Towards An Ecological Civilization
Spare me the BS, let's solve the hardest energy problem first
Fossil Fuel Victory at COP28
The recent COP28 Climate Change negotiations came to a dramatic close with the world’s oil majors declaring that the world will “transition away from fossil fuels” without actually committing to any firm targets1. Environmental activists rolled their eyes in disgust2 while Middle East petroleum potentates smiled from ear to ear.3
What does the oil industry know that the environmentalists do not? Are the oil majors cynically lying or do they have a plan?
The oil majors may have a better plan for the environment than they are given credit for. For one, they know they are not going out of business despite activist protests because demand for their products extends as far into the future as we can project.
Secondly, they have proven technical options available to eliminate the worst of the pollution and achieve net zero carbon emissions through a combination of industrial and ecological carbon management. The climate activist community is willfully blind and opposes these clean fuel solutions because the new products are still carbon-based, so we keep burning the old toxic fuels instead.
I believe the oil majors plan to transition from fossil fuels to synthetic fuels which are generally non-toxic, recycle carbon, and are in no danger of running out. But it will still be up to the people to hold the powerful accountable and ensure they behave ecologically.
Net zero carbon emissions is within our means. There is a path to close the loop and restore balance to the global carbon cycle by managing industrial carbon emissions upstream. Even more importantly, we must restore global ecosystems downstream that are thirsty to convert all those greenhouse gases into soils, trees, and life.
We can have a civilization that is designed to last for thousands of years, but it must put ecology first morally and ethically.
Who am I and What do I Know?
I am a committed Deep Green environmentalist and have over two decades of hands-on experience in renewable energy. I make my living constructing large solar power, battery storage, and microgrid projects across the United States.4
I have painfully come to the conclusion that the political project to completely replace fossil fuels with renewable energy will fail dramatically. These decarbonization schemes don’t work on their own engineering merits and are an ecological disaster.5 I was once a true believer but now I see firsthand that tearing up ecosystems to install solar panels and wind turbines does nothing to solve our energy problems and is adding more damage to nature.
I have completely lost faith in our scientific and political leadership concerning climate change, renewable energy, and a lot more. Their plans are terrible,6 like throwing water on a grease fire.
We do have serious environmental problems, namely a mass extinction event7 going on all around us. Human population growth is displacing habitat for wildlife in addition to massive amounts of toxic pollution poisoning the landscape. The mass extinction of animals is the canary in the coal mine we should be worried about because we humans are next.
The push for renewable energy is repeating all the same ecological mistakes of the soulless Enlightenment capitalism that got us in trouble in the first place.
We need a new vision.
We need a new path forward, a new ideology if we have any hope of creating a truly ecological civilization that can thrive for millennia.
Fortunately, the solution for climate change is largely the same as the solution for wildlife: detoxify and restore healthy ecosystems at continental scales with urgency.
I am optimistic that we have viable solutions available to clean up our energy systems and bring them into balance with nature by detoxifying and closing the loop on the carbon cycle; which I will explain below.
But I am equally pessimistic that these solutions will be implemented in time before our runaway train of an industrial economy goes off the ecological rails with tragic consequences.
Failure of Renewable Energy
I am not going to list all the myriad reasons why we can’t run industrial civilization on renewables alone; all of the land use,8 raw materials9, and engineering performance constraints10 that put hard limits on diffuse and intermittent renewables, the information is open source.
Or the fact that wind and solar power are not replacing any baseload power because they are simply feeding the growing demand for electricity that comes with population growth, rising global standards of living, and the brave new digital world of ubiquitous LED lighting, internet data centers, and electric vehicles.11
I will make one simple argument.
We are told ad nauseam by climate activists that “we have the technology, we just lack the political will”12 to abandon the suicide pact with fossil fuels.13 We are told by esteemed university professors14 and presidential candidates15 that renewable energy is cheap and abundant and if we simply deploy enough wind, solar, and batteries we will produce more than enough electricity to not only power the electrical grid but also produce enough hydrogen from water to replace petroleum fuels in transportation.16
This is all pure fantasy with no basis in engineering reality17 and critics18 have been pointing it out for years,19 but postmodernist climate activists hold ideology and narrative above all reality-based concerns.20
Now even the most hard-line climate activists recognize there are sectors of our economy that are “difficult to decarbonize”21 such as fuels for aviation, maritime shipping, heavy transportation, and high-temperature manufacturing,22 but they prefer to ignore that conversation and focus on falling costs for solar as if low-cost is the same thing as engineering solutions for large and difficult problems.23
I argue that when you look at the most difficult engineering challenges first you see that they are actually impossible to decarbonize short of crashing modern civilization and we must craft an ecological solution that recognizes this fundamental reality.
Perhaps if we start at the top of the engineering pyramid and solve the hardest problem first then the solution will cascade down the rest of the way.
The USAF is the Most Difficult Industry to Decarbonize
What industry is the most difficult of all to decarbonize?
It is the one that consumes the most fossil fuels and also has the most demanding engineering requirements. This industry is the US military.24 The Pentagon is the biggest buyer of petroleum products on the planet,25 over 50% of that fuel goes to the Air Force and 30% to the Navy.26
Global militaries are not even included in carbon emissions reports because they claim it would jeopardize national security.27 This is known as the Military Emissions Gap and is a tacit admission that military carbon emissions are enormous and intractable.28
The USAF has demanding and highly specific technical requirements for their jet fuels and they need deep rivers of it available continually around the world 24/7/365 at reasonable prices.
These requirements are driven by battlefield performance and no reduction in performance can be tolerated. The USAF will accept better fuels but they will not accept anything inferior. The Air Force is also clear that there is no theoretical solution even under discussion that will replace jet fuel and jet engines on the battlefield in the foreseeable future. They plan on continuing to use jet fuel for centuries, which means that the industry and infrastructure must remain intact regardless of politics. 29
This is why the oil and gas industry is in no danger of going out of business.
This is a fundamental reality.
If no Air Force is flying that means civilization as we know it has crashed.
Greens must accept this reality.
Whatever solution the USAF arrives at will be the same as every other Air Force in the world to maintain competitive parity. If any country has a better solution they will all adopt it, which is why all countries use the same fuels and engine types. All of this combines to make the Air Force the toughest industrial sector to decarbonize.
Jet fuel is made from kerosene, as is diesel, and they are effectively the same for this discussion. The military uses kerosene in the Navy and in heavy ground vehicles like tanks, trucks, and troop carriers, all of which consume massive quantities of fuel compared to civilian vehicles.30
All the militaries of the world follow the same basic program and it means that if you can provide an ecological fuel solution for the Air Force then that same solution can also replace diesel globally in heavy trucking and bunker fuel in maritime shipping.
The solution cascades down.
Synthetic Jet Fuel
What does the Air Force have to say on the subject of decarbonizing? Quite a bit actually. The US Air Force is the single biggest researcher and consumer of renewable fuels in the world and has invested more money and effort than anyone to craft realistic technical solutions that meet their needs.31
The good news is that the USAF has a plan for fuels of the future and it does not require petroleum products. The USAF prefers synthetic fuels because synfuels are clean and offer better performance with less pollution. Pollution is a tactical liability because the enemy can follow the trail of fumes.32
Synthetic jet fuels have been made from coal at industrial scales since WWII and virtually any sources of hydrogen and carbon can be transformed into liquid fuels.33 Incredible amounts of effort have gone into making synfuels from biomass crops, waste, algae, electrolysis of water H2O, carbon dioxide CO2, and more.
Most of these attempts have failed to commercialize.34
Biomass does not scale and requires orders of magnitude more vegetation than is available. The resulting biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel are lower quality than petroleum and do not meet the needs of the USAF.35
Climate activists want hydrogen derived from water H2O using electrolysis. The problem is this approach requires vast quantities of electricity to crack water and we don’t have those amounts available from the grid or renewables.36 Industry sources most of its hydrogen from natural gas and gets almost none from electrolysis.37
More positively, synthetic fuels provide a robust platform for open-loop recycling of all of our plastics and carbon-based waste from biomass, sewage, garbage, and farm animals. Plastics in particular are an excellent raw material for synfuels and harnessing their stored energy is an obvious solution for cleaning up the tremendous amounts of plastic waste littering the global landscape.
Methanol-to-Jet
One USAF program that has proven successful is methanol-to-jet fuel.38 Methanol, known as wood alcohol (the kind you don’t drink), is a simple molecule used as a traditional fuel and industrial chemical. Methanol is commonly used in racecars and is routinely upgraded to USAF-grade jet fuel.39 40 Methanol is also a strong candidate to replace bunker fuels in maritime shipping.41
Methanol is simply methane (natural gas) with an oxygen atom. Methane is CH4 and Methanol is CH3OH. DME (Dimethyl Ether) CH3OCH3 is similar and is like green propane.42 Industry has produced synthetic methanol, DME, and kerosene for decades and despite being non-toxic and safe for nature these products are considered fossil fuels and are rejected by climate activists due to carbon emissions.43
Synthetic fuels are still hydrocarbons and exhaust CO2 and water vapor just like fossil fuels but synfuels can be made from recycled carbon and renewable methane to dramatically reduce the amount of fossil carbon going into the atmosphere. They are also free of sulfur, contaminants, and particulates, virtually eliminating the toxic air pollution that currently plagues us.44
From there we must close the carbon loop by restoring ecosystems and returning the carbon from the atmosphere into the soils, forests, and ecosystems where it belongs.
Greenhouse Gases are Green Fuels
Here is the trick, methanol is made from only two ingredients, the same greenhouse gases that climate activists tell us to fear: carbon dioxide CO2 and methane CH4.
Methanol is efficiently produced from a reaction of 80% CH4 with 20% CO2 at huge scales and low cost.45
CH4 + CO2 -> CH3OH methanol -> CH3OCH3 DME -> C12H26C15H32 kerosene
We have a remarkable paradox, by using the two greenhouse gases of concern we can manufacture ecological replacements for kerosene, diesel, and propane, and fuel every heavy-duty machine under the sun with low prices and unlimited supplies.46
Climate activists reject this solution even though they offer no viable alternatives.
Methane is a Building Block of Life
Climate activists tell us that methane is a threat and we should fear the use of LNG liquified natural gas,47 and that we need better methane literacy.48 Well, the climate activists are wrong,49 and I say this sadly because they are my friends, or at least used to be.
I was active in the Green Party and went to all the environmental protests for years until I realized how hypocritical, nihilistic, hysterical, unscientific, and ultimately hateful the movement has become.50
Methane is not a threat, it is a building block of life and a core component of the Earth’s cycle of life along with carbon dioxide, water, and oxygen. All life on Earth is dependent on these biological gases cycling through plants, animals, and the atmosphere, including our own bodies.51
If methane is bad, then why is it the basis of the food chain on the ocean floor?52
Vast amounts of methane are locked up in hydrate ice at depth, and this methane hydrate ice hosts great colonies of life deep beyond the penetration of sunlight.53
Methane is a source of life.54
Not a Bridge but the Destination
Methane is wildly abundant in the universe, non-toxic, readily renewable, safe for nature, energy-rich, and we will never run out. We have centuries of proven fossil supplies plus methane is profitably renewable. Mother Nature produces methane continuously geologically and biologically, she is incredibly generous.
Proven reserves of natural gas keep climbing despite rising consumption, and unproven reserves are huge. Remember that 20 years ago shale gas was an unproven reserve and today it is a major resource.55
Methane hydrates, fire ice, form expansive masses on the the sea floor along continental margins at depths of 350m to 5000m. These hydrate formations ring every continent and are distributed around the world. The resources are unfathomably huge, bigger than all the historical coal, oil, and natural gas combined.56 The United States has the most of any country due to its long coastlines. Methane hydrates are not counted among proven fuel reserves though work has already started to harvest them.57 Most people don’t even know methane hydrates exist since they were only first mapped in the 1990s and have not become a mainstream topic of conversation.58
Renewable natural gas (RNG) is also the most successful renewable fuel on the market today because it is identical to fossil methane and is blended seamlessly in the pipelines, unlike ethanol and biodiesel which are low-quality fuels. We get RNG from landfills, farm digesters, and sewage treatment, and use it in trucking. Many garbage trucks, city buses, and big rigs run on renewable natural gas today and it is a growing industry.59
Natural gas is safe for nature, it does not harm air, soil, or water, fish, birds, or worms. The only threat from a spill is fire but there is no residue from the gas itself, unlike oil. The LNG shipping industry has the best safety record of all industrial fuels and chemicals, there has never been a disaster from LNG shipping even when ships have run aground. Unlike coal and oil which both have profound legacies of damage from spills and waste.60
The Nord Stream undersea natural gas pipeline was sabotaged in September 2022 and news reports showed it gushing hundreds of pipe-miles worth of gas for weeks in a giant ocean plume. It was the single largest industrial spill of methane in history and yet there was no environmental catastrophe; no fisheries were damaged, no dead birds, no coastlines ruined, and no human lives lost. If that had been an oil pipeline it would have been one of the biggest environmental catastrophes ever causing enormous damage. But there was no damage from natural gas because methane is fundamentally part of nature and safe for nature.
We find methane in space in even bigger quantities. Saturn’s moon Titan is cold and has an atmosphere of liquified methane, it rains LNG and there are giant seas of it. Human space travel can be fueled with methane rockets. Methane will be a vital component of life in space and recycled alongside water, carbon dioxide, and oxygen.61
Methane is green as green can be and should properly be viewed as a living fuel, not a fossil fuel. Methane is not a bridge but the destination in our clean energy journey.62
Industrial Carbon Capture Works
Circularity is at the heart of an ecological civilization so we need to close the loop on the industrial carbon cycle and ensure that we are keeping it in sync with nature. We must manage our carbon emissions at both the source and the sink.
The next trick is to capture carbon dioxide from electric power and industry at large scales and low cost. Proven technologies like amine scrubbers work well for clean coal and emerging technologies like Allam Cycle power plants work for natural gas.63
Carbon capture requires pipelines and a substantial network of CO2 pipelines running across the country is necessary infrastructure for net zero carbon emissions alongside water, gas, sewer, and power.64
Industrial carbon capture has usually been paired with attempts to sequester the captured gases in geological formations underground. Geological carbon sequestration has generally failed except when used for enhanced oil recovery.65 I have never been a fan of disposing of CO2 underground, it is an expensive exercise in creating a new type of toxic landfill and a good example of the linear economics we need to move away from.
I have studied this industry closely, I was trained by the Dept of Energy on CCUS (carbon capture, utilization, and storage) and visited industrial carbon capture sites in the USA, Canada, and Saudi Arabia.66
Rather than bury CO2 underground as a waste product, I looked for ways to use CO2 in huge quantities, billions of tons per year. I found there are many small uses for CO2 in plastics, cement, carbonated beverages, and more, adding up to millions of tons but few options offer meaningful scale.
The best use I observed for captured CO2 that can scale massively is to simply react it with natural gas to make synthetic methanol, DME, and kerosene at the enormous volumes required to fuel aviation, maritime shipping, and diesel markets.67
Converting natural gas to a liquid is a huge practical advantage because the gas is liberated from pressurized pipelines where it is constantly trying to escape and instead stored in containers to be used in transportation. This is usually done by cooling and liquifying methane into LNG, but methanol is an equally viable process, perhaps even advantageous.
A second option for boundless quantities of captured CO2 is to deposit it on the seafloor as hydrate ice alongside methane. Hydrate ice can store numerous types of gases. This technique is already deployed at small scale to liberate methane for production but has not been attempted at large scale.68 There is no obvious reason why expansive quanties would be constrained since the CO2 is held in place as ice by the temperature and pressure of the deep ocean.
Ecological Carbon Sinks Close the Loop
The final trick gets us to net zero by closing the loop on carbon emissions through ecological carbon capture. The Earth’s natural carbon cycle is much larger than the industrial carbon emissions put out by humanity. The Earth cycles carbon dioxide, water, and methane in gargantuan quantities through the metabolic processes of plants and animals.
Carbon is fundamentally abundant and is stored in enormous quantities in the Earth and ecosystems. Through our bad practices of deforestation, pollution, and erosion we have been steadily converting the carbon once stored in our ecosystems into atmospheric carbon contributing to climate change. We can reverse this trend if a critical mass of people recognize the importance of regenerating soil carbon, root networks, forest canopy, and continuous habitat as the core strategy for restoring balance to the carbon cycle.
All animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2 and methane, plants take these molecules in and convert them into living creatures and breathe out oxygen for the animals. It is a beautiful cycle, carbon builds up in soils and is stored in the total quantity of life.69
Scientists have long documented the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuel which they link to climate change. This is true but not complete, it is equally true that nature can readily absorb all the CO2 if global ecosystems were intact, but they are not.70
Humans have been cutting ecosystems to ribbons for centuries, we place human needs above those of nature and don’t think twice about chopping down a living forest to build a temporary tribute to some person’s ego.
When settlers arrived a few centuries ago much of North America was a primeval forest, soils were deep and rich, and wildlife was verdant. We destroyed much of it and have lost roughly a foot of topsoil in American farmlands since colonial times due to bad agricultural practices and erosion.71 Much of that carbon went up in the atmosphere.
We are now facing a mass extinction event around the world as remaining ecosystems face unprecedented challenges and wildlife is left with few places to go. This is the canary in the coal mine we should be worried about.
Soil is made primarily from carbon and if we could restore that foot of topsoil it would be more carbon than we have put in the atmosphere from fossil fuels. Wise farmers recognize that regenerative agriculture and ranching techniques work to heal the land and their businesses are gaining popularity. More and more folks are seeing the core value of reforestation and ecosystem restoration.72
The carbon numbers add up generously, Mother Nature will readily take gigatons of carbon every year and turn it into life if we work with her rather than against her. Reforestation, afforestation, regenerative agriculture and ranching, grasslands, wetlands, and peatlands restoration all offer deep and thirsty sinks for billions of tons of carbon to build life and ecosystems.73
These are not new ideas but implementation has varied widely. For years the United Nations has operated carbon trading schemes that promote reforestation and ecological projects but they have mostly failed. I feel these carbon-trading programs are well-intentioned but suffer from being overly reductionist, micromanaged, and fundamentally too small.74
Soil carbon sequestration as a strategy for net zero carbon emissions can only work at large scale, it's a waste of time to do small isolated projects where the carbon fluxes are too complex to measure accurately much less track financially. Ecosystem restoration needs to happen at continental scales, soil carbon accumulation needs to be carried out over vast tracts of land if there is any hope of making a dent in fossil fuel emissions.
We could transform rural economies if we created a mechanism to financially reward farmers for improving the quality of the soil in addition to harvesting crops, or paying people to manage forests and wetlands. Today, people are only rewarded for what they harvest and extract from the land, not for how they regenerate the land.
Policy incentives need to be addressed at a deep systemic level that all land stewards respond to and we need to shift our moral and ethical relationship with the land as an entire culture. Every square inch of land is available to be restored, we need a shift of mindset to recognize that nature is not something we keep behind a fence in a park, she is living everywhere.
High Energy Net Zero Future
I am pro-technology and pro-Mother Nature and optimistic in believing that we can integrate industrial civilization into the biosphere. I want us to move into a hi-tech Space Age future where we mine asteroids for minerals to spare Mother Earth, and that is going to require vast amounts of energy for an advanced civilization with a high quality of life for all.
I believe in nuclear power for bulk electricity, but the industry is going through a lot of growing pains at the moment. It will take time to develop the next generation of safe nuclear power but it will come eventually.75
Meanwhile, we will still need fuels for aviation, shipping, and heavy-duty trucks.
I am also pro-electrification of light-duty vehicles and heating, but we must be cognizant of the vast mineral requirements for electrification and the burden that mining places on Mother Earth. The electrical grid will take years to expand and improve while power demand is already rising fast from new electric vehicles and data centers.
Ecology is a Circular Economy with No Waste or Pollution
We have perverse incentives in law and culture that encourage people to ravage ecosystems rather than protect them. An intact forest with abundant wildlife and clean water has no intrinsic value in our economic models, no financial flows reflect the valuable ecosystem services they provide in creating oxygen to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat, and no one pays when ecosystems are dismantled to make room for farms, ranches, and commercial development.
Our economic models simply do not account for ecosystem health, destruction, or pollution.
In many ways, we are encouraged by law and custom to destroy ecosystems.
Landowners must pay property taxes and are tacitly encouraged to harvest resources from the land to pay for it. Chop the trees for lumber, hunt the animals, harvest the minerals underground, and convert the land into money. In many cases, the law has obligated people to “improve” the land by turning forests into farms and other developments.76
We must find a way to incorporate ecology into our economic models and culture. Ecology is circular, it has boundaries but it creates constant growth by being circular. Resources are continually cycled through life, death, and renewal.
Our Enlightenment capitalist economy is linear, we extract resources, use them once, dump the waste, and return to do it again. Linear capitalist economics does not account for resource limitations or the externalities of toxic pollution.
These economic models are designed to outstrip ecological limits and we can not be surprised when we end up with empty holes in the ground on one hand and big piles of waste and pollution on the other since this is exactly what our system is designed to do. Linear economics is a landfill model.
Nature achieves endless growth in jungles and forests and she provides us with models for a circular economy. In nature, every output feeds the next input and there is no waste and no pollution. Nature is a circular economy where resources are continually recycled, it is a regenerative model.
We can model this in our industrial economy by requiring that every industry, not just energy, account for the full life cycle for every molecule they are putting out into the universe. If those molecules are good for nature then they can be released into nature, but if the molecules are toxic then they need to be collected, or else they can’t be allowed to be released and alternatives must be found.
Clean air, soil, water, and healthy ecosystems are objective standards everyone can agree on.
Living Web of Life
Secular humanism places human needs first and has created a narcissistic culture that only thinks of consumption and self-interest rather than any higher ideologies.
We must change our ethics by agreeing on a set of first principles and a vision for an ecological civilization. Only when we have a clear vision of our aims can we craft the technology and policy prescriptions to get us there and it is the vision we are lacking.
The moral shift needs to come first, an agreement on first principles that we are all part of a living web of life, the indigenous wisdom that the Earth is a single living creature and we humans, like all plants and animals, are microorganisms in a larger macroorganism that we call Mother Earth.77
We can not abandon industrialization, we must progress into the Space Age and bring human industry into harmony with Mother Nature on Spaceship Earth, or else die trying. There is danger and hope, it requires an ethical, moral, and visionary shift to light the way.
Ecological civilization puts ecology first.78
Nations at COP28 in Dubai approved earlier on Wednesday a roadmap for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” – a first for a UN climate conference – but the deal still stopped short of a long-demanded call for a “phaseout” of oil, coal and gas. UN News - 13 December 2023
“On climate deals, beware the word ‘historic’ It's a trap!” Emily Atkin, Heated blog, Dec 13, 2023
“Saudi Arabia backs COP28 deal, praises flexible approach.” Reuters, December 13, 2023
You can see my research and writing on clean energy on my old blog site, and my current Substack. Most of my writing these days is on Goddess spirituality which dovetails with my environmental views. The Mother teaches us the cycle of life, death, and renewal.
I have BS ILR and MBA degrees from Cornell University where I also worked on research staff for 8 years and began my career in renewable energy research.
Michael Shellenberger is one of the leading environmentalists I have long followed and admired. He was a co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute whose pragmatic ecomodernist approach to markets and technology has always appealed to me. He is a big critic of climate change hysterics, ecologically destructive renewable energy projects, and liberal policies writ large which has made him a heretic in the environmental community. He is also a proponent of nuclear power and natural gas, positions I agree with. He is a founder and president of the organization Environmental Progress, and his current writing is on Substack (paywalled).
“Can New York Really Get to 100% Clean Energy by 2040? Clean power supply is being generated in upstate New York, but it is not making its way to New York City, the area that relies most heavily on power from fossil fuels.” Anne Barnard and Grace Ashford, New York Times, Nov. 19, 2021
New York State is fucking stupid to ban drilling for natural gas and instead attempt to rely on wind and solar for electricity. All that natural gas could be going down to New York City where it is truly needed. Instead, they are knocking down trees to build solar farms all over upstate even though they are covered in snow for much of the long dark winter and contribute nothing for heat and industry.
The truly obnoxious thing is that the Marcellus Shale bountifully full of natural gas runs through one of the poorest regions of the state, the Southern Tier between the Finger Lakes and the Pennsylvania border. Folks in this area are struggling to get by, the economy is weak and farmers can barely hold onto their land. But they can watch their neighbors right across the border in PA drill gusher wells and earn huge royalties. New York could bring a much needed economic miracle to upstate. They could send all the gas down to New York City and consume it all without ever crossing state borders. Can you imagine?
Cornell University could lead the way in developing the most sensitive and ecologically sound engineering methods for drilling. They could monitor every component in the entire system to make sure it does not leak a single molecule of methane. Instead, the climate hysterics shut down the entire industry and condemn all those huge apartment buildings in Manhattan to continue burning imported fuel oil. It’s just so fucking stupid.
Signed, a New Yorker
Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction. Gerardo Ceballos , Paul R. Ehrlich, Anthony D. Barnosky, Andrés García, Robert M. Pringle, And Todd M. Palmer, SCIENCE ADVANCES, 19 Jun 2015, Vol 1, Issue 5, DOI:10.1126/sciadv.1400253
Journalist Robert Bryce has been a longstanding critic of the renewables revolution, pointing out the fundamental performance limitations that prevent wind and solar from being able to lift the world’s poor out of grinding poverty. Bryce’s Iron Law of Electricity states that government policy will always prioritize keeping the lights on and the economy operating smoothly over any kind of climate change policy, which is why coal use continues to climb steeply in Asia despite any claims made by climate activists and politicians.
Prof. Simon Michaux is an expert on mineral use and has presented detailed analysis that the planet does not have anywhere close to the supply of minerals that are demanded to replace fossil fuels with electrical alternatives. He appears in many interviews and podcasts.
Derrick Jensen is a co-founder of the environmental group Deep Green Resistance, who claim that industrial civilization is incompatible with life. I do not completely agree, I think we can reintegrate industry with nature, but not within the current socio-political-economic system (but don’t call me a Marxist!)
I agree with DGR 100% on their critiques of the current renewable energy strategy and how it is completely incompatible with nature and totally destructive. Jensen co-authored the book Bright Green Lies that documents a long list of ecological tragedies done in the name of “saving the planet.”
Our World in Data, Global Primary Energy Consumption by Source. Data source: Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2023); Smil (2017)
“We Have the Technology to Solve Climate Change. What We Need Is Political Will,” Alejandro De La Garza, Time, April 7, 2022
“Biden’s Climate Envoy, at U.N., Likens Global Inaction to a ‘Suicide Pact,’” Somini Sengupta, New York Times, Feb. 23, 2021
Mark Z. Jacobson is a professor of atmospheric science at Stanford University who came to prominence in 2008 by claiming we can run all of industrial civilization solely on wind, solar, and hydropower with no combustion fuels or nuclear power at all.
Prof. Jacobson is a total fraud who states as a matter of faith that we will make all the hydrogen we need for aviation, trucking, and shipping from the electrolysis of water using electricity from wind, solar, and hydropower. Jacobson’s views have been widely debunked by engineers as naive and unworkable and his usual response to critics is to block them and speak only to friendly audiences. Jacobson even sued some scientists who had the nerve to publicly debunk him, Jacobson lost, more on that below.
Despite having no engineering credibility at all, Jacobson remains popular with eco-intelligentsia like Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, and Bernie Sanders who quote his work as “proof” that we don’t need fossil fuels.
Senator Bernie Sanders promoted the Green New Deal as a renewable energy revolution in his high-profile 2016 campaign for President of the USA. Unfortunately for the Senator, he relied on the fraudulent work of Prof. Mark Z. Jacobson to craft totally bogus plans.
100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World. Mark Z. Jacobson, et al, Joule, Volume 1, Issue 1, 6 September 2017, Pages 108-121
Landmark 100 Percent Renewable Energy Study Flawed, Say 21 Leading Experts Robert Fares, Scientific American, June 23, 2017
“What the 100% Renewables Literature Gets Wrong,” Seaver Wang, The Breakthrough Insitute, July 26, 2023
Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar. Clack et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), June 19, 2017
This paper completely savaged Jacobson’s work in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal and he responded by suing the authors for defamation, a rather remarkable turn for academic science. Jacobson withdrew his suit at the last minute to avoid losing and then sued Stanford to recover the legal fees he was ordered to pay by a judge.
“In a World on Fire, Stop Burning Things,” Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, March 18, 2022 Bill McKibben is the absolute worst of the climate hysterics and he doesn’t know the first thing about how energy engineering actually works.
“Rebecca Dell on decarbonizing heavy industry,” Volts podcast, David Roberts, Feb. 11, 2022
“X-Change: Electricity: On Track for Net Zero” By Kingsmill Bond, Sam Butler-Sloss, Amory Lovins, Laurens Speelman, Nigel Topping, Rocky Mountain Institute RMI, 2023
“Why the Pentagon Is the World’s Biggest Single Greenhouse Gas Emitter,” Ruqaiyah Zarook, Mother Jones, Oct. 7, 2022
“Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War,” Neta C. Crawford, Boston University, 13 November 2019
“Insight: World's War On Greenhouse Gas Emissions Has A Military Blind Spot”, Sarah Mcfarlane and Valerie Volcovici, Reuters, July 10, 2023
The Military Emissions Gap, militaryemissions.org
Air Force Energy Plan 2010, Accession Number: ADA511964, Defense Technical Information Center, Fort Belvoir, VA
JP-8 and other Military Fuels. Joel Schmitigal, Jill Tebbe, U.S. Army TARDEC, Briefing Charts, 01 Dec 2011
Biofuels: An Alternative To U.S. Air Force Petroleum Fuel Dependency. Mark S. Danigole, Lt Col, USAF, Occasional Paper No. 62 Center for Strategy and Technology Air War College Air University Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, December 2007
The USAF And Alternative Jet Fuel: How To Fuel The Future Of Airpower. Yvonne Carrico, Maj, USAF, Air Command And Staff College Air University, Maxwell AFB, AL, February 2009
“Failed Promise of Biofuels,” Robert Bryce, Manhattan Institute, The Dallas Morning News, February 19th 2016
“The False Promise Of Biofuels,” David Biello, Scientific American, August 1, 2011
Green hydrogen is the biggest fucking scam. I am not even going to bother to debunk it here. If you are dumb enough to believe that it will ever be economic to produce meaningful quantities of hydrogen using electrolysis of H2O and it will outcompete acquiring hydrogen from CH4 then I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale that I would like to tell you about, it’s priced to move.
“New Clean Energy Process Converts Methane to Hydrogen with Zero Carbon Dioxide Emissions,” Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), US DOE, Press Release, March 18, 2021
Methane pyrolysis is a new technology beginning to commercialize that can replace traditional steam methane reforming, which easily separates hydrogen from methane but produces CO2 emissions. With this new pyrolysis process, there are no carbon emissions. Methane is heated and the carbon separates in its solid form, as carbon black, which is a commodity used in a variety of applications from laser printers to soil amendments.
“The Air Force partners with Twelve, proves it’s possible to make jet fuel out of thin air,” Corrie Poland, Air Force Operational Energy, Press Release, Oct. 22, 2021
“Green Methanol – A Raw Material For Sustainable Aviation Fuels,” thyssenkrupp AG website. Describes the process of manufacturing methanol from hydrogen and CO2 and upgrading it to sustainable jet fuel by German industrial giant ThyssenKrupp.
Hot Rod explains why race-car drivers love methanol. Fuel Freedom Foundation blog.
Methanol as fuel heads for the mainstream in shipping. DNV Corporate blog.
Dimethyl ether (DME) Fact Sheet. ETIP Bioenergy, European Technology and Innovation Platform, Website, https://www.etipbioenergy.eu/fact-sheets/dimethyl-ether-dme-fact-sheet
CO₂ Recycling to Dimethyl Ether: State-of-the-Art and Perspectives. National Library of Medicine, NIH, Catizzone E, Bonura G, Migliori M, Frusteri F, Giordano G. Molecules. 2017 Dec 24;23(1):31.
Oberon fuels is producing bioDME and biomethanol today. These fuels work.
Volvo trucks promoted DME as a replacement for diesel in big rigs. Every major engine manufacturer has proven designs for DME engines, but until there is a mandate for clean fuels they will continue to manufacture engines for the petroleum market.
“How Methanol is Produced,” Methanex Corporation website. Methanex is a major Lousiana, USA-based producer of methanol.
“Synthetic Fuels Reference Guide,” Global Syngas Technologies Council website.
“Methanol production from natural gas reforming and CO2 capturing process, simulation, design, and technical-economic analysis” Author: Bo-Ping Ren,Yi-Peng Xu,Yu-Wei Huang,Chen She,Bo Sun, Publication: Energy, Publisher: Elsevier, Date: 15 January 2023
“Methanol Takes Lead in Shipping’s Quest for Green Fuel,” Costas Paris, WSJ Reports, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 6, 2023
“This Liquefied Natural Gas Facility Is the Next Carbon Bomb,” By Delaney Nolan, Sierra, Magazine Of The Sierra Club, November 27, 2023
“The urgent need for methane literacy,” Emily Atkin, Heated Blog, Oct. 19, 2023
We all fart methane you dumb-asses!
I have been an environmental activist since the 1990s and was a volunteer on Ralph Nader’s 2000 and 2004 Green Party presidential campaigns, efforts that I will never apologize for. The Greens were unfairly scapegoated as spoilers by the Democrat Party who do not like to acknowledge their own failings.
I broke with the Greens over the issue of fracking natural gas in New York State. As a longtime resident of Ithaca, NY our town was at the epicenter of the fight and New York is the only state with serious gas resources that has banned production. Initially, I was also opposed to fracking and had a sign in my yard. In 2008 folks were highly concerned about pollution and damage from gas drilling as some of the early work in the Marcellus Shale in neighboring Pennsylvania had gone badly and some residential properties were impacted. But the regulators in PA got their act together, the industry cleaned up, and by 2013 natural gas drilling was a huge success and none of the predicted catastrophes had come to pass.
During this time I was on staff at Cornell University and had access to all the best data and expertise and had learned how natural gas is simply methane, is non-toxic, renewable, and can replace gasoline and diesel in transportation. I also knew that natural gas is a perfect complement to intermittent renewables. So I switched my position on natural gas and spent a couple of years trying to convince my liberal friends that natural gas is good and a huge benefit, but none of them were interested in listening to me.
Climate activists prefer to protest natural gas by going on the water in plastic kayaks, using plastic paddles and lifejackets, hanging from bridges using nylon ropes, displaying banners printed on plastic sheets, and using all manner of high technology to communicate and travel to oppose the production of the very molecules that make life in industrial civilization possible without a moment’s thought where all the plastics they are using came from, or what do with them at end of life, or offering any viable solutions at all to the very real ecological problems we face.
Climate protesters like Extinction Rebellion have become a nihilistic farce. All their preferred solutions are failing and now they resort to disrupting traffic and throwing paint in art museums like children having a tantrum.
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Climate science itself is not that firm, certainly not the constant media narrative to attribute every adverse weather event to the use of fossil fuels. These prominent scientists below have been offering important critiques of climate science for years and have been deemed heretics and mostly ignored.
Roger Pielke Jr., University of Colorado, a critic of climate change policy, particularly the estimates of financial damage from weather events.
Judith Curry - Statement To The Committee On Science, Space And Technology Of The United States House Of Representatives Hearing on “The President’s U.N. Climate Pledge.” 15 April 2015, Judith A. Curry, Georgia Institute of Technology.
Patrick Moore - Greenpeace Pro-Nuclear Heretic - Greenpeace Founder Patrick Moore Says Climate Change Based On False Narratives
Statement of Patrick Moore, Ph.D. Before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight. February 25, 2014 “Natural Resource Adaptation: Protecting ecosystems and economies”
Methane and the gastrointestinal tract. Sahakian AB, Jee SR, Pimentel M. PubMed, Dig Dis Sci. 2010 Aug;55(8):2135-43. doi: 10.1007/s10620-009-1012-0. Epub 2009 Oct 15. PMID: 19830557.
The majority of microorganisms in gas hydrate-bearing subseafloor sediments ferment macromolecules. Zhang, C., Fang, YX., Yin, X. et al. Microbiome 11, 37 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-023-01482-5
Microbial communities from methane hydrate-bearing deep marine sediments in a forearc basin. Reed DW, Fujita Y, Delwiche ME, Blackwelder DB, Sheridan PP, Uchida T, Colwell FS. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2002 Aug;68(8):3759-70. doi: 10.1128/AEM.68.8.3759-3770.2002. PMID: 12147470; PMCID: PMC124055.
Snow crabs found clustered around methane vents at bottom of Sea of Japan. The Yomiuri Shimbun, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, phys.org/news, 2010
Natural gas explained, How much natural gas is left. U.S. Energy Information Administration, Washington, DC, June 2, 2023 https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/how-much-gas-is-left.php
What are gas hydrates? Gas hydrates are ice-like substances that form in deep-sea sediments. NOAA Ocean Exploration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA, Educational website. oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/hydrates.html
Japan eyes undersea 'fire ice' as source of clean-burning hydrogen. Annu Nishioka, Nikkei Asia, March 20, 2021
Methane Hydrates - Fire Ice Next Energy Revolution. Enverus Corporation Blog www.enverus.com/blog/methane-hydrates-fire-ice-next-energy-revolution/
Renewable Natural Gas Production. Alternative Fuels Data Center, U.S. Department of Energy, https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/natural_gas_renewable.html
LNG Safety And Security. Michelle Michot Foss, Ph.D. Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas, June 2012
LNG - The Safe Fuel. Westport Fuel Systems Video
Liquefied Natural Gas Safety and Emergency Response. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration Video.
The Mystery of Methane on Mars and Titan. Sushil K. Atreya, Scientific American, Jan. 15, 2009
The Shell Prelude is the largest ship ever built in history, the 488-meter-long and 74-meter-wide FLNG floating liquefied natural gas ship is a triumph of engineering and should be an inspiration to the public. This floating facility does natural gas production, liquefaction, and loading of LNG to container ships in one package. Despite severe challenges, it operates in deep water far off-shore where it is uneconomic to run gas pipelines and opens up the enormous gas reserves in the oceans to exploration, reducing the need to drill near where people live.
Maritime operations in the deep oceans are also good practice for space exploration.
New Allam Cycle power plants offer complete carbon capture from coal and natural gas. NET Power Inc. Website 2023. https://netpower.com/technology/
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Pipeline Development: Federal Initiatives. Paul W. Parfomak, Congressional Research Service (CRS), June 2, 2023
CO2 Pipelines Are Part Of Our Low Carbon Future. Liquid Energy Pipeline Association website
CO2 Transport and Storage. IEA, International Energy Association website
Commercial Carbon Dioxide Uses: Carbon Dioxide Enhanced Oil Recovery. NETL, National Energy Technology Laboratory, DOE website
CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery. US Chamber of Commerce Global Energy Institute, white paper
In 2015 I was freelancing in Washington DC and with the goal of becoming a carbon capture expert I attended the RECS Research Experience in Carbon Sequestration program run by the US Department of Energy. We were trained by technical experts and visited the DOE test facility in Alabama and the ill-fated Kemper clean coal plant in Mississippi. I attended the opening ceremonies for the Boundary Dam clean coal plant in Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada. While there I made friends with delegates from the Saudi Arabian Oil Ministry and was invited to attend the 2015 CSLF Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum ministerial meeting in Riyadh. It was a remarkable trip, I was flown out with VIP treatment and stayed at the Four Seasons in the Kingdom Tower where the event was held, the hospitality was generous and overflowing.
The highlight of the trip was a private tour of the Saudi Aramco HQ in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and a talk with the CEO. An invited delegation was flown on an Aramco corporate jet from Riyadh to Dhahran. We walked the famous command center for Saudi Arabia’s entire oil industry, I was not allowed to take pictures but you can see it in this story from 60 Minutes.
On the plane, I sat a few rows behind US Energy Secretary Dr. Ernest Moniz, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi, along with other energy ministers, their staffs, and oil executives. At the time, Al-Naimi was one of the most influential people in the world, he had held his job for 20 years and called the shots for OPEC, his words moved markets. I watched when Al-Naimi stepped out in public and a whole swarm of reporters would mob and crowd him with microphones. As the entire conference spanned a few days I got to speak with both Moniz and Al-Naimi multiple times each. An extra bonus was watching a ceremonial fly-over by the Saudi Air Force for the pleasure of Al-Naimi who was met with the greatest honors upon landing at the airbase in Dhahran, along with the fighter jets he was greeted by an Army general with a red carpet and a military band.
Synthetic kerosene – the future of aviation? Shell Corporation Website
Gas Hydrate Production Trial Using CO2 / CH4 Exchange. NETL, National Energy Technology Laboratory, DOE report, Project Number DE-NT0006553
What is the carbon cycle? The carbon cycle is nature's way of recycling carbon atoms. Carbon is the foundation for all life on Earth. National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Website. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/carbon-cycle.html
The Carbon Cycle. National Geographic Society, Encyclopedic Entry website
Why Regenerative Agriculture? Regeneration International website. https://regenerationinternational.org/why-regenerative-agriculture/
How the Loss of Soil Is Sacrificing America’s Natural Heritage. Verlyn Klinkenborg, Yale E360, Yale University, March 1, 2021
More Than 50 Billion Tons of Topsoil Have Eroded in the Midwest. Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, April 19, 2022
Regenerative Organic Agriculture. Rodale Institute website. https://rodaleinstitute.org/why-organic/organic-basics/regenerative-organic-agriculture/
The Roads to Removal (R2R) Report. United States Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)-Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E), and Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) as well as the ClimateWorks Foundation, 2023. https://roads2removal.org/
The growing signs of trouble for global carbon markets. James Temple, MIT Technology Review, November 2, 2023
The emissions market failure that still threatens the planet. Alan Beattie, FT Financial Times, July 13, 2023
Living with uncertainty in carbon markets. London School of Economics, Grantham Research Institute, Commentary, January 30, 2023
Advanced Nuclear Energy Is In Trouble, NuScale Cancellation Should Be Wake-Up Call For Advocates. Adam Stein, Ted Nordhaus, The Breakthrough Institute, Nov. 28, 2023
New York State Forests: A History of Human Impact
“From the time of European settlement in North American until the middle of the 19th century, forests had been viewed primarily by the settlers as an obstacle to civilization; they were something to be cleared out of the way for agriculture, or to be unsustainably cut and exploited for profit. By the 1880s, less than 25% of New York State remained forested.” NYS DEC.
I have learned a great deal of ecological wisdom from listening to Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, Onondaga Nation, Haudenosaunee, Six Nations, Iroquois Confederacy Cattaraugus Indian Reservation, New York. There are many wise voices among indigenous peoples speaking a common ecological message. I particularly connected to Oren Lyons for personal reasons, perhaps because we are both from upstate New York, or because we both played lacrosse (he is better than me). I lived not far from the Onondaga reservation and have visited a few times, though I never met Oren Lyons.
OREN LYONS: “Being life, as it functions in the cycles, in the great cycles of life, you know, as we do our cycle of being born and going back to the Earth again, as a tree is a sapling and grows to full being and then falls as it goes back to the Earth again, as the spring comes and the fall and the winter and it comes again-it's endless, the cycle, as long as you protect the cycle, as long as you participate in the cycle, as long as you honor it and respect it, then it will continue, but it doesn't have to.”
Oren Lyons the Faithkeeper, Bill Moyers Documentary, July 3, 1991
“When we walk upon Mother Earth, we always plant our feet carefully because we know the faces of our future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. We never forget them. In the absence of the sacred, nothing is sacred. Everything is for sale.”
Peace Talks: Peacekeeping Traditions Of The Iroquois Confederacy
“Politics of abundance for Indians was to always be respectful of the natural world and to have ceremonies and to make sure that the next generations were taken care of. Indeed, the peacemakers said to our leaders that every decision we make must regard the seventh generation coming. And we shouldn't think of ourselves, nor our family, nor even our generation, but make our decisions on behalf of seven generations. Most Indian nations, that I know (and I know most of them) all have the same respect and reverence for life and for the future, and responsibility. So, that was a politics of abundance. Politics of scarcity comes from our brothers. Which is to say: when things get scarce, then they make rules and laws. And they make things scarce. The salmon discussion (is an example): when there was abundance beyond comprehension of so many salmon coming up so many rivers, just full of salmon. And today, today, it's hard to find them there. That's a politics of scarcity. That is the idea of taking more than you need, and taking at the expense of your grandchildren.”
Xi's thoughts on ecological civilization published. By Hou Liqiang, China Daily, 2022-08-01
I learned the term “Ecological Civilization” from Chinese Premier Xi Jinping who recommitted this traditional Chinese cultural value in the official long-term strategy of the Chinese Communist Party. I view the term as a constructive first principle to guide peace through trade relationships between the USA, China, and the world.
I am a proud libertarian patriot and my family roots in America go back to founding colonists. I am no fan of Marx or Mao, but I am willing to agree on first principles with anyone or any country who sees the moral imperative of clean, air, soil, and water, a healthy biosphere full of verdant flora and fauna, and a common dedication to our living Mother.
Thank you for your extensive work and research on this vital topic. I have not read every word you have written because my background is limited. I was a biology major, chemistry minor and taught biology and life science primarily. As an octogenarian, my formal education is ancient. I encourage you to keep up your work and get your voice heard. (As I believe I have told you, I am your great Aunt Ruth Foljambe Copeland’s daughter living in Peru, NY close to the Canadian border. Barbara Copeland Perry