“[My] early writing was from a viewpoint that there was an ocean of BTUs beneath our feet, and what was high cost and supplemental today would become low cost and conventional later. I ‘trusted’ human ingenuity. I turned out ‘right’ for the wrong technological reason: horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.”
Any intellectual is interested in what is written about him or her, whether it be in the newspaper or an essay, book, or doctoral dissertation. In my case, being of 66 summers, and having a lot of scholarship under my belt, I do not worry much about the momentary ad hominem stuff. But for the record, I am eager to correct with facts and interpretation as needed.
This brings me to a dissertation, “Limits and Cornucopianism: A History of Neo-Liberal Environmental Thought, 1920–2007” (New York University: 2019).…
“What we are seeing in my county right now is that developers are coming in and asking for 50 acres to put up a solar [or] wind farm…. If the developers got their way in all my surrounding townships, we would have 12,000 acres of solar on some of the best farmland in the United States. It’s monstrous.”
It is still possible to get two sides of the story regarding renewable energy. You just need to read the bottom half first. And correct a few things.
I was reminded of this when reading a pro-renewable piece by Stacy Gittleman, “The Role of Wind and Solar in the Future of Power” (August 24, 2021), the cover story of Downtown Newsmagazine.
Backdoor is better than nothing to shake up the puff narrative.…
The drawbacks of petrochemicals and plastics are widely publicized by “news” media, singers, actors, professors, and most anyone else with a megaphone. But the black-sheep facts of the alternatives are quietly herded out of sight, especially by Big Tech censors. (below)
Yesterday (Part I) reviewed the use of carbon-based energies for synthetic polymers, chemicals, lubricants, and pavement. Part II today discusses the original “natural” things as a substitute for petroleum. Three areas are wood, metals, and bioplastics.
Wood
First, let’s examine wood as a substitute for making three-dimensional parts: