This is more absurd than the usual drivel from ClimateDepot:
We need to redefine sustainable development as oil, gas, coal
It's not enough to bash in heads, you have to bash in minds
This is more absurd than the usual drivel from ClimateDepot:
We need to redefine sustainable development as oil, gas, coal
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.
Regardless of one’s attitude to fossil fuels there’s simply no way to describe that option as sustainable.
What does the word “fossil” imply? Any clue there about the provenance of the ergs?
Morano: …oil, gas, coal — energy that works and energy that lifts people out of poverty.
For a little while, then =splat= back into the mud. Aren’t we planning on being around more than another 1/2 millennium?
Let’s use China as a metaphor for the modern world and where Morano’s imagination takes us.
China’s a civilization (more or less, over time) that’s been around for roughly 3,000 years. Let’s suppose that by some miracle China had made a “great leap forward” and tapped into hydrocarbons 2,500 years ago. Leveraging their advantages, they quickly come to own all the hydrocarbon resources on the planet. China exploits hydrocarbon reserves at the pace we know by our own experience will happen. Unfortunately China makes no plans for the future, assuming instead that somehow their supply of hydrocarbons is limitless.
How would the Chinese civilization be doing today? Failing having provided for their future, their civilization would have collapsed long ago.
Duh.
There is so much wrong with Morano’s statement but I think this part takes the cake.
The other thing that really bugs me about Morano is his symbolization as a lack of attention to alternative uses for hydrocarbons and what the impact will be of mindlessly burning the HC endowment we have. This is in keeping of course w/monetizing the resource as fast as possible; what better way to drive demand than to con customers into burning your product as rapidly as you can supply it?
We tried the same thing with wood but it turned out there were many better uses for forests and forest products than turning them to ash.
Hydrocarbons are expensive to manufacture. Burning the hydrocarbon endowment we have is going to make our energy substitution problem even more difficult because the molecules we get for “free” now are going to have to be jammed together later, using energy from (???).
If we had perfect knowledge and perfect imagination and better inhibitions on our ambition for easy material wealth 100 years ago we’d have planned the combustion phase of hydrocarbon exploitation to be as brief as possible, strictly resorted to this crudity as a miraculously fortunate springboard, something to be terminated at the first opportunity. We’d have used our amazing gratuitous boost to make a civilization that could better scale.
Instead we’re burning down the house.
I’m always perversely amused by the references to “lifting the poor out of poverty.” Because if there’s one thing we can be certain motivates Morano, Inhofe, Monckton, the Kochs, etc. it’s ending poverty in the third world. Those folks will give them all the fossil fuels they can afford to purchase.
Kinda cute that Morano is coming around to Obama’s view of things.
In the 2010 SOTU, Obama defined “clean energy”: “to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies….”
In 2011, he suggested that “clean energy” amounts to whatever “some folks” want: “tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all…”
Well, at least he “just” called these energy sources “clean”, not “sustainable”…so…
No worries, he’s getting there. This year, in conjunction with borrowing the McCain/Palin 2008 “all of the above” mantra, his fancy Blue Print for Energy seeming to revel in the heightened meaningless of language, communication, stuff, now throwing the term “renewable” on the bonfire of absurdity:
“By 2035, 80% of the nation’s electricity will come from clean sources, including renewable energy sources like wind, solar, biomass, hydropower, nuclear power, efficient natural gas, and clean coal.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/blueprint_for_an_america_built_to_last.pdf
Proud to say this US energy leadership has borne fruit:
“Energy from gas power stations has been rebranded as a green, low-carbon source of power by a €80bn European Union program, in a triumph of the deep-pocketed fossil fuel industry lobby over renewable forms of power.
In a secret document seen by the Guardian, a large slice of billions of euros of funds that are supposed to be devoted to research and development into renewables such as solar and wave power are likely to be diverted instead to subsidizing the development of the well-established fossil fuel.”
http://insideclimatenews.org/breaking-news/20120529/eu-rebrands-natural-gas-green-energy