Ed Note: This excerpt is from Erich Zimmermann, World Resources and Industries: A Functional Appraisal of the Availability of Agricultural and Industrial Resources (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933).
“Harnessing the air for generating electric power … [is] engrossing the attention of scientists and technicians and may revolutionize the German electric industry. [Hermann] Honnef claims to have … overcome the drawback of the inconstancy of air currents which hitherto has been a handicap to the utilization of this source.” (1932)
Erich W. Zimmermann’s World Resources and Industries (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933) is one of the towering tomes of energy and mineral thought. The treatise (850 pages) in the old tradition, wherein a scholar presents a unified system of thought and considers differing viewpoints.
It is a tradition that seems to have stalled, with the next-best-thing being the latest book from Vaclav Smil.…
BP is trying to have its cake and eat it too. And it is being criticized on all sides: the greens for greenwashing its major activity (oil and natural gas production) and mineral energy advocates for engaging in the uneconomic as a contra-capitalist company. BP head Bernard Looney tries to square the circle with both.
Looney just reported on LinkedIn:
…Some brilliant news to share today… bp has just signed a $4 billion deal to buy Archaea Energy – a leading US biogas company that produces renewable natural gas. As I’ve said recently – “putting our money where our mouth is.”
I realise renewable natural gas might not mean much to people outside the industry so let me explain… It’s gas from organic waste – homes, cities and farms – that is captured instead of vented into the atmosphere or flared.
“Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner. (IPCC, below)
… government (coercive) mitigation policy is being left behind by self-interested energy actions around the world. Wind and solar and batteries … are running into limits. A new public policy era post-COP27 is called for. (RLB, below)
The UN Conference of Parties to be held in Cairo, Egypt, next month (COP27) has long been in preparation. Net Zero may be a dead he/she walking (Halloween fright?), but expect no backtracking from the Church of Climate. “Don’t Look Up” … IPCC reports … ExxonKnew … it is a one-after-the-other global media campaign to not focus on the Green Energy Crises or the tripartite fossil-fuel boom but on … Net Zero.…