... its latest set of non-forecasts is that solar panels could be the most important single energy source by 2100. No word on the flying pig scenario....
... Five years ago, [Shell] was bemoaning the depletion of oil and gas from traditional areas, apparently unaware of the shale gas and tight oil booms on [its] doorstep....
... the main stresses on natural resources in the past four decades have come from one source: bad policy. Current and future stresses will have the same root....
... the costs of solar are not just linked to the inefficiency of the technology itself but to the fact that it requires conventional generating capacity standing by for when the clouds roll in...
... Instead of going the cheap and reliable route, they’ll go the Rube Goldberg way.
... The question still remains why such convoluted solutions would be necessary to self-inflicted problems. The answer lies in the climate derangement syndrome....
... the scenarios include a fair amount of climate porn, as in — “In the 2020s, a series of unusually violent storms leads to sea level surges in Asia, wreaking massive flood damage on major coastal cities etc., etc.”
... As Warren Buffett once said, “Forecasts tell you little about the future but a lot about the forecaster.” Presumably that applies to scenarios too.
"One should doubtless keep an open mind...though open at both ends, like the food pipe, and have a capacity for excretion as well as intake." -- Northrop Frye, 'The Great Code'
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Shell's latest fantasies
Peter Foster: Shell’s solar scenario fantasies
The Shell guys I know, and BP guys for that matter, just shake their heads at what they see as either window dressing or management lunacy, and try to focus on running their facilities as best they can.
ReplyDeleteBut there is a younger cohort of employees who frankly couldn't have been recruited into the hydrocarbons industry without upper management singing praises to the Goddess of Sustainability.
And all that subsidy money sloshes around and ends up in some company's pocket, so it would be irresponsible to the shareholders to not grab some, I suppose.
I can't wait for the madness to pass, but on the other hand enlightenment of the Intensely Political Climate Catastrophists probably involves crop failures and long winters. That won't be pleasant at all.
Historians will look at this phase of civilization and ridicule us. Broke yet throwing money away, scientifically advanced but prone to being manipulated by fear and guilt.
Yes, barring, as you say, some irrefutable cooling trend, "climate derangement syndrome" will continue for a long, long time. I guess we have to admit that the climate change propaganda campaign has been enormously effective. Policy documents for all levels of government and most corporations are saturated with it.
ReplyDelete