The Carbon game’s up : within 40 to 70 years the Petroleum empires will be gone. Even with massive new investment, Hydrocarbon production will be peaking. With supplies of Crude Oil, Natural Gas, and yes, even Coal, starting to fall away, a crucial sub-plot will begin to play out.
Category: Carbon Capture
Carbon Capture : How you’ve been caught in a trap believing we can solve Climate Change by capturing Carbon Dioxide and pumping it under the ground or the sea. World’s most ridiculous and expensive idea, ever.
Seven reasons why “Clean” Coal is dirty, dangerous and wicked, but not funny in the slightest.
He may prowl like a cat and purr like a cat, and make out he’s soft and sweet in interviews, but Peter Mandelson’s ideological positioning gives him the impression of him more resembling a pawn, an eel or a rat, and gives me a shudder of disgust; and I’m glad to hear the Climate Rush non-Pussycat Dolls have seen fit to pounce on him :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/10/mandelson-climate-protest-vestas
Am disappointed and a touch surprised to find Government propaganda in the New Scientist magazine.
The thread of the official answer to “what to do about China ?” is “sell them Carbon Capture and Storage”. The way it’s packaged is : “we need to help China reduce their emissions”. As if “we” had a right or responsibility to correct China !
Whenever one exchanges words with a representative of the British Government regarding Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), if one deigns to risk asking such a question as “why is the UK spending so much time, effort and resources on CCS demonstrations ?”, the usual, much-trodden answer is “because we need to lead China on this”.
The Public Opinion No is a Government Policy Yes. Carbon is Zero Carbon. Coal is Clean. Sounds like Doublethink to me.
As Orwell put it : “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies…”
I cannot offer an opinion about the validity of this research, because I haven’t read the science paper with the calculations, I haven’t spoken to the researchers, or entirely understood their model from the news report, but I’ve got to admit the results appear intriguing.
The authors speak to my key annoyances : the proposals for new Nuclear Power and Carbon Capture and Storage. And they say we shouldn’t do it : the net heat from “thermal” power generation is going to be dangerous regardless of what we do with any resulting Carbon Dioxide.
A curious little news item caught my eye last week : a Reuters report of the official opening of the Britain’s largest Carbon Capture project in Renfrew, Scotland :-
https://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE56R00E20090728
All pretty standard hot-off-the-Press-Release fare. You would have thought it was a fine thing, a noble undertaking, a breakthrough. If you were at all interested in Energy engineering, which most of you aren’t.
The Campaign against Climate Change has been running a very thought-provoking extending compendium of ideas on how to reduce British Carbon Emissions by ten percent by (the end of) 2010, to which you are all welcome to contribute :-
https://portal.campaigncc.org/content/10-10-ban-domestic-flights
https://portal.campaigncc.org/content/10-10-ban-domestic-flights-0
https://portal.campaigncc.org/content/10-10-50-reduction-cost-public-transport
Recalling the first Apollo moon landing, Ed Miliband tries to make the noble, heartwarming case for spending lots of public money in The Guardian :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/20/climate-change-low-carbon-economy
There was a rash, a veritable rash of media articles last week about Ed Miliband’s Low Carbon Transition :-
https://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/publications/lc_trans_plan/lc_trans_plan.aspx
It was an overwhelming torrent of fairly helpful and semi-accurate information, and it’s taken me a few days to wade through it to fish out some relevant threads.
Dear Reader,
You are politely asked to consider the connection between the following two pieces of information :-
https://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2009/07/15/us-government-moves-carbon-capture-forward
ExxonMobil have a plan : harness the natural lifecycle of billions of little photosynthetic critters and make oil, oil, lots of lovely, slimy, rainbowy algal oil.
There are times in conversation when you know, you just know, that it’s going nowhere, and that you’ll have to fold. Cue lame excuses, mumbling into beard/beer/brassiere, lower eyes, get up and walk away. “It’s not you, it’s me”, you’ll claim, or something similarly limp, obvious and contrite.
So many times in the last six and a half years since I read the British Government’s Energy White Paper of February 2003, I’ve had to bow out of conversations with employees and fans of the Big Energy companies and the World Nuclear Association and some people from the Government as well.
This is possibly going to be Renewable Energy’s biggest week ever in UK history.
And we’re going to need all the Wind Power we can get to meet Ed Miliband’s lofty ambition.
At the Oscars and the BAFTAS and so on, the winners, always bleary, always blubbing, always drunk, always start with an “I’d like to thank” speech, offering genuine (or coerced) gratitude very publicly to those who collaborated (or financed) their venture : “you made it all possible”.
In true TV award ceremony style, the British Government, plus “Special Adjunct” Tony Blair, in amongst their good work pursuing Energy Efficiency and True Renewables, appear to be virtually obliged to mention the Energy and Climate “solutions” of their closest lobbyists and corporate allies, or even relatives, in the case of Gordon Brown’s brother Andrew’s company Electricité de France :-
Remember the American Space Program ?
Very large sums of public tax money have been ploughed into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration over the years, peaking in 1966 :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget
OK, it gave us the Moon landings and Teflon (TM), but just recently, I don’t see much in terms of really, really new things.
What’s happened to the innovation ?
A number of organisations have been gathering round some key concepts to promote for the upcoming Copenhagen Treaty make-or-break Climate Change talks in December.
Ambitious. Fair. Binding. Effective. All those meaty, emotionally positive values.
But a Binding treaty – that could turn out to be worse than a nuisance – if that Binding treaty means we lock ourselves into funding expensive mega construction projects like new Nuclear Power and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).
I’ve been considering becoming a student again. “Retrain to gain”, they say, and I need to do something to justify a change in career path.
Here’s the course I’ve been considering : a Masters Degree in Science in Climate Change Management :-
Some simple analysis of the Carbon Dioxide emissions in the UK leads to several pertinent conclusions :-
Ah yes, time to pack up your trusty, dusty suitcase and head for the beach.
I hope you’re not thinking of flying.
And I trust you’ll take with you the Synthesis Report from the Copenhagen Climate Change science conference that took place between 10th to 12th March 2009 :-
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/files/synthesis-report-web.pdf
At the Climate Change campaign meeting on Saturday, “Six Months to Copenhagen”, hosted by the Fabian Society in London, Ed Miliband said some things I find astonishing admissions.
The Climate Change Committee, after having looked into the matter of Carbon Budgets on Carbon Emissions Reductions for the United Kingdom, made recommendations for our national targets :-
https://hmccc.s3.amazonaws.com/pdfs/LaunchPressRelease01.12.08.pdf
In the hallway supping on orange juice and ice, I turned off the Sky Eternal Non-News on a fat, loud TV because I saw someone standing in front of it in a hynotic trance. He complained, but didn’t demand the show turned back on. Thankfully that provided the quiet for us all to talk some to each other and read a little.
There’s news from the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) quarter.
A whole bunch of Aid and Development, charity, Third Sector and green groups got together today and were instilled with their responsibility to “hold politicians’ feet to the fire” by Ed Miliband, who just happens to be a politician.
Not just any old politician, no. Only the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in the United Kingdom.
In the best Private Eye style, I will merely present to you two statistics and let you deduce the relationship between the two.
If you really don’t understand what I’m driving at, do get in touch :-