Time now to turn our attention to news releases from outlets that perhaps you have not previously recognized for their powerhouse scientific reporting. UN weapons inspector Hans Blix is taking some heat from American conservatives for his interview over on MTV, where he says,”…you have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way. I regret it. To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war…the environment, that is a creeping danger. I’m more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict.” Over on Fox News, Blix’s comments are being met with what could politely be called derision in between the issuance of news stories like “[Potential] Iraqi Oil Well Fires Not a Major Health Threat”.
Not to worry, says a news release from GOPNews (“Bringing the conservative message to America”). “…The White House announced a $1 billion, ten-year demonstration project to create the world’s first coal-based, zero-emissions electricity and hydrogen power plant….’This demonstration project and the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum will build on these initiatives to provide the American people and the world with advanced technologies to meet the world’s energy needs’ [President] Bush said.” However, critics say these efforts are too little, too late. Seventeen environmental experts, assembled by the National Academy of Sciences at the president’s request, said in their report that the president’s strategy “lacks most of the basic elements of a strategic plan: a guiding vision, executable goals, clear timetables and criteria for measuring progress”.
So…what are the facts?
I seem to remember doing a project in geography when I was at school on the Earths available fossil fuel reserves that suggested rather gloomily that we would have exhausted all reseves by the year 2020 or so. Since then economic pressures and developments in technology have made it viable to work mines that would otherwise have been abandoned, and new coalfields have been discovered. In fact there is quite a lot of coal out there waiting to be used. Okay great, but that is still a fintite amount and I noticed from your link to the Naruc site above that while their graph indicates a substantial increase in coal power plants by 2020, it shows the growth in the predicted number of (unspecified) renewables falling to less than a quarter in 2020 from now. It seems a litle short-sighted to charge ahead building fossil-fuel plants at the expense of hydroelectric power plants or wind generated power as well.
Yup, that projection-estimation stuff has had problems. Look up the “Club of Rome” Malthusian study from…I think the 1970s. “Limits to Growth”.
Predicted that we ran out of oil 5 years ago.
Well, now we have more oil reserves…a huge amount compared to those 30 year old numbers.
Oh, and “Fossil Fuels” may be finished – as a phrase. They’re not fossil, they are geology, if Thomas Gold, Russian workers taking oil out of bedrock, and many others are right. The carbon material which forms into oil and other things is coming up from below. Start by looking at how much carbon is in those “coal” and “oil” deposits — was there really that much carbon in the atmosphere or sea water for plants to grab? And why do we get our helium from oil fields?