Two planets are talking to each other. One looks like a beautiful blue marble and the other a dirty brown ball.
“What on earth happened to you?” the beautiful planet asks the brown one.
“I had Homo sapiens,” answers the brown planet.
“Don’t worry,” says the blue planet. “They don’t last long.”
Climate alarmism has turned into a big funny. The above, a joke at COP26 recalled by Thomas Friedman, says much about the stalled-out Church of Deep Ecology. It seems that enough governments are self-interested to slow down the march on road to serfdom–and a lot of Homo sapiens really care about energy affordability and reliability.
So much for the quixotic quest to substitute dilute, intermittent energies for dense mineral energies.
Of course, the energy intelligentsia refused to deal with that stubborn thing called Energy Density, opting for a blank check for wind, solar, and batteries.…
Ed. Note: Michael Lynch’s Shifting Oil Industry Structure and Energy Security Under Investment Phase-Out’s (EPRINC: 2021) challenges the quest of Faith Birol/ International Energy Agency to cease investment in the petroleum industry. A summary of and excerpts from Lynch’s study follow.
“If we want to reach net zero by 2050 we do not need any more investments in new oil, gas, and coal projects.” (Faith Birol, IEA, 2021)
“… efforts to discourage the production of oil are entirely misplaced since consumption is not driven by supply but demand.” (Michael Lynch, below)
Introduction by Lucian Pugliaresi, President, Energy Policy Research Foundation, Inc.
In May of this year, Fatih Birol, speaking as head of the International Energy Agency, stated publicly that “The pathway to net zero is narrow but still achievable. If we want to reach net zero by 2050 we do not need any more investments in new oil, gas, and coal projects.”…
“As we’ve said from the beginning of this project, we are going to build these units the right way…. We have endured and overcome some extraordinary circumstances building the first new nuclear units in the U.S. in more than 30 years. Despite these challenges, progress at the site has been steady and evident.”
– Chris Womack, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power, October 21, 2021
Forget the U.S. Synthetic Fuel Administration of the 1970s. Forget the Obama Administration’s Solyndra project. The biggest debacle in modern U.S. energy history appears to be in Georgia, and the saga continues.
And far from unique, the latest-and-greatest in nuclear (this was supposed to be the breakthrough) is a warning sign about nuclear power in general. It has always needed government subsidies and protection. And it was a setup train wreck under lenient public utility regulation that allowed the franchised monopoly utility to recover all costs and a “reasonable” rate of return on invested capital.…