By Rob Bradley, Master Resource
“I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or her professional credibility.”
—Dr. Michael Mann, Climategate email, May 30, 2008.
“The film [Planet of the Humans] presents a distorted and outdated depiction of the renewable energy industry in an effort to malign renewable energy, thus ironically promoting the agenda of the fossil fuel industry.”
– Dr. Michael Mann. Quoted in E&E News (May 5, 2020).
If Big Environmentalism loses wind, the supply-side ruse is over, and people will reconsider climate science given that the “cure” is not there. Hence Michael Mann versus Michael Moore.
“The cause” of climate alarmism and forced energy transformation has been pushed backward by a very long overdue hard look at renewable energy as a mass substitute for mineral energies. Being dilute and intermittent, renewables have more bad secrets than any closet could hold. Small wonder; renewable energies chew up the earth’s surface and creatures in a way that leads to the joke:
Q. “When is an environmentalist not an environmentalist?” A. “When it comes to industrial wind turbines and solar farms.”
Moore’s Planet of the Humans all but ensures that DC-based Big Environmentalism will frontally reject biomass/biofuels, their loss-leader to try to prop up wind and solar as viable. Remove biomass from “green” portfolios and it gets a little skinnier for the business cronies.
And if Big Environmentalism loses wind, the supply-side ruse is over, and people will reconsider climate science given that the ‘cure’ is gone. Hence Michael Mann versus Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans, the gist of Maxime Joselow’s “Michael Moore’s documentary irks climate scientists” (May 5, 2020).
Energy Density/Reliability
Although Moore et al. do not understand this yet, the problem of each renewable gets back to the absence of stored energy density (think mineral energies; think Vaclav Smil and Bill Gates). Think of the energy stock created by the sun over the ages versus a very dilute, unreliable flow of energy from solar directly or indirectly (wind).
This harks back to W. S. Jevons, The Coal Question, published in 1865, who said this about windpower:
“The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear” (p. 122).
“Civilization … is the economy of power, and consists in withdrawing and using our small fraction of force in a happy mode and moment” (p. 122).
“No possible concentration of windmills … would supply the force required in large factories or iron works. An ordinary windmill has the power of about thirty-four men, or at most seven horses. Many ordinary factories would therefore require ten windmills to drive them, and the great Dowlais Ironworks, employing a total engine power of 7,308 horses, would require no less than 1,000 large windmills!” (p. 123)
If one retorts that modern wind turbines make the above obsolete, note that modern conventional power generation facilities, dramatically and ingeniously, have improved also and easily beat wind-generated electricity in a variety of metrics–including reliability.
And to bring the stored density argument to date, consider Peter Huber’s insight in Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 105, 108:
The greenest fuels are the ones that contain the most energy per pound of material that must be mined, trucked, pumped, piped, and burnt. … [In contrast], extracting comparable amounts of energy from the surface would entail truly monstrous environmental disruption…. The greenest possible strategy is to mine and to bury, to fly and to tunnel, to search high and low, where the life mostly isn’t, and so to leave the edge, the space in the middle, living and green.
Planet of the Humans
Back to Planet of the Humans…. An article in E&E News, a mainstream enviro (subscription only) report, titled “Michael Moore’s documentary irks climate scientists” inspired the present post. Author Maxine Joselow begins:
When filmmakers Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs set out to make a documentary about renewable energy, they said their goal was simple: to tell the truth.”If we don’t face the truth we’re doomed. My camera will expose whatever and whoever needs to be exposed,” Gibbs later wrote.
Then comes the criticism from the perturbed Big Green–including the above quotation from energy expert (not) Michael Mann. (It is very suspicious that Mann is the chosen one to weigh in on energy issues; is he the front for a PR firm wed to wind/solar cronyism?)
Mann is among a host of climate scientists and environmentalists who have blasted the documentary, saying it peddles inaccuracies about the costs and climate impact of various clean energy sources, including wind, solar and biomass.
But what about all those ‘climate scientists and environmentalists’ that would agree with the film? How about climate scientist James Hansen, the father of the climate alarm, who said:
Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
E&E author Joselow continues:
But some conservatives have cheered the film as a refreshing takedown of renewable energy and the environmental movement. Many of them reject the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is heating the planet. “My friends and I have been saying these things for years about renewable energy. And then Michael Moore comes along and just devastates this whole renewable energy myth,” said Steve Milloy, a skeptic of mainstream climate science who runs the blog JunkScience.com.
Wait, wait–a lot of us do not “reject the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is heating the planet.” Moderate warming, along with CO2 fertilization of plant life, has distinct positives that dilutes, if not refutes, the cause of climate alarmism. But this is another story.
Author Joselow then exposes the predicament of climate alarmists who fear that losing renewables leaves them naked on energy policy.
One thing is clear: Since “Planet of the Humans” hit the internet just before Earth Day, it has attracted a good deal of controversy — and sparked a broader discussion about climate misinformation.
And adding to the predicament:
Another frequent criticism of the documentary centers on journalistic ethics. In its code of ethics, the Society of Professional Journalists encourages reporters to “diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.” But the filmmakers failed to contact two prominent targets of their criticism, according to the targets themselves.
Okay, so does this standard apply for in-the-tank environmentalist reporters who, for example, I have never heard from, despite authoring a 1997 piece (“Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’) that basically identified what Michael Moore et al. uncovered decades later?
Conclusion
Planet of the Humans stands on its own. The main point is sound and damaging to the “Green” case for renewable energies. But critics of the film have some points (such as the need to update the analysis).
So let’s have a Planet of the Humans 2 to look closely at wind and solar as mass substitutes for mineral energies. Let’s take a look at the politics of crony energies. Let’s look at the climate alarm itself that is driving the the environmental mess called renewable energy.
“but it’s not helping the cause” Michael Mann. That says it all really doesn’t it and right from the horses mouth. The cause is not concern about humanity, but the green agenda with it’s various pet projects benefiting the rich to get richer on the backs of the “proles”. as well as attempting to permanenetly get rid of democracy. The Gravy train is under threat and that is why the ilk of Mr. Mann are so desperate.
Q. “When is an environmentalist not an environmentalist?” A. When it comes to the environment.
I realised GreenPeace had gone off the rails the day I received a fat glossy catalogue of “green” merchandise through the door. I realised they had become what they always claimed to be fighting against. I cancelled by subs and told them not to contact me again.
Environmentalism has not been about the environment since at least 1985. That’s when I noticed and I may have been a bit slow to catch on.
That would be a pretty accurate time frame wrt Greenpeace. About when Patrick Moore was starting to un mask them.
Environmentalism is a for-profit non-profit protection racket, one of many in a highly inclusive, yet diverse, modern corporate enterprise that includes political, economic, social, religious,. etc. interests.
non-profit means not for taxation
The end came for me in 1995 when Greenpeace told endless lies about the Brent Spar, a 14,500 tonne oil platform in the North Sea. They were determined to force the British government to change the law in order to stop their most hated enemy (Shell UK) from disposing of it at sea. Greenpeace organized a massive publicity campaign which they ramped up into a barrage of hysterical lies about the “dangers” of sinking the rig. In fact, it was much more dangerous to tow the Brent Spar to land to cut it up but Greenpeace didn’t care about that. They had their victory when the British government withdrew the license to sink the Brent Spar, but when the truth emerged it destroyed the trust I had in Greenpeace and I have not believed a word they have said about anything since.
I joined Greenpeace in 1981 and left in 1985 when i began to noticed their enthusiasm for dealing with actual pollution and campaigning for the environment begin to wain and they became an openly leftwing organisation.
“but it’s not helping the cause” Michael Mann.
There was no purpose to help the cause, but to help appear the trust.
“Michael Moore’s documentary irks climate scientists”
Why would an documentary about “green” energy irk climate scientists? Because they are NOT scientists, they are advocates of a political agenda. They have a massive conflict of interest where their main motivation is not the “science” they pretend to be doing but advancing a political position, while trying to claim the authority of science to avoid debate and challenge to their naive political ideas.
They are hypocrites and lyarz all.
I have been told many times that I am not a climate scientist and have published no papers on climate. Therefore my “beliefs” mean nothing. Well turn about is fair play! These climate scientists are not mechanical or electrical engineers and have published no papers on the operation of power generation. Their pronouncements are not worth the “paper” it takes to print them!
“right from the horses mouth.”
I say that it is from the horse’s other end.
One horse’s lifetime output of poo is worth more than the lifetime output of all the activist scientists in the world.
I’d like to see a link and data on that, but then again, maybe not.
You’d be proven right and would just gloat.
Biomass!
one could opine that Micky Mann looks somewhat like the south end of a north bound horse and he is demonstrably prone to outbursts of verbal flatulence; so it’s difficult to decide which end of the Climastrologist horse we’re supposed to be lectured by.
…the Judith Curry horse is far more sensible.
Wind and solar are bait and switch. We’re being told we can relatively painlessly get rid of fossil fuels and replace them with wind and solar. If we do manage to get rid of fossil fuels, everyone will realize that wind and solar can’t replace them. There will be a great deal of pain.
Bait and switch is fraud. For that, if for nothing else, Dr. Michael Mann does belong in state pen.
That Michael Man guy isn’t just a fake Nobel winner. He’s a fake economist and engineer. The lists of his fake expertises is getting pretty long! I wonder who he gets to “peer review” his “calculations” on energy efficiency. Does he invent new math for those as well? Whattaguy!
Probably the same expert he asked to review his statistical methods.
Are we all now to be vilified as “Energy Deniers”!
Great article! but one misconception:
“Think of the energy stock created by the sun over the ages.”
There is no energy stock created by the sun over the ages.
Coal does not derive from plants? Oil and gas aren’t formed from phytoplankton and the zooplankton which eat them?
IMO photosynthesis, powered by photons from the sun, is responsible for fossil fuel creation.
You think the hydrocarbons on Titan are due to decaying plant matter?
Your logic is as follows:
1. Titan and Earth both have hydrocarbons.
2. Similar things have to have similar origins.
3. Therefore the hydrocarbons in both places have to have been created by similar processes.
Your second premise is false, Zoe. That is not a logical conclusion.
You are making the type of argument an alarmist would make:
This warming must be due to human co2. All historic and experimental evidence can be ignored, because our adhoc reasons are sound.
If you have no evidence of the sun initiating the process of FF creation, you have nothing.
You have nothing.
As we have no samples collected on Titan we don’t know, ’til later, may be.
In case my response is lost in cyberspace:
https://www.encyclopedie-environnement.org/en/life/oil-evidence-biological-origin/
Yet another invalid analogy from Zoe.
Ignore the (attention seeking) troll, people.
“Yet another invalid analogy from Zoe.”
We’ll have to coin a new term. Zoeology.
No. The hydrocarbons on Titan–chiefly methane and ethane–are a lot simpler than oil and even coal, although the liquid CH4 is the same compound as the main component of natural gas.
Hydrocarbons abound in the universe, but fossil fuels require biological feedstock. If abiotic oil and gas exist on Earth, they’re minor.
Yeah OK. Look at the surface area of the biosphere. You’re telling me all that (and probably more) got buried into those tiny areas we have oil fields.
Yeah, makes sense. Can you not see that you’re just asserting and assertion?
Any evidence of abiotic origin is used as evidence of biotic origin merely by rhetoric.
There’s so much top-down bias in modern “science”. The Earth “must” be a dead rock and everything must happened top down, whether it’s the atmosphere heating the surface or biology seeping down into a few places.
Why don’t more people not see this silly bias and baseless assumptions?
Diamonds are pure carbon, are you sure it’s drom plants too ?
I’m not.
A good book for you to learn about geochemical and biochemical reality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echoes_of_Life
As in my prior comment, the location of oil fields is high on the list of evidence for biological origin of crude and gas. That over 99% of fields are in sedimentary basins shows how the organic matter from organisms accumulated.
As also noted, the case for coal is open and shut, prima facie.
John, that is some brilliant reasoning.
A Sedimantary layer covers over 73% of the Earth’s surface. FF is found only in a tiny portion.
Of course you would expect the most ABIOTIC FF there because it’s easier for internal earth stuff to seep through POROUS sedimantary layer than anything else.
John, when all you have is a biotic hammer, every problem seems like a biotic nail.
You would have to believe something quite magical about those oil fields … that they have the ability to suck in vegetation from thousands of miles all around.
Your theory SUCKS, it’s the only explanation.
The areas aren’t tiny, not by a long shot.
You really should get out of your mom’s basement more often and experience the real world.
MarkW,
There’s so much greenery in the state of Georgia. Been that way for millions, if not billions of years. Where the oil at? Where the coal at?
Did they get magically sucked into Texas and West Virginia?
Amazing how that works.
“The areas aren’t tiny”
Not in an absolute sense. But compared to the greenery …
Zoe, every time I think you have finally found the utter limits of stupidity, you manage to plumb new depths.
Try learning a little about how oil and coal form. Maybe then you might begin to fathom the unparalleled depths of the many things you don’t know.
To start off with, oil, coal, gas do not form over night. They need to be buried for a long time, David could tell us more about how long, but it’s in the millions of years. That’s why fossil fuel deposits are found in places where you get sedimentary deposits.
Once again Zoe actually manages to convince herself that she’s a world class expert on every subject under the sun.
Sedimentary deposits cover 73% of the earth? Really?
Now you’re just making stuff up.
Zoe, try looking at maps of the size of these fields.
Your ability to imagine new facts in order to support ever more bizarre fantasies is fascinating.
Yes, Mark, 73% of the surface area.
Yes, millions of years …
Georgia has had greenery for millions, if not billions of years. Where the oil at? Where the coal at?
Well there is a little bit of coal up in the mountains. You know, those mountains made by GEOTHERMAL activity, the same force that pushed those mountains up, might have seeped some liquid coal on top as well. It mighr have mixed with the greenery and given fools the wrong impression.
Or maybe all that Georgia greenery somehow got whisked away into very specific mountain spots where it became coal.
I understand some people are enamoured with the stupid latter theory, but I don’t buy it.
You are welcome to. But I’ll keep thinking what makes more sense … it’s what good science is all about.
Take care. I will not respond to you anymore in this thread.
Love, -Z
Zoe writes on a few occasions;
“Georgia has had greenery for millions, if not billions of years”
Billions huh? You keep using that word. Somehow I don’t think it means what you think it means.
To be honest I am not convinced that ‘millions’ holds fully up in context either. Not completely sure where the ice sheets stopped in the Last Glacial Maximum (aka – ‘Pre-Pre Industrial Temperature Levels 😀 ). Georgia may have been ‘greenery’ in that period only in the most generous of descriptions.
I’m friend with some of T: Golds assumptions., be assured 😀
Wow, yet another subject on which you are woefully ignorant.
What ever hydrocarbons the earth may have managed to capture during it’s creation either escaped or were destroyed by the emergence of oxygen billions of years ago.
The coal, oil and natural gas that are currently being found result from biological activity, ultimately driven by the sun.
“What ever hydrocarbons the earth may have managed to capture during it’s creation either escaped”
Did they take the bus or the train?
“or were destroyed by the emergence of oxygen billions of years ago.”
If you say so.
“The coal, oil and natural gas that are currently being found result from biological activity, ultimately driven by the sun.”
If you say so. But my maps debunk that silly idea.
I imagine that these “maps” have the same origins as the math that proves that external geothermal energy is the source of all energy on the planet, as you claimed the other day.
If you don’t know how molecules of gas escape from the earth, why don’t you do a little research. Maybe, just maybe, you will finally learn something that is actually true.
Wow, Mark, your last comment on geothermal and how gases [ and hydrocarbons] escape the Earth is arguing my point. Thanks.
Zoe, how do you know there is no oil under Georgia?
Good point Crispin, I don’t know.
There very well could be, but not according to the biotic theory.
There’s just no evidence of Georgia greenery plunging into the ground right now. Where’s the trace?
If there’s oil miles below and nothing in between, … abiotic is more likely.
We know the mountains formed by geothermal activity. We don’t think the wind blew them here.
I just find horizontal burial very unbelievable. Where’d the material come from?
If biotic FF theory was true we’d expect to find the trace of this process in progress. Instead we just find ready made “FF” already complete and ready for extraction.
Didn’t everyone read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_in_Collision
back in “high” school?
I guess you never heard of coal, gas and oil
No such thing as coal or petroleum, eh?
Wrong, again!
translation: fossil fuel
Linear thinking Joe. I won’t explain. You are not going to benefit here at this level.
LOL, my critics are just repeating popular fairy tales.
Solar energy is the conversion of radiation to the mechanical motion of molecules in REAL TIME.
Solar energy makes molecules dance more vigorously. When the sun goes down, the motion dissipates. There is NO STORAGE of this motion, and there is no net increase of intensity of this motion over time.
The ISS has been orbitting Earth for quite a while now. It gets hot in the sun, and cools back down in the shade. It hasn’t gotten hotter over time. Where’s your solar storage?
The sun provided an average ~163 W/m^2 at the surface over 24 hours, or 326 W/m^2. This flux is not enough to create hydrocarbons. This flux is slightly over ice cube melting level.
Insolation over the North Sea is even more feeble, yet there is plenty of hydrocarbons there.
Insolation over Titan is pathetic, yet is plenty of hydrocarbons there.
Here’s a simple experiment: Shine a 326 W/m^2 source on a piece of wood for 12 hours, then 0 W/m^2 for the next 12 hours.
Tell me when it becomes petroleum…
Never. Because energy doesn’t accumulate to become some chemical process later on. Only a real time energy source can initiate a chemical process, and the sun is too feeble to do so.
QED
It doesn’t take intelligence to repeat popular narratives. Anyone can do it. Don’t be that person. Think!
“or 326 W/m^2” over 12 hours.
Zoe, my impression is, you were missing
somea lot of hours at school, physics, biology…..Krishna,
I don’t see any argument, but only an insult. Did you think they were the same?
What’s the matter? Can’t defend the narrative you were taught? Maybe it’s time to reject it?
Sun makes fossil fuels because someone said so! How do we know it’s true? Someone said so! How can anyone disagree with that? The reasoning is so sound. Science is done by believing dead experts whose hypotheses were discussed for so long they became “facts” in themselves.
You know brown coal and it’s origin ?
They may or may not have a stratified appearance. Stratified brown coals may contain layers of concentrated plant matter alternating with layers of more-coalified material. Many brown coals of lighter colour have a fibrous structure in which roots and other plant matter are still recognizable, indicating little coalification beyond peat.
Brown coal
coal classification
Caption
Brown coal (lignite). This form of coal has a high moisture and ash content, and is a more polluting form of coal than the higher (black) grades of coal. It is a sedimentary form of carbon, and the layers of compressed organic matter can be seen in this sample
Brown coal
Wow, Krishna, that is some interesting reasoning.
I suppose if you find chunks of something in something else that proves those chunks caused it.
And what’s your explanation for causation?
Zoe, you are very talented but you’re not rising to your level of potential on this topic.
Solar energy is converted to chemical energy. The process is called photosynthesis which you should know. Do you at least agree with that?
Millions of years ago atmospheric composition and environment allowed buried plants to form coal over time. Coal is the prototypical fossil fuel because it’s full of actual visible fossils, in addition to molecular biomarkers. Today we can see a similar process in formation of peat.
Fossilized Carboniferous swamp in an IL coal mine:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-worlds-largest-fossil-wilderness-30745943/
Sorry, but you’re up against not just geology, but chemistry, physics, biology and paleontology. And astronomy, for that matter. Clouds of hydrocarbons drift in interstellar space, but no petroleum.
John,
Use your head for once.
There’s plenty of peat in Illinois. You managed to find a spot where ABIOTIC fuel seeped out, mixed with the peat, and then got fossilized.
But what about the other peat where that did not happen? Why do you use lack of evidence elsewhere as evidence that peat made coal?
What is so special about THAT SPOT? You believe the peat got magically sucked into the Earth, and under heavy pressure and heat it became coal and then went back up again? But only i that spot for some reason.
Try Occam’s Razor!
Scissor,
Of course I understand photosynthesis.
The problem with this stored energy is that it must deprive energy from reaching the surface (ground) and heating it.
So plants COOL the surface. I think we agree. Let’s go further:
“allowed buried plants to form coal over time.”
Woah… where’d this burial energy come from? Where’s the burial from all those abundant tropical vegetation? I see extremely little coal in the tropics.
OK, it got buried. Heat and pressure, yadda yadda. Remember, junk scientists also believe the Earth only provides 91 mW/m^2. That’s not a lot of heat. Does that magical heat come from the sun and backwarming gases, neither of which exists after a burial?
With geothermal denial, there is no heat to perform the transformation.
Look, I’m just looking at maps of vegetation, and distribution of FF and saying … no way. The whole thing seems so irrational. You’d have to believe there are magical spots that suck in vegetation. I prefer to think that FF came from inside the Earth. It seems more rational to me. Magical suction spots are to fantastical for me.
Just like volcanism and lava flows in spots … FF came from the interior. That seems more plausible.
Fossils are found in coal mines around the world. The swamp in IL is just the largest such inclusion. That coal results from plants, animals, fungi and other organic matter from organisms is inescapable. It’s obvious on its face.
I’m guessing that Zoe believes the earth is only a few thousand years old.
The peat didn’t get sucked into the earth. It got buried over millions of years.
“Fossils are found in coal mines around the world.”
Yes, lots of stuff can get buried in hot stuff seeping from the interior. Therefore the stuff did it? Okay …
“The peat didn’t get sucked into the earth. It got buried over millions of years.”
Yes, but for some reason only only in very specific tiny locations. Illionois is big. Lots of peat. Little FF. Hmm…
Where’d the burial material come from? It coalesced into that one space, and left all the other peaty places alone?
Amazing. Imagine I told you there’s a cemetary. Over a long period of time … all the coffins move around to create deep vertical coffin skyscrapers in some places, but other spots are barren of coffins. Would you believe me?
Zoe, It’s easy to envision the probability that natural gas forms deep in the earth and migrates to the surface (“fire ice” in the ocean depth) and “enriches” petroleum accumulations. But your arguing that the space station’s lacking the capacity to store energy from the sun disproves conventional “fossil fuel” explanations doesn’t make it easy to take anything you say seriously.
Dennis,
You know what’s silly?
Plants store energy until they decompose and lose that energy.
Day and Night. I think the analogy is apt.
There is nonaccumulation.
The only thing that could in theory turn plants into FF is rapid burial. Rapid burial before decomposing. Rapid burial refutes uniformitarianism. Can’t have your cake and eat it too.
“It got buried over millions of years.”
So it was a one time thing?
Where’s the decaying plant life now starting this million year process?
Where’s the 10,000 year old dead plant life in the process now?
Where’s the 50,000 year old dead plant life in the process now?
Where’s the 100,000 year old dead plant life in the process now?
Where’s the 500,000 year old dead plant life in the process now?
Show me the locations on Earth where this is happening right now!
All I see is the end product in some sparse places over the world.
Think!
You can’t show the transitions, but only the result. Well, my abiotic theory predicts the result too. And you won’t see the transitions because they are happening way down deep. You need to show the transitions from the shallow INTO the deep.
Zoe,
We know that fossil fuels come from photosynthesis not because someone said so, but because all the evidence in the world shows that they do. In the case of coal, you can see it being made, as in peat.
Much as paleontologists find fossils in coal, oil and gas carry biological signatures and telltale signs. More than 99% of the world’s oil reserves are located in sedimentary basins, with occurences in magmatic or metamorphic rocks rare. Where crude is found outside sedimentary rocks, it has migrated therefrom.
Oil, like biological amino acids, is optically active. Abiotic molecules are optically inactive, because they contain equal proportions of the left and right-handed isomers of chiral compounds.
Oil and fossil organic matter have the same 13C isotopic depletion as organics in living tissues. Porphyrins are an ubiquitous biomarker in crude and kerogen-rich clays. They’re transformed from chlorophyll, providing clear evidence of their photosynthetic origin.
Among other biomarkers in fossil fuels are the cell membranes of prokaryotes and eukaryotes, leaf cuticles and pigments or resins. These are made of resistant biomolecules, preserved in sediments where they alter little and remain identifiable.
Steranes are another important class of biomarker. These molecules are derived from sterols, which help plants and animals maintain the structural and functional integrity of cell membranes. A large number of steranes with 27, 28, 29, 29 or even 30 carbon atoms have been identified in crude. Geochemists analyzed more than 400 oils generated by 650 to 45 million year-old marine rocks. They extracted and identified the different types of steranes, grouping them by increasing number of carbon atoms. They found that the proportion of steranes with 28 carbon atoms increases over geological time, while the proportion of steranes with 29 carbon atoms decreases; that of steranes with 27 carbon atoms remains almost stable. This chemical evolution jibes with diversification of phytoplankton across millions of years.
In the 20th century, it became possible to recreate petroleum in the lab by applying heat and pressure like those in sedimentary basins to kerogen. The results were so similar to crude oils that they can be used as a “genetic” fingerprint to link a natural oil to its source rock.
How much more evidence do you need?
“all the evidence in the world shows that they do.”
Yes, if you twist all observations to your presumption, that’s true.
“In the case of coal, you can see it being made, as in peat.”
Plenty of places with peat, and NO COAL, and vice versa.
Look at a coal map vs. peat map:
So much for that argument.
“More than 99% of the world’s oil reserves are located in sedimentary basins”
So what? Take a look at a map of sedimentary basins:
Plenty of basins without FF. So much for that theory.
Let’s apply some logic. Here’s a map of Earth’s vegetation:
You’d expect to find FF where there is more vegetation, no? Then somewhere that vegetation can drift to, no? That’s not where we find FF. Look at the coal map again. There’s barely any in the tropics.
Your hypothesis requires all that vegetation to get sucked into very specific places, that have very little in common. How’d that happen?
“In the 20th century, it became possible to recreate petroleum in the lab by applying heat and pressure like those in sedimentary basins to kerogen. ”
And how does dying vegetation get down there into those depths? Tectonics? OK, then FF should be found exclusively in subduction zones. And some are, but what about the majority?
As for the rest of your arguments:
We found biotic material in FF … therefore creation. What? LOL. I can put all sorts of stuff into my soup, and it doesn’t prove they created the broth.
Organic life needs organic material. More likely causality runs the other way. Life came from hydrocarbons, rather than vice versa.
If you could answer one question, it would be this:
Where’s the petroleum from tropics vegetation? Where?
What’s funny is that the consensus on why there’s uranium in plants is … abiotic.
But let’s flip that around to your way of thinking:
Why are there uranium in places, and why are we mining there?
Simple! It’s really ancient plants that collected into those spots … somehow.
See? Why is FF stupidity allowed, but Uranium is purely abiotic. No no, let’s have the same silliness there too. It’s all biotic.
It should be obvious that today’s peat fields don’t need to be where coal was laid down hundreds of millions of years ago. The Carbonifoerous Period is so named because of its swamps which produced so much coal. Fossil plants and animals are common in coal deposits.
It should also be obvious to an open mind that only sedimentary basins covered by shallow seas produce oil, which is marine in origin. Virtually all oil is found in such sedimentary basins. That basins on land don’t form oil only strenthens the point.
Oil and gas don’t come from “vegetation”, although coal can and does. Oil fields are laid down in shallow seas, formed from phytoplankton and zooplankton falling to the seabed.
Please study the subject rather than just making stuff up. Again, I recommend the book, a nontechnical treatment of the subject. I just scratched the biomarker surface.
Petroleum geologists find oil and gas by knowing where to look. Prospecting is thus based on predictions from the hypothesis of biotic origin. Every discovery is a confirmed test of that hypothesis by experiment. Few scientific hypotheses have been so repeatedly confirmed.
Good answer John.
When I was young I analyzed crude oil for biomarkers to help geochemists determine field maturity. I used gas chromatography with FID (for steranes, pristine, phytane, etc.) and FPD (for thiophenic compounds). I still like the smell of most crude oil in small amounts. I recall that SJV crude contained naphthenic acids that had a lingering odor.
“Yes, if you twist all observations to your presumption, that’s true.”
Wow, just wow.
Considering that appears the only logical mode of argument that you know, you really aren’t very self aware.
For example, you proclaim that unless coal and peat are found in the same places today, that’s impossible that millions of years ago, peat was turned into coal.
Come back when you at least can manage to make sense.
The fact that plants can take up uranium from soil says nothing at all about the facts of photosynthesis, death and decay leading to first to peat, then coal under heat and pressure. Plants take up all kinds of abiotic minerals from soil. So what?
“It should be obvious that today’s peat fields don’t need to be where coal was laid down hundreds of millions of years ago.”
What? But coal should be where the peat was/is. My maps debunk that. You want to claim the peat migrated elsewhere to make the coal … make your case.
“Fossil plants and animals are common in coal deposits.”
Well OF COURSE. ABIOTIC FF seeped from the ground and BURIED some animals and vegetation. Can you think?
“Oil and gas don’t come from “vegetation”, although coal can and does. Oil fields are laid down in shallow seas, formed from phytoplankton and zooplankton falling to the seabed.”
Well then we’d expect most FF to be in the deepest parts of the Persian gulf … not splattered around randomly and at different elevations.
You would have to believe that the Persian Gulf was covered in abundant plant matter. There are theories for that. But why can’t we find anything transitional? Oil and sand, oil and sand, and hardly anything in between. Where’d the sand come from to bury the plants? More speculation.
“The fact that plants can take up uranium from soil says nothing at all about the facts of photosynthesis”
The fact that abiotic material can come from the ground, doesn’t mean it was made by photosynthesis.
Where’s all the FF from the vegetation in the tropics? Surely this huge area should have created a lot of FF. Where is it? You never answered.
“Please study the subject rather than just making stuff up. ”
You mean uncritically repeat what others made up?
I bet if mankind buried Titan in sediments, people like you will claim it used to covered in vegetation, then something happened … see? Titan is biotic origin too.
All of your evidence for biotic origin is the same for abiotic origin. I’m surprised you can see that.
Like I said, you would EXPECT to find abiotic oil in areas of sedimenary layer, because stuff seeps out easier through porous material.
There’s lots of dirt in the tropics, and lots of vegetation. Obviously, very little hydrocarbons seeped up the dirt. But what about all the decaying plant matter in the tropics. Where’d all that photosynthesized material go? Where? Answer the question.
Look again at the coal and peat map. Look at northern Russia. Look at the big chunks.
Why is there no peat where there’s coal? Why is there coal where there is no peat?
Swappidy do? A nebulous anything-can-happen-with-enough-time theory?
Coal should be where peat is now?
Why?
Do you actually believe that the earth of today is identical to the earth of 100 million years ago?
“Plenty of places with peat, and NO COAL, and vice versa.”
You might have heard of a little thing called Plate Tectonics. Things are constantly moving.
Zoe, I don’t know, what is worse, your comment or the mistery tales of our “Green leadership”, declaring the grid is the storage.
I’m guessing that Zoe hasn’t reached the point in school where they teach about photosynthesis.
Do you argue that radiation (energy) from the sun is not involved in photosynthesis, by which plants construct themselves, or that said solar energy does not remain in place as long as the material of those plants remains in a more or less stable condition, which obviously can be years, and even thousands of living years, for some plants.
Do you argue that all the sunlight that directly enters into water, to around 100 meters depth, according to what I read, also leaves each night while the water itself remains warm? Or that sinking currents doesn’t carry some solar energy to greater depths where it is can be retained for hundreds, probably at least 1000 years, according to various ocean dynamics studies?
Do you believe that the great warming of the land, and everything on it, that occurs in the summer season isn’t due to retention of solar energy? I almost never use the air conditioner because costs are too high, but once or twice a summer I have visitors for a time in the evening or early night. I then use the air conditioner to lower the house temperature, say 20F, to make my guests comfortable. When they leave I turn it off. Within a fairly short time most or all of that 20 degree internal temperature reduction is reversed. There is no sunlight to provide that increase. By that time the outside temperature is sometimes lower than the inside temperature (time to open some windows). If the energy for that temperature increase doesn’t come from solar energy stored in the materials of which the house is constructed, where does it come from?
None of this directly says that “fossil fuels” are a product of geological processing of that stored solar energy but does seem to question your assertion that there is no storage of solar energy, no?
Zoe seems to feel that unless you find peat bogs on top of every single coal deposit, that proves that coal did not come from peat bogs.
No, Andy. What I’m arguing is that if you invoke photosynthesis – you have to contend with plants taking away solar energy from reaching the ground. You have no energy left for burial and heat and pressure needed to transform them into FF.
What’s the argument?
The sun has energy for photosynthesis, decomposition, burial, pressure cooking and something left over for temperature, latent and sensible heat at the moment?
That’s a lot of energy the sun doesn’t provide. I guess backwarming gases are needed too. How’d those gases defy gravity to begin with? You need KE to convert to PE.
“Do you believe that the great warming of the land, and everything on it, that occurs in the summer season isn’t due to retention of solar energy? ”
There is definitely a heat capacity effect. But averaged over a year … there is nothing stored of solar energy. And what is stored by plants, is a deprivation of energy that would’ve been used to heat the surface and air.
Plants are coolants. I suppose they do store energy while they’re alive. When they die, their energy gets eaten up. That’s what decomposition is.
For plants to become actual FF they would need RAPID burial, the kind of think denied by uniformitarianism.
The truth is that most hydrocarbons are ABIOTIC.
Zoe, you know, how charcoal is produced ?
First step to understand.
No oxygene, heat.
So, plants, trees, in high depth, no oxygene, pressure some thousands of tons and heat, voilà, there you are.
Krishna,
Why the need for the plants and trees to begin with?
Where’d the consituent material for the plants and trees come from?
Why couldn’t the constituents plus pressure and heat create charcoal?
Why the need for a silly plants and trees middle process, and a burial process too?
Why the need of up and down cycle, when all the constituents necessary for them are made in the Earth itself?
Wait plant and tree chemicals did not come from the Earth itself?
Did aliens plant them on the top?
I don’t get it. I really don’t. What’s with the middle loop? Do you need to build a house, and knock it down to get its materials? Why not use the raw materials?
You’ve created an entire army of strawmen, Zoe.
Charcoal burner
You may use charcoal for barbecue, isn’t-it ?
Why couldn’t the constituents plus pressure and heat create charcoal?
It’s a daily production for daily use, may be there are industrial productions that use the way…..
PS
Charcoal production uses pyrolysis
@Jeff Alberts
Zoe is the strawman 😀
“my critics are just repeating popular fairy tales.”
It really is fascinating how Zoe manages to convince herself that she and she alone, out of all the people on the planet, actually knows how things work.
Anyone who disagrees with her just believes in fairy tales.
I got the the father of Chemistry, Mendeleev by my side. He believed FF were of abiotic origin.
Whose on your side? The scarcity-mongering FF industry and their paid scientists?
Zoe Phin
Whilst i’m in no position to debate you, or anyone else on this subject, your response “Whose on your side? The scarcity-mongering FF industry and their paid scientists?”
I presume you are as sceptical of AGW as the rest of us, so does it really matter how Oil/Coal is generated i.e. will it eventually be exhausted if mankind continues to exploit it at the rate we are.
To help me understand whether it does or not, were your theory of abiotic hydrocarbon production true, how long does the process take to produce, say, one barrel of Oil?
Surely we then need to balance that against how many barrels of Oil mankind extracts. I could be wrong (very likely) but I’m not sure there is evidence of depleted Oil fields refilling with Oil, at least not to any extent that would attract attention.
I also wonder at hydrocarbon resources being relatively reliably found using the conventional thought process behind their production. Were the theory of abiotic production meaningful, that would consign the science behind exploration/discovery to blind luck.
And by the same token, why is abiotic hydrocarbon production as local specific as the conventional theory on the subject. Shouldn’t the earths crust be floating on a sea of Oil?
Mendeleev refused to believe the existence of electrons. He knew absolutely nothing about oil biogenesis. Why do you use him as an exemplar?
Kindly explain the presence in oil of chemical fossils like steranes, which can only be derived from biological compounds, as explained so graciously by John Tillman
“Zoe Phin May 14, 2020 at 12:33 pm
There is no energy stock created by the sun over the ages.”
Up until this point I was interested in your posts. #FAIL!
You believe the ISS Space Station has gotten hotter over time? What happened to all that stored solar energy? Where is it?
It didn’t get stored. It moved molecules in real time. Energy in … energy gone.
The fact that the sun’s energy doesn’t get stored is even the basis of mainstream climate science. We are supposedly in an equilbrium … no heating.
That’s not suprising. Turn an oven to 400F for 12 hours, then off for 12 hours. Will it ever get beyond 400F? No. There’s nothing stored.
Photosynthesis allows light energy to be converted to chemical energy, which is stored.
You need plant matter to do the photosynthesis. Where’d that come from?
I can see the photosynthesis formula. It’s easy to find. You know what I can’t find? An experiment where shining sunlight on water and carbon dioxide created plant life.
Since nobody buys into your really, really bad analogies, you declare that everyone else is stupid.
There’s an old saying amongst gamblers. If you can’t spot the mark in the room, then you are the mark.
Zoe, you are the mark.
Zoe, are you off your nut?
Photosynthesis is a chemical process that uses solar energy to produce carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. The energy that can be recovered from burning those carbohydrates is stored solar energy. This doesn’t happen by absorbing heat that can radiate away when the sun stops shining. If the ISS had greenhouses growing plants then it could accumulate chemical energy.
Your arguments are not coherent.
I prefer to convert at least some of those carbohydrates to other products via fermentation.
“If the ISS had greenhouses growing plants then it could accumulate chemical energy.”
Aha, so the plant would not consume that energy during night time?
Plants just constantly make food and don’t eat it?
Plants are just batteries?
I’m made of organic material. I don’t belive the Earth has organic material BECAUSE humans have died. I think humans were created from the available organic materials.
I think hydrocarbons created plants, and not vice versa.
We use hydrocarbons to fertilize plants. Right?
My opponents want to believe that the plants made their own fertilizer. First came the plants, then came the ferilizer.
Uhuh, first came the roof, the walls, and then the foundation. That’s how a house is build.
Yup. Off yer nut it is then.
I don’t know why the storage process is so hard for you to grasp.
In cyanobacteria and the chloroplasts of algae, phytoplankton and plants, the light reaction splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen atoms (a proton in the latter case). This is powered by a photon of sunlight. Then, in the dark reactions, the proton is attached to a CO2 molecule, leading to a sugar molecule. When these photosynthetic organisms die, they accumulate, then are subjected to heat and pressure, turning them into coal, oil and gas.
This is not just an hypothesis, but an observation, ie a scientific fact. Maybe abiotic oil exists, but there is no evidence of it. Since microbes live deep in the crust, hot, deep biotic oil might exist, but purely abiotic oil has yet to be found.
You can lead a horse to water, so they say.
Zoe Phin is obviously very bright and talented but also obstinate even in the face of well reasoned lessons, such as from yourself. The good news is that such stubbornness is inversely related to wisdom, which we all know can come from age.
John,
Bottom line, the Earth has plant life because there was/is hydrocarbons not vice versa.
What are plants made of to do photosynthesis in the first place?
You can shine sunlight on pure water mixed with carbon dioxide in a bottle, try it, and you will never get plant life from it.
Never.
You have a non-starting theory.
“Zoe Phin is obviously very bright and talented”
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Jeff,
It’s really simple.
Plant life need certain chemicals.
Some people believe you can’t get petroleum until those chemicals were combined into plant life, plus sunshine, plus death, and got buried, and then compression heated for a long time.
Other people are smart and realize you don’t need the middle stage of plant creation. You can just make your petroleum soup directly from the constituent chemicals of plants – the ones thst existed before plant life.
The middle step is such a bizarre necessity. If you got the raw ingredients, heat and pressure …
Notice nobody justified/explained the necessity of the middle step?
It seems to me people put the cart before the horse.
“It’s really simple.”
Yeah, it’s so simple, no one can find it.
Zoe,
Photosynthesis evolved in cyanobacteria from chemosynthetic bacteria.
not stored as heat
Everybody should just relax and ignore Zoe. Nobody can be that STUPID. She’s just trying to get everybody wound up.
I happened to live in a state where the idea of biotic FF is so retarded that it beggars the imagination.
So much greenery and no fossil fuels. So where’d all that decaying plant matter go?
If people actually addressed my arguments rather than constantly mindlessly repeating theirs they might actually convince me. But they don’t even try, and that tells you everything.
I already know all their arguments, because I too learned the same thing. Repeating what you’ve been taught is not intelligence. Intelligence is evaluating alternative hypotheses and recognizing some of them are better.
Wind me down and explain why a green state like Georgia has no FF. Simple. It will shut me up.
“It seems to me people put the cart before the horse.”
Nailed it.
Sometimes people are “too smart” to realized their orthodoxy thinking is actually, wrong.
This place gets a lot of hate from anyone criticizing vaccines, for example. They *refuse* to look at adjuvants, such as Al-Hydrozide. They are adherent to a false orthodoxy of thinking. They “cannot be wrong”. I’ve tried to link the several dozen papers of the neurological damage from the vaccine adjuvants, but the moderation(ers?) removes the post. +shrugs+
Consider, for the moment, other fossils. Bones, shells, sometimes entire animals, get turned to stone. Where are they found? Mostly in sedimentary rock formations or metamorphic formations which started out as sedimentary. Both are often fairly easily recognized because, among other characteristics, they are composed of many different layers.
Do you believe sedimentary layers in soil and rock are not formed by gradual accumulation of materials gathering in places such as lake bottoms, swamps, and coastal submarine canyons?
Do you believe layered metamorphic formations are not created from sedimentary formations (yes, there are also other sources of metamorphic rock)?
If sedimentation and transformation are the processes that created so much metamorphic rock in so many places, from the surface down to considerable depths, do you think the transformation process requires solar energy?
Do you believe such conversions do not require geological time spans?
Do you believe such conversions do not require the sedimentary collections first being (often very gradually) transferred to to great depths (relative to human standards) in the earth in order to find the necessary conditions for metamorphism to take place?
In some locations fossils are found by the millions. If plants and animals can be converted to rocks, why not, in suitable concentrations and conditions, to coal or petroleum?
I’ve read this site for a long time but hadn’t encountered Zoe until today. Fascinating, as Spock would say. Basically her argument against the biotic theory of oil is that when she looks around in Georgia today it’s very green but there’s no oil? Okay. I guess it double-proves her case that West Texas, where there is lots of oil, is brown and barren. (Sure, there were ancient seas there, but we’re assuming the surface environment of the earth never changes.).
My suggestion for Zoe is to start an oil company and hire geoscientists to look for oil based on her theory. Since all the oil companies today study seismic data under a biotic theory of oil creation, Zoe Oil and Gas should put them all to shame and she’ll be the next John Rockefeller. Go for it Zoe!
I believe you win the troll analysis contest, William.
Zoe, the isotopic signal for FF points to biotic origin.
How so?
ABIOTIC fuel deposited near/at the surface is what allowed plant life to begin in the first place.
Let me guess, you want to use correlation of isotopes to prove causation in reverse. Okay …
Zoe, you need to read up on hydroponics. Plants are grown without being “fed” any hydrocarbons. The carbon in plants comes entirely from the carbon dioxide in the air.
As for how organisms get buried, it’s not the sun doing it. Ash clouds from an erupting volcano will do it. Landslides and flash-floods can also do it.
As for why fossil fuel deposits occur in some places and not others, luck plays a large part in that. The above-mentioned processes occur at random times in varied places. It is only by chance when a large number of organisms get buried by such processes.
It’s possible that some fossil fuels are created abiotically (particularly methane) but, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that complex hydrocarbons like oil and coal are created this way. I believe Occam’s Razor is best applied here.
Zoe, you are right about energy storage in slowly buried plants. They must be buried quickly and in vast quantities to give the coal we find. The only answer is the flood.
Carbon 14 dating the coal doesn’t give millions of years but thousands.
G
I wish that Rep. Ocasio, Dr. Mann and their fellow traveling advocate’s of wind power would do the simple math.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
To replace electric power now generated by fossil fuels in the US with wind would require twelve times more turbines than now. Then add to that existing demand power for vehicles. Then factor in that the windiest sites have already been taken, although a bit could be gained by updating turbines at some of the oldest farms. Finally, consider that wind power is highly intermittent.
Replacing fossil fuels with solar power would require 36 times more capacity as now, with the same problem of intermittency.
PEven with the storage problem somehow magically solved, (crack) pipe dream doesn’t even begin to describe this dangerous delusion. Besides which are the enormous environmental costs for “renewables”.
The only presently viable alternative to fossil fuels is nuclear, as Jim “Boiling Oceans” Hansen recognizes. Mann must know this as well, but when have facts ever mattered to him. Ocasio may very well actually believe in the magical power of renewables, contrary to reality.
They’re calculator-dodgers one and all and, as for the Mann cretin, he never did a real calculation where the dog didn’t eat his homework, as we all know, and he knows.
The punishment is already in though. At the very least, since he and the other similar fakers won’t ever be able to walk it back, it will haunt them to their death beds or their padded cells, whichever comes first.
Not only that, but class action lawsuits against these freaks are going to run rampant soon.
Hope your optimism proves warranted.
Justice delayed is justice denied, so to speak.
While punishment might be justified, do you think it any more likely that history reveals about most other great wrongs? How about all those people responsible for the insanity that led to 50,000 or more people murdered as witches? How much was the Catholic Church made to pay for the wrongs of the Inquisition?
The perception of right and wrong are different in different times and places. There are no absolutes in morality.
I hardly think that is relevant. What is relevant is that those in power are very often above the consequences of right or wrong.
It’s all about the CO2. So lets just remove the CO2 from the combusted fossil fuel exhaust and transform the CO2 into good paying full time jobs and money.
America has over 600 years of good quality coal available and we are blessed with a lot of natural gas and oil.
A power plant has a very small footprint compared to the solar and wind farms. Lets use this land to produce food crops instead of a little bit of electricity during daylight hours or when the wind might be blowing.
America must be Energy Wise!
Lets use our coal to produce electricity.
Lets use our natural gas for building space heating and by industry to produce and process products that we use every day.
Lets use our oil for transportation and in all those other products that require oil.
Lets use the solar and wind to power America’s growing fleet of EV’s. It can have it’s own electricity infrastructure. When the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing and the batteries go dead, it’s then time to park for the day.
CO2 can be captured from point sources, but from vehicles, not so easily.
CO2 should be left free into the atmosphere, where it can be used by plant life the increase the viability and functionality of the biosphere. Helping to feed all life on this carbon based Earth.
I agree, but if capturing it were ever economically feasible for point sources, there would still be the “problem” of vehicles.
CO₂ is an insignificant trace gas.
CO₂’s atmospheric component was near plant starvation.
As the recent greening of the world demonstrates, improving the amount of trace gas CO₂ disproportionately improves plant health.
Costs to remove CO₂ from consumption of fossil fuels provide negative real benefit as any work created is parasitic of farming/forestry industry. i.e. higher costs for fossil fuel use with loss of atmospheric benefits to plants.
so it is NOT “insignificant”. It is a vitally important trace gas. CO2 is the base of the entire tree of life on Earth, more essential than oxygen.
Maybe you meant to suggest is was an insignificant GHG.
Same quote – I’m also not sure what you mean by disproportionately ATheoK. The Calvin cycle is linear with respect to CO2 so directly proportional. Totally different from the disproportionate evisceration of CO2’s activity due to the Beer-Lambert Law amongst many other things, which alarmist sheep don’t even know exists (although I do know you know). Heck, Loydo as recently as a month ago thought temperature was linear with CO2. I know it’s hot in Australia but jeeeeez, get a pencil and the back of an envelope pleeeease.
Did Loydo/Griff really not know that for 32 years after WWII, global temperature plummeted while CO2 rose steadily? After the PDO flip of 1977, slight warming did accidentally correlate with still increasing CO2 for about 20 years, but after the super El Nino of 1998, world temperature went sideways until the super El Nino of 2016, which was insignificantly balmier than that at the end of the 20th century.
He/she must not read posts and comments here.
I’d say essential trace gas.
Three times more than we now have would be better for C3 plants and other living things.
Why are you trying to starve the plants? We depend on them for food and air. We need to feed plants, not starve them.
Oh god, here comes Sid and his absurd scheme of wasting a vast amount of the energy in coal so that plant food doesn’t get in the air. No sale here Sid. Just burn the damn coal (if it’s cheaper than natural gas).
Next up, Col Mosby to tell us how you can easily get 4c/kW-hr electricity from molten salt reactors that nobody can actually build.
After that we’ll be onto fusion that would be just around the corner if only government would “invest“ a few trillion dollars. Dozens of companies are successfully harvesting billions in grant money, despite zero prospect of commercialization in my great-grandchildren’s lifetime. The industry’s prospects have never looked so bright.
There’s never a shortage of solutions to non-problems when there’s government money to be wasted.
Didn’t you forget the hydrino and whatever the ECAT is supposed to use?
Yes, of course. There will be cold fusion advocates, too. But there you don’t just need to overcome economics and engineering problems. You need to violate the laws of physics. Up to now even government isn’t stupid enough or brazen enough to divert borrowed money to crony capitalists to pursue violating laws of nature. Give it a few years, I suppose.
Col Mosby at least has an excuse, he actually believes that electric cars are about to take over the world and he wants something to power them.
Electric cars will become people’s vehicles of choice about the time commercial version of molten salt reactors become the main source of electric energy for the world.
That soon?
Once again, Sid pops up pushing his solution that doesn’t work for a problem that never existed.
Perhaps if we set up a fundme page for Sid, he’ll finally go away?
Emily Holden just tweeted this information:
A cast of high-profile climate advocates are coming together to launch three different efforts to elevate the climate crisis in the 2020 election and highlight president Trump’s failures on the issue.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former secretary of state John Kerry will lead a task force to advise Joe Biden and the Democratic Party on climate change policy. Biden this week announced task forces on six separate issues, aimed at unifying with supporters of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.
Other members of the climate task force include Florida congresswoman Kathy Castor, who leads the select committee on climate; and Obama-era environment chief Gina McCarthy, who now runs the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Another effort, Evergreen Action, will be run by staff from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s presidential campaign. The group says it will provide “an open-source climate policy platform based on Inslee’s ‘gold standard’ climate plan, in order to inspire bold action by the next president and Congress.” Inslee’s ambitious climate plans during the primary paved the way for other candidates to ramp up their own policy
proposals.
“Evergreen is picking up where Gov. Inslee left off: Leading the fight for bold climate policies and a national mobilization to defeat the climate crisis,” said political director Maggie Thomas, who advised both Inslee and senator Elizabeth Warren on climate.
Evergreen launched a policy memo with Data for Progress to lay out a $1.5 trillion “Clean Jumpstart” stimulus plan. A third group, Climate Power 2020, describes itself as “a team of seasoned political strategists, content creators, digital organizers, activists, and communications operatives,” launching “a campaign dedicated to changing the politics of climate in 2020.”
The group’s board includes a number of Obama officials: John Kerry, John Podesta, John Holdren, Gina McCarthy, Ernest Moniz, Samantha Power and Mustafa Ali. It also includes Rhiana Gunn-Wright, co-author of the Green New Deal; Varshini Prakash, founder of the youth-led Sunrise Movement; Jamal Raad, from Evergreen Action; and Maria Urbina, from Indivisible. Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid and philanthropist Tom Steyer are also on the board
Presumably, they are going to try and blame COVID-19 on supposed Climate Change.
I would agree that COVID-19 and Climate Change do have something in common – Junk Science.
The estimated casualties were so overstated that they would make a Climate Scientist blush.
As a result, the lockdown was very poorly thought out.
If New York City is anything to go by, only 600 people under the age of 45 have died. 75% of deaths are in the over 65 age group – retired people.
If these results are accurate, there was no reason to shut schools. Or shut down the economy in general.
“Samantha Power”
That would be the former Obama administration UN ambassador now infamous for her unmasking of Trump administrtion officials. If it is found that her unmasking led to illegally turning over classified information to the leftwing media, then the Board will need to look for someone to replace her until she gets out of jail.
She won’t go to jail. Nobody will.
This is going to be fun! 🙂
Funny, the weather worriers never quote Jevons’s 1865 work. Worth a requote:
“The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear” (p. 122).
Jevons also famously wrote what is the corollary to the uselessness of windmills for modern industrial society. He raised the alarm that Britain’s industrial supremacy would be shortlived because it would run out of coal resources in several decades. So, he was essentially following up on Malthus, on population and scarcity of resources.
These two historical figures had no understanding during their times that human ingenuity is the fundamental resource that has proven itself boundless. They can be excused for being diametrically wrong in their worries, with the unfolding of economies light years beyond their dreams in the 20th Century. Not so for the likes of the Club of Rome flubs of the 60s or the serially wrong Population Bomber, Ehrlich from the 1970s to the present with human ingenuity already in full view.
That we are even having this anxiety and argument about the need for windmills and solar panels to save the planet and having to fight against Luddites of doom to preserve civilization itself, would have surprised both Jevins and Malthus today.
When cruising Facebook I see solar ads galore
I generally will post that before purchasing a solar system one should view Moore new film
Usually my post gets taken down
Big Wind Broken!
I am hoping to see that headline some day when the economics of variable power from windmills is understood.
Oil and natural gas IS renewable. It is being renewed in subduction zones below the earth’s crust under neat and pressure.
If we don’t harvest it, it will just bubble up anyway. Should we try to cap all of the “rogue oil” we find on land and in the oceans? (I hope I didn’t just give an idea to the parasitic grant junkies…)
Oil and natural gas IS a storage battery.
I already put the question to some “leave it in the ground” fanatics. The answer is that since the huge amounts that leak out without human intervention are natural. they are all good.
Michael Moore is obviously unqualified to opine on matters of industrial energy supply. I can’t understand why he was even asked.
Greta Thunberg on the other hand is supremely qualified to pout definitively on any topic whatsoever. Why wasn’t she consulted?
My biggest problem with the AGW construct has always been that they want everyone to accept their WHOLE PACKAGE (the “science”, the “deniers”, the “renewables”, “the subsidies”,”the taxes”, the “Gores & Gretas”, etc etc)
Question any aspect of THE WHOLE PACKAGE and you’re an enemy of The Cause.
I pass on their Set Course Menu thanks very much.
From the article: James Hanse: “Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”
There’s no “almost” about it. It *is* the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.
From the article: “But some conservatives have cheered the film as a refreshing takedown of renewable energy and the environmental movement. Many of them reject the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is heating the planet.”
There is no evidence humans are heating the planet enough to affect the Earth’s weather and there is no overwhelming scientific consensus about the topic. Strike Two!
Unsubstantiated Assertions all the way down.
My old adage: if you are able to build wind and solar power, it means you do not need them. The very fact that you CAN build them indicates that you do not need them.
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-daily-data-summary-deaths-05132020-1.pdf
Here is my source.
Bezos’s $10bn green pledge is a ‘chicken feed’
Could Jeff Bezos become the world’s first trillionaire?
The chief executive of Amazon has seen his fortune go up by more than $20bn since the start of the year. At $143bn (£117bn), his fortune now dwarfs that of rivals. The 56-year-old is one third wealthier than Bill Gates with $106bn. Mark Zuckerberg, in third place, has a fortune of $78bn.
Amazon’s dizzying success – which has accelerated under lockdown – has prompted some US publications to question whether the Amazon founder could one day become the world’s first trillionaire. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/
If Jeff Bezos is the same capitalist that started Amazon 25 years ago, then he should put up his money 2:1 against the cabal of fellow billionaires trying to upend the US economic system that would gut the middle class. Amazon’s growth and continued growth depends almost exclusively on a vibrant, affluent middle class across the West’s democracies. His delivery fleet is and always will necessitate fossil fuel for long-haul trucking and local deliveries. And the same for his Whole Foods, affordable foods depends on affordable fossil fuel energy.
That Leftist cabal is Soros ($8.3B), Bloomberg ($58B), Steyer ($2B), and the Rockefellers ($1B) and a few other worth in the single digits of Billions as well.
For every $1 Billion the Cabal spends on anti-Trump and anti-Republican ads to the election, Bezos could fund $2 billion easily from his personal wealth to stop them and expose the Lies of Bloomberg and his elitists.
Except that Bezos is equally in the tank for the Democrats. Certainly no friend of OrangeManBad.
Yes, capitalism does not tolerate single/central/monopolistic systems, processes, and figureheads, which are suboptimal progressions of quasi-intelligent design.
Anyone who doesn’t realize Climate Change has nothing to do with climate, and everything to do with global socialism movement to concentrate political power away from Free people and into the hands of a few, just isn’t paying attention.
That in a nutshell is why I frequently refer to it as the Climate Scam.
And then there are plenty of egotistical, rentseeking snake-oil salesmen like Mann who have always lent their mendacious skillset to the needs of the elitist-socailists in order to put a faux veneer of science on the scam.
“Anyone who doesn’t realize Climate Change has nothing to do with climate, and everything to do with global socialism movement to concentrate political power away from Free people and into the hands of a few, just isn’t paying attention.”
Well-stated Joel. Global warming/climate change alarmism has always been a false front for totalitarian political objectives – the drive to dictatorship.
For decades, we climate skeptics have argued that global warming alarmism had no credible basis in scientific reality. We wrote paper after paper debunking the warmists’ very-scary falsehoods, but the leaders of the CAGW scam already knew they were lying. That is why the warmists adopted the tactic of refusing to debate the science, instead attacking climate skeptics at a personal level, vilifying us and seeking to harm us professionally and personally. The warmists successfully employed classic Goebbels propaganda tactics, complete with their own brown-shirts, aka green-shirts, to do their dirty work.
The ability to predict is the best objective measure of scientific and technical competence. All the very-scary global warming and climate change predictions made by the climate alarmists, totaling ~50 or more to date, have failed to materialize. Virtually every scary prediction made by global warming alarmists turned out to be false. Nobody should believe them – about anything.
The global warming / climate change alarmists have relied upon the stupidity and gullibility of the average person to sell their falsehoods, and so far it has worked to their advantage.
“but it’s not helping the cause”
I really do think that Mr Mann and quite a number of other ‘scientists’ are in the pay of some higher organisation.
The way he leaps into action like an attack dog when ugly truths are revealed about climate ‘science’ and the environmental movement tells us that it is about much more than just his fanatical political beliefs.
Him and his kind are a disgrace to science.
Do you think that bible quoting extremists are in someone’s pay because they are so quick to condemn some fashion trend, fiction publication, or music performance?
Small modiular molten salt reactors have them ALL beat : cheaper than coal, natural gas , and FAR , FAR more dense than any energy technology and far safer than any energy technology – moltex energy has a very good, simple, easy to build molten salt SMR design and is funded and likely will commercialize berfore 2030. You can build nd install these plants very fast and locate them anywhere – no need for any nearby body of water for cooling. Any discussion of energy tha doesn’t include this technology is not a knowledgeable discussion and not worthy of attention
Now all they have to do is to actually build one, somewhere outside a laboratory.
Wuhan would be nice.
The more wind and solar added the closer we come to realizing it is not a replacement for fossil fuels. Nuclear comes the closest but is not the complete answer. It is a fact that today wind and solar cannot power the planet, or even come close to it, so why continue the charade other than to enrich those who can afford expensive energy and prosper from it and impoverish those who cannot.
A PUBLIC RESPONSE TO THE OPEN LETTER TO PM JUSTIN TRUDEAU BY 265 CANADIAN ACADEMICS
Some 265 academics, overwhelmingly NOT from the technically-competent fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine recently wrote a foolish letter to Canada’s Prime Minister, stating the following false nonsense:
“Instead of purchasing equity in oil and gas, Canadian governments should pursue the retraining of fossil fuel workers, and public ownership of Canada’s renewable energy sector, where government coordination and large-scale investment are needed in the short term and where investments will be repaid.”
The Calgary-based group “Friends of Science“ posted a detailed review of the academics letter, entitled “BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU”, not too subtly suggesting that these academics do not pull-their-weight in the economic spectrum, and were dependent on real wealth-producing enterprises like the energy industry to support their pseudo-intellectual blatherings:
https://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BITING-THE-HAND-THAT-FEEDS-YOU-1.pdf
It is past time that these technologically-innumerate academics learned some basic scientific and economic realities, knowledge that many of us acquire as children:
A GREEN ENERGY PRIMER – GRID-CONNECTED WIND AND SOLAR ENERGY BOTH FAIL DUE TO INTERMITTENCY AND DIFFUSIVITY.
INTERMITTENCY means the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow 24/7, and the electric grid needs reliable dispatchable generation, not generation that goes up and down uncontrollably. Battery storage is touted as the solution, but it does not economically exist at grid-scale.
DIFFUSIVITY means it takes far too much land area to replace conventional energy with wind and/or solar generation – it would take fully ~10% of all the land area in Britain to do so. In the USA, this 10% would total about 300,000 square miles, or all of Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
Energy experts have known these facts since ~forever. In 2002 my co-authors and I published the following statements that have both proven correct–to-date:
a. “Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
b. “The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
“DEBATE ON THE KYOTO ACCORD”
Published by APEGA in the PEGG, reprinted by other professional journals, The Globe and Mail and La Presse,
by Dr. Sallie Baliunas (Harvard-Smithsonian), Dr. Tim Patterson (Carleton U) and Allan MacRae, November 2002
Since then, trillions of dollars of scarce global resources have been squandered on worthless green energy schemes that are not green and produce little useful (dispatchable) energy. The result of this green energy virtue-signalling has been the destabilization of electrical grids, runaway energy costs, energy poverty, increased winter deaths, and INsignificant reduction in CO2 emissions. What a foolish green debacle!
I also suggest they read the following paper. In the unlikely event that they become even marginally competent, they will reverse their erroneous positions on climate and energy, and retract their imbecilic letter.
THE CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING (CAGW) AND THE HUMANMADE CLIMATE CHANGE CRISES ARE PROVED FALSE
By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc.(Eng.), M.Eng., January 10, 2020
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/the-catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming-cagw-and-the-humanmade-climate-change-crises-are-proved-false.pdf
“There are numerous highly credible observations that falsify the CAGW hypothesis and many are listed herein, but as Albert Einstein famously stated “One would be enough”.“
Respectfully submitted,
Allan MacRae, Calgary
“…Dowlais Ironworks, employing a total engine power of 7,308 horses”
Horses are unable to work 7 days a week 24 hours a day which means the factory would need at least 14,600 horses plus the handlers, harnesses, stables, food, and ability to remove all the manure. It is environmental though: https://stephenliddell.co.uk/2017/09/11/the-great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894/
“Wait, wait–a lot of us do not “reject the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is heating the planet.” Moderate warming, along with CO2 fertilization of plant life, has distinct positives that dilutes, if not refutes, the cause of climate alarmism. But this is another story.”
it’s not an opinion survey.
you have to look at what the data says.
that’s the only thing that matters.
“Climate Scientists Try to Rescue Renewable Energies from ‘Planet of the Humans”
But who will rescue science from the climate scientists?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/04/22/climate-science-uncertainty/
ironically promoting the agenda of the fossil fuel industry.
Straw-clown apologetics. The alternative is not hydrocarbons, but a basket of resources and technologies selected to best fit their applications.
Everybody should just relax and ignore Zoe. Nobody can be that STUPID. She’s just trying to get everybody wound up.
I’m sorry, but I believe that people who think they are smarter than everyone else, including those who have studied the relevant issues for their whole lives, using the scientific method, are indeed that stupid. To include especially Zoe.
What happened to Forbes? I thought Steve Forbes was a conservative, but for the last couple of years I’ve seen nothing but leftist hit pieces. This one is the latest. I couldn’t get past the first few paragraphs where the author just waves off the issuee that intermittent renewables cannot supply baseliad power. Apperantly the author knows something all of humanity doesn’t know.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2020/05/13/what-michael-moores-new-climate-documentary-gets-wrong-about-renewables/amp/
Australia’s green activism cut its teeth on stopping a hydro-electric dam in Tasmania back in the 1980s, with the first prominent greenie being elected to the federal parliament.
Hydro is still the one Australian ‘renewable energy source’ that makes much commercial sense.
Decades later, a proposal for a wind farm in NW Tasmania met with no support from the same prominent greenie due to its ‘wilderness’ location.
The proposed site in coastal NW Tasmania is one of just a few windy spots in southern Australia where a wind farm makes any commercial sense at all.
In between these two events, Tasmanian greenies largely destroyed the state’s timber industry. The prominent greenie has been filmed using firewood in his bush holiday shack.
Tasmania needed a new pulp mill to supply Australia with paper and Tasmanians with jobs, but thanks to him and his ilk, it didn’t get one.
Timber is a renewable resource, the harvesting of which makes commercial sense, especially as Australia imports timber.
However, the greatest renewable resource has been the gullibility of the electorate to this hypocrisy. The greenie led a cavalcade of internal combustion engine cars from Tasmania to Queensland to protest about a mine where the coal is destined to provide Indians electricity.
That makes no sense at all, commercially or progressively.
Thanks to greenies, Australia is barely making any cents either. Scratch a hardened greenie and you’ll find their support for renewable resources is often a very thin veneer. Eventually, the green left will destroy itself as some rebel against the hypocrisy.
For The ordinary mortal trying to follow the intricacies of this debate the solution is obvious. The marine industry sorted it all out years ago. Namely:
If you want to achieve a steady and reliable speed when crossing oceans, it cannot be done with renewable energy. Today, if you want to achieve a steady and reliable GDP /economy when crossing the world it also cannot be achieved with renewable energy.
It is obvious and doesn’t need a bank of computers to prove.