Dear Friends,
It seems to me that a dangerously large fraction of society is utterly ignorant of our energy situation. This ignorance leads to actions which are very counterproductive. These counterproductive actions make it all the harder to maintain our level of energy usage let alone ramp it up so the whole World can improve their standard of living. The truth is, if we don’t open up sufficient energy supply so the entire World can benefit, we will loose the benefit we have here in the West.
Part of this ignorance is, of what is and what is not, possible. People think we can just develop this or that technology and voila! We are off fossil fuels. Unfortunately this is not possible. There are alternatives which are more economical in certain situations but there is no more compact way to store energy than in hydrocarbon fuel. The more dense the fuel the more energy it stores. Gas having the least and wax having the most. (By volume).
There is no other way to store so much energy, safely, in such a small space than with hydrocarbon based energy. Once we accept this fact we can then move on to a productive line of reasoning. How can we produce hydro carbon based fuels such that the environmental impact is positive and the cost is sufficiently low so that all the World’s inhabitants can take advantage.
One way, not necessarily the best, is algal based oil production. Some strains of algae have a very large percentage of their mass as light oil. This oil can be used directly in diesel engines. The production of this algal oil is quickly becoming commercially viable. Producing base oil in this way, economically and commercially, regardless of location, would open up energy production to anyplace on the globe. All that would be needed, would be a commercially available algal digester, processing equipment and inputs. Inputs would be a source of carbon dioxide and biological waste.
The resulting oil could be placed directly into a diesel engine and used to make electricity, grind stone into aggregate, move a truck or whatever. The oil could also be further processed into a gasoline substitute. This technology, were it to come online, would revolutionize energy production and thereby energy usage the World over. This would raise the material standard of living of all the Worlds’ people. It would also substantially redistribute international power.
But alas it is not yet available. Solar and wind have very specific uses where they can be economical but they cannot compete with hydrocarbon based fuels for ease of portability, safety, and energy density. There are several measures available that can fill the gap and reduce the West’s dependence on Mideastern oil today.
One is coal to oil and the other is oil shale and oil sand production. The main opposition to these technologies is that they are high carbon sources of energy. The presupposition here is that anthropomorphic climate change is fueled by human carbon output. As I have said many times the climate change we are experiencing is a solar system wide phenomenon… As evidenced by Mars. As such the entire premise of the opposition’s argument against coal to oil or oil sands/shale production is invalid.
Ignorance of these fact leads well intended people to protest much needed oil pipelines and pass regulations that keep US shale oil, sand oil and coal to oil production off limits. Rhetoric like Nazi oil is routinely used against any attempt to build a coal to oil plant. Even when that plant was to be used to mitigate slag heaps left over from past coal production. Protecting the aquifer from contamination and reopening land for other uses other than to hold a pile of slag. Yet Single payer is Nazi healthcare…
The real problem, is the law of God, otherwise known as the laws of physics. These laws are incontrovertible. We have been using them to our benefit since our inception. But since we must bow to them, as we have always done, it is in our interests to use them as I have pointed out. In the future, algal based hydrocarbon production but in the meantime, coal to oil and shale/sands oil production. Standing in the way only empowers hateful people, who want to kill the good people in the World, and does far more environmental damage than the alternative. Helping this along raises the material standard of living of the World and protects us from loosing ours. There is no reason to keep people ignorant and thus threaten our very own standard of living.
Unless there is some other agenda such as political.
