Home » Posts tagged 'fossil fuels' (Page 12)

Tag Archives: fossil fuels

LONG-ODDS BET OR A PORTFOLIO OF SCENARIOS?

An intelligent investor – as distinct from a gambler – doesn’t put all his or her money on a single counter. He doesn’t stake everything on a single stock, a single sector, a single asset class, a single country or a single currency. The case for portfolio diversification rests on the existence of a multiplicity of possible outcomes, of plausible scenarios which differ from the investor’s ‘central-case’ assumption.

This isn’t a discussion of market theory, even though that’s a fascinating area, and hasn’t lost its relevance, even at a time when markets have become, to a large extent, adjuncts of monetary policy expectation. The concept of ‘value’ hasn’t been lost, merely temporarily mislaid.

Rather, it’s a reflection on the need to prepare for more than one possible outcome. Sayings to this effect run through history, attaining almost the stature of proverbs. “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst” is one example. Others include “strive for peace, but be prepared for war”, and “provide for a rainy day”. There’s a body of thought which has always favoured supplementing hope with preparation.

Dictionaries might not accept the term “mono-scenarial”, but it describes where we are, working to a single scenario, with scant preparedness for any alternative outcome. The orthodox line is that the economy will carry on growing in perpetuity. Obvious problems, such as the deteriorating economics of fossil fuels and the worsening threat to the environment, will be overcome using renewable energy and the alchemy of “technology”, with “stimulus” deployed to smooth out any economic pains of transition.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Richard Heinberg explores the flawed thinking behind proposed solutions to climate change

September 20, 2021

Richard Heinberg explores the flawed thinking behind proposed solutions to climate change

He explains why real climate progress will require large numbers of people in wealthy countries to forgo forms of power they currently enjoy. —

*****

“power — the ability to do something, the ability to get someone else to do something, or the ability to prevent someone else from doing something — is everywhere in the human world.” – Richard Heinberg (from “Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival”, page 1 of Chapter 1, Introduction).

*****

Richard Heinberg

“Climate change is often incorrectly described as an isolated pollution issue. In this flawed framing, humanity has simply made a mistake in its choice of [fossil fuels as] energy sources. The solution entails switching [to renewable energy] sources and building enough carbon-sucking machines to clear the atmosphere of polluting CO2. Only the political power of the fossil fuel companies prevents us from adopting this [renewable energy] solution and ending our existential environmental crisis. But techno-fixes (that is, technological solutions that circumvent the need for personal or cultural change) aren’t working so far, and likely won’t work in the future. That’s because fossil fuels will be difficult to replace, and energy usage is central to our collective economic power. In other words, power is the key to solving climate change—but not necessarily in the way that many pundits claim. Solutions will not come just from defeating fossil fuel interests and empowering green entrepreneurs; real climate progress will require the willingness of large swathes of the populace, especially in wealthy countries, to forgo forms of power they currently enjoy: comfort and convenience, the ability to travel far and fast, and the option to easily obtain a wide range of consumer products whose manufacture entails large inputs of energy and natural resources.” —Richard Heinberg, Common Dreams

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The U.S. Desperately Needs To Rethink Its Middle East Strategy

September 20, 2021

The U.S. Desperately Needs To Rethink Its Middle East Strategy

Is the Middle East still important? This is a seemingly absurd question, yet some are asking this in Washington. The Middle East is the source of massive reserves in oil and gas. Much of the fuel to produce goods and trade from Asia and the EU comes from the Middle East. Much of the world economy relies on Middle East energy. The region has strategic chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, The Suez Canal, and The Bab al Mandab. It is a source of some of the more significant threats in the world, such as from ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other groups. It contains some of the most important security connections in the world. Consider the neighbors of the Middle East and not just the Middle East. The Middle East is a crossroads for energy and security. It also could be one of the generators of change and improvement, if it is allowed and supported to do so. However, as the U.S. becomes more focused on “The Great Powers Conflict” in Asia, especially with China, it is becoming clearer that the U.S. is losing the plot in the Middle East. Consider the slow to no reaction to the shipping of Iranian fuel with the help of Hezbollah and Syria to Lebanon.

The U.S. could have done many different things to help the Lebanese with this without handing a massive public relations and political victory to its adversaries. But, in some ways, Washington’s sanctions have painted it into a corner on such issues. Consider how the U.S. took the anti-missile batteries from Saudi Arabia as the Houthis are still attacking Saudi Arabia with missiles…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Negative-Sum Economy

September 19, 2021

The Negative-Sum Economy

There are tides and seasons in the comments I field for posts here on my blog, certain questions that get asked at regular intervals, certain saliva-flecked tirades I can count on getting whenever certain things appear in my writings or happen in the world. One of the more frequent of the questions is how to preserve wealth in the face of a difficult future. This question pops up reliably when an economic crisis is on its way, as it happens, and I’ve started fielding it again in recent weeks; my readers may want to brace themselves.

Like so many of the common questions here, it’s an important question, and it has no simple answer. The combination of those features isn’t accidental. It’s an important question because it can’t be answered in any meaningful way without grappling with what wealth actually is, and it’s because wealth is not what most people think it is that the question has no simple answer.

We can start our exploration with a lump of stone and metal whizzing through the lethal radiation-soaked vacuum of interplanetary space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Its name is Psyche, and it’s about the size of Greece. It’s been splashed over the news in recent years because it’s got more metal in it than most other asteroids, and scientists have speculated that the metallic portions of Psyche might include a great deal of gold. Of course the mass media jumped on that instantly and started insisting that if only it could be dragged into our part of the solar system it would make everyone on Earth a billionaire.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A far from perfect storm

September 18, 2021

A far from perfect storm

Global warming may yet prove to be the one thing which saves us from our largely misguided attempts to respond to global warming. This is because, while the crisis is real enough, the solution that we have bought into is an absolute stinker. While a great deal of corporate profit has been made from the deployment of non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) whatever question they are an answer to, it is not “how do we operate a complex industrial society without fossil fuels?”

Up until now this has not been a problem, of course. For the best part of half a century, politicians have been mouthing warm words about protecting the environment and saving the planet. But in practice they have simply presided over more business as usual while hoping that clever people somewhere else will discover some new energy source or invent some new technology which will save the day. In the meantime, energy-expensive solar panels and wind turbines were deployed – with huge subsidies doled out to landowners – to lull a gullible public into believing something was being done.

The establishment media played their part by conflating electricity with energy, so that they could falsely claim that this city, region or country had run entirely on renewable energy yesterday – although “yesterday” often turned out to mean “a couple of hours yesterday.” But since electricity is only 20-25 percent of the energy we use, these media stories simply ignored the gas used for heating and cooking, the oil used to operate transport, plant and agricultural machinery, and the coal used to make steel and cement.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Battle For Control Of East Mediterranean Energy

September 18, 2021

The Battle For Control Of East Mediterranean Energy

The history of oil and natural gas is marred by instability and conflict. The rise of the Eastern Mediterranean as a prolific energy region has increased existing tensions between certain littoral states while strengthening cooperation between others. The ratification of the charter concerning the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF) further cements the importance of gas exporting countries in general and Egypt in particular.

In a political and economic sense, Cairo has succeeded in strengthening the country’s position as a major producer and exporter of gas while highlighting its role as an energy hub. Egypt’s large domestic market, significant production capacity, and strategic location make it an ideal candidate to host the EMGF’s headquarters in Cairo.

Besides the economic logic, Egypt’s growing population requires ever-larger volumes of raw materials to satisfy demand. Therefore, liquidity and access to additional sources are important to improve energy security. Cairo learned a lesson from the developments of 2014/2015 when domestically produced natural gas for export purposes was diverted to satisfy the exploding Egyptian demand. After becoming a net importer in 2015, the country’s two liquefaction facilities in Idku en Damietta were reconfigured for the regasification process of LNG.

The EMGF seeks to bring together the energy-rich countries of the Eastern Mediterranean through dialogue, layout policies, ensure safety and reliability to increase investments, and support growth. The charter is signed and ratified by the founding members Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Palestine, and France. The U.S. and the EU are observers. Noticeably, Turkey has been sidelined while two European countries who are geographically not part of the region, Italy and France, are members. It show’s the hard geopolitical reality of Ankara’s isolation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Chevron CEO Warns “New Dynamics” To Boost Energy Prices Amid Global Supply Crunch

September 16, 2021

Chevron CEO Warns “New Dynamics” To Boost Energy Prices Amid Global Supply Crunch

Soaring energy prices are stoking new concerns about a stagflationary environment of high prices and waning economic growth. Natural gas prices in Europe and the US are through the roof, and WTI futures are over $70 per barrel.

Chevron Corp.’s CEO Mike Wirth spoke with Bloomberg on Wednesday and warned about elevated prices due to tightening supply. He said oil and gas companies are holding back on drilling new projects.

“There are things that are interfering with market signals right now that we haven’t seen before. Eventually, things work out, but eventually can be a long time,” Wirth said.

He said although commodity prices are moving higher, “signaling, we could invest more,” equity prices are sending mixed signals.

“There are two signals I’m looking for, and I’m only seeing one of them right now,” he said. “We could afford to invest more. The equity market is not sending a signal that says they think we ought to be doing that.”

Wirth added that shareholders would rather see cash returned to them than invested in new or existing drilling projects. Investors are cautious about plowing billions of dollars into low-return projects. They are also concerned about climate change initiatives targeting energy companies to reduce carbon emissions that would hurt future returns.

“You’ve got some real new dynamics, whether it’s government policy, efforts to constrain capital into the industry, to make it harder for the industry to access capital markets,” Wirth said. “That is the short term could create some risk for the global economy.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Not enough fossil fuels left to trigger another mass extinction

September 12, 2021

Not enough fossil fuels left to trigger another mass extinction

Preface. Since both conventional and unconventional oil peaked in 2018, we clearly won’t be burning fossils at exponentially increasing rates until 2400 as the IPCC expected. Quite the opposite, currently the decline rate of oil is 8% a year, which can be reduced to 4% by enhanced oil recovery techniques. The other 4% could be remedied by finding more oil, but discoveries have been at their lowest point for decades the past 7 years, and with oil prices so low, exploration and new projects are on hold.

Many books, starting with Ward’s “Under a Green Sky” warned that we would bring on another major extinction event burning fossil fuels. News reports continue to assume that this will be the eventual outcome as well. So you may not be aware of what it took to bring on the mother of all extinctions: The Permian. Although it’s commonly said that we are emitting far more CO2 faster than ever in history, this isn’t true.

Amazingly, researchers don’t blame the 300,000 to 1 million years of volcanic traps. Rather, it appears there were two pulses of lava from deep beneath the earth that rose to the surface, burning through underground deposits of coal, oil, and natural gas. That released an enormous amount of CO2 into the atmosphere; 100,000 billion tonnes (= 1 × 10¹⁴ tonnes). That is an almost incomprehensible amount of carbon injected into the atmosphere in a short (geologically speaking) period of time. This is more than 40 times the amount of all carbon available in modern fossil fuel reserves including carbon already burned since the industrial revolution.”

Researchers also don’t find methane hydrates a suspect, because it was “highly unlikely based on our data” according to Dr. Marcus Gutjahr from GEOMAR, co-author of the study (SD 2020).

Related articles:

Clarkson, M. O., et al. 2015. Ocean acidification and the Permo-Triassic mass extinction. Science 348:229.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5 °C world

September 10, 2021

Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5 °C world

Abstract

Parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement pledged to limit global warming to well below 2 °C and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C relative to pre-industrial times¹. However, fossil fuels continue to dominate the global energy system and a sharp decline in their use must be realized to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 °C (refs. ^2,3,4,5,6,7). Here we use a global energy systems model⁸ to assess the amount of fossil fuels that would need to be left in the ground, regionally and globally, to allow for a 50 per cent probability of limiting warming to 1.5 °C. By 2050, we find that nearly 60 per cent of oil and fossil methane gas, and 90 per cent of coal must remain unextracted to keep within a 1.5 °C carbon budget. This is a large increase in the unextractable estimates for a 2 °C carbon budget⁹, particularly for oil, for which an additional 25 per cent of reserves must remain unextracted. Furthermore, we estimate that oil and gas production must decline globally by 3 per cent each year until 2050. This implies that most regions must reach peak production now or during the next decade, rendering many operational and planned fossil fuel projects unviable. We probably present an underestimate of the production changes required, because a greater than 50 per cent probability of limiting warming to 1.5 °C requires more carbon to stay in the ground and because of uncertainties around the timely deployment of negative emission technologies at scale.

Main

In 2015, McGlade and Ekins⁹ set out the limits to fossil fuel extraction under stringent climate targets. They estimated that one-third of oil reserves, almost half of fossil methane gas reserves and over 80% of current coal reserves should remain in the ground in 2050 to limit warming to 2 °C….

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Standing Rock is Everywhere: The Indigenous Heart of the Climate Change Fight

September 10, 2021

Standing Rock is Everywhere: The Indigenous Heart of the Climate Change Fight

This is a story of victory for the earth and of the end of the Keystone XL pipeline. It also involves the Dakota Access pipeline and the Standing Rock Lakota reservation, indeed the entire world, all of which is threatened by our desperate last burst of fossil fuel exploitation. It is a story of what the dogged persistence and creativity of indigenous people and their allies can do against the kind of power we’ve been told is impossible to resist. But it’s a story without a guaranteed ending. The ending depends on us.

In 2004, small indigenous nations living near the Alberta Tar Sands project, the largest unconventional oil extraction effort in the world, began reaching out for help. Not only was the project interfering with their water, fishing, and hunting infrastructure, but rare and unusual cancers were appearing. They contacted policy experts at the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in Washington, D.C., who met with them in 2005 and saw photographic documentation of the devastation. These experts began to gather data and to raise awareness in the United States, on whose special refineries the project relied. Experts focused on the unique risks posed by tar sands at every stage of production, including extraction, transportation, and refinement. It wasn’t enough, but without the testimony and photographs supplied by indigenous people, experts would not have noticed for some time.

In 2008, approximately two dozen people from indigenous nations and environmental activist groups met to develop an overall strategy. The groups decided that the most promising activist target was the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, proposed by the giant TransCanada (now TC Energy) corporation to move the tar sands to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. Stopping the pipeline would rob the Tar Sands project of financial justification…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Nitrogen Bomb: fossil-fueled fertilizers keep billions of us alive

September 10, 2021

The Nitrogen Bomb: fossil-fueled fertilizers keep billions of us alive

Preface. There are two articles below that explain why natural gas fertilizers are keeping at least 4 billion of us alive today. If you’re interested in this topic, here are a few more to read:

Erisman JW, Sutton MA, Galloway J, et al (2008) How a century of ammonia synthesis changed the world. Nature Geoscience.
Smil V (2004) Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the transformation of world food production. MIT Press.
Stewart WM, Dibb DW, Johnston AE, et al (2005) The contribution of commercial fertilizer nutrients to food production. Agronomy Journal 97: 1-6

We really ought to be transitioning to organic agriculture and composting to restore soil to it’s former health, which in turn protects plants from diseases, higher production, water retention, and more. Since pesticides are also fossil fuel based (oil), and we’re running out of new ones just like we are antibiotics, there’s all the more reason to go organic before we’re forced to. It can take years for industrial farms to be restored to good soil ecosystem health.

***

Fisher D (2011) The Nitrogen Bomb. By learning to draw fertilizer from a clear blue sky, chemists have fed the multitudes. Discover magazine.

They’ve also unleashed a fury as threatening as atomic energy.

In 1898, Sir William Crookes called on science to save Europe from impending starvation. The world’s supply of wheat was produced mainly by the United States and Russia, Sir Crookes noted in his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. As those countries’ populations grew, their own demands would outpace any increase in production. What then would happen to Europe? “It is the chemist who must come to the rescue of the threatened communities,” Crookes cried. “It is through the laboratory that starvation may ultimately be turned into plenty.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Earth Is Going to Run Out of Oil Someday — but Not in Our Lifetimes

September 1, 2021

SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES

The Earth Is Going to Run Out of Oil Someday — but Not in Our Lifetimes

Created when fossilized organic compounds break down over time, crude oil, in particular, has become a necessary part of daily living for nearly every person on the planet. Fossil fuels are the most effective and destructive natural resources known to humans. The moment that humanity understood the potential of fossil fuels, we inadvertently signed our own death warrant.

It should come as a relief to some that oil and other fossil fuels are not inexhaustible resources. Inventors, scientists, and industries are scrambling to find new energy sources in a mad dash to simultaneously fix our hopelessly broken climate and maintain the status quo. Meanwhile, the rest of us are pondering the question, when will the world run out of oil?

SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES

Where does oil come from?

Millions of years ago, the plants and algae that died off and sank into the seafloor were treated to high enough pressure and temperatures that they coalesced into an immature, early form of petroleum. When the seas dried up and shifted about, the remaining hydrogen and carbon in the atmosphere were added to the mixture. According to National Geographic, those elements helped create what we know today as fossil fuels.

SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES

Will we ever run out of oil?

Yes, we will absolutely run out of oil. Despite the many major extinctions that have occurred throughout Earth’s long history, not every fossilized life form has been transformed into petroleum, coal, or natural gas. All of those fossil fuels are nonrenewable and irreplaceable, so when they’re gone or burnt off, we have nothing to replace them. So, unless we find a petroleum alternative at some point, we’re going to be out of luck in many ways.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

America’s Energy Strategy is Bonkers

August 30, 2021

America’s Energy Strategy is Bonkers

“Higher gasoline costs, if left unchecked, risk harming the ongoing global recovery. The price of crude oil has been higher than it was at the end of 2019, before the onset of the pandemic. While OPEC+ recently agreed to production increases, these increases will not fully offset previous production cuts that OPEC+ imposed during the pandemic until well into 2022. At a critical moment in the global recovery, this is simply not enough. President Biden has made clear that he wants Americans to have access to affordable and reliable energy, including at the pump.” – Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor (emphasis added)

Almost a decade ago, the official mascots of the London 2012 Summer Olympics were revealed. It didn’t go very well. Meet Wenlock and Mandeville:

At the time, I was perusing a magazine article collecting various reactions to the mascots – I think it was in Time but I can’t be sure – and one commentator delivered a line that will stick with me forever.

“This can only be the work of a committee. It has cc written all over it.”

I am reminded of Wenlock and Mandeville as I observe America’s rambling approach to energy policy over the past several years. When you ponder the logical consequences of where we are headed, it is hard not to conclude that this too must be the work of a committee, and a disjointed one at that. More on the members of that committee a little later.

Let’s start with the opening quote for this piece, which I took from an official White House statement, because it is quite the stunner. The President and his allies are limiting domestically produced oil and gas at every opportunity, which should come as no surprise – they ran for office on exactly this policy, after all…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How the Economy Has to Radically Transform to End Fossil Fuels in 20 Years

August 19, 2021

How the Economy Has to Radically Transform to End Fossil Fuels in 20 Years

Coming disruptions will eventually lay waste to conventional jobs in incumbent fossil fuel, combustion engine, and livestock farming industries.

IMAGE: MARCEL KUSCH/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES

To avoid the worst of climate change’s disastrous effects, humanity needs to slash carbon emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere at a pace and scale often said to be eye-wateringly difficult, expensive, and even unlikely given the continued failure of political will. That’s the implication of the IPCC’s report, published this week, which concludes that a 1.5 degrees Celsius rise in global average temperatures is now inevitable in 20 years.

The IPCC’s “best-case” scenario concludes that if we act fast, we might be able to gradually reduce temperatures back down to 1.4C by 2100. Yet this would keep us in the 1.5C climate danger zone for decades, which could risk triggering tipping points that could lead to irreversible and even more dangerous shifts in the climate system. Against this background, the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill has offered a watered down set of policies that simply won’t contribute to the scale of change required.

But a new report by technology forecasting think-tank RethinkX finds that the scope for change could be far larger and faster than either the IPCC or powerful governments like the United States realise: because the most powerful fossil fuel-based industries in the world—oil, gas, and coal; livestock farming; and combustion engines—are going to become obsolete purely due to extant economic factors well within the next 20 years. According to RethinkX, they are being increasingly disrupted by a cluster of clean technologies in the energy, transport and food sectors, which are rapidly becoming cheaper, more efficient, and as a result, more ubiquitous.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pulling Back The Curtain On The Energy Transition Tale

August 18, 2021

Pulling Back The Curtain On The Energy Transition Tale

OK, I am going to try to keep this quite short and to the point. Everyone familiar with me knows that I have been rather outspoken against what are commonly called “technofixes” for a considerably long time. Of course, this has always been for very good reasons, being that technology is what has caused the predicament of ecological overshoot in the first place. However, given the hype, marketing, advertising, and PR work done by the industries involved, many people are unaware that these technologies do not reduce fossil fuel use, they actually INCREASE their use by requiring (among other things) a considerably larger electrical grid, storage of energy for when intermittent devices are not generating, and large losses due to the realities of electrical transmission. Because the overwhelming message presented to society over the years that technology is “great” and does so much for us, the inculcated message is that technology can do no harm. Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth. While technology has definitely accomplished very many awesome feats, these have all come at great cost to all the nature surrounding us which we ourselves are a part of; and we cannot live without this nature because we depend on it for the ecosystem services it provides, giving us habitat. Technology use is actually what supports civilization and is the cause of ecological overshoot.

Finally, this paper by William Rees and Megan Siebert (based upon this particular study) has been distributed showing once and for all that the technofixes that are constantly hyped about are nothing but an illusion, quote:

“We have exposed fatal weaknesses in the technologies widely advanced as solutions to the climate crisis. The notion of clean energy is an illusion that ignores innumerable biophysical realities and costs that cannot be afforded by any reasonable measure…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: fossil fuels

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts