Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The objective has been set, now up to the engineers to deliver.
Climate change: Pope urges action on clean energy
9 June 2018
Pope Francis has said climate change is a challenge of “epochal proportions” and that the world must convert to clean fuel.
“Civilisation requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilisation,” he said.
He was speaking to a group of oil company executives at the end of a two-day conference in the Vatican.
Modern society with its “massive movement of information, persons and things requires an immense supply of energy”, he told the gathering.
“But that energy should also be clean, by a reduction in the systematic use of fossil fuels,” he said.
“Our desire to ensure energy for all must not lead to the undesired effect of a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty.”
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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44424572
The obvious response is you can have cheap, reliable energy or non-polluting energy, but not both.
But perhaps this is an opportunity. The Catholic Church has an awful lot of money, and the world is full of wildly implausible energy claims which few serious venture capitalists would consider, like E-cat cold fusion generators.
Skeptics like myself might think alternative energy ideas like Andrea Rossi’s E-cat claims are nonsense, but who knows? If Pope Francis wants the impossible, he needs to consider the extremely improbable, because just maybe somewhere out in the wilderness of wild ideas is an idea with real potential which we have all overlooked.
Cheap Reliable Clean Energy?
That will be nuclear power then…
…Pope Francis Asks Oil Companies to Deliver Cheap Reliable Clean Energy…
Oil Companies ask Pope Francis to deliver a world without evil….. and the Second Coming would be nice….
“the Second Coming would be nice….”
That’s what the wife says.
Oh, you’re bad. I like you. We should both be removed by the moderators.
dodgy, be careful what you ask for. (pope francis isn’t known as PETER THE ROMAN for nothing, you know)…
“world is full of wildly implausible energy claims which few serious venture capitalists would consider, like E-cat cold fusion generators.
Skeptics like myself might think alternative energy ideas like Andrea Rossi’s E-cat claims are nonsense, but who knows?”
I think this is the only realistic chance we can handle, but that’s going to hurt oil companies too.
It is very correct for Pope Francis to gives its views on a number of issues in the disastrous state of the world. It would be ideal if he were able to correct his mistakes as a matter of migration for example. That would mean that he views are going to develop like any ordinary person.
The Pope is asking the wrong head office for a miracle. He should be talking to hs own CEO.
When two religions join…
Since the pope has a hotline to the most intelligent and knowledgeable being in the universe (so he says), why does he not ask god how it can be done.? Better still, for god to deliver us the plans for a fusion reactor that actually works.
What is the problem here? Why is god so unhelpful? Or does god not like us? Or does god not exist? Perhaps thenpope might like to explain god’s reticence to help us.
R
Yup – he is one alright!
Let’s suppose that “clean” energy includes the system of energy storage, transport, and utilization that life itself exhibits. Let’s take green plants as an example, converting huge amounts of CO2 to more complex sugars, cellulose, etc. In the process, plants consume around half just to live and reproduce and grow. Look up “plant respiration.” Nature itself has already settled the question of whether a carbon-based energy system is “clean.”
So the pope throws in his lot with the anti-capitalists? It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle etc..
Recently I’ve been reading Yuval Noah Hariri’s excellent book “Sapiens”. He explains in an incisive way the bases of human society and when and how they emerged. One of these was money. Initially there was just barter of goods then financial tokens like coins. The amount of wealth in society was however more or less fixed. One person getting richer – like a king – meant others getting poorer – such as taxed peasants.
Then in medieval Europe and the Netherlands the idea of credit arose. A loan could be advanced based on the expectation of future repayment with interest. Suddenly wealth could grow, not having to be tied to coins or presently existing goods. It could be tied to goods that were expected to multiply in the future. Economics stopped being a zero sum game. Hariri showed that the succession of dominant powers in Europe was explainable by something as straightforward as credit-worthiness. First the Netherlands shook of Catholic Spanish rule since the more punctilious credit-worthy Dutch could attract more international investment for building warships and hiring mercenary armies, than the financially indisciplined Spanish. Later France and Britain would fight for global domination. France looked the stronger pick at first, but Britain won the financial war of attracting capital investment for warmaking. France, compromised by fiascos such as the Mississippi bubble, lost credit-worthiness, became bankrupted by global conflict and slid toward revolution.
So capital ruled, even back then. The central and brilliantly simple point that Hariri made was that money or credit is the hope of a better future.
Empires such as China, India, Persia, the Muslim world, were until the 17-18th centuries wealthier than Europe. But they lacked the capital system to energise world exploration and development of colonies, that led ultimately to global economic development.
Credit, capital and capitalism are built of optimism. The belief in, and banking on, and thus (this is the bit that the anti-capitalists don’t get) the creation of a better world; which then makes it happen.
Reading Hariri’s insight made it suddenly obvious to me why anti-capitalists have to be dystopian. Prophecies of doom such as harmful global warming, ecological decline, sea level rise etc., erode the basis of money and credit/capital. So it’s obvious why they are irresistibly and continually drawn to one dystopic fiction after another. Global cooling; global dimming; acid rain; global warming; sea level rise; the Great Barrier Reef like mythical Prometheus dying again and again, always magical reviving only to die again. The sea turning to plastic.
They have to kill hope in the future. They need to uproot hope from the human heart. They passionately desire a return to feudal times, with their self-appointed elite inside castle walls raising wealth to sustain narcissistic extravagance by impoverishing bonded, land-bound, energy deprived peasants.
Let’s keep hope alive and keep on demolishing the fictions of eco-doom. Global warming is beneficial, as is CO2 fertilisation. All dismal stories of climate doom remain firmly in a computer modelled fantasy future.
A previous pope Jean-Paul the second grasped this much better than the socialist Francis. His book “Crossing the threshold of Hope” showed the way – hope is our future, keep eco-feudalism in the past.
“Who so beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound
Hope’s strength the more is”…
Those who follow technological history “credit” England’s patent law with her role in expanding the very early beginnings of the Industrial Revolution that ALLOWED men to begin freeing slaves, creating a wealthy middle class of educated people, (and elevating the poor to a higher class than their only other existence: dirt-poor manual farming worldwide.)
Patent law? Nah, it was the potato. Nutritionally inferior, land-hungry and labour-intensive grain could not support a rising and urbanising population on a smallish island nation with unfavourable weather for high yields.
And yet those many other European countries which adopted the potato earlier and to a greater extent than England didn’t start the Industrial Revolution.
Neither did the Amerindians who cultivated them first or the Spaniards who were next to adopt them. Obviously, a food source alone will not spur a particular development without a number of other preconditions, such as the availability of sea coal and metal ores, established trade patterns and the decline of rigid class structures such as feudalism. Even Marx and Engels recognized the importance of the potato and they had a front row seat to the Industrial Revolution in full swing. It’s the lack of an easy to raise rich food source to allow for a rapid population growth and a move away from agrarian work that would have made the shift to industry very hard.
The potato per se didn’t fuel the IR. It was the fried potato.
But the IR didn’t require potatoes. Improved agricultural practices with traditional crops, plus public health, would have enabled population growth even without potatoes.
My PhD thesis was on Liebig and the advent of chemical fertilizers, which led to the synthetic dye industry and modern industrial chemistry.
+10*10. Extremely insightful. Thank you.
Nothing to fuss about. Please notice the careful wording:
“a reduction in the systematic use of fossil fuels” is a thing everyone wants, if only to save money.
Greens want a systematic reduction in the use of fossil fuels, which is quite different.
Likewise, “Our desire to ensure energy for all must not lead to the undesired effect of a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty.” is nothing but reasonable.
The Pope stress the importance of energy for all, who is disagreeing?
And who wants “A spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures”? That won’t happen, anyway.
Um, the climate/weather are extreme and always have been. You-WILL-NEVER-CHANGE that.
Actually, the standard for “extreme” are lowered, and kept lowering. Weather office now issue warning if there is risk of a storm (not the tropical kind, you know, just the regular, late summer afternoon, kind). I expect them to issue a warning for extreme weather just every day by a few years, either because of chance of rain (extreme wetness), or no chance of rain (extreame heat, extreame dryness)
in case of risk of rain AND risk”
2017 October 31 was the Quincentennial Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation against just such Papist drivel. It is time for the Roman Church to go the way of the Empire, of the Communist faith, and its incarnate Marx.
Hmmm, what does that make George Soros, and what does that make Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism?
The problem is that the other Christian god-bothering sects are just as bad, merely less high profile.
You have surveyed all of them?
As always, the Pope is just all talk. That’s all he’s good at, apparently. Easy when you don’t actually have to do or understand anything. Atleast he acknowledges the importance of energy. I would ask him how come Earth has survived ice ages, asteroid bombardments, mass extinctions and lot more, but it can’t survive fossil fuels and small amount of warming? I would also remind him that since we started using fossil fuels poverty and famine have dropped dramatically. The poor people in third world countries don’t need expensive and unreliable green energy. As Alex Epstein put it: “Fossil fuels don’t make safe environment dangerous. They make dangerous environment safe.” But what would the Pope understand about this? He doesn’t actually live in poverty. Again, he’s just all talk. Anyone can say anything.
The speaker linked above makes a pretty strong case that it’s not just talk.
I am afraid that the Pope has been hitting the sauce again….
Perhaps the pope could ask his boss to get the wind to blow across the UK. We are about 2 weeks in to a lack of the aforesaid blowy stuff, and the UK wind turbines are churning out typically less than one Gw of power (currently 0.9 out of a total capacity of 15 – http://energynumbers.info/gbgrid).
I suggest the pope cook over a dung fire for a bit and then get back to us. I mean it’s cheap, it’s reliable and it’s deadly to the folks who do it.
The Catholic Church has money, and in theory, is stupendously rich. That said, the vast majority of the wealth is locked into consecrated liturgical equipment, sacred artwork, or distributed throughout fiscally independent dioceses and parishes. The first set is, essentially blasphemous to sell, and only as valuable as the market will bear for a sudden glut in precious metals and jewels. The second only has value for enormously wealthy Christians, who have a much smaller demand than the potential supply, if it can be transported at all. As for the last case, as the Vatican’s budget is of similar size to a medium to large university, I would suggest going to the German Catholic Conference, where the real money is.
Both churches have billions in assets. In addition to those you mentioned, the RCC has billions invested in stocks and bonds, and a vast holding in real estate (branch offices in virtually every neighborhood throughout the Christian world). They cover all the basis in wealth. They even hold a metric tonne of gold. There is no single holding that represents the ‘vast majority’ of their wealth.
So you are recommending that the church sell it’s church buildings?
Check out what happened to church properties in Detroit. There are plenty of photos of abandoned churches of all denominations online.
Some examples.
DETROITURBEX.com
Church photos and there are more photos online.
Stranded assets?
http://www.detroiturbex.com/content/churches/index.html
That’s what you get from someone used to miracles.
This pope doesn’t know what a real miracle is.
Well, life is a miracle, all by itself.
We’re surrounded by it, all the time. WE live on a planet that – so far – is the ONLY one known to have life living on it. We’ve found other places – Mars and a couple of Jupiter’s moons, for instance – where it might have the potential to exist – but we haven’t found it anywhere else except here on Earth.
Speculating on that, it’s also possible that there is no other hominid species like us anywhere in the Universe. Period. That’s kind of a lonely possibility, isn’t it? We have no corresponding species that evolved separately from us? If we ever find another species even vaguely like us, will we shoot them or shake hands?
Life is a miracle. That has yet to be acknowledged by The Church of Rome.
And this pompous papist wants to dictate the terms of it to the Faithful. Not a good idea, Frankie. That’s what jerks do. It will backfire on you, if it hasn’t already. Do what Jesus said to that merchant: Take all that thou hast and sell it, and give the money to the poor. Or try delivering a baby in the middle of one of your silly speeches. Take care of the sick and dying, instead of standing on a balcony.
Otherwise, please go sit in your chambers and shut up.
End of rant.
“Otherwise, please go sit in your chambers”
& don’t forget to pull the flush !
a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty.
Increased levels of poverty cause climate change?
Who knew!?
Why is his holiness asking energy companies for something only God can provide?
Maybe because energy engineers have succeeded in providing cheap, reliable energy to lift millions out of grinding poverty;
whereas his tooth fairy god has failed & catholic dogma would keep people in grinding poverty.
Shouldn’t everyone have the same ‘carbon footprint’ as the pope.
It really is sad how anti-religious bigotry makes idiots of so many of us.
Oh the Pope is Great. I think greater than his god.
I’ll get my coat, Anthony will strangle me for throwing fossil fuel to the fires of Mordor.
Is it anti-religious bigotry to be disgusted by the Potato’s promotion of pedophile promoters? The public outcry forced the Commie Papa to backtrack:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-francis-accepts-resignation-three-chilean-bishops-vatican-104125608.html
I think the key line is here:
Pope Francis has said climate change is a challenge of “epochal proportions” and that the world must convert
Convert to what? Convert to clean fuel, not Christianity!
The Pope, a fallible man, should now pray, because he has no idea how to convert without actually causing havoc.
A fallible man caught up in the climate scare hype.
Bergoglio has already tried to reconcile Marx and Catholicism in Liberation Theology, so reconciling the greens with civilization should not be that much more difficult./sarc
Agreed and we need a solution fast. The economic costs of AGW make conventional fuels an outmoded solution in the long run: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/6/8/17437104/climate-change-global-warming-models-risks
If you truly believe the world is on the brink ditch the renewables cr*p and embrace nuclear. It’s your green fellow travelers who are preventing the zero carbon nuclear revolution, not us.
Ivan, one of the things the green blob likes about renewables is that they are unable to support industrial civilization. There is a irreducible element of nihilism for the greens, which means they will always oppose fission, because it works.
The world is getting better, and a tiny bit more warmth will only accelerate this process.
PS: When you can find a model that accurately hindcasts without having to use 20 parameters, let me know. Until then anyone relying on models to predict the climate is an utter fool.
MarkW
And what would you use to predict the climate?
Models that essentially ‘predict’ low resolution weather and that are adjusted to short term expectations are wholly inadequate for predicting how a system with known periodic, quasi-periodic and chaotic variability acting over time scales from hours to over 100K years will behave a week into the future, much less decades.
How does this Pope not believe that his God will prevent humans from destroying his own creation?
And don’t start wiht the “free will” stuff, that is the second biggest lie ever told.
hear, hear!
You are presenting a theological argument for which there are theological responses. One would be that free will consists of potential actions within pre-determined parameters. In this case, you can have mankind exercising its free will which would normally, under the natural laws we operate, lead to our world’s destruction, but God would intervene and prevent the destruction with mitigating events …miracles, if you will… without impinging on human decisions and actions. Not being Catholic, or the Pope, I wouldn’t know though whether this argument would be an acceptable belief.
This doesn’t pass the smell test. Why would oil company executives go to a conference at the Vatican?
A. They drew the short straw.
Rome has some beautiful architecture, great museums, and like any big city, lots of night life. Downside is you listen to a blowhard tell you that your company needs to change your product in such a way that you will quickly go bankrupt. Upside: the report back to the company is brief. “The Pope wants us to go out of business.” Not bad, and all expenses paid.
Sometimes, in my mind’s little eye, I spy an hourglass. and laugh. and cry. and come over just a little bit sad.
(That’s one of the hazards of having had a minor stroke (TIA) ~15 yrs ago. It brings on a thing called Emotional Lability. I suspect Weeping Bill McKibben has it also. Look out for it in stroke victims you know and maybe yourself ultimately. Stay off the carbs, the booze & baccy and do some/any exercise nowandagain and you should be OK. Brought on this morning by having driven past/under Drax. It is actually raining there – no wind to blow away the stuff coming off the cooling towers so the entire Doomsday Machine, and surrounding area, is inside one mahoooosive cloud. Who said Man cannot change the weather/climate?)
Shudda got a weather foto for 2day, sigh
In the lower half of said hourglass is The Ocean. A place where things, all things, go. Drawn in by gravity coz that’s how glasses work.
In the top half is some sand, slowly falling down into the ocean below.
Above the sand is the sky – atmosphere properly – and scrambling about on the surface of the sand are some little ants. (That’s us)
It’s quite obvious that the ants are terribly worried about the sky – they think it’s gonna eat them.
Patently, one of the ants has pointed upwards and shouted “Hey look, there’s an ant-eating squirrel” and all the rest are looking for it. They want to show their concern, their ‘care’ and also appease the alarmist ant and so are going to keep looking till they find it.
But what they really rather should be worried about is the sand beneath them, because at some point, it is all gonna be gone.
And them with it