By Vijay Jayaraj
Fossil fuels are destroying our planet. Big oil is evil. Coal is an addiction. These are hyperbolic statements uttered without basis in the public square as we continue with lifestyles dependent on hydrocarbons and their derivatives.
This dissonance exists cognitively in individuals whose choices are inconsistent with their thinking. Another dissonance manifests itself as elites who are wedded to an apocalyptic climate vision fearmongering to people who are just fine with their “high-carbon lives.”
Whatever one thinks about hydrocarbons, nobody can deny the sheer ubiquity of the things produced through their use as an energy source or feedstock.
From the plastic in smartphones to the synthetic fibers in clothing, from life-saving medical equipment to the asphalt on roads, petroleum-based products are woven into the fabric of modern life. Even the components of many “green” technologies, such as solar panels and wind turbines, are made with materials derived from fossil fuels.
In a document stating that petrochemicals are the basis for more than 6,000 everyday products, the U.S. Department of Energy lists a fraction of them to make the point of their prevalence.
The success of the climate industrial complex in demonizing coal, oil and natural gas despite their enormous benefits speaks to the broadness of the alarmists’ network: career politicians, unelected international political organizations, media houses, government-funded scientists in academia and corporate CEOs addicted to subsidies. All this is fed by an education system that puts ideological indoctrination ahead of inculcation of independent thought to beget complaisant minds.
Yet, this schizophrenic relationship to hydrocarbons may not run as deeply as it sometimes seems. Despite the crescendo calling for a rapid transition to solar and wind, global consumption of fossil fuels continues to climb. That is because the alternatives are neither affordable nor dependable.
In 2023, the world set new records for hydrocarbon consumption. This trend is not limited to developing nations struggling to industrialize like China and India; it’s equally evident in some of the world’s most advanced economies.
The U.S. was the world’s largest oil producer in 2023, with an average of 12.9 million barrels per day (b/d), breaking the previous U.S. global record of 12.3 million b/d set in 2019. Norway, often hailed as a leader in environmental policy, issued hundreds of new drilling permits for oil and gas exploration in 2024.
Dependence on fossil fuels is not waning; it’s intensifying at a rate never seen before.
Aramco CEO Amin Nasser says, “Global South is likely to see significant growth in oil demand for a long time…. If so, more than 100 million barrels per day would realistically still be required by 2050… This is a stark contrast with those predicting that oil will, or must, fall to just 25 million barrels per day by then…. Being short 75 million barrels every day would be devastating for energy security and affordability.”
Meanwhile, the preachers of the anti-fossil fuel gospel live hypocritically, enjoying fossil fuel-guzzling private jets and lavish sea-front mansions. That their affluence rests on an economic bedrock of fossil fuels is not lost on impoverished countries seeking betterment through the use of hydrocarbons as they are pressured to adopt “green” policies.
Even if the findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports are accepted, the predictions of harm from global warming are overblown. According to the IPCC, the cost of a warmer planet would be in the range of 2-4% of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2100 – a tiny amount considering that the average person is expected to be much richer by then and the cost of “green” policies are likely to impoverish entire nations.
Every major economy thriving today was built on fossil fuels. Their contributions in the areas of energy, transportation, construction, agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare and more have produced unprecedented levels of prosperity, health and life expectancy.
Moreover, the increase in atmospheric CO2 from the combustion of hydrocarbons has been a boon, greening vast areas of Earth and producing record crop harvests to feed billions of people.
It’s past time to abandon the climate myth and embrace fossil fuels for the gifts that they are.
This commentary was first published at BizPac Review on October 28, 2024.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
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Earth knew. Starving and freezing is an alternative.
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What’s missing in Vijay Jayaraj’s article is any mention about the fact that fossil fuels are finite.
As time goes by and fossil resources become scarce, what’s the plan?
There is no “plan.”
Before there can be any plan, we must first stop the insanity.
There are discoveries yet to be made. One only need look at the history of technology evolution to appreciate that there will be new discoveries that will open doors.
It’s a big planet. I bet the biggest fossil fuel resources have yet to be discovered.
Yep.
Oh dear. Its easy to say that from a position of total ignorance, but oil and coal and gas companies are not stupid and they have been looking for more, for years.
Relying on discoveries of as yet undiscovered resources is as bad as relying on as yet undiscovered grid scale battery technologies. To Make Renewables Great Again.
Sensible people work with the world as it is now.
Sensible people wouldn’t be wasting the “finite” resources to produce worse-than-useless windmills and solar panels.
Except they are not worth than useless
We get more useful energy out of renewables than fossil fuels
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/we-get-more-useful-energy-out-of-renewables-than-fossil-fuels/
In the interest of reducing stupidity, I took five minutes to read the link
Quote
On average, renewables would need a final EROI of less than 5 to be competitive with fossil fuels. The absolute worst value is for natural gas products, whereas renewables would need a final EROI of a bit over 10 to be competitive in energy terms.
Comment
The authors admit that under their scenario natural gas is the “competition”. The slight of hand is they state that the cost of recovering the natural gas from the earth is excluded. This then, in the interest of fair and balanced, allows them to also ignore the cost of extracting the energy required to mine, process and manufacture the solar panels and wind turbines.
They use the familiar ethanol argument for efficiency: Set the energy boundary at the input to the fermenter in the ethanol plant instead of at the diesel for the plowing, planting, spraying, irrigating, cultivating, harvesting and transporting for the corn. In the real world ethanol requires somewhere between 5-7 times more hydrocarbon fo produce the carbohydrate than the carbohydrate yields as competitive transportation fuel. The authors of this link ignore the billion tons of coal consumed every year to convert raw silica into ultra-pure polysilicon required for solar panels (and more).
Not to mention that the wind turbine gears are not going to spin very well without lubrication. Of course, we could always use whale oil for that.
Whale oil is too light. Tallow would be better.
And the billions of tons of coke for smelting iron ore. And the many million of liters of Diesel for mining the ore and transporting it to the smelter.
Thanks for that. Unsurprising that username would double down on the same deception – claiming how cheap or effective wind and solar are by conveniently ignoring most of the costs and energy inputs, not to mention the required backup.
That is a total lie. Since unreliables are not-dispatchable they are worse than useless by making the grid unstable. This forces us to use even more fossil fuel in mainly gas turbine generators to stabilize the grid. Since CO2 is not an issue there is absolutely no need to reduce it, in fact the world would be better if we increased the CO2 level further.
Around that area – for Ontario
“Absolutely insane that the sliver of green at the top: solar and wind, funded by feed in tarrifs under the Green Energy Act, cost Ontario more in inflation adjusted dollars than the capital cost of our entire CANDU nuclear fleet in light blue.
This is one of the great scandals of our time. ”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GbOGs72XMAASAQE?format=png&name=small
ROFLMAO.. We get VERY LITTLE useful energy out of renewables.
It is totally impossible to build, maintain or power a civilisation using just wind and solar.
Why are you so mindless that you constantly fall for these propaganda nonsense sites. !
They can’t even build a wind or solar farm with wind or solar energy.
Arstechnica should be renamed Arzwhole – they are one of the most egregiously stupid sources of energy information on the Interwebs.
Get lost, stinking troll.
Yes they are. Germany built, in capacity terms, wind and solar totalling nearly double their PEAK electricity demand (150GW vs. peak demand of 80 GW).
For that colossal waste of resources, they got LESS THAN 30% of their electricity from the worse-than-useless wind and solar.
Plus among THE HIGHEST ELECTRICITY PRICES in the world and a much less reliable grid.
Permian Basin, pre-salt in Brazil, Flemish cap in Newfoundland, Surinam, Namibia, and the unexplored East coast of the US.
There’s oil and gas all over the place.
Australia has barely touched the huge reserves of coal and gas it has available, given the political will.
Not to mention large deposits of Uranium and Thorium.
Quite so, only what obbeys the laws of physics and respects the known properties of matter can work . No discoveries are likely that defy the laws of physics, and in particular the realities of enrgy density and the ability to scale generation to meet demand, on demand.
What other energy source offers a replacement for fossil fuels at a similar or greater energy density, which also determines the cost of output, etc. Not fusion for sure. At least a Century, if then. And fission is just getting sorted as regards fault tolerant designs and build costs. Making stuff up as you go along when the realities and alternatives are well known is as ignorant as claiming weak intermittent energy can replace fossil energy and power a developed economy. Renewables can make enough energy for the elites and their electric cars and private jets, as long as they can reduce our energy use in active travel 15 minute concentration camp cities with some dystopian pre industrial neo slavery life-style for the rest of us.
No questions asked or allowed, believe and do what you’re told or disappear, elections decided by government computers, and laws made without consent or debate of the real issues and needs allowed. Because they aren’t for our benefit. As is already being imposed in Western democracies as the removal of our prosperity and freedoms justified by a tranparent lie about the amount of cliamte change, its true cause and what the overtly regressive cure for a non problem should be when the phsyics says it can never work.
And these laws attack and pricing enrgy beyond the reach of the masses reduces our fundamental freedoms in every aspect if life, by laws we did not ask for or want. Taking your cheap plentiful energy away is key to the programme of disempowering the masses, reversing the democratic economic progress of the last 75 years since WW2 that is uniquely dependent on cheap plentiful energy, available on demand at whatever scale is required. The elites really find democracy uncomfortable when people begin to question the laws they make in our name to profit from and control us. So they are taking the prosperity cheap energy brings away from us, by more laws made in our name. You are voting for them….CEng, CPhys.
The Russians claim that there 500,000 million metric tons of oil in Antarctic basin in the British sector. If they are right, we have nothing to worry about.
“plan”
That’s the problem right there. Central planning always fails because no one could possibly know what products billions of people might want decades in the future. The opportunity costs induced by central planning impoverish economies and nations. Have you noticed that stores have plentiful supplies of pumpkins today, and will have plentiful supplies of turkeys one month hence? “Plans” don’t accomplish that; prices and markets in a capitalist free enterprise system do.
The plan is that as they run out, and price goes up, other forms of energy will compete- without subsidies- just like every other industry in a capitalist society.
It would be if government fiddling with subsidies and tax breaks, carbon credits and interest rates and regulations hadn’t skewed the market heavily in favour of useless expensive alternatives
Amen, Joe. When a resource “runs out,” it doesn’t just go to zero immediately. It goes through a gradual decline that allows other sources to make up the difference. Sounds logical, no?
We have had civilisation for 5,000 years. In that time we have found and used many different resources.
None have ever run out – in terms of their depletion having limited our abilities. None, ever.
OK, we have fewer Great Auk feathers but we replaced them with other birds.
That cannot be a coincidence. We cannot have gotten away with it every single time by mere luck. And it isn’t a coincidence.
As supply becomes scarce, prices go up, funding alternative means of developing those resources or finding other resources. No-one bothers looking for alternatives to abundantly supplied, cheap resources. Why would they?
So lump Peak Oil with the running out of Zinc and the other Limits to Growth scares that are all derived from the Malthusian Fallacy.
It has never happened. It is not happening.
And it will not happen.
Sadly in Western Europe we have already run out of all fossil fuels. You have to go as far as east Germany and Poland to find coal, and there is sod all natural gas left in the North Sea.
USA is not the whole world. In fact is an edge case.
The only countries with serious oil and gas left are Iran Russia and the USA.
As for coal, that would be Canada Australia and the USA – and Ukraine Poland and Russia.
Saying silly things like ‘we will never run out’ simply is not true. We will, and here in Europe, we pretty much have.
Which is why Europe is ahead of the USA on new nuclear, and so is the far East
Two overly expensive projects is not far ahead. Where Europe is far ahead is renewables.
and their message to citizens is –
“the electricity cost punishment will continue until morale improves”?
“Where Europe is far ahead is renewables.”
And it is totally destroying their hinterland and economy.
They are “well ahead” on electricity prices too ! 😉
Only reason nuclear got expensive in the USA and Europe is because of green tape interference.
Pebble bed reactor now on line for commercial production of electricity in China.
Now they know how to build one, look to a rapid expansion and the cessation of all the waste that are new wind and solar.
Thus entirely proving my point.
Britain has plenty of coal and probably oil and gas which can be developed by frakking. And it can be imported from areas that have it.
Japan has little in the way of natural resources yet became an industrial power, despite having a lack of resources in its own backyard.
Leo. One of the reasons Europe doesn’t have natural gas resources is because horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking is illegal. Germany even denied a permit for a pilot plant to test feasibility. Yes, only essentially inexhaustible nuclear is the only long term energy answer; but until SMR’s become widely deployed Europe should at least attempt to exploit any economically recoverable natural gas.
They’d rather commit suicide it seems.
There’s enough stupidity in Washington for the whole world. In fact, it seems to be limitless.
Check out the Simon abundance Index. Which everyone in an educated developed society should know the facts of as a voting citzen in a democaracy. BuUt most are too selfish and/or stupid and/or gullible to check, which is why they are ruled by people who can lie to them without even checking the facts, because they know the lumpen prletariat won’t, and impose easy money for insiders solutions to non problems they pay academics to create, when, if they applied what they learnt in high school, they could understand how blatantly fraudulent and corrupt their goverments are. The people who vote for the end of their cheap energy dependent prosperity, which is causing no harm to the planet in measurable fact, are compliant in allowing the loss of the freedoms the wealth from cheap plentiful energy bought them. The people, and their lazy and studied ignorance of economic and technological reality they were taught at school (no longer taught so even less people can understand), are the problem.
You present a false dichotomy. We can continue to use fossil fuels while looking for alternatives. Nobody said stop all R&D, we will just use oil.
We have over a century of history of scares over running out of oil.
With sufficient energy, we can make anything from the chemical elements or some molecular feedstock, including CO2.
Steve says:”As time goes by and fossil resources become scarce…”
How much time? Hundreds if not thousand of years of coal. Thousands of years of methane. A switch to nuclear for electricity will extend those out some unknown multiple of years.
Exactly. Relying on the energy sources that could only only support feudal agrarian economies can only return them to such economies. The level of ignorance of the physical realities of energy intensity , scalability and intermittency in this forum is alarming. And the real reserves, and the likely new reserves and extraction technologies that running out elsewhere keeps turning up.
So many statements made by people with opinions the facts do not support, with no effort made to check the easily found data. We have more than enough available fossil resources to energise a sensible replacement of fossil by nuclear where it works best, obviously in electrical generation, and later in synthetic hydrocarbons where required, perhaps to conserve gas for heating in colder countries and oil for transport outside of cities, in the air, where it is uniquely capable and cheapest. etc…. people are just so ignorant of the facts of natural resources and the energy we can extract from them, at what cost. Perhaps solar in desert counries for the aircon, where ourput matches demand, and if nature does not destroy them before their supposed life span………. etc.
By 2100 we’ll be mostly nuclear or we will long be short of affordable essential minerals fed into the wind/solar/battery nonsense decades before we have the slightest hint of oil and gas depletion.
By 2100 most everyone reading this will be dead. The dead don’t worry about life’s details.
The plan is for the markets to sort it out as they always do. If fossil fuel demand exceeds production, prices will increase. At some point, production will rise towards demand. If oil and gas producers cannot invest enough capital to make supply equal demand, prices will go up even more. In which case, consumption will go down until supply and demand are balanced again.
Warmunists have been predicting “peak oil” for many decades and they have always been wrong. Perhaps some day they will be right, and we really have reached a plateau in oil and gas production.
At that point, prices for oil and gas will be high enough to stimulate other sources of energy. Nuclear is certainly part of that picture, though nukes will only generate electric power not power individual vehicles, ships, and aircraft. By that point – we are talking many decades from now – electric motive power will have been optimized a great deal from where they are now. Perhaps hydrogen will make sense for vehicles.
Who knows, perhaps someone will develop a nuclear vehicle that is cheap and safe.
But no matter what, markets as aided by technology are going to determine what happens via the law of supply and demand, which can never be repealed. Dictators and authoritarians keep assuming they can manipulate the markets, but they always lose in the end.
So is lithium, cobalt, copper etc.
Why do people who are alive today think it is their prerogative to plan for the unborn future generations?
Burn all the coal, oil and gas while you can. Then switch to nuclear. That was the plan. It was a good one given the resources.
Just because socialists don’t like the plan doesn’t mean anything. We could always go back to wood, tallow and whale oil.
With the size of the world population , whale oil would very soon be depleted…
… and the modern Greenies wouldn’t care.
If the keep building offshore wind farms, their won’t be any whales to source whale oil from.
Nuclear is cheapest of all on LCOE (lifetime cost), per IEA, causes least environmental damage, uses less natural resources per unit energy than any other energy source, is scalable to any demand level while humans are likely to be viable on the earth, and is available 24/7 at almost no marginal cost of generation.
Hydrocarbons can by synthesied if required, its ineffeicient BUT the energy source is effectivley limitless, and can also desalinate seaswater and all the other energy intesne things things. So there is no crisis and the solution to gradual decline in fossil energy as extraction becomes more difficult is easy to build, as the Chinese show us with the nuclear power stations they build every year, as well as all the coal fired ones.
All you need for prosperous developed economy is the technology to generate and use cheap plentiful energy to make stuff we need. Nuclear is that future energy. They don’t like it because it solves the supposed problem without the impositon of controls on how we travel, heat our homes, and the amount of wealth we can genrtae that makes us free and questioning of them. And there is no easy subsidy money for the elites in the inside of the climate change protection rackets by way of the protection money subsidy rackets.
It’s zero CO2 if that mattered, it obviously doesn’t. They don’t want the supposed problem sold.
PS I am told most of the Saudi wells are capped when they stop producing under their own pressure. That leaves c.80% in the ground that can be extracted by pumping or pressurising the wells. And then there is all the shale gas and shale oil waiting to be extracted when the woke idiots and government and politician energy fraudsters have been removed from office, clutching our subsidy billions.
POINT: Nuclear is a far better way to generate plentiful, cheap, clean electrical energy so we should be preferring it for electrical generation everywhere, and fattening the grid to electrify some uses over the next century, because we need to keep oil for chemicals such as plastics, transport outside of cities for sure, and for most shipping and vehicles, particularly larger trucks that carry significant loads. Big ships will be powered by Nuclear SMRs..
So rumours of peak oil are premature. We have time if we roll out nuclear progressively and increasingly expand the grid to electrify what really needs electrifying, what makes most sense, not everything, which is complete BS on any joined up assessment of the realities in the different climates of the World, and for any application which is mobile and uses batteries as the energy store. Heating is static use and could be electric IF costs were reduced to the price of gas, but we have lot of clean gas which converts to energy at over 90% effecincy, when making electricity with it is only 50% efficient at best. etc. In haste. CEng, CPhys.
The plan is to increase nuclear for stationary energy and conserve out oil and gas for transportation. When oil gets scarce the price will go up and the market will switch to liquid fuels from natural gas and coal for transportation.
This should be adequate for about 1000 years from known reserves and longer from undiscovered reserves. IF THE MARKET IS ALLOWED TO WORK?
Of course that’s associating CO2 with climate change and we’re not ready for that yet.
Just cross out the words “from the combustion of hydrocarbons,” since that is superfluous. Increasing atmospheric CO2, from ANY source, is a boon.
This seems to be overly pessimistic reporting. IPCC SR15 Chapter 3 (page 256) suggests that “Under the no-policy baseline scenario, temperature rises by 3.66°C by 2100, resulting in a global gross domestic product (GDP) loss of 2.6%.”
It’s hard to see any scenario where the growth in the next three quarters of a century doesn’t dwarf the impact of Climate Change.
This is important as the high costs of fighting climate change today are only justified on the grounds of a better tomorrow.
But that is not justified by mainstream science – as published by the IPCC.
Do they ever estimate lost growth from fighting climate change?
How do fight climate change? That is, how you do change the weather for the next 30 years?
And the 3.66 degrees is utter nonsense in any event.
Yes, and note the implied precision, which is always an indication that we’re being fed a load of bull.
As is the GDP loss even in their moronic scenario.
A 3.6C rise would open up vast areas of the far north for development and food production.
Solar & Wind Cheaper & Cheaper — New Reports
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/10/28/solar-wind-cheaper-cheaper-new-report/
But just pay more for outdated forms of electricity generation. 😛
The moment oil prices go up because most oil isn’t used for burning in oversized emotional support vehicles, we will switch to cheaper non oil alternatives for most applications.
Your so-called new reports are so very tired and jaded.
You seem to lack the Goebbels touch with propaganda.
Goebbels made sure to take care of his family before he committed suicide.
I thought his Frau was way more ideological than he was. She did the children.
Oh, sorry, in any case it was a family affair, all in the family. Was she an eco loon like he?
Apparently, she couldn’t bear the idea of her children growing up without National Socialism and the leader
By “take care of his family” do you mean how Michael “took care” of Fredo?
Yeah, kind of like that, or what Canada’s healthcare system is becoming.
Dear Dumbass, do you believe everyone else is more stupider than you? [sic] Why would anyone pay more for outdated electricity generation? If your renewables cost less, everyone would buy them.
And this is what happens. And what will happen with EVs. Looks like we are finally on the same page. So maybe we can ditch the pro-fossil shill articles and get some reality in here?
What happens is your bluff gets called every time.
Ideologies like yours are expensive and produce only white elephants
“Car maker Mercedes Benz said its profits fell 54%….in the period July to September due to slowing electric vehicle sales and falling demand in China…….sales in China fell 13 per cent”
UK i Newspaper 26 Oct 24
What’s happening with EVs is they are piling up because NOBODY WANTS THEM.
Nobody wants a bomb with a lithium fuse in their garage. Or an exploding EV bicycle in an elevator.
Change that to “Nobody sane……”
EVs are powered by COAL in China… didn’t you know that. ?
They are manufactured and powered using FOSSIL FUELS.
More to the point, if renewables DID THE JOB, people would build them WITHOUT government MANDATES, SUBSIDIES, AND TAX CREDITS all being awarded to the “investors” at taxpayer expense.
Stop post stupid bullshit!!!
There have been many detailed articles showing that wind and solar are unreliable and creates large price increases.
You are offered two choices for a car to take you wherever you need or want to go at any time.
Car A runs on gasoline. It operates at any time under essentially any conditions, has a range of hundreds of miles, and can be refueled in about 5 minutes.
Car B only works when the wind is blowing at sustained speeds between 6 and 49 miles per hour with the wind blowing in the direction of travel, OR if there is bright sunshine AND the time is between 11AM and 2PM. Otherwise it does not operate.
Car B is cheaper than Car A.
Which car do you want?
Car A is always much cheaper car B.
In reality, yes, but using the false metrics username uses to suggest otherwise continues to ignore another elephant in the room, which is the complete lack of utility of “Car B,” even if it were cheaper.
User. If there was prize for the most groundless statements ever about the cost of RE (Ruinous Energy) your link with these three statements would be the clear winner. I can’t remember anything more ridiculous and I worked in the energy business for 46 years and since my retirement 14 years ago I’ve spent thousands of hours on the internet researching and blogging about climate and energy:
copy
“By 2060, utility-scale solar LCOE is expected to decline by an average of 60%, driven by advancements in cell technology, and increased production capacity for key components like polysilicon.
Onshore wind in the U.S. is projected to see a 42% reduction in LCOE, underscoring the long-term competitiveness of renewables in the region.
However, offshore wind faces short-term cost pressures but will see a significant LCOE reduction of up to 67% by 2060, highlighting its growing role in the future energy mix.”
Comment
Solar is a mature technology and the cell technology is a small part of overall costs. Current silica to ultra-pure polysilicon requires about a billion tons of coal/lignite annually. As coal becomes a smaller part of the energy mix energy costs will increase. China currently has about 4 times more solar production capacity than demand. Higher cost manufactures will be out of business by 2040 and the remaining producers will be able to increase prices. Everyone paying attention knows that China is currently selling PV at far below replacement cost.
Onshore wind is limited by transportation restrictions to 5 MW turbines and cannot benefit from new size increases. NIMBY is so extensive that U.S wind last year lost market share to solar and CCGT, this trend should be expected to continue.
Offshore wind, the authors admit “faces short-term cost pressures”. Well yes, that’s the grain of truth in the link, but a 67% increase in price is reasonable. A 67% DECREASE by 2060? Get out of here.
Twenty years ago the PRC made the decision to undercut every PV manufacturer outside of China, including the US, Europe, Korea, and Japan. The list of PV manufacturers that have given up since then is long.
More mindless propaganda pap from a gullible little child. Thanks for the laugh, Luser.
Wind and solar are NOT forms of electricity generation at night when there is no wind.
They are actually just a totally WASTE OF RESOURCES.
That is what drives me BONKERS about some people who knock FF and then use them every day!
You use renewables every day…
I’ve noticed that you’re grounded in a virtue signaling fantasy.
Scientifically, mainly because of the second law, renewables don’t even exist. Sure we can recycle some things but in many cases it is more economical to make virgin product.
I promote the transition to renewable, or however you want to call them. I was only pointing out yor argument is weak – but maybe I was too subtle?
I think you were replying to J Boles, whose point is correct in any case.
Wind and solar are not renewable they are unreliable and useless without hot spinning backup.
“I promote the transition to renewable”
No, your comments make a MOCKERY of transition to renewables…
… because they are uniformly based of mindless propaganda and a total departure from reality.
There IS NO ‘TRANSITION’ to renewables. And never will be.
Without fossil fuels, you couldn’t manufacture, transport, erect, maintain, demolish, transport to landfills and bury worse-than-useless windmills and solar panels, nor provide the NECESSARY backup for when they don’t work (more often than they do).
But I could do without ruinables, and you could NOT do without FF.
Touché.
Don’t feed the troll.
None of us would do so voluntarily if the true costs are known.
But you do not RELY on them. Wind and solar are a small additive.. NOT a reliable dispatchable supply
On a windless night, NO-ONE can use wind and solar, because there isn’t any. !
preachers
The new clerisy: Educated people considered as a group; the literati. The elites.
For it is written: “”Humans are a ‘plague on Earth’: Sir David Attenborough”” https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/humans-are-a-plague-on-earth-sir-david-attenborough-warns-that-negative-effects-of-population-growth-will-come-home-to-roost-8461570.html
The new dark green religion is most unforgiving.
Attenborough has been a patron for the Optimum Population Trust since April 2009.
“All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder – and ultimately impossible – to solve with ever more people” https://populationmatters.org
What a….
He apparently is Agent Smith of Matrix fame…
Land wars in Europe are a good thing then…
This story does not talk about dissonance. This article is describing and addressing what should be called ‘fear porn’. Fear porn provides what are accepted as ‘facts’ by a mass of people who have been civilized in a society that is covered in a false veil of ‘high trust’. The primary failing of the mass of people is their refusal to think for themselves, which has also been caused by the ‘civilizing influence’ currently in power. Once the fear porn has reached these people and triggered their emotional response, they are lost to logic and actual truths.
Scream all you want with actual facts, rationale, logic and rebuttals, their wall of emotion is impervious.
Tell them why it is bad in terms that would appeal to their emotional concerns, at the level that overcomes the stupid AGW crap. In order to get through you have to literally get them angry and/or fearful. Good luck.
All very well to embrace fossil fuels, bur in the UK that means buying them from Arabs or Russians.
Neither of whom are very happy with us right now.
And if the Donald wins, he isn’t going to be happy with us either.
We need nuclear. shitloads of it
You have loads of gas by investing in fracking and lots of coal.
No it doesn’t. It requires frakking to get what’s right under your feet.
“It’s past time to abandon the climate myth and embrace fossil fuels for the gifts that they are.”
The climate myth, as stated here, is rooted in the misconception that a rising concentration of CO2 or other non-condensing GHGs in the atmosphere must be expected to drive surface temperature up by forcing absorbed energy to accumulate in the land + ocean + atmosphere system as sensible heat. This is incorrect and always has been.
Among skeptics of climate danger, the self-described “lukewarmers” hold the view that one should expect some warming, but it will most likely be beneficial, not harmful. OK, but without intending any disrespect, even that view is based on assumptions that cannot be confirmed.
What then? Take proper account of the known dynamics of the general circulation, and the influence of the formation and dissipation of clouds on longwave radiation to space. One then realizes that the static radiative effect of incremental non-condensing GHGs cannot be isolated for reliable attribution of any of the reported warming. The observed conditions imply dynamic self-regulation in regard to GHGs. There is no good reason remaining to expect ANY “warming” (i.e. accumulation of energy as sensible heat) to result from rising concentrations of CO2, CH4, N2O, or any of the other non-condensing compounds for which IR absorption has been characterized.
Therefore to most effectively bust the myth, skeptics should show that the core claim has been unsound all along. And stop conceding the circular “forcing” + “feedback” framing of the investigation of climate system responses to emissions.
My aim in comments here at WUWT, on X, and at this Youtube channel is to do so as directly as possible. The sources are the NOAA visualizations of the GOES “CO2 Longwave IR” Band 16 radiance data, and the ERA5 computed estimates of the “vertical integral of energy conversion.” There are four short time-lapse videos. Please take the time to fully read the description text at each video.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI8vhRIT-3uaLhuaIZq2FuQ
A magnificent post. Vijay is right on the mark.
Calling hydrocarbons fossil fuels is sloppy science. It is unproved theory.
The problem is Vijay is singing to the choir, the congregation doesn’t hear a word due or thanks to the level of preaching.