As an old-fashioned scientist, I prefer hard engineering realities to all those interminably vacuous and poorly informed policy “debates” that feature energy self-sufficiency (even Saudis import!), sustainability (at what spatial and temporal scales?), stakeholders (are not we all, in a global economy?) and green economy (but are not we still burning some 9 billion tonnes of carbon annually?).

High regard for facts and low regard for wishful thinking has forced me to deal repeatedly with many energy illusions–if not outright delusions–and to point out many complications and difficulties to be encountered during an inevitably lengthy transition from an overwhelmingly fossil-fueled world to economies drawing a substantial share of their primary energies from renewable sources.

Steel & Coal-Derived Coke

Here is another challenge for the energy transformationists, one that is both inexplicably neglected and extraordinarily important: steel’s fundamental dependence on coal-derived coke with no practical substitutes on any rational technical horizon.…

This is part 2 of my post on a recent Partnership for a Secure America (PSA) briefing on climate change, energy and national security. Yesterday’s post made two main points:

(1) The strange-bedfellow coalition of defense hawks and eco-warriers is based not on sound national security arguments but on a convergence of political interests. For defense hawks, the alleged climate crisis facilitates mission creep by providing an open-ended rationale to expand DOD programs, activities, capabilities, and the appropriations to fund them. For green groups, partnership with defense and intelligence big wigs builds their already formidable lobbying machine and gives them cachet with conservatives who generally oppose government meddling in energy markets and Kyoto-style “global governance.”

(2) The PSA panelists exaggerate the security risks of climate change. The “history” of global warming, recent research on climate sensitivity, and even the Stern Review (properly understood) call into question the claim that climate change is an important “threat multiplier.”

The New York Times chief foreign affairs correspondent, Thomas Friedman, has finally come out of the closet as a fascist wannabee. Harsh words, but consider the evidence.

Here is the pertinent section from his recent op-ed, “One Party Democracy” [with commentary]:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks [like the secret police and labor camps?]. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today [that’s why they need all those internet filters], it can also have great advantages [such as locking away dissenters]. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century [no need to find out what people want, just tell them what to do].

[This piece, which originally appeared in the (Canadian) National Post, can be read in conjunction with MasterResource posts on “peak oil” here and here. A brief bio of Mr. Foster appears at the end of this post.]

The great petroleum geologist Wallace Pratt famously said that “Oil is found in the minds of men.” Discoveries depend on visionary theory, technical innovation and commitment to risky drilling. Plus luck. Peak Oil theory, by contrast -which asserts that global oil production has, or soon will, peak, and that this has powerful policy implications — is found in the limitations of the minds of men. It is less geological theory than unevolved intellectual shortcoming, although it certainly has its political uses.

The fruits of the “greatest resource,” as economist Julian Simon dubbed the human mind, appeared yet again this week with the announcement by BP that it had found a “giant” field at unprecedented depth in the Gulf of Mexico, an area that twenty years ago was regarded as played out.…