[Editor’s note: This is Part I of a five-part series by Vaclav Smil that provides an essential basis for the understanding of energy transitions and use. Dr. Smil is widely considered to be one of the world’s leading energy experts. His views deserve careful study and understanding as a basis for today’s contentious energy policy debates. Good intentions or simply desired ends must square with energy reality, the basis of Smil’s worldview.]
Energy transitions – be they the shifts from dominant resources to new modes of supply (from wood coal, from coal to hydrocarbons, from direct use of fuels to electricity), diffusion of new prime movers (from steam engines to steam turbines or to diesel engines), or new final energy converters (from incandescent to fluorescent lights) – are inherently protracted affairs that unfold across decades or generations.…
Continue ReadingIn the wake of the BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico and the attempted terrorist bombing of New York’s Times Square, the broadcast media have been full of the sackcloth and ashes crowd pronouncing once more the end of the hydrocarbon era and the vital need for the U.S. to “break our oil addiction” ASAP.
Their soundbites start with a half-truth and end with a fallacy. We are told that “60 percent of U.S. energy supplies still come from oil and gas,” with the implication that (i) all of that is imported; and (ii) the pittance that we produce domestically all comes from offshore facilities.
It is true that 60 percent (actually 62.5%) of our energy comes from oil and gas. But the portion that comes from natural gas, about 24% of total U.S.…
Continue Reading“[Robert] Mendelsohn’s position is rather similar to yours…. He believes the impacts are not negative at all for the US and most of the developed countries. Most impact studies seem to be showing this. It leads us to think that a little warming is not so bad. Glad I have kept my mouth shut on this issue of which I know so little.”
– Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), November 12, 1999
“I agree that the case for 2C warming [for a doubling of manmade greenhouse gas forcing in equilibrium] is pretty strong.”
– Gerald R. North to Rob Bradley, email communication, August 13, 2007.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published my letter-to-the-editor rebutting Kerry Emanuel’s letter, which, in turn, was critical of his fellow MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen’s op-ed, “Climate Science in Denial.”…
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