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.
Category: Technological Sideshow
Technological Sideshow : Technology can only save us if it saves Carbon and doesn’t cost too much and doesn’t take too long to implement.
It’s a huge shame that the person charged with decisions about Energy in the UK doesn’t have a science or engineering background.
He can’t determine truth from fiction, that’s why.
We can produce report after report and datasheet after datasheet showing how ridiculous it will be to continue with Coal and Nuclear, and he won’t be able to see the wood for the trees.
This is yet again proof of why it is pointless trying to engage with the decison-makers. They don’t have the mental framework to be able to deal with the facts and figures.
If you’re not doing very much else on 15th July 2009, why not take a look at the Shell Dialogue, asking the question : “can technology reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions ?”.
https://www.shelldialogues.com
https://www.shelldialogues.com/technologiesforco2
You can submit your questions in person to Jan van der Eijk, the Chief Technology Officer at Shell.
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.
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 ?
Nicholas Stern, and other more bog standard Economists, all seem to believe in the magical power of Innovation. He writes about it in a reverential way in his book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet”.
Innovation : gleaming, sparkling, wondrous dexterity : if there’s a buck to be made from shaving a saving, or fishing for an efficiency, it is assumed the holy Market Economy will be in there, innovating away.
Or that’s what Economists believe anyway, wholeheartedly, generally, generously, neo-liberally.
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
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.
Everywhere you look this week there’s news about Coal, and how we need to pay to clean it up, and how wonderful this idea is.
I don’t buy it. But I’m going to be forced to pay for it through my electricity bills regardless :-
[ UPDATE : Some of you have mentioned that you thought this piece was rather biting. So I put it under Bryony’s nose and offered to change anything that she felt was inaccurate, personally distressing, or that she disagreed with or objected to on professional grounds. Changes are bolded. ]
At the The Guardian Climate Change Summit in London’s Russell Square’s Hotel Russell on Monday 15th June 2009, there was a large banner marked out with the name of the key sponsor of the event, E.On, but nobody at the large table underneath it to schmooze the attendees.
Perhaps they thought that the info pack in bright friendly red, orange and yellow colours would suffice in terms of communications. Perhaps they thought that they had enough of a hold on the event’s messaging by having their Chief Executive Officer Paul Golby speaking at one of the morning sessions.
I have been reading Nicholas Stern’s book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet : How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity”, and I feel that it is somehow my role to be making some rather critical remarks about it.
At the London School of Economics last Friday 5th June 2009, there was a conference called “The politics of climate change : from economic crisis to business revolution”.
In the afternoon, after Adair Turner spoke, we were treated to the pragmatic realism of Andy Duff, the CEO of RWE npower, the Energy group.
Adair Turner must be a bundle of nerves, sitting, as he does on both the Financial Services Authority and the Climate Change Committee.
He’s often asked to speak on behalf of ideas that are shaky, like cracking down on the banks with stronger regulation, whilst avoiding blaming the banks themselves for the financial crisis :-
It has become fashionable, since the Financial Crisis was admitted to publicly, for high net worth individiuals to propagate Public Relations campaigns in support of their industry of choice. Normally the industry that makes all their money for them.
In the United States they call this process a “bailout”, making it sound like a worthy rescue of a valued affiliate. In the United Kingdom, it’s called “public support”. It all amounts to the same thing : tax revenue from the public thrown at the private corporations.
Well, Friends of the Earth are not to be found beating around any bushes or mincing any words today. It’s up front and confrontational on the matter of Carbon Offsetting coming out of the Clean Development Mechanism, and how it’s going to fail us. The new report is titled “A Dangerous Distraction : Why Offsetting is Failing the Climate and People : The Evidence” and its language is brutal :-
https://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefing_notes/dangerous_distraction.pdf
[ Comments on “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet” by Nicholas Stern ]
So, I might be promoting sales of Nicholas Stern’s book with this post, but actually I think we should all read this book, just to be conscious of how Neoliberal Economics hasn’t evolved to encompass reality, even if it thinks it has.
There are many statements, assertions and hopes about the progress and possibilities of technology in Nicholas Stern’s book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet : How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity”.
UPDATE : I have been advised to be more precise about what Beulah actually is. The update is bolded for your convenience.
The Weyburn Oil Field field in Saskatchewan, Canada has been the centre of attention for several good reasons over the last few years.
Some of the grease-brained petroleum engineers had a brilliant idea one day : how about trying to pump extra oil out of the field by injecting waste gas into it ?
Everywhere I’ve gone for the last couple of weeks, I’ve taken Nick Stern with me. Or rather, his bright blue book with the “World Class” title “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet”.
To answer Climate Change we must have strategies for new Low Carbon Energy investment.
The technologies we need to deploy are those that are already proven, and can be installed in the fastest possible time. What we can DO, and DO NOW.
This is DO-Tech, NOW-Tech : and it effectively rules out new rounds of Nuclear Energy, which is slow-to-grid. It also rules out the almost entirely hypothetical Carbon Capture and Storage.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been just the wisp or filament of an idea for so long; and never really taken on a bodily form. It’s still ectoplasmic, in the worst of ways. Despite the various attempts around the world to drag it kicking and screaming into a corporeal existence.
I had a very brief exchange with Dr Alan Knight of the Sustainable Development Commission today at the UK Aware 09 “Ideas for Greener Living” exhibition today at Olympia 2 in London.
This week has seen a flurry of “Yes, We Can” news articles about the Carbon Capture and Storage technology, or CCS.
“Solution to the carbon problem could be under the ground : Hope for the fight against climate change as study finds greenhouse gas can be buried without fear of leaking : By Steve Connor, Science Editor : Thursday, 2 April 2009 : Carbon dioxide captured from the chimneys of power stations could be safely buried underground for thousands of years without the risk of the greenhouse gas seeping into the atmosphere, a study has found.”
1st Apriil 2009
SPACE 1
2pm : Trading our way into Trouble – How carbon trading hasn’t worked so far, why it’s not going to work and the problems it’s causing in the Global South (CarbonTradeWatch).
3pm : Plenary (all together session) – “Their solutions / our solutions” – with starting contributions on “their solutions” and an open discussion on “our solutions”.
STOP PRESS : Just received a text “Big Brother is turning off CCTV for the day. Don’t forget to bring your own. Please forward this text.” What can go on when nobody is watching ?
I’ve just been at one of several G20 Climate Camp convergence spaces this evening to get the full briefing.
I expected Police presence on the door, and yes, once again they were illegally photographing people coming and going from a public meeting.