You were only a natural gas engineer.
I worked in oil and gas and then switched to coal
along with other open pit mining including phosphates. So ocean eutrophication is my bad as well.
4 Likes
No doubt, not to mention that they’re (nearly?) inherently linked–poor, overproduced, and chemically-treated soils actually lose carbon to the atmosphere (as carbon dioxide and methane gases) rather than sequestering it.
4 Likes
I hear you, @geographyjones and we’ve got nearly a planet-full of company. The good news is that now we know more, including how to do better.
4 Likes
Your link included my favorite George Bernard Shaw quote about (paraphrase) reasonable people accepting the World as it is and unreasonable people persisting in not accepting the World as it is and thus all progress depends on unreasonable people.
3 Likes
So far, climate change activists are inexplicably putting the cart before the horse.
Standard Oil didn’t build a huge oil refineries in Galveston TX or Linden NJ in 1880 and then said “Ok, now go and invent some gasoline powered cars so we can sell you this fuel”.
The automobile manufacturers are the ones that need to be pressed to change. The energy sector will follow whatever they are doing.
4 Likes
And there’s this:
(although Norway will continue to produce O&G)
And, Ford’s F150 Lightning is another harbinger.
5 Likes
Don’t get me started on almonds and pomegranates
At least we eat the almonds and pomegranates.
Alfalfa is grown in ‘no water So Cal’ using acre feet of precious ground water so it can be shipped to China. So a resource in very short supply is shipped to China.
.
5 Likes
So how many almonds in a bushel? Times 3 bushels per tree; times several hundred trees??!!
4 Likes
Hydrologyjones could not be reached for comment.
5 Likes
The Osage are using their CARES Act money to build local aquaponic facilities and slaughterhouses etc. They discovered the hard way last year that being the last stop in the food distribution network during a nationwide shortage is not a great position for their members to be in. Anyway it’s interesting how mindful the shift to local food production has become, not for frou-frou NYC restauranteurs but for rural, evangelical, even Trumpy folk, who honestly always have had a leg up in that field. The homesteading movement is a weird mix of everyone from permaculture hippies all the way to red-state evangelists preparing for either the Boogaloo or the End Times.
4 Likes
This leaves out one factor that I bet is going to have a major impact.
It’s somewhat connected to the market and investors but is a slightly different thing.
I’m thinking of the banking system and the rules investors have to play by (or within).
I’m thinking of the parameters they set up to keep the market itself from collapsing (or more accurately I guess gauging and dealing with financial risk, etc connected to environmental factors) such as the Basel Conventions.
Those folk have started paying very close attention to climate change.
For example this—
3 Likes
Didn’t oil/cars/tires collude to buy and kill the LA public transportation system?
5 Likes
“You know the catapult is quite important. So I said what is this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system. He said well, we’re going to this because we wanted to keep up with modern [technology]. I said you don’t use steam anymore for catapult? No sir. I said, “Ah, how is it working?” “Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air.” It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said–and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said what system are you going to be–“Sir, we’re staying with digital.” I said no you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.”
3 Likes
Among many others. Sad how many street car systems we’ve lost in America.
8 Likes
Cut to video of the latter eating stale MREs while the former are eating freshly grown tomats.
Lol. Just got back from ground zero on this and if there’s one thing that Ozarker side of the family knows, it’s how to grow food. To quote my late Uncle Truman, “Why would anyone spend a goddam cent on fertilizer when there’s more goddam cow shit than you’d ever need just lying around for free?!”
5 Likes
Standard Oil’s reach was far and wide. The first oil and gas lines were built to avoid freight costs. There was speculation that prohibition, was partially brought about because farmers were distilling fuel.
That won’t work because people don’t see the threat as immediate or that deadly. The government called for the shutdown, not individuals. Many resisted and many died.
1 Like
I read they are currently testing a 10% hydrogen mixture in natural gas lines to see what effect it will have on the pipelines in the US. In Europe, they are getting a little more serious:
Some of the most advanced efforts are underway in the U.K., where utilities including National Grid and Scottish Gas Network are blending hydrogen into pipelines not just to fuel power plants or industrial processes but also to serve homes and businesses.
“We’ve got hydrogen in 20 percent blend already going into one very small network in the U.K., and consumers are saying they notice no difference” in terms of performance of gas-fired appliances, Antony Green, National Grid U.K.’s hydrogen project director, said in an October interview. “That’s a good sign.”
While early-stage tests are keeping hydrogen concentrations below 20 percent, U.K. utilities hope to carry 100 percent hydrogen in future years as part of the country’s emphasis on finding green replacements for fuel supplies as well as electricity. “It’s a very, very ambitious program across all the gas networks,” Green said.
Added:
I’m no longer into Plug Power’s stock and really should short it now, I won’t though.
But to me, I think the oil companies are going to dominate the hydrogen industry going forward. They own the pipelines and most of the other infrastructure needed to produce and distribute it.
3 Likes
I would love to see different industries blended better into the landscape (not the right terms).
For one thing: the urban/rural cultural divide might weaken dramatically, when people in high-rises live with the people who grow the food on top of the high-rise. That would help our politics enormously. And if we would just bother to make greedy ISPs and other companies actually provide first-class service to sparsely-populated areas, a lot of us in the city might be thrilled to move out of the city, where we’d begin contributing to rural taxes and politics and society.
I grew up in a small farming town, and this whole rural/urban culture war has seemed so manufactured to me. That’s kind of an overstatement. But, when I was a country boy, I never hated city folk, and now that I live in the city, I’ve not lost my respect for the work of or value provided by country folk. But, living apart means we kind of live in separate worlds, and that opens the door for predators to lie about what’s happening on the other side. Which they never miss an opportunity to do.
3 Likes