Tag: energy
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Like kicking dead whales down a beach: understanding the Great Hydrogen Delusion
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Engineers will rarely tell you something is impossible, even when your proposal is a very bad idea. Computer scientists at Stanford and MIT in the 1970s came up with a wonderful expression for this, an assignment that was technically feasible, but highly undesirable. They called it “kicking a dead whale down a beach”. The folklore compendium The Hacker’s Dictionary defines this as a “slow, difficult, and disgusting process”. Yes, you can do it like that. But you really don’t want … Read More
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Peak Oil: RIP
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The idea that seized the imaginations of the bien pensant chattering classes in the Noughties – “Peak Oil” – is no longer relevant. So says the commodities team at Citigroup, and policy-makers would be wise to examine the trends they’ve identified.
“Peak Oil” is the point at which the production of conventional crude oil begins an irreversible decline. The effect of this, some say, is that scarcity-induced prices rises would require huge changes in modern industrial societies. For some, Peak … Read More
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Synthetic renewable oil: what’s not to like?
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“Rely on the sun and the other eco-friendly things that Mother Earth has given us. We need to stop being dependent on the corrupting effect that is oil now!”
– HuffPost Super User “ProgressivePicon86”
The next energy revolution is coming – and promises the biggest disruption since the industrial revolution.
Today we assume that oil is a finite resource. The “Peak Oil” argument, for example, is not that it runs out, but that conventional sources run down, and it becomes … Read More
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The League of Handicapping Gentlemen
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Energy Minister Christopher Huhne has an opinion piece in the The Daily Telegraph today – and it’s really an 800-word explanation of why we need a new Energy Minister. The subject of Huhne’s essay is new, cheap gas.The article finds the minister on the defensive about shale gas: it’s why he’s taking his argument into print. Huhne doesn’t like this exciting new development, but he doesn’t have the power to kill it. He welcomes it through gritted teeth before … Read More
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At Esquire: Alien Oil
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For Esquire‘s May edition, an in-depth feature on the implications of new synthetic hydrocarbons, including interviews with Dr Craig Venter, and Vladimir Koutcherov. An excerptWe’ll have to get used to thinking of oil as a renewable, low carbon energy source. The difference is this oil is harvested, not excavated. Oil will be something you’ll create in a back garden, next to the composter and bonfire pile. Kids will brew up some diesel for their school project. There will… Read More -
Shale ignorance
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Is it time to decouple “Climate Change” from the Department of Energy and Climate Change? If it was the plain old “Department of Energy” again, it might spend more time researching new fuel sources.Is it time to decouple “Climate Change” from the Department of Energy and Climate Change? If it was the plain old “Department of Energy” again, it might spend more time researching new fuel sources. Two peers last week took aim at the department because its latest … Read More