oil
-
A new way to waste energy
Last week, the NYT's Andy Revkin blogged about a federal laboratory that says it can take atmospheric carbon dioxide and turn it into gasoline:
One selling point with Los Alamos's "Green Freedom" concept, and similar ones, is that reusing the carbon atoms in the captured CO2 molecules as a fuel ingredient avoids the need to find huge repositories for the greenhouse gas.
The only problem with that exciting statement is that it is almost certainly not true, a point I will come back to.
Now the NYT has published an article on the subject that also overhypes the technology:
There is, however, a major caveat that explains why no one has built a carbon-dioxide-to-gasoline factory: it requires a great deal of energy.
To deal with that problem, the Los Alamos scientists say they have developed a number of innovations ...
Even with those improvements, providing the energy to produce gasoline on a commercial scale -- say, 750,000 gallons a day -- would require a dedicated power plant, preferably a nuclear one, the scientists say. -
Our chance to escape the tightening fossil-fuel vise
With or without climate policies, energy prices seem set to rise. The question is, Who will get the money? Auctioned cap-and-trade gives us the opportunity to take charge of price increases and share the benefits widely -- even while we safeguard the climate and stimulate local jobs. Big chances like this don't come along often!
To see what a golden opportunity this is, we've got to briefly review recent fossil-fuel price increases.
-
Oscar-nominated film depicts oil production realistically
Anyone interested in oil should see There Will Be Blood, since it is a great film that tells a fascinating and detailed story of the early days of the oil industry in California.
Okay, it's Oscar week. I try to see all the Best Picture nominees, which is much tougher now that I have a one-year-old daughter. I missed Atonement [so far], but my wife read the book, so half credit. And lord knows after seeing No Country for Old Men, I don't need to see another downbeat movie -- uh, sorry for the spoiler, but if you thought a movie titled No Country for Old Men (or Atonement) was upbeat, you get out even less than I do these days.
I don't think There Will Be Blood is the best picture of the year -- but it is very good. Certainly the performance by Daniel Day-Lewis should take the Oscar, and the cinematography and music are fantastic.
But as a depiction of the grueling work of producing oil, it has no equal. Assuming you've read The Prize by Daniel Yergin, this is a must-see. Just leave five minutes before the end and you'll be happy.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
-
New tool tracks financial ties between politicians and oil companies
Check out Follow the Oil Money, a tool from the Center for Responsive Politics Oil Change International. You can find out exactly how much oil money any politician is getting (by zip code). You can also see cool charts showing the oil connections among sets of politicians. Here, for instance, is a chart of the […]
-
Canadian sportswriters better than 99.9 percent of U.S. media
It's truly depressing to find a better, more solid treatment of climate change and peak oil in the fricking sports pages of a Canuck paper then you will ever find in most U.S. papers. This sports writer schools the NHL and educates readers with a technique unheard of down here: assuming the readers aren't morons! What a nefarious trick!
-
Oil industry barely hangs on, thanks to brave Republican defense of subsidies
You may recall that a couple of months ago, Republicans in the Senate threatened a filibuster to defend about $13 billion in oil company subsidies. In other news, Exxon Mobil just posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company in history — $40.6 billion. It also set a record for the largest ever quarterly […]
-
Will peak oil force the localization of agriculture?
Stuart Staniford says no. Sharon Astyk says yes. Jeff Vail also says yes.
-
Conventional oil will peak within seven years
The oil company with the best strategic planning says the day of reckoning is nigh:
-
There are limits to the positive environmental change we can expect from high gas prices
You can scarcely pick up a paper or turn on the television these days without hearing the word recession. Leading economic indicators have wiggled in different directions over the past few months, but the general trend appears to be negative. The conventional wisdom points toward an economic downturn of some kind during 2008, and businesses […]