Fossil Fuel Importance Quotes

Hustle is to business success what fossil fuels are to civilization. It's extremely important in the beginning, but eventually you gotta upgrade to something more efficient and something more sustainable.

Fossil fuels are merely a part of the “natural capital” which we steadfastly insist on treating as expendable, as if it were income, and by no means the most important part. If we squander our fossil fuels, we threaten civilisation; but if we squander the capital represented by living nature around us, we threaten life itself.

The twin signatures of this era have been the mass export of products across vast distances (relentlessly burning carbon all the way), and the import of a uniquely wasteful model of production, consumption, and agriculture to every corner of the world (also based on the profligate burning of fossil fuels). Put differently, the liberation of world markets, a process powered by the liberation of unprecedented amounts of fossil fuels from the earth, has dramatically sped up the same process that is liberating Arctic ice from existence.

Fossil fuels are superconcentrated ancient dead plants. When we burn/oxidize them, we increase the amount of CO2, plant food, in the atmosphere. Thus, on top of getting energy, we should get a lot more plant growth—including growth of the most important plants to us, such as food crops.

Similarly, replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources is likely to appeal to some countries more than to others. China, Japan, and South Korea depend on importing huge quantities of oil and gas. They will be delighted to be free of that burden. Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia depend on exporting oil and gas. Their economies will collapse if oil and gas suddenly give way to solar and wind.

We need a rigorous, big-picture examination of fossil fuels’ impact on climate and other environmental issues. We must clearly hold human life as our standard of value, or if we don’t, we must make clear that we are willing to sacrifice human life for something we think is more important. With that standard, we must look at the big picture, the full context. And we must use experts as advisers, not authorities, getting precise explanations from them about what is known and what is not known, so that we as individuals can make the most informed decision.

Climate Change. When we talk about our responsibilities as human beings and as parents, there is nothing more important than leaving this country and the entire planet in a way that is habitable for our kids and grandchildren. The debate is over. The scientific community has spoken in a virtually unanimous voice. Climate change is real. It is caused by human activity and it is already causing devastating problems in the United States and around the world. The scientists are telling us that if we do not boldly transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies, this planet could be five to ten degrees

I would have offered a somewhat different statement, based upon my familiarity with the assessment reports and literature: The earth has warmed during the past century, partly because of natural phenomena and partly in response to growing human influences. These human influences (most importantly the accumulation of CO2 from burning fossil fuels) exert a physically small effect on the complex climate system. Unfortunately, our limited observations and understanding are insufficient to usefully quantify either how the climate will respond to human influences or how it varies naturally. However, even as human influences have increased almost fivefold since 1950 and the globe has warmed modestly, most severe weather phenomena remain within past variability. Projections of future climate and weather events rely on models demonstrably unfit for the purpose.

So what then is “climate change”? As the WMO defines it, “climate change refers to a statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting for an extended period (typically decades or longer).” The important thing to keep in mind here is that the climate changes because it is forced to change. And it is forced to change either by natural forces or by forces introduced by mankind. In other words, the climate varies naturally because of its own complex internal dynamics, but it changes because something forces it to change. The most important natural forces inducing climate change are changes in the earth’s orbit—which change the intensity of the sun’s radiation hitting different parts of the earth, which changes the thermal energy balance of the lower atmosphere, which can change the climate. Climate change, scientists know, can also be triggered by large volcanic eruptions, which can release so many dust particles into the air that they act as an umbrella and shield the earth from some of the sun’s radiation, leading to a cooling period. The climate can be forced to change by natural, massive releases of greenhouses gases from beneath the earth’s surface—gases, like methane, that absorb much more heat than carbon dioxide and lead to a sudden warming period. What is new about this moment in the earth’s history is that the force driving climate change is not a change in the earth’s orbit, not a volcanic eruption, not a sudden natural release of greenhouse gases—but the burning of fossil fuels, the cultivation of rice and livestock, and the burning and clearing of forests by mankind, which together are pumping carbon dioxide, methane, and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere a hundred times faster than nature normally does.

The announcement yesterday follows Obama’s 2011 agreement with automakers to build cars that average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. But as important as fuel efficiency in automobiles may be, power plants are the largest concentrated source of carbon dioxide emissions. The EPA’s new power-plant rules will reduce overall emissions by at least 80 times more metric tons of carbon than the regulations for cars. Almost all credible reports suggest the world is passing the point where it can reverse, or eliminate, global warming. But that only means it’s more urgent than ever to push for historic carbon reductions. Nonetheless, many politicians — including the usual global-warming deniers and those from both parties in fossil-fuel-producing states — rushed to claim the new rules would cause steep economic damage.

Once you realize an oil company functions not to deliver oil but to structure the future as a system of financial flows, then the points of sabotage shift a little bit. This is why I think projects like Carbon Tracker’s “Unburnable Carbon” are really important. Carbon Tracker shows that the share price of fossil fuel companies is a bubble, since it is based on a projected use of energy that is incompatible with keeping the planet livable. This campaign works precisely at the point at which the corporation understood as a set of financial flows is vulnerable—the calculability of future revenue.

Climate change alarmism is a belief system, and needs to be evaluated as such. There is, indeed, an accepted scientific theory which I do not dispute and which, the alarmists claim, justifies their belief and their alarm. This is the so-called greenhouse effect: the fact that the earth’s atmosphere contains so-called greenhouse gases (of which water vapour is overwhelmingly the most important, but CO2 is another) which, in effect, trap some of the heat we receive from the sun and prevent it from bouncing back into space. Without the greenhouse effect, the planet would be so cold as to be uninhabitable. But, by burning fossil fuels—coal, oil and gas—we are increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and thus, other things being equal, increasing the earth’s temperature. But four questions immediately arise, all of which need to be addressed, coolly and rationally. First, other things being equal, how much can increased atmospheric CO2 be expected to warm the earth? (This is known to scientists as climate sensitivity, or sometimes the climate sensitivity of carbon.) This is highly uncertain, not least because clouds have an important role to play, and the science of clouds is little understood. Until recently, the majority opinion among climate scientists had been that clouds greatly amplify the basic greenhouse effect. But there is a significant minority, including some of the most eminent climate scientists, who strongly dispute this. Second, are other things equal, anyway? We know that over millennia, the temperature of the earth has varied a great deal, long before the arrival of fossil fuels. To take only the past thousand years, a thousand years ago we were benefiting from the so-called medieval warm period, when temperatures are thought to have been at least as warm, if not warmer, than they are today. And during the Baroque era we were grimly suffering the cold of the so-called Little Ice Age, when the Thames frequently froze in winter and substantial ice fairs were held on it, which have been immortalised in contemporary prints. Third, even if the earth were to warm, so far from this necessarily being a cause for alarm, does it matter? It would, after all, be surprising if the planet were on a happy but precarious temperature knife-edge, from which any change in either direction would be a major disaster. In fact, we know that, if there were to be any future warming (and for the reasons already given, ‘if’ is correct) there would be both benefits and what the economists call disbenefits. I shall discuss later where the balance might lie. And fourth, to the extent that there is a problem, what should we, calmly and rationally, do about it?

Any version of the widely discussed Green New Deal project must include these priorities: 1. Greenhouse gas emissions reductions will at least achieve the targets set in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, namely a 45 percent reduction in global emissions by 2030 and the attainment of net zero emissions by 2050. 2. Investments to dramatically raise energy efficiency standards and equally dramatically expand the supply of solar, wind, and other clean renewable energy sources will form the leading edge of the transition to a green economy in all regions of the world. 3. The green economy will not expose workers in the fossil fuel industry and other vulnerable groups to the plague of joblessness and the anxieties of economic insecurity. 4. Economic growth must proceed along a sustainable and egalitarian path, such that climate stabilization is unified with the equally important goals of expanding job opportunities and raising mass living standards for working people and the poor throughout the world.

In mechanical terms, humans are quite efficient converters of food into energy, so human slaves were often more valuable than animal slaves, if one could afford them.21 The importance of human beings as a source of energy helps explain why forced labor was so ubiquitous in the premodern world, just as the existence of fossil fuels helps explain why human slavery has largely vanished today.

Most importantly, there’s a great business case for saving the world. Meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is a $12 trillion opportunity.8 Renewable energy is now a more than $1.5 trillion business9 and in 2017 generated 26.5 percent of global electricity and accounted for 70 percent of all new power generation capacity.10 Numbers like this make renewables a job creation machine. More than three million Americans now have jobs in the clean energy sector, more than three times the number employed in the fossil fuel industry.11 Increasing the efficiency with which energy is used could create thousands of new firms and millions

But there are several important differences between methane and carbon dioxide. One is that methane concentrations are much lower (2,000 parts per billion, which is about 1/200th that of CO2’s 400 parts per million). Another difference is that a methane molecule lasts in the atmosphere for only about twelve years—though after that, chemical reactions covert it to CO2. And a third difference is that, because of the peculiarities of how molecules interact with the different colors of infrared radiation, every additional methane molecule in the atmosphere is thirty times more potent in warming than a molecule of carbon dioxide. These differences—lower concentration and shorter lifetime, but greater warming potency—must be taken into account when comparing CH4 and CO2 emissions. For instance, the 300 million tons of methane humans emit each year is only 0.8 percent of the 36 gigatons of CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels.

Thus, my claim about the current benefits of fossil fuels is radical in two respects: I am claiming (1) that today’s world is unnaturally livable, not, as our knowledge system portrays, unnaturally unlivable, and (2) that the role of ultra-cost-effective fossil fuel energy is not incidental or even just important—it is fundamental.

We should limit how much beef we eat, because the amount of water, fossil fuel, and grain it takes to procure one pound of beef is nearly unimaginable. We should recycle. And precycle—buy things that have as little packaging as possible. We should do our best to walk and take public transportation and offset our fuel by giving generously to those who are helping plant trees around the world through organizations such as the Eden Project. But perhaps the most important thing we can do immediately to positively impact the health of the planet is to begin to take a Sabbath. If we work six days a week, it very well may be that we can limit one-seventh of our carbon footprint because we are not commuting on that day.

Air travel has made it possible to travel vast distances in no time at all. We fly so we can get to places more quickly, and waste less time. Yet, we often don't honour the passage of that time or respect the other costs of that rapid transition from one environment to the next. I didn't allow time to "unpack" the tension and stress my body must have carried as a result of the travel, not to mention the terrible stress it put on the environment. I realized so much of my life was driven by a "make it happen" attitude; that belief that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. And yet, my father constantly reminds me, "You can do anything you want. But you can't do everything." There is a cost. It takes energy. Be that fossil fuels, calories or our soul-connection. In some indigenous cultures there is a belief that you need to allow time for your soul to catch up with your physical body after long journeys, so it's important to rest when you arrive and travel more slowly during the journey itself, taking time to pause, wait, rest.

The earth has warmed during the past century, partly because of natural phenomena and partly in response to growing human influences. These human influences (most importantly the accumulation of CO2 from burning fossil fuels) exert a physically small effect on the complex climate system. Unfortunately, our limited observations and understanding are insufficient to usefully quantify either how the climate will respond to human influences or how it varies naturally. However, even as human influences have increased almost fivefold since 1950 and the globe has warmed modestly, most severe weather phenomena remain within past variability. Projections of future climate and weather events rely on models demonstrably unfit for the purpose. Later,

Understanding how the climate system responds to human influences is, unfortunately, a lot like trying to understand the connection between human nutrition and weight loss, a subject famously unsettled to this day. Imagine an experiment where we fed someone an extra half cucumber each day. That would be about an extra twenty calories, a 1 percent increase to the average 2,000-calorie daily adult diet. We’d let that go on for a year and see how much weight they gained. Of course, we would need to know many other things to draw any meaningful conclusions from the results: What else did they eat? How much did they exercise? Were there any changes in health or hormones that affect the rate at which they burn calories? Many things would have to be measured precisely to understand the effect of the additional cucumbers, although we would expect that, all else being equal, the added calories would add some weight. The problem with human-caused carbon dioxide and the climate is that, as in the cucumber experiment, all else isn’t necessarily equal, as there are other influences (forcings) on the climate, both human and natural, that can confuse the picture. Among the other human influences on the climate are methane emissions into the atmosphere (from fossil fuels, but more importantly from agriculture) and other minor gases that together exert a warming influence almost as great as that of human-caused CO2.

Carlton Church: Australia in Doubt on Building Nuclear Plant With the continuous trend of nuclear proliferation, the nuclear-free Australia is in critical dilemma on whether to start the industry in the country or not. On one end of the coin, the negative effects of nuclear generation will surely cause skepticisms and complaints. On the other side, nuclear fuel industry is worth exploring. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been reserved when it comes to nuclear talks but he did admit that “Australia should ‘look closely’ at expanding its role in the global nuclear energy industry, including leasing fuel rods to other countries and then storing the waste afterwards”. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill set up a royal commission in March to undertake an independent investigation into the state’s participation in the nuclear fuel cycle. Carlton Church International, non-profit organization campaigning against nuclear use, says there is no need for Australia to venture into nuclear turmoil as they already have an extensive, low cost coal and natural gas reserves. Other critics has also seconded this motion as it is known that even Turnbull has pointed out that the country has plentiful access to coal, gas, wind and solar sources. During an interview, he also stated, “I’m not talking about the politics. We’ve got so much other affordable sources of energy, not just fossil fuel like coal and gas but also wind, solar. The ability to store energy is getting better all the time, and that’s very important for intermittent sources of energy, particularly wind and solar. But playing that part in the nuclear fuel cycle I think is something that is worth looking at closely”. A survey was also conducted among random people and a lot of them have been reluctant about the nuclear issue. Some fear that the Fukushima Daichii Incident would happen, knowing the extent of the damage it has caused even to those living in Tokyo, Japan. Another review also stated, “We only have to look at the Fukushima disaster in Japan to be reminded of the health, social and economic impacts of a nuclear accident, and to see that this is not a safe option for Australians.” According to further studies by analysts, 25 nuclear reactors can be built around Australia producing a third of the country’s electricity by 2050. But it also found nuclear power would be much more expensive to produce than coal-fired power if a price was not put on carbon dioxide emissions. Greenpeace dismissed nuclear power as “an expensive distraction from the real solutions to climate change, like solar and wind power”. - See more at: carltonchurchreview.blogspot

One former insider in the Kochs’ realm, who declined to be named because he feared retribution, described the early donor summits as a clever means devised by Charles Koch to enlist others to pay for political fights that helped his company’s bottom line. The seminars were, in essence, an extension of the company’s corporate lobbying. They were staffed and organized by Koch employees and largely treated as a corporate project. Of particular importance to the Kochs, he said, was drumming up support from other business leaders for their environmental fights. The Kochs vehemently opposed the government taking any action on climate change that would hurt their fossil fuel profits.

These deals were part of a strategy that Koch had been formulating for over a year. Koch saw something in Eagle Ford. It was something that others also saw, but that Koch was the first to exploit. While production was flat until early 2010, the number of drilling rigs had more than tripled in just over a year, from thirty to 104. This number was a leading indicator. The wells would start pumping, and new oil would start to flow. Koch Industries was poised for the change. The wells being drilled into southern Texas were the face of an energy revolution that would redefine global oil markets and the American economy. They were part of a once-in-a-generation transformation that crept up quietly and then changed everything. In one short decade—from 2005 to 2015—America went from being the largest importer of refined petroleum products to the largest exporter of refined petroleum products. A country that was once the poster child for peak oil discovered that it was home to oil and natural gas deposits that were likely larger than those found in Saudi Arabia. The entire story about fossil fuels was reversed before many people even realized what was happening. These changes were every bit as cataclysmic for oil markets as the OPEC embargo had been in the 1970s. But this time, the changes accrued to America’s benefit. The cost of oil plummeted, OPEC was defanged, and America became essentially self-sufficient as an oil consumer.