.

Lastly we come to John Hofmeister the former Shell Oil President. He now has his own website and company promoting the same old, same old stuff – we need more affordable cleaner energy. whatever that means. What kind of energy? The website and his non-profit doesn’t get very specific when it comes to the energy choices. Yet it asks for donations. Looking at the tags I see biofuels, federal energy policy, oil as some of the main topics. Yet there is nothing new on the website since early 2012. Hm, makes we wonder what the real purpose of the website and company are about.

Why is it universities and colleges bring in industry speakers that push the status quo? Why isn’t there someone who thinks outside the box, outside mainstream – like me? I guess people like me rock the boat too much, get people thinking, bring things to light that industry would rather keep in the shadows (hydrogen economy that will never be).

I have never said that electric cars are bad or like RMI promoting carbon fiber for building cars shouldn’t happen. They are both very good ideas, just 30 years late. You see what people who promote electric cars or the use of carbon fiber never address is the other parts of the car still dependent on petroleum that everyone overlooks. People have so focused on the fuel that the rest of the car jus doesn’t seem to exist so no one sees the many items made from petroleum and that is why I say electric cars and cars made with carbon fiber are a failure. There will be a day in the near future when individual car ownership will decline and eventually disappear altogether.

The article ends with this idea: we need better national leadership. I say we need better, smarter more involved people, not leaders who are bought on the open market of corporate America. We need people who will turn off their TV, get off their behinds and do something to move us forward as individuals and collectively. We need people who act at the personal level and then come together under a cooperative to force the energy issue creating solar farms, small helix windmill farms and so on. As a cooperative people can buy at discount making it much more affordable. If local energy companies refuse to follow the lead people are setting then they should collectively take the energy company to court – maybe even taking over ownership.

It will be people not corporation or government that will move us forward. It has always been people in the past and is the only answer for a sustainable future.

People are slowly waking up – just a little too slowly. If you are interested in hearing what I have to say – hire me as a speaker on anything sustainable. Email me.

[ The referenced article was found here: Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Division of the Washington Post Company – http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/28/john_hofmeister_mark_jacobson_peter_byck_speak_at_the_future_of_energy.html %5D

Peak Oil Mythers

I watched a YouTube video featuring Noe van Hulst, secretaries-general International Energy Forum who thinks Peak Oil is a myth. I watched the video and I could clearly see he was making up everything he was saying. He would look away, fidget, make broad unsupported claims, gave no supporting information or data to his claim and just sounded phony. Here is what he claims:

• we will never see the end of oil and neither will our children
• we are not running out of any fossil fuel
• claims we have only recovered 35% of the oil leaving 65% still in the ground
  (this claim is saying we have around twice as much oil as has ever been found)
• as prices rise it makes it more affordable to pull more out of the ground
  (this has never been shown to be true)
• it is the techno-pessimists who claim we are running out of oil
  (haven’t a clue who a techno-pessimists are, he doesn’t qualify)
• we are moving toward every higher recovery rates
• he agrees we are running out of cheap oil but not oil (no qualification)
• availability in deep sea and the arctic will drive up prices but the oil is out there
  (never states how much is out there, “out there” mythers use a lot)

I am not even going to waste time to counter such blatant stupidity that goes against what former oil industry employees are saying. Many of these former industry people have been a part of the oil industry since the beginning. I will defer to what they have to say than Noe van Hulst.

What Other Mythers are saying

They mix conventional oil that is easy to pump out of the ground with tar sands, heavy oil and shale. All of which is lumped together to make their claims more credible – there is more than enough oil. Some even add oil derived from pyrolysis – taking turkey guts, slaughter house waste, or garbage that is cooked under pressure at high temperatures to create an oil like substance as proof there is plenty of oil “out there”. “Out there” is heard a lot with these mythers and they never qualify what they mean.

Another ploy mythers use is change shale oil into oil shale claiming they are two different things when in reality they are not. Shale, also referred to as kerogen is a rock formation that contains some oil. Ancient people knew about shale even calling it the rock that burns not dissimilar to coal. The only difference between shale and coal is that coal is softer than shale but both do burn.

Shale oil is the original rock and oil shale is the resulting liquid after processing the shale into oil. See how words are confused when you are really talking about much the same thing. Mythers are big on word use to help confuse and make them sound more credible when in reality it is an act of deception.

Mythers never talk about the EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) which gives a better picture as to the real cost of retrieving an energy source in order to bring it to market. Shale just five years ago had a 15-20:1 return. That meant 15 to 20 units of energy went in to get just one unit out. This included the mining, drying, milling, crushing, high temperatures required to cook the rock, high pressure steam and hydrogen used to help liberate it from the rock turning it into a liquid form ready for distillation and the removal of sulfur. Today though the industry is claiming numbers as low as 1:1 or 1:2 meaning you get out what you invest or you get one unit more energy out that you put in. Where the supposed improvements came from is unknown. Technology has not improved in five years that significantly to bring down the cost of getting shale out of the ground and turning it into a liquid ready for processing – distillation. I just don’t believe it. It is some sort of deception, play of the numbers or even putting much of the cost into externalities so the public has to pay for the cost of shale to oil in an indirect manner through subsides. There is a technique of heating shale that has been fractured to get the oil out but I can’t see how that has brought down the cost either.

Mythers claim it is hard to determine just how much oil is in reserve and therefore potentially there is a lot more available than is claimed. This is not and argument that makes any sense.

Lastly, mythers talk in generalities giving no support or even get angry at being challenged. Myhers tend to be right-wingers, conservatives, pro-business supporters towing the line for corporations, staunch followers of economic policies and will often paint themselves into a corner before lashing out. If you can catch a myther ask them hard questions and see them squirm as they look for a way to answer you.

Mythers overall have not produced a credible argument to their claims. None. They should be tossed out with the economists so we can actually get something done and stop wasting time before we move into a cleaner world run by renewables.

 

Climate Changing Affects

Here is some of the things you can expect since we are ignoring the reality of climate change choosing to do nothing (business as usual – full steam ahead):

• Much of Florida would find itself under water including surrounding islands
• Downtown NY would be under water
• Coastal power plants would become useless and nuclear plants would become submerged with unknown affects
• Docking & shipping harbors would be lost
• London would be under water
• Louisiana would flood
• the Mississippi river would swell flooding along its banks
• the Colorado river would swell and flood along its banks
• the Ganges would swell over flowing its banks flooding areas
• the Thames would swell flooding areas
• Marshal Islands would disappear along with: Kiribati, Maldives, Seychelles, Torres Strait Islands, Tegua, Solomon Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Carteret Islands, Tuvalu, Bangladesh, and any other islands not named
• San Francisco Bay area would be under water
• Windmills at sea and along coastlines would be lost
• much of Barcelona would be lost
• Netherlands would flood once sea levels rise above dam levels
• Denmark would be lost
• Berlin would be lost
• Paris would be lost

Many locks and dams would become undermined and fail as sea levels rise above their height or would be undermined from underground seepage.

People would think super dams are the answer but all it would take is one strong storm surge to breach them and the areas would be lost very quickly.

Diking would not work because the shear number and volume of material required and their sheer height from an engineering point of view would just not be possible. Places like Florida or New York have porous soil that would undermine any sea wall built. Think of it this way – you build a huge wall all around New York to keep out the sea and lets say you are successful that wall would be there for several hundred years before water would recede then what do you do with the wall? Tear it down? The wall would have to go down to bed rock and be at least three hundred feet above current sea levels. How is anyone planning on tearing something that huge down? Or building it in the first place? You might save a few places but not many at what cost? It would be better to let the sea claim areas and just allow the sea to over take low lying areas until such time that waters recede.

Dams would make climate change worse by making some areas wetter and other areas much dryer. Some coastal waters would become stagnant and useless which would only make things worse for people living near these waters. Disease outbreaks would only increase and people would move inward to get away from the foul smelling waters.

New Orleans is the mistake that people are making and continue to make. The U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers makes one mistake after another thinking they can dominate Nature. They should be disbanded. The problem is that instead of holding back the water allowing areas to flood and restore wetlands which would mean there is no natural barrier to flooding. Currently New Orleans will flood making all current efforts useless and wasteful.

The required construction to fight flooding would cost trillions to hold back ultimately 250 foot rise in water after polar ice melts requiring more materials than we could muster unless we dismantle coastal buildings and use them for rubble. We could just let the sea flood these areas reclaiming them several hundred years in the future when water recedes. Of course stupid people in office and economic policies would dictate that we should build useless sea walls and dams.