Guest laugh by David Middleton
If this wasn’t funny enough…
This is too fracking funny.!
Richard Newell, Daniel Raimi
Aug 17
EXPERT VOICES
Despite renewables growth, there has never been an energy transition
Since 2010, the costs of producing electricity from solar photovoltaic systems have decreased by more than 80%. Wind and solar now vie with natural gas to provide new electricity generating capacity. To some, these trends signal the world’s latest energy transition: away from fossil fuels and toward a renewable future.
The big picture: These historical changes in the energy system, however, have been a matter of addition, not transition. Although the percentage shares of biomass, coal and oil in our energy supply have fallen with the rise of alternatives, their total use continues to grow. The world has never experienced an energy transition, but the challenge of climate change means that, for the first time, one will need to begin.
[…]
The bottom line: To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, renewables and new technologies will need to do more than build atop CO2–intensive fossil fuels — they will need to push out incumbents while at the same time expanding global energy access and reducing the system’s environmental footprint.
Richard Newell is president and CEO of Resources for the Future. Daniel Raimi is a senior research associate in RFF’s Energy and Climate Program.
“Expert Voices” wake up and smell the fossil fuel-fired toast!
One of my favorite sayings is, “We didn’t leave the Stone Age because we ran out of stones.” Technically we never left the Stone Age because we use more rocks now than we did in the Stone Age.
And we never left the “Wood Age.” There was no energy transition from biomass (wood) to fossil fuels. Coal piled on top of biomass, oil piled on top of coal and natural gas piled on top of oil…
It’s a fossil fueled world.
If wishes were unicorns, we’d all have a merry energy transition.
To the extent that “renewables” are replacing anything, it’s mostly been nuclear power.
(Yes, “fueled” is spelled wrong. I’ll edit the graph when I get around to it.)
Please don’t neglect the issue of how much of the world’s money and wealth in the form of misdirected human effort this so-called transition to the new energies of solar and wind has squandered for the minuscule and unreliable power so far produced.
The words “criminal waste” hardly seem adequate .
Spelled wrong? Could have fuled me.
There’s no fuel like an old fuel.
The thing is, Greens and Alarmists really believe that the world is headed for Armageddon with CAGW unless we cut out CO2 and outlaw FF power generation – and if they got their way, the resulting destruction of our 1st-World society as we lost 80% of our energy supply and much of our agriculture would be a darn sight worse than Armageddon.
Green virtue has its price – and we shall pay it.
Richard Newell seems both educated and clueless.
Uff da!
Lack of transition in transport on Malta:
‘As any fule kno’ Nigel Molesworth
Eny Fule Kno , shirley?
Thing is, the authors are entirely right — at least with regard to “building upon the upward trend of fossil fuel emissions”. If the fossil fuels continue to be used not just to the same degree, but to a linearly increasing degree in the future, it hardly matters whether the World gleefully invests in ever-more renewable energy.
Now — as per the sentiments of those here who question the link between rising CO₂ and the purported spectacular rise in global temperatures — to me at least it seems to depend on whether we’re looking at spectacular(ly) bad or speciously innocuous relationships.
I personally would love to see the world somehow incorporating a whole lot more nuclear, geothermal and both PV and wind energy into national grids. Sure, sure, to effectively do so requires some amount of rapid-load-tracking generation such as hydro and natural gas. It also might benefit when the levels of PV especially, but also wind … rise to a significant proportion of domestic grid use, to have municipal or regional power catch-and-release storage facilities. At least that’d result in less energy just not being wasted.
But I don’t think we need to be addressing this as a transnational crisis.
We’ve become hugely dependent on fossilized carbon deposits.
Be they solid, liquid or gas.
And since — realistically — it took many millions of years to deposit these resources, and we’re burning them off in excess of 1% a year, there definitely is an “end” a’coming. Might be nice to be working on that with increased vigor, today. By the time we need “revolutionary” generation and storage, distribution and consumption technologies, at least we’ll have worked all the losers out of the mix.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
“These historical changes in the energy system, however, have been a matter of addition, not transition.”
————————-
Yeah, because they still need the fossils for back-up generation to prop up unreliable renewables.
Oh, and a “transition” implies moving ahead, but use of wind and solar are actually old energy sources that we long ago transitioned from to something better like fossils.
The only way to reduce fossil fuel use is to go big – very big- on nuclear.
Do I detect a movement in the farce (sic) whereby we are no longer attempting to create a Camelot-type climate but only stopping the ‘worst’ (whatever that means) climate changes?
From Camelot (the song):
It’s true! It’s true! The crown has made it clear.
The climate must be perfect all the year.
“It’s only a model.”
https://youtu.be/m3dZl3yfGpc
“There Has Never Been An Energy Transition”
Maybe not completely, but historically the world was run on slavery, for a very, very long time. From very ancient times, right up to 1865 here in parts of the USA, a good portion of the GDP was produced by slavery. The economic might of Greece and Rome was rooted in slavery. A good deal of Africa’s wealth was rooted in slavery, as were the European slave traders that powered an entire industry just getting and selling slaves to market let alone the vast industries that were mainly generated by slave power. Spain employed vast numbers of slaves in working the gold and silver mines from Mexico to South America, in addition to just straight up plunder and theft of existing accumulated wealth. Same for agriculture, all around the world. Some argue that many parts of the world are still run on wage slavery, such as the sweatshops of the 3rd world to produce the products that are sold in the first world, the workers barely making enough to purchase low grade food and housing. And still don’t have any measure of true freedom.
Of course, it was fossil fuels that was responsible for ending a lot of slavery, when it became cheaper to use a steam engine to power industry than it did a great number of slaves. This is what Western Liberalism has already forgot, is that it was fossil fuels that enabled empires to abandon slavery, because there was an entire suite of new available energy sources, which was a completely newly discovered source of energy in the form of fossil fuels. So I would argue, at least partially, that the transition out of slavery which was by definition a form of energy, happened. But it is something so repugnant to us now, that this history of global slavery, practised by almost everyone, everywhere at one time or another for eons has mostly been forgotten.
Just a small note to: “It’s a fossil fueled world.”
Really? Are all those hydrocarbons on Titan fossil? Did the dino’s fly there and die en masse?
What about those methane dunes on Pluto?
My take is: it’s a hydrocarbons fueled world. Could be that some of those on earth are fossil, but most not….
Firstly, coal is clearly sourced from organic matter.
Secondly, methane on Titan is 100% irrelevant to hydrocarbon formation on Earth. Abiotic/abiognic/inorganically-sourced methane is common throughout our Solar System and beyond, as are traces of other simple hydrocarbons.
Thirdly, there is no evidence at all of any significant volumes of complex hydrocarbons on Earth that were not sourced from organic material. Petroleum is a mixture of complex hydrocarbons (paraffins, naphthenes, aromatics and asphaltics) and the vast majority of natural gas production comes from the same total petroleum systems as crude oil and other liquid hydrocarbons. It’s possible that oil forms in the mantle all the time. The chemical equations can be balanced; so it’s not impossible. There’s just no evidence for it.
Biogenic vs abiogenic is really a poor way to characterize the issue. It implies that the formation of crude oil is either a biological or non-biological process. The process is thermogenic. The original source material is considered to be of organic origin because all of the evidence supports this.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/18/oil-where-did-it-come-from/
Here’s a very simple example:
The “oil-like hydrocarbons” were associated with hydrothermal-vent fluids which “pass through thick layers of seafloor mud” in the Pescadero Basin.
Just 75 km to the south, the seafloor of the Alarcón Rise is covered with layers of relatively fresh lava flows and very little sediment. The Alarcón Rise hydrothermal vents are run of the mill black smokers, with no evidence of “hydrothermal oil.”
Petroleum-like substances have been associated with hydrothermal vents in basins with thick organic-rich sediments. However nearby hydrothermal vents with little to no sediment cover (rises) do not exhibit evidence of “hydrothermal oil.”
If petroleum was being formed in the mantle, the petroleum-like substances wouldn’t be limited to hydrothermal vents in basins with thick organic-rich sediments.
Furthermore, the “hydrothermal oil” of the Guaymas Basin is extremely young and relatively rich in 14C…
The Lost City hydrothermal vent on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Pescadero Basin are the only two known places where carbonate (rather than sulfide) chimneys have been found. While there are similarities between the Pescadero Basin and Lost City, there’s a big difference…
Setting aside the fact that “the building blocks of oil products” are not the same thing as oil (in much the same manner that a 2×4 is not the same thing as a house)… The carbon in the Lost City hydrocarbons is either so old that carbon-14 is undetectable or it has never “had contact with the global carbon cycle at the surface.” So, the methane and the traces of hydrocarbons at Lost City were almost certainly sourced from inorganic substances. While the traces of “hydrothermal oil” in the Pescadero and Guaymas Basins were almost certainly sourced from organic substances.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how hydrocarbons form. They have to be produced from economically viable accumulations… which only occur in or adjacent to sedimentary basins.