By Joe Carroll

May 27 (Bloomberg) — Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest refiner, said the transition away from oil-derived fuels is probably 100 years away.

Petroleum-based fuels including gasoline and diesel, as well as hydrocarbons such as coal and natural gas, will remain the dominant sources of energy for factories, offices, homes and cars for decades because there are no viable alternatives, Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson told reporters today after Exxon Mobil’s annual shareholders meeting in Dallas.

In the U.S., which burns a quarter of global oil supplies, consumers probably face higher fuel prices if lawmakers impose greenhouse-gas rules that inflate fuel-production costs, Tillerson said. A plan introduced by Democrats this month would allocate a limited number of emission credits to refiners and electricity producers, with the aim of curbing greenhouse gases.

“The oil-gas-refining side of the business received a very, very small amount of the allocations, which means that sector will bear more of the costs more immediately,” Tillerson said. “If we’re going to place a price on carbon, let’s do that in the most efficient way. A carbon tax is more efficient than a tax that’s applied by way of a cap-and-trade mechanism.”

Tillerson, 57, said lawmakers are hurrying to restrict greenhouse gases when many scientific questions surrounding the global warming issue remain unresolved.

“The point of conflict that I find more often than not are the projections that some make regarding how serious the problem may become and at what pace of acceleration it may occur,” Tillerson told investors at the shareholders meeting. “All of those models have deficiencies in the way they’re constructed and the assumptions that go into the models and the limitations of the data.”

Tillerson, a University of Texas-trained engineer, said climate change is a “serious risk-management issue” for Exxon Mobil. The company will continue to fund scientific research into climate science and the impact of greenhouse gases on the atmosphere, he said.

“We’re going to be very forthright in not accepting something that is not completely scientifically proven,” Tillerson said. “We’re not skeptics. We’re just approaching this the way we would approach any scientific challenge, and it’s a serious challenge.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Carroll in Chicago at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net

Ron de Haan (14:57:19) :

Today a windmill in the Netherlands lost a blade.
The blade landed on the A6 highway without hitting a single car.
That’s what I call luck.

http://www.nu.nl/algemeen/1970377/wiek-van-windmolen-valt-op-snelweg.html

Sorry, I only saw the tennis boobs video link further down the page. ;)

http://www.nu.nl/algemeen/1970377/wiek-van-windmolen-valt-op-snelweg.html

It looks like the exploding windmills and breaking blades make a continuing hazard that won’t be solved in the near future.

It shows that wind energy is unreliable, not only from it’s dependance on weather conditions but also from a technological point of view.
The lis of incidents is growing.

SHOCK HORROR! BBC manages to cover an Antarctic story without blaming or even mentioning Global warming !

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8066991.stm

New build proposal:
http://www.cumbria.gov.uk/elibrary/Content/Internet/538/755/2146/38832122637.pdf
The second key driver of nuclear generation is how many hours per year each
plant is operational (measured by the “availability factor”). Figure 3.6 shows
that this factor has increased significantly over the past 15 years. The increase
from 71.0 percent to 83.2 percent from 1990-2004 is equivalent to an increase of 17 percent in capacity.

The capacity factor of UK nuclear plant is shown in Figure 3.12. The period
1975-1990 showed capacity of just over 50 percent, which is low by
international standards and is not high enough for nuclear to generate
electricity competitively. The introduction of competition into the electricity
industry, and the retirement of some of the worst performing plant (the
Magnox GCRs), has led to this figure improving significantly (it averagesapproximately 75 percent since 1993).

I did not know the Weather Underground has wind speed measurements at 80m and 100m ??

Most weather stations (unless they are a lighthouse) measure wind speed at 5m or 10m height, or at a height not significantly different.

The hub height of modern new installation wind turbines is usually ~80m.

I hope you were not a nuclear engineer, Plutonium is so radioactive that with some tungsten carbide bricks or half spheres of beryllium stacked about ( to reflect the neutrons back it will go critical, and produce lethal radiation:

Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin found out the hard way:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_K._Daghlian,_Jr.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin

—

Nuclear Power Plants Set Reliability, Output Records in 2002, Industry Tells Wall Street

NEW YORK—The nuclear energy industry posted another year of record-high operating performance in 2002, underscoring the crucial role that nuclear power plants play in the nation’s diverse portfolio of energy sources, industry executives told Wall Street financial analysts today.

Although final performance figures are not yet available, preliminary estimates for 2002 show that the nation’s 103 nuclear power plants set an electricity production record for the fourth straight year, increasing their output 1-2 percent to about 778 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh). Nuclear power generation in 2001 was 769 billion kwh.

The plants’ average capacity factor—a measure of efficiency—reached a record high for the fifth straight year, climbing to about 91.5 percent in 2002.

“By any measure—reliability, productivity, safety, economics—the nuclear energy sector has achieved major gains in recent years,” said Don Hintz, president of Entergy Corp. and chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute’s (NEI) board of directors. “We’ve achieved these results by concentrating on safety, by continuing to share the best operating practices across the industry, and by further sharpening our management skills.”

Since 1990, the industry’s sustained excellence in operating performance has enabled the nation’s reactors to increase electricity production equivalent to what 25 new reactors would add to the electricity grid, NEI President and Chief Executive Officer Joe F. Colvin said.

“In just the last five years, the increase in output is equivalent to 13 new 1,000 megawatt power plants,” Colvin said.

With improved productivity and reliability leading to better economic performance, the average production cost (fuel costs plus operations and maintenance) in 2001 stood at a record low of 1.68 cents/kwh. The average production cost for 2002 likely will set a new record when those figures become available later this year, Colvin said.

–

Hmmmn. 91.5 percent capacity factor, eh?

yes, unplanned outages are just that: unplanned. We (the power industry) work very hard to keep them “unplanned” and “infrequent” – trying to base or justify a (false) wind power energy theory based on a single (large) power failure in 2003 shows just how scared wind advocates are of the truth.

2003 – 2009. Figure 5-1/2 years x 365 days x 24 hours just to FIND one large outage.

But NO wind power PRODUCTION can even be “planned” – Look at the Danish example where they only had 5-1/2 DAYS in an entire year when they WERE producing “almost nominal rated” power from their huge wind mill farm on the most beautifully productive wind area in the world: the flat sea coast off the North Sea!

And all of the money going into windmills is wasted – there is NO productive value in spending that money. No “gain” in reducing AGW gasses nor in “replacing” fossil fuels either – since there is no demonstrable link between temperatures and CO2.

Windelecs run only 20 – 25% of the time and you have no idea when they will stop. Indeed, they may stop five times in one day and the owner will say that ‘we generated for 50% of today’, …

There is no normal energy source in the world that can instantly take up 100gw of supply, so all the UK fossil and nuclear plants will have to be running all day anyway – just in case.
they do not stop everywhere simultaneously. The wind speed allows hours of warning.

Only the AGW true believers, and their duped politicians believe that wind-power or solar-power can replace fossil power. The engineers know better.

Until we have economic solutions for energy storage systems, intermittent power plants of any type will not replace fossil power. There are plenty of workable, practical storage solutions, but none are yet economic.

My point is a deliberate jab at the crowd who maintain that “nukes will save us all.” It is pure rubbish to employ nuclear power, as if it is always available (it is not). One of those going down unexpectedly, as happened here, puts a serious strain on the entire grid. Just ask Japan…where they had to restart many fossil fueled plants recently after their nukes suffered damage from an earthquake.

Colorado’s Giant Sequoias have already disappeared due to climate change – 35 million years ago.
http://www.nps.gov/flfo/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8063000/8063392.stm

Yosemite’s giant trees are disappearing because of climate change! Yes, the article is literally saying giant trees are magically disappearing. They provide no evidence for such a conclusion except to say that aged giant trees are scarcer, but do not offer any relative evidence. It seems in the world of manmade climate change alarmism if something isn’t melting or catching fire then it is magically disappearing without a trace.

No, you are wrong.

With fossil and nuclear, you only need about 5% or less on standby, because power stations are reliable and most downtime is PLANNED. And in the UK we have Dinorwig, a pumped storage system that is always on standby and can run 5% of demand for five hours. (Although it has to be said that Dinorwig is mainly there for demand increases, not supply decreases).

The problem is that with windelecs producing 30% of UK power, you can then lose 30% of the grid – and lose it two or three times in one day. Thus you will need a huge number of conventional stations on spinning standby.

And as for cost, you have to include all the costs of spinning standby. A prime component of electrical cost is not the fuel, but the capital, maintenance and manpower costs. These will have to be met whatever is happening. So you may use 80% less fuel on spinning standby – big deal. The cost of these backup systems is still HUGE.

Yes, electrical costs will have to treble, in my opinion. And take all the government subsidies into account, because you pay for these too.

.