Hey Binoy. One of the oil companies in the USA got so sick and tired of the leftist hypocrisy that they hit back. When North Face clothing company started mouthing off against oil companies, one of them took out TV adds pointing out that 90% of North Face's raw materials were produced from oil.

You only have to remember the dirt poor Taliban in Afghanistan blowing up the Babayan Buddhas, which could have attracted planeloads of Buddhist pilgrims, to compare today's leftists with the most extreme religious nutcases. They are so enamoured of their ideology that they would happily destroy their own livelihoods to attain it.

So shove your moralizing, Binoy. If you hate coal so much then start sticking up for nuclear power. If you can't manage that you are just a leftist Taliban.

Shell, could easily make a point by not delivering product in Holland
and closing Shell service stations. With their dominance in their
home market we would hear the screams here.
They can just use their UK office to buy crude anyway.
BP and others would probably not increase deliveries in Holland.
I have not heard if they are to appeal.

I have not heard of any such stupid moves here. Have you ?

One would need to be willfully blind and selectively deaf not to fully and comprehensively understand, that fossil fuels have had their day!

And that we need to transition away from these things and the manipulative mongrels who have weaponised secure supplies?

It's not as though there weren't fully electric Alternatives for any vehicle or workhorse! There is and I include tractors and all former diesel-electric variants.

The only bugbear is what fuel are we to transition to provide reliable baseload power 24/7? Only MSR thorium nuclear power fits that bill if you also want carbon-free power all can afford!

Renewables attached to batteries ( the servant chained to heavyweights as he surges through muddy bogs) almost guaranteed to tank the economy!

And I get that advocates don't give a rats about the economy? Just as long as they get their pound of flesh from the reticulated power system!

I predict that not too far into the future, all air traffic will be powered by gravity-defying electric VTL systems as will all space flight and by a new hyperdrive able to accelerate to just under light speed!

All that stands in the way are the renewable/battery troglobites. TBC
Alan B.

So-called renewable energy runs on taxpayer subsidies. While it is still grudgingly admitted that sun and wind has to rely on fossil fuel as a "backup", the fact is that renewables are a parasite on fossil fuels. Most energy still comes from fossil fuels, and will remain dependent on coal, oil and gas in the foreseeable future - unless nuclear generation is accepted.

Even the word 'renewable' is a lie. While the sun and wind components are obviously renewable and cheap, nobody ever talks about the other input components necessary for sun and wind to be turned into electricity and delivered - none of which are necessarily renewable or cheap.

Binoy just what did you study while a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge? Was it philosophy, or perhaps political science? It certainly could not have been physics or math, or even the lefty in you would not have been able to write the bulldust involved in this piece of cr-p.

I may be wrong of course in that. Perhaps lefties can write such rubbish, even when they know that CO2 can not ever produce anything like the heating they attribute to the poor maligned molecule.

Big oil equals George Bush.

I hope he goes to hell!

Dan

One would not only need to be blind, wilfully deaf, and totally ignorant of history, not to know that the earth warms and cools in 1000 year cycles. We are right in the middle of the latest warming period which just happens to be right on schedule. Leftists today rely on the total ignorance of history that well meaning useful fools like Alan B have to promote their public service expanding and ever higher taxing agenda.

Alan B could argue that sooner or later mankind will have to stop changing the composition of the atmosphere with CO2 and start looking at alternatives, and I would agree with him. But for alarmists like himself to keep pushing for the total destruction of western economies while our Chinese totalitarian enemy laughs at us while building a coal fired power station every 2 weeks, is totally insane.

The alarmism is being driven by a coven of public service climate "scientists" more interested in gaining ever increasing public taxpayer support for their relatively unimportant scientific discipline, than any concern for their community. And you only have to look at Dr Fauci and his virologist friends who lied when they signed a declaration attesting that the Chinese virus could not have been engineered, to see the same thing happening again in real time.

Like the Chinese virus, the climate alarmism cause was taken up by a left wing press who supported their public service mates, had apparently slept through their history classes in school, and who pointedly never asked any pertinent and obvious questions of the self aggrandising "scientists." They in their turn were supported by the "anti everything" brigade who dream of a nation "of the public service, by the public service, and for the public service." Then every other bunch of nutters like vegans rallied to the cause, as an indirect way of justifying their nutty beliefs.

And Alan B fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker.

Actually LEGO, the cycles vary every 200 years or so. as the sun waxes and wanes as part of that normal cycle. As it waxes, the joint warms up! And as it wanes, it cools. We have been in a waning (cooling) phase since the mid-seventies (NASA

And should normally experience the ice advancing sea levels dropping and the tundra remaining solidly frozen the year-round! Instead of record hottest days, years and heatwaves. More record extreme weather events and fire seasons the like of which none have ever seen!

I get that you don't have a single clue given the garbage you have written! And you are no brighter than a (bird brain) parrot! Given all you have managed here is to repeat the (Polly want a cracker) garbage in garbage out, bulldust that is your particular forte!

I also get that don't want us to electrify the economy nor experience the massive economic growth that would include, if we also embraced MSR thorium, cooperative capitalism and genuine bracket creep free, tax reform! Manifesting as an unavoidable 15% flat tax that kicks in above a very generous tax-free threshold!

You'll have a nice day now y'hear.
Alan B.

WE could have the world's cheapest, cleanest and safest energy if it was MSR and retasked to burn nuclear waste we'd b paid annual millions to store.

As as we burnt and burnt the unspent fuel (90%) in this material. Reduce the half-life to just 300 years. With the annual millions paying for all the R+D and the factory produced, mass-manufactured, fully operational modules.

Where we would burn about 90% of the remaining unspent fuel leaving as little as 5% as waste that stabilises in around 30 tears and may be available as long-life space batteries. That sail forever skyward or burn up in the sun or with reentry.

With energy that cheap and abundant, we could deploy the surplus to create all the fuel, fertiliser and plastics from seawater using long known science! And never ever need to import another drop of (big) oil from anybody! And pocket the annual 26 odd billions we'd save as we did so!

And here I am saying, we'd have abundant and guaranteed carbon-free, safe, clean and all but free energy for quite literally, thousands of years!

Energy that cheap would have the high tech manufacturers of the world, queuing to relocate their manufacturing facilities here! Along with the jobs, training and tax liabilities, also!
Alan B.

I already knew about solar cycles, Alan B, and their effects upon solar radiation and heat distribution around the globe. There are a dozen other variables. But since your vestigial brain can only handle simple concepts, I did not want to confuse you by introducing other variables which would only befuddle you even more.

The essential point is that the Earth warms and cools in 1000 year cycles, and much of human history is explainable in that crucial fact. From the Scandinavians, Huns, Vandals, and the Helvetians from Switzerland fleeing global cooling at the end of the Roman Warm Period. To the Vikings finding "Greenland" during the Medieval Warm Period.

We are in another warm period and rather incredibly, government employed climate scientists have chosen to use this natural occurrence to claim that their rather obscure branch of science is now the saviours of he world. Then claim it is in need of massive government support from every country. They know it is crap. But they can rely upon the total ignorance of history which most members of the public, including yourself, display every day. The Climate "scientists" are dishonest and they made it all up in order to mine the gold of public funding, as well raise the status of their obscure profession. But it is a lie and the climate scientists know it is a lie. In exactly the same way that Dr Fauci and his virologist cronies knew all along that the Chinese virus was engineered in China using US (and probably Australian CSIRO) funding, and they lied about it. They were too naive and self interested to even consider that the engineered virus was probably a PLA biological warfare project.

Next we will hear from Fauci, "97% of virologists dismiss the idea that the covid-19 virus was engineered." And just like the Human Induced Global Warming myth you will probably believe them because you want to believe that science is above reproach.

For God's sake pick up some history books and forget about ferking thorium.

Fossil fuels have lifted billions of people out of poverty. But, there are still 1.3 billion with no electricity, and a further 3 billion who don't have adequate electricity. Hopefully, some of these people if not all will have their existence improved; but it will never happen with unreliable and expensive "renewables" that have to be subsidised by governments.

Just one thing that is not revealed when people lie about the economic and environmental "benefits" of "renewables" :-

It takes 542.3 tons of iron and steel to produce 1 megawatt with renewables; 35.3 tons with coal, and 5.2 with natural gas.

For Alan B and Lego;
Alan your advocacy of Thorium could be a winner, I just have no knowledge of that.
Lego, the current cycle is about 600 years and the previous cycle
seems to be around 1000 years.
The reason it changes is because it is made up of severn vaguely
connected cycles.
1. The variation in the radiated heat of the sun.
2. The orbit of the earth around the sun.
3. The earths orbit is elliptical.
4. The orbit itself is rotating around the sun.
5. Variation in the tilt of the earth's axis.
6. The sunspot cycle.
7. The maximum level of sunspot plasma ejection from cycle to cycle.

2, 3, 4, and 5 are known as the Milanovitch cycles.
Because of these various cycles the scientists at Turku and Kobe
universities were working on using a Fourier Transform technique to
calculate the length of the cycles and predict them.

The way it works is that cosmic rays entering the earths atmosphere
cause clouds to be formed. When the cycles all work together they
vary the formation of clouds and the earth's magnetic field is disturbed.
The allows more or less cosmic rays into the atmosphere.
When more clouds are formed more radiation is reflected back into
space and the earth is shaded more. So a cool period exists.
When less clouds are formed less heat is lost to space and the earth warms.

That is it in a nutshell.
PS The Fourier technique was developed by CSIRO to dig your weak wifi
signal out of the noise.

Whoops, perhaps I should have said;
The Fourier Transform technique was USED by CSIRO to dig your weak
wifi signal out of the noise.

We could have a much cleaner atmosphere if it weren't for Anarchists Leftists necessitating defensive action all over the planet.

The insurgency against big oil, will be lead by the boardrooms of New York, London, Paris, Stockholm, Sydney, Wellington and all major cities across the globe! Fools living in a fool's paradise will argue that we will continue to sell our coal, given its high quality!

As for carbon capture and storage? The only viable success stories have only been applicable to gas and exhausted wells that can then be retasked? But may become completely unviable then, as in the past, earth movement have caused gas wells to leak massive volumes of gas! And could do the same with CO2!?

Most of the success stories have been when CO2 was pumped back into gas wells to maximise production and volume.

And where successful could enable us to avoid carbon tariffs, which will be a part of the foreseeable future.

That same future foresight tells us we are still living in a fool's paradise as in the thirties, believing as we do we are protected under the umbrella of another powerful nation? That worked well do WW11 didn't it!?

And tells all energy options must be on the table, but particularly those that return mass scale manufacturing to these shores. That simply cannot happen while big oil has us by the short and curlies, lay assisted by our insane, self-imposed, the sky will fall, embargo against nuclear power!
Alan B.

I'll concede that the sun's solar cycles are not nailed to specific timelines But I accepted that NASA's scientific community knew? And that whatever the probable length of the cycle? That we have been in a waning (cooling) phase since the mid-seventies! (NASA)

CO2 blocks infrared radiant heat which would normally be reflected back to space! So it does affect climate!

If our CO2 levels were typical of the medieval era, we'd be freezing our family jewels off, the ice would be advancing across the globe and sea levels would be falling in response to the advance of the ice!

So without question, something is out of whack and needs to be addressed without tanking the economy, but instead massively turbocharging it!

And those two conflicting goals only possible if nuclear power is on the table and as MSR thorium! MSR thorium would also allow us to capture an annual massive medical tourism market!

Simply put, there are no downsides to thorium and the coal-mining jobs it would more than replace! Thorium needs to be mined and refined, as does nickel, lithium, cobalt, graphene, copper and platinum.

Moreover, thorium would facilitate vastly increased metals smelting outcomes and a whole host of endlessly sustainable, carbon-neutral, fuel, fertilizer and plastics production here, of alternatives created from inexhaustible seawater! Using known science/proven production methods!

I'd argue just the latter on its own more than replacing any lost coal mining jobs! Given they can be installed as production projects in or near former coalmining towns/provinces! The only factor currently missing is, an affordable energy source to power this potential industry!

And the only affordable energy source that would make the latter viable, is, MSR thorium or better yet MSR nuclear waste burners!

The latter not including the massive annual medical tourism spinoff of MSR thorium, but, the production of endlessly available, ultra-cheap hydrogen!
Alan B.

Actually, Alan, the medieval period, say 800 to 1200 is known as the
Medieval Warm period when the Vikings settled on Greenland and hence its name.
Some suggested it was given that name as a Real Estate Sales trick to
encourage more Vikings to settle there.
By the 1400s it had got to cold for farming there and the Vikings left.
The lowest point of the temperature was around the end of the 18th
century and the end of the cold period was signaled by the end of the
annual Ice Festivals on the Thames in 1814 and the temperature kept
rising until around 2000.
After that we will watch with interest, if we are here.

As an aside the Turku & Kobe scientists believe too much sensitivity
is given to CO2 on its affect on temperature.
The main cycle effect has been blamed erroneously on CO2.

Since the demotion of the working class by industry moving out to Asia, and the subsequent increase in the Lumpenproletariat, could we burn them in ovens for fuel ?

This model has advantages for the elite best able to afford the cost of inefficiencies created by alternate power sources.

Dan