fossil fuels

Mark J. Perry, scholar at American Enterprise Institute: It wasn’t that long ago that we were wallowing in an era of energy scarcity, worried about our dependence on foreign oil and constantly hearing dire warnings about “peak oil.” The record high oil production this year further solidifies America’s new status as a world energy superpower in a new era of US energy abundance. In addition, the United States has used nuclear fuel and depleted uranium that can provide over 700 years of electrical energy needs at 1994 levels, if America decides to use fast nuclear reactor technology and used nuclear fuel recycling.

President Obama: We led with historic investments in growing industries like wind and solar that created a steady stream of new jobs. We set the first-ever nationwide standards to limit the amount of carbon pollution that power plants can dump into the air. Note: The world will see how President Obama's claims and actions play out in the future. It is very important for all countries to reduce air, water and land pollution, respect the environment and protect biodiversity. EFN-USA does not consider CO2 to be a pollutant anywhere near these concentrations. It is essential for life.

Roger Bezdek, President of Management Information Services, Inc. brought this Nuclear Energy Institute report to our attention: The federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars since WW II supporting energy technologies with large shares going to fossil fuels. Energy subsidies are drawing intense attention as policymakers grapple with a variety of incentives that are straining competitive electricity markets and driving baseload generation off the grid.

The hydrocarbon processing industry, i.e., refineries, has a rich history of discovery, challenges, breakthroughs, trial and error, collaboration, and success. Looking back a little more than 100 years, it’s easy to see how civilization has benefited from more than 250 leading-edge, hydrocarbon processing licensed refining technologies used by the more than 700 refineries worldwide that service the demands of the 8 billion living on earth with more than 6,000 products made from the oil derivatives manufactured out of raw crude oil at refineries. None of these products were available to society before 1900.

As the world engaged in conflict in the 1940’s, demand for fuels and chemical products manufactured from crude oil soared to aid in the war effort. Post-WW2 ushered in new technological advances for producing higher octane fuels and chemical products that increased the standard of living for hundreds of millions around the world.

Ben Johnson, Historic UK: By the late 1800s, large cities all around the world were “drowning in horse manure”. In order for these cities to function, they were dependent on thousands of horses for the transport of both people and goods. The manure on London’s streets also attracted huge numbers of flies which then spread typhoid fever and other diseases. Similar issues of waste from low energy density energy sources like wind and solar apply, without the stench and disease spreading flies.

Marty Cornell, chemist. Career with Dow Chemical specializing in transportation and environmental issues: This is a letter to a newspaper that covered Greta Thunberg's lecture to the world at the United Nations September 23, 2019 without any comment or criticism. He takes the newspaper and media in general to task. Man’s activities do change local climates; one only needs to drive from the Brazoria County countryside to the heat island of Houston to experience an upward shift of couple degrees centigrade. The solution to any detrimental effect of changing local climate such as warmer cities is simple: adapt. The issue is not about climate, but rather about a change in world order toward global central control by elites, to the loss of liberty and national independence.

All man-made alterations to the landscape - forests, prairies, countryside, suburban, and urban areas change the local climate - surface and air temperature, range of max and minimum daily temperatures, humidity, clouds, hydrology, and vegetation.

One thing that mankind does not significantly cause is supposed catastrophic, anthropogenic, planet-wide global warming. The sun is by far the main source of warming planet Earth, not infrared excited CO2 molecules at tiny concentrations.

We are currently living in a time of never-before abundance of energy and all kinds of niceties, suggests Vaclav Smil in his new book, "How the World Really Works." Modern humans are animals, products of evolution like any other, and yet we noticeably do not spend every minute of every day struggling to get the material required to survive. Instead, we build cathedrals and watch football, we make art, we waste time on Twitter. That is because we live on the gigantic, blessing of our fossil fuel inheritance. We can’t do without them, and there’s no easy carbon-free alternative way of making them.

Most of us don’t realise how that energy is actually used. A large percentage, for instance, is used to create four materials which are the building blocks of modern society – materials which are so ubiquitous that we barely notice them, even as we depend on them. These four basic pillars of human civilisation as steel, cement, plastic and ammonia. We can’t do without them, and there’s no easy carbon-free alternative way of making them.

The world’s population grew from 1 to 8 billion after the discovery of coal, natural gas, and crude oil.

The economic and technological advances over the last 200 years have transformed how we produce and consume energy. From the 1800’s, the fossil fuels of coal, oil, and natural gas now support more than 80 percent of the world’s energy supply to meet the world’s population demands for more than 6,000 products in our daily lives, made from the oil derivatives manufactured out of crude oil, that did not exist before the 1900’s, and the fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of more than 50,000 jets and more than 50,000 merchant ships, and the military and space programs.

Euan Mearns, Geologist: I don’t think humans have the power to alter the climate. I’ve been especially doubtful of the claim that CO2 in the atmosphere is a significant regulator of the earth’s climate. Even If we believe that CO2 is part of earth’s greenhouse gas effect that is making it possible for us to be alive, the CO2 component of earth’s atmosphere is increasing at only about 1 part per 100,000 every 5 years. It will take at least 1,500 years for earth’s CO2 component to increase from the current 40 part per 100,000 to 100 parts per 100,000. That would be 0.10% instead of the current 0.040%.

Paul Driessen, senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow: Young Americans for Liberty Conference - I hope you're prepared to have some fun actively engaging in a little exercise to discover how the world really works. I know some of you have read my books and articles – and heard me talk about how eco-imperialists deny the world’s poorest people access to the modern energy, agriculture, disease control and other technologies that make our jobs, living standards, travel, entertainment, communication, health and life spans possible. After countless thousands of years of stagnation, wallowing near the abyss, living little better than domesticated animals … what brought about this incredible transformation?

This is a hugely important and very timely book. At a time when thinkers in the developed world are split between environmental catastrophism and unbridled techno-optimism, here is a firmly grounded analysis of the present day, informed by the previous history that got us here, and the likely short-term future.

Most of what we hear and read about today by way of prognostications and nostrums for the future will simply not come to pass. The complexity and inertia of the systems of the modern world – energy acquisition and use, food production, materials requirements for contemporary living – place strong constraints on the pace of change in any preferred direction. This is true even if all the world leaders should agree to move in any particular direction, say on a net-zero global economy by 2050, with a global command economy.

Richard Lindzen is an atmospheric physicist, Emeritus Professor at MIT. From 1983 until his retirement in 2013 he was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT: Here are two statements that are completely agreed on by the IPCC. It is crucial to be aware of their implications. 1. A doubling of CO2, by itself, contributes only about 1C to greenhouse warming. 2. If one assumes all warming over the past century is due to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, then the derived sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C. The notion that alarming warming is ‘settled science’ should be offensive to any sentient individual, though to be sure, the above is hardly emphasized by the IPCC.