Back in 1991, Shell Oil released a public documentary video which raised serious concerns about anthropogenic global warming. This hasn’t prevented The Guardian from trying to claim it is all part of the oil industry coverup.
‘Shell knew’: oil giant’s 1991 film warned of climate change danger
Public information film unseen for years shows Shell had clear grasp of global warming 26 years ago but has not acted accordingly since, say critics.
The oil giant Shell issued a stark warning of the catastrophic risks of climate change more than a quarter of century ago in a prescient 1991 film that has been rediscovered.
However, since then the company has invested heavily in highly polluting oil reserves and helped lobby against climate action, leading to accusations that Shell knew the grave risks of global warming but did not act accordingly.
…
“They knew. Shell told the public the truth about climate change in 1991 and they clearly never got round to telling their own board of directors,” said Tom Burke at the green thinktank E3G, who was a member of Shell’s external review committee from 2012-14 and has also advised BP and the mining giant Rio Tinto. “Shell’s behaviour now is risky for the climate but it is also risky for their shareholders. It is very difficult to explain why they are continuing to explore and develop high-cost reserves.”
…
The video;
Shell also tried to contribute to the education of future climate researchers, by meeting representatives of the high profile British Climatic Research Unit;
Climategate email 0962818260.txt
To: ***@uea.ac.uk
Subject: Shell
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 13:31:00 +0100
Reply-to: ***@uea.ac.uk
Cc: ***@uea.ac.uk, ***@uea.ac.uk
Mike [Hulme]
Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday. Only a minor part of the
agenda, but I expect they will accept an invitation to act as a strategic
partner and will contribute to a studentship fund though under certain
conditions. I now have to wait for the top-level soundings at their end
after the meeting to result in a response. We, however, have to discuss
asap what a strategic partnership means, what a studentship fund is, etc,
etc. By email? In person?
I hear that Shell’s name came up at the TC meeting. I’m ccing this to Tim
who I think was involved in that discussion so all concerned know not to
make an independent approach at this stage without consulting me!
I’m talking to Shell International’s climate change team but this approach
will do equally for the new foundation as it’s only one step or so off
Shell’s equivalent of a board level. I do know a little about the Fdn and
what kind of projects they are looking for. It could be relevant for the
new building, incidentally, though opinions are mixed as to whether it’s
within the remit.
Regards
Mick ††
______________________________________________
Mick Kelly Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
Tel: *** Fax: ***
Email: ***@uea.ac.uk
Web: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/tiempo/
______________________________________________
Original source available from Wikileaks
What went wrong?
As the Guardian points out, Shell went on to fund Tar Sands in Canada and other carbon intensive industries, though as recently as May 2016, the Guardian were celebrating Shell’s ongoing commitment to renewables.
Shell’s firm interest in renewables suggests they would really like to find a renewable future for the world’s energy needs.
But that isn’t going to happen with current technology.
Leading greens such as James Hansen, David Attenborough and Bill Gates are aware of and have have publicly commented on the shortcomings of renewables.
The inescapable conclusion is current generation renewables are not fit for purpose. Only the engineering challenged think otherwise.
For now, we need oil – a commodity which Shell is providing.
One thing for sure – the attempt by Greens to paint the oil industry as the bad guys, covering up their historical concerns about climate issues, has descended into utter farce. I suggest releasing a public documentary about climate concerns is above and beyond, in terms of attempting to disseminate information to the public. The sooner The Guardian and other greens stop embarrassing themselves with their nonsense conspiracy theories, the better.
Green projection?
The Guardian, once a quality broadsheet newspaper with a leftwing bias, has become nothing but pathetic FAKE NEWS campaign platform.
It think the turning point was when Alan Rusbridger was removed as editor-in-chief .
The decline started long before that. Rusbridger went along with the green-crazies for years.
Exactly!
Also hilarious is the timeframe for the catastrophic impacts of climate change and expected calamity.
Where is all the chaos? It should almost be here. They were predicting increases of between 2 to 4 degrees warmer in the 20’s.
Shell’s only crime was to not celebrate the wonderful benefits of a warming world . The Guardian is going broke . Who knew ?
It has been hilarious, logging on to the Guardian website and seeing the begging bowl out. they are pleading for people to subscribe to the newspaper but do not even have the balls to admit it is a subscription. Apparently you are spending £5 per month to be a “supporter” and help to secure the Guardians future. Just another example of Gerald Celente being correct about the demise of the 4th Estate.
Lots of folks seem to have conflicted attitudes to fossil fuels. Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau Jr. was able to approve pipelines at the same time he was demanding a carbon tax.
Shell’s position seems to be analogous to a whisky company advising us to “Drink Responsibly”.
I really don’t see a problem here. Actually I’m a bit worried about venue shopping and activist judges.
Socialism needs money and will grab it where it can. “Evil” is just socialist code for “higher tax rate” for a product.
Right. And “evil” is socialist code for “we want what they’ve got”, and, “we should be in control, not them”.
Isn’t the carbon tax the price for moving the oil out of Alberta and thru Canada via pipelines?
Let’s make a deal and environmental groups got what they wanted, a carbon tax.
Canadian federal tax policy has encouraged the development of and or investments in renewable energy. Includes the Harper government as well.
Shell Canada
Partnerships with NGOs. This is not new.
Read at:
http://www.shell.ca/en_ca/sustainability/environment/partnerships.html
Don’t look for any sense out of Justin. Big deficit spend to get the economy going, then tax increases take the money back out of the economy again. Legalize marijuana then a bunch of teeth gnashing about the effect on kids brains and no road side impairment criteria or testing capability. He is an idiot! Plain and simple! A little boy trying on his dad’s big pants and strutting around without a clue how stupid he looks.
The Shell webpage above also includes information on Shell’s participation in a “Student Internship” program in Canada.
Re: The Climategate e-mail.
ecoweek, Canada, July 22, 2002
‘Shell, NCC launch conservation internship program’
Read at:
http://www.ecoweek.ca/issues/ISarticle.asp?aid=1000169576
You are absolutely correct. People seem to forget that federal judges are appointed for life. Obama appointed many in his eight years. Unlike executive orders and existing congressional law, these appointments can never be “reversed.” And waaaaaaaaaay too many of them are activists.
The thing about delusional paranoia is that with sufficient cleverness it is possible to rationalize almost anything as proof/evidence of one’s delusion. It’s in the ‘snowstorms are caused by global warming’ department.
James Lovelock in his 1978 book ‘Gaia a new look at life on earth’:
“By great fortune, so far as I was concerned, the nadir of the space programme coincided with an invitation from Shell Research Limited for me to consider the possible global consequences of air pollution from such causes as the ever increasing rate of combustion of fossil fuels. This was in 1966, three years before the formation of Friends of the Earth and similar pressure groups brought pollution problems to the forefront of the public mind.
Like artists, independent scientists need sponsors but this rarely involves a possessive relationship. Freedom of thought is the rule. This should hardly need saying, but nowadays many otherwise intelligent individuals are conditioned to believe that all research work supported by a multinational corporation must be suspect by origin.”
So, Shell knew already in the 1960s. And cooperated with climate scientists. For decades.
As to why, simplest explanation is that this it is part of their business strategy: you try to assess all factors that may affect your business. And in the back of their mind Shell probably realizes that they will continue to sell oil and gas for the foreseeable future: the world cannot do without.
The world can do very well without fossil fuels.
Civilization, not so much…
Plants seem to enjoy our use of fossil fuels.
This silly “Exxon knew” thing has taken on a life of its own. The devolution of the climate movement into attacks against Exxon, Shell, and “deniers” indicates that they have failed and are now desperate to find something to blame it on.
“This silly “Exxon knew” thing has taken on a life of its own.”
Yeah. What did they know? They *knew* nothing. They had speculations that increased CO2 might cause changes in the climate. But no human-caused changes in the climate have ever been proven or detected, so there is nothing to know.
Shell and others speculated that CO2 might cause the climate to change, but that hasn’t happened, so, so far, they are wrong and claiming they know something that doesn’t exist is ridiculous.
Shell knew nothing. Speculation does not equate with “knew”. And it’s still speculation, all these years later, with no evidence of what is claimed they “knew”.
““This silly “Exxon knew” thing has taken on a life of its own.””
Yeah, it’s just yet another Leftist slogan asserted ad infinitum and indulged by the media until it becomes “truth” due to repetition and a lack of challenge.
Spot on.
piper it is funny how these fake news/moonlanding/oil conspiracy people at Garudina have chutzpah to call their opponents as conspiracists. Shell knew – come on, GISS hardly knew in 2000 what was the ∆T/yr·¹ between 1900 and 2000. Had they not fixed the records more than their error bar then, we had much less alarm going on.
Green is just new communism. It has all the central features, and it will collapse again, and the people will be asking who could have guessed. Well, many did, suckers just don’t get it.
This is just the latest brain snap by The Guardian. What more needs to be said.
Oh well, yes, the Australian Broadcsting Corporation could very well make a story out of this for the Sunday evening news.
From an MBA corporate standpoint you assess risks to your industry and products, and you support education in key fields to study future trends impacting your markets. Trends in climate relate to fossil fuel consumption projections, and would be the sole interest for an oil company to study. They are studying market impacts. For them, climate science is an MBA tool. They don’t care what the climate is doing, just long range forecasting of its market demand effects.
Think of it like this. You are in Florida and want to build a marina. You need to look at hurricanes and tide surges from them to estimate the amount of sea wall you need, and to estimate pier strength. You don’t care about how hurricanes form or what the trend of their occurrence is. You are not researching climate. You are estimating its impact on your business under various scenarios.
MBA nerds running around making market forecasts are not oil company climate scientists making climate forecasts. There are no oil company climate scientists.
In ten years we will say: the Guardian new!
Or perhaps, what was the Guardian?
In ten years, we may all be considered criminally insane for supporting theories that destroy the planet, and none of us might dare speak out.
In about 10 years their trust fund will be all gone with the rate they lose money every year.
In ten years we may be saying the Guardian. Who?
Oh surely we’ll remember the Gruniad, as the cornucopia of typographical error…
One only has to look at the Guardian’s readership figures and financial state to see how much credibility it has as a news source nowadays.
Just a few days ago, one of trolls was trying to claim that the Guardian was one of the most accurate news sources available.
it is on the same down-slide as Labour
According to ABC figures for June 2016, not including the weekend and free press, there are about 6 million daily papers sold in the UK, with the Guardian selling about 170,000 copies.
Which means more than 97% of newspaper buyers don’t read the Guardian. Do we have a consensus here?
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/abc-figures-national-press-sees-june-brexit-vote-boost-in-print-and-online/
The Guardian newspaper, so influential that the only UK newspaper with lower circulation is the other left wing environmentalist broadsheet the Independent:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/UK_daily_newspaper_circulation_1950_present.svg
Hide the decline eh? And the Daily Mail looks to be holding up quite well, considering.
Which paper has the pin-ups on page 3?
The one that’s making money?
In this 2007 clip, Shell supports mandatory Gov regulations on CO2 emissions.
View From the Top: Shell Oil President John Hofmeister
June 27th, 2007
John Hofmeister, Shell Oil president, sees an important role for his company in supplying the world’s energy in the future. Petroleum (oil and gas) will remain, at least for the near to medium future, the most important energy resource. Shell is also investing, as are many other energy companies, in renewable energy (wind, solar, biofuels) as well as so-called clean coal. Hear John Hofmeister’s views on Shell’s future directions and current energy policies.
http://connectedsocialmedia.com/3450/view-from-the-top-shell-oil-president-john-hofmeister/
They likely had a good idea that whoever won the 2008 election was NOT going to be on their side, so they played a hunch.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
“Shell’s firm interest in renewables suggests they would really like to find a renewable future for the world’s energy needs.
But that isn’t going to happen with current technology.
Leading greens such as James Hansen, David Attenborough and Bill Gates are aware of and have have publicly commented on the shortcomings of renewables.
The inescapable conclusion is current generation renewables are not fit for purpose. Only the engineering challenged think otherwise.
For now, we need oil – a commodity which Shell is providing.”
More epic Guardian conspiracy theories. It’s no wonder they’re bleeding cash and could go under. Fake news really doesn’t pay the bills.
https://climatism.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/heavy-losses-at-the-guardian/
You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Somewhat OT, but has anyone seen this?
Clearly you are only defending Shell becasue you are int he pay of Big Oil.
On a lighter note:
Back in the 1960s, Shell advertised that their gasoline contained Methyl Benzene AND Toluene.
Methyl Benzene has the methyl group on the 1-position.
While Toluene has the methyl group on the 4-position.
You see if the chemistry doesn’t rotate nor will the wheels.
There is only one methyl group old mate.
So it doesn’t matter whether it’s in the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 position.
Methyl benzene IS Toluene.
I thought the “rotate” comment made it clear I was taking the mick.
American English doesn’t have the expression “to take the mick”. Nor have I heard it in Canada, although can’t rule out its use there, as among recent British immigrants. Or Australian, New Zealander, South African, etc.
What about ‘to rake the richard’?
Extracting urine is a good substitute for taking the pi$$…
Are you certain that wasn’t ethylbenzene and toluene?
Shell and Exxon need to fight back against these extortion actions.
Climate “Science” on Trial; The Criminal Case Against the Alarmists
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/climate-science-on-trial-the-criminal-case-against-the-alarmists/
“Shell went on to fund Tar Sands in Canada “, Fake news, Canada does not have a Tar Sands Industry, that is an invention of the environmental groups. Tar is waste product not a feed stock.
The Athabasca Tar Sands have been called the Athabasca Tar Sands for a long time, basically since they were discovered as tarry accumulations on surface.
Not unlike the “La Brea Tar Pits” that started the California oil industry.
Smart Rock,
This is a site that deals with factual information and technology not fake names, it IS NOT TAR, it is oil sands. The precise definition of Tar is the result of processing the material with heat. Just because someone, (mostly ignorant environmentalists) call it tar does not make the oil in the sand tar. Tar is the product of destructive distillation period. There would be little usable product if the material were actually TAR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar
” Tar is a black mixture of hydrocarbons and free carbon[1] obtained from a wide variety of organic materials through destructive distillation.[2][3][4] Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat.[4] Production and trade in pine-derived tar was a major contributor in the economies of Northern Europe[5] and Colonial America. Its main use was in preserving wooden vessels against rot. The largest user was the Royal Navy. Demand for tar declined with the advent of iron and steel ships.
Tar-like products can also be produced from other forms of organic matter, such as peat. Mineral products resembling tar can be produced from fossil hydrocarbons, such as petroleum. Coal tar is produced from coal as a byproduct of coke production.”
The next sentence in the Wikipedia entry is, “Bitumen is a term used for natural deposits of oil “tar”, such as at the La Brea Tar Pits.”
For practical purposes I prefer the word “bitumen” is reference to oil/tar sands but tar is also used commonly.
Shell put out a movie that shows they “knew” CAGW was real.
ALGORE said 30 years ago AGGW was real
They have both been proven wrong.
So??
The Guardian deals mostly in green propaganda while objective, fair analysis has long-since departed their environmental pages. Below the line comment has become a green echo-chamber with almost all sceptical commentators moderated into oblivion, hence they’re now a lost cause with circulation collapsing and losses mounting. Ah well, that’s too bad.
Recall the video last week of the liberal woman who was removed from the jet for bothering a Trump supporter? Funny how she was complaining about global warming WHILE SHE WAS SITTING ON A JET PLANE, typical hypocritical liberal.
According to news reports DiCaprio flew in an “artist” to do his eyebrows for the Oscars.
Hey, more than one top elite star used the eyebrow service for the Oscars.
It was only 7500 miles from Australia to LA, I think.
I wonder what she did to his eyebrows.
After thinking about the possibilities I decided that I really don’t want to know.
Sunspot number update: SSN for February is virtually unchanged at 15.7 (Jan. @ 15.5) in the classic Wolf numbers, while the new Svalgaard number is 26.1 (Jan @ 25.8)
Composite graph can be found here
http://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/solar-cycle-sunspot-number.gif
what most of you do not realize
the lower magnetic activity, the more of the most energetic particles are released, the more ozone, peroxides, and n-oxides are produced TOA
the less UV reaches the oceans
the cooler it will get…
This is buying off your critics. All companies should know by now that their blackmailers will just keep raising the costs. Better to have a painful bloody public fight as Chevron is proving. That is in the best long term interest of your shareholders.
Weak CEO’s think the lion will eat the less friendly one. In the end a hungry lion eats you just the same.
troe,
You are correct. The thing made me wish I hadn’t just eaten supper.
Oak Ridge NL authored the Billion Ton Study stating that by 2030 there would be 1 billion tons of biomass available for producing alternative fuels (Cellulosic Ethanol and corn ethanol mostly). Yield of ethanol from biomass is about 50 gal per ton (just over a barrel/ton). This would yield 2.7 million bbl/day (1 billion gal/yr) of ethanol which currently has no home. The 16 Billion gal/yr of ethanol already produced from corn has saturated the market with E10 (the blend wall) so there is no home for double that production of ethanol.
Not stated in the Billion Ton study is the cost of cellulosic ethanol (CE) plants. Multiple projects were started in the 2012 to 2015 time frame, but essentially no CE plants have produced fuel. Robert Rapier wrote a great summary of this issue in 2016 (http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2016/02/13/cellulosic-ethanol-falls-a-few-billion-gallons-short/). Basically, 5 plants with combined capacity of 90 million gal/year actually produced 2.2 million gal/year (143.5 bbl/day) for a total plant construction cost of ~$1B ($6.97 Million/barrel). Many of the CE plants and companies are now either closed or bankrupt. Abengoa is gone (along with Range Fuels, Cello Energy, Kior, and others). The other companies have closed or curtailed their CE efforts. Other alternative energy companies are nearly broke or have switched from fuel production to specialty chemical production as the market value of chemicals is much higher than fuel.
So, for a great many reason, we cannot grow our way out of either an energy issue or a GHG issue. There simply isn’t enough yield per acre of energy to justify the effort, and the environmental and social damage for energy crops is too great to pursue this route for future fuels.
The Guardian knows and it keeps using oil consuming automobiles and airplanes.
The Guardian continues the sin … and may they go straight to …
“Its narrator speaks of a ‘new sense of urgency’ driven by the ‘realization that our energy-consuming way of life MAY be causing climatic changes, with adverse consequences for us all’ — like famine, flooding, waves of climate refugees and extreme weather.”
“’We believe that climate change is real and we believe that action will be needed,’ Ben van Beurden, Shell’s CEO, told reporters on Feb. 2 during an annual earnings presentation.” The implication of this statement is that even in 2017 there is disagreement as to whether or not climate is changing. It is in no way an explicit endorsement of the hypothesis that humans are totally or even partially responsible for the alleged change. Most telling is a statement near the end of the video, “Whether or not the threat of global warming proves as great as the scientists predict, is it too much to hope that it might act as the stimulus…” In other words, it is not Shell’s scientists who are claiming climate change. Rather, Shell is relying on the work of climatologists and are accepting what they are claiming.
If, in 1991 and even in 2017, Shell has not developed any kind of in-house expertise in climatology, how reasonable is it to believe that Exxon had done so in the 1970s?
It looks to me like this video was developed to convince stockholders that investing in alternative energy sources was a good way to hedge their bets. The Guardian and Mashable have misrepresented the story behind the video.
How would a responsible Exxon behave?
1) Take a cue from BO and raise the price of fuel so high that only the rich could afford it.
2) Sell its now useless mineral rights at bargain basement prices to George Soros, designated keeper of the devil’s black gold.
3) Save a little money to build high walls… http://www.voanews.com/a/mexico-pemex-says-protests-cauce-critical-border-city-fuel-shortage/3671454.html
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/05/americas/mexico-protests-gas-price-hikes/index.html
…around Washington, London, etc. –AGF
Perhaps I should leave a comment here.
I am Dutch, originally, and I thought I could approach the top scientists there of Shell [in Dutch} when I started my own investigations, ca. 7 years ago,
I do remember some correspondence after I had asked them if they could explain to me how global warming works, exactly.My final evaluation on that correspondence: they are completely clueless, just like most of those ‘believing’ in AGW.
AGW is a belief system based on a false premise:’ what we do must be bad….’
Better to have ‘belief’ in something for the right reasons….
To use the same argument the global warming people do, science has marched forward and today the evidence is far LESS than in 1991. Shell is simply following the science.
A potentially larger threat to humanity than failing to recognize that CO2 has no significant effect on climate is failing to realize what actually does. Beware the still-rising water vapor. Its increasing influence is addressed at http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
I am quite happy to take the risk in return for the dividend cheques they send me. I was more concerned when they got involved with dumb carbon capture stuff but thankfully as soon as the taxpayers’ cash stopped Shell the CCS project.
Re Dr. Bob: “So, for a great many reason, we cannot grow our way out of either an energy issue or a GHG issue. There simply isn’t enough yield per acre of energy to justify the effort, and the environmental and social damage for energy crops is too great to pursue this route for future fuels.”
Here is another thought about this option. I never hear anyone discuss this: How would we power the conversion plants that convert these fuels to something that can be used for generating electricity? Wouldn’t you have to use lots of “fossil fuels” to power those plants? Talk about inefficiency!
I keep wondering if this whole AGW myth wasn’t created to prop up the price of fossil fuels because it was becoming known that they can be found in many more places on the planet than we’ve always assumed. Yes, I’m talking about the abiotic oil concept. When I first heard of it, I wondered what would happen if oil became almost as widely available as water. Would it be like they say about diamonds: producers have cultivated the image of their being rare. Anyone else remember the 1970s, when they told people we were running out of oil and there were long lines at gas stations? Gee, I wonder whatever happened to those shortages? /sarc
You missed it: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/18/oil-where-did-it-come-from/
Anyone who can successfully bring the Underpants Gnomes into a serious discussion gets my thumbs up.
(Hope I haven’t offended anybody with the term ‘serious.’)
The video fails to really explore the AGW conjecture. The reality is that there is no real evidence that CO2 affects climate. Furthermore, there is no evidence that a radiant greenhouse effect caused by LWIR absorbing and radiating gases exists anywhere in the solar system. Wthout such evicence the AGW conjecture is only science fiction.
Browne (Shell), as well as providing equivocal advice pivotal on UK higher education, gave an NERC lecture in which he parroted the AGW nonsense. I stand to be corrected if my memory serves me badly on the NERC lecture.
Dan
I don’t have a problem with your theory that water vapor is increasing due to human activities [especially due to nuclear energy]
but I don’t think anyone has established a clear balance, by experiment,
namely
a) how much outgoing radiation from earth is trapped [due to more clouds and water vapor] 24h/day
b) how much incoming radiation from the sun is deflected due to more clouds/more water vapor
I wonder if anyone can…..12h/day
sorry
that last comment should read
b) how much incoming radiation from the sun is deflected due to more clouds/water vapor ….12h/day
I WONDER IF ANYONE CAN ???
Henryp – The water vapor (WV) trend is still up as reported by NASA/RSS as shown in Fig 3 of that analysis.
I did some back-of-envelope calculations and found for the planet:
All energy, including all fossil fuels and all cooling towers about 2E13 kg WV/yr
Irrigation about 250E13 kg WV/yr
The increased WV should result in increased low altitude clouds countering the increased ‘greenhouse’ effect from the added WV. Sensitivity of average global temperature to clouds is calculated at http://lowaltitudeclouds.blogspot.com
Dan,
I had a look at it but I cannot go along with it.
Not with the results I got.
For example, on the drop in minima over past odd 40 years or so I have a perfect curve.
For the drop in maxima it is y=0.039 ln(x) – 0.1112, where x= rate in K/annum and y = years in the past, from Jan. 2015. rsquare= 0.9964.
You see what my problem is? There is no chaos there. Especially for the drop in minima you would expect to see chaos if indeed there is some man made warming. But there is no chaos. Hence [my conclusion] there is no man made global warming.
The drop in maximum T, globally, can be ascribed to the drop in the solar polar magnetic field strengths.
you can draw a binomial from 1971 -2014 to represent the average polar field strengths?
[the ‘double’ sc around 1971 and 2014 indicate dead end stops]
Must be that as the magnetic field is falling, more of the most energetic particles are able to escape from the sun, forming more ozone, peroxides and N-oxides, TOA. More of these substances, as you can imagine, divert more of the normal UV back to space. Hence, less energy [UV] actually goes into the oceans.
Most data sets [except my own] have not even picked on the fact that global cooling has already started, or are being manipulated to show otherwise.
Henryp – I don’t seem to grasp your work. Are you only using 4 data points? I have been misled in the past by small sample size.
Shell was and is very shrewd. By publicly disclosing the possibility (not probability) that AGW could in some part be caused by hydro-carbon fuel combustion leading to CO2, they effectively limited their liability in the court of public opinion and that of the investment community. They full well know that (nuclear fission aside) only hydro-carbon chemical fuels have high enough energy flux densities (or specific energy) to operate today’s transportation and heavy machinery plus baseload electricity production. They dabble in “renewables” to obtain tax credits and other preferential State treatments and to appeal to the public and investors that they are “looking” at alternatives. However they are only looking at these alternatives because they know they can not and will not lead to material energy production which further supports they need for their petrochemical products. Note they are silent on atomic power and have been since the days Gulf Oil company divested its ownership of General Atomics when Gulf was acquired by Texaco and Phillips 66 abandoned its internal fusion science research and development group after Carl Icahn acquired them. The petrochemical industry greatly benefits from the fact that today’s “renewables” don’t work and can not work. When fossil fuel reserves tighten to the point of significantly higher production costs, they will be looking at nuclear alternatives again. nuclear fission now as a practical solution and fusion on the horizon to counter the anti-fission groupies.
Generally true
I dont understand your last sentence?
henryp ^ Last sentence reads: ” nuclear fission now as a practical solution and fusion on the horizon to counter the anti-fission groupies.” By that I mean the petrochemical companies will have to transform themselves into energy companies and embrace nuclear energy. There is no other alternative. Nuclear fission exists today. Be it uranium, plutonium or advanced fuel cycles consisting of uranium and thorium. Lots of new nuclear reactor technology will surface once R&D can be paid for. There will be many nuclear detractors claiming its unsafe, has weapons black market potential, and the waste issue is not sustainable. These companies can say yes but we also support future scientific experimentation, research and development of fusion energy which addresses the “downsides” of fission. That gives them a fair amount of time before they have to get serious mastering fusion which is still decades away from commercial viability. In other words they can use the promise of future fusion to diffuse complaints about fission today and say that fusion is very difficult and is years away. Thus they are somewhat acknowledging the “downsides” of fission and say they have a future plan to replace that but in the interim fission is the only solution. The analogy is what they are doing today with petrochemicals and renewables. The difference, arguably, is that fusion may be a realistic solution but based on the scientific knowledge today and the state of the art in experiments, fusion is an illusion in many people’s mind. I hope this clears up the question.
nuclear fusion
you need to build a magnetic field as big as that of the sun and I do not see that happening yet.
btw
the current lower solar polar magnetic field strength is what causes a change in climate, mostly, as it allows more of the most energetic particles to leave the sun forming more ozone, peroxides and N-oxides, TOA
nuclear fission
what are we going to do with the waste?
If thorium has no radioactive waste, as claimed, why are we not using it already?
better to stick with fossil fuel as long as possible
[since I find that more CO2 is better]
Please note that I have built what has become “The world’s most comprehensive Fusion Energy website for fusion & plasma science, research, project management, academic journal articles, videos, fusion politics, news, and advocacy.” The website contains several years worth of fusion news articles, academic journal articles and an extensive science section. Also note the right hand sidebar with “featured articles.” I bring this to people’s attention rather than respond to categorical dismissals. Also if one reads my comments carefully and reviews our website, they see that we must use our rich hydro-carbon fossil fuel sources now followed by fission which works. As I have stressed, fusion is decades away. To do nothing and go decade after decade without developing new energy solutions to take over from petrochemicals is very irresponsible to say the least. Our fusion website is at: http://fusion4freedom.com
Part 2 of 2. Thorium has roughly the same actinide decay chain products as uranium. And, in fact, thorium has a bigger problem with waste than uranium in that it produces a very strong gamma ray producing component. Thorium is a “fertile element,” not a fissile element which means that thorium must be used in combination with uranium in a fuel cycle. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain