Ed. Note: Also see Part II (on water, biomass, and geothermal); Part III (on coal); and Part IV (on energy efficiency) in this series.
“The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.”
The most important book written on energy economics was the first: William Stanley Jevons’s The Coal Question (London: Macmillan and Company, 1865, rev. 1866). This classic is available in its entirety on the Internet.
Jevons’s remarkably sophisticated treatment of energy sustainability remains pertinent today.…
Continue Reading“There has to be a lot of shrillness taken out of our language. In the environmental community, we have to be more humble. We can’t take the attitude that we have all the answers.” – Fred Krupp (EDF), 2011.
Thirty something years apace, what can anti-CO2 activists claim for their efforts? Answer: not much, except for an incalculable amount of resources wasted to travel and politick around the globe.
Consider this bottom line. In 1988, the year the global warming alarm started, the global market share of carbon-based energies was 88 percent. Today, it is just a bit diminished at 85 percent. Total usage of natural gas, coal, and oil in this period increased by two-thirds, with CO2 emissions rising 61 percent. Fossil fuels–dense, mineral energies–rock!
With this in mid, consider the article below from Greenwire (E&E News), dated April 5, 2011, by Colin Sullivan.…
Continue Reading“Plastic is light, easy to store and transport, comes in an endless variety of textures and shapes and can hold almost anything…. Unfortunately, plastic is much more difficult to recycle than materials like glass, aluminum or paper.” – Eureka! Recycling
The eco-snoops and lifestyle police don’t like plastic, the stuff of oil and gas. But the rest of the world lives by plastic–and benefits. The boom in feedstocks has produced a boom in plastic capacity. Reported Beth Gardiner for Yale Environmental 360 (December 19, 2019):
… Continue ReadingCompanies like ExxonMobil, Shell, and Saudi Aramco are ramping up output of plastic — which is made from oil and gas, and their byproducts — to hedge against the possibility that a serious global response to climate change might reduce demand for their fuels, analysts say.