Interrupted Summer – A good news about the energy story in the midst of carnage – Is it emerging with that?
It wasn’t even Stampede yet – and it looked like it would be a good old fashioned free game for all – and I ran into an attractive drunken idiot at the top of his game. I don’t think there’s anything out of the ordinary there, except that this encounter actually has an interesting and thought-provoking twist.
It happened on the train to downtown last week, at around 8am. Life is getting back to normal and the train ride is pretty full. Halfway through downtown, two drunks were on the train, strangely drunk for eight o’clock in the morning; not drunk but party drunk, friendly but sporadic/noisy chat with commuters who just want to stare at their phones or get under a chair if it’s not so disgusting down there.
One of the drunks, jumping out of a 2L Coke bottle, clung to a tall man and started chatting with him: asking how his day was going, pointing out his clothes. how beautiful he is, etc. Then he sinks into the philosophical stage too much. alcohol often brings. “Do good things,” advised the drunkard. “Be good. Don’t have too many nice things. Don’t bring too many beautiful things like your beautiful belt there, because [side note: for those unfamiliar, these heartfelt alcohol-soaked soliloquies often include some eyebrow-raising admissions]someone like me can come along and take them away. “
“That would be really annoying,” replied the ready-to-go businessman, trying to strike up a conversation bravely.
“Maybe that’s the problem,” said the drunk. Gosh. That motivates me.
Fascinating, hey? If he’s right – and I have no reason to doubt him, he knows his job – he makes an interesting point about motivation and a well-meaning but misguided cure. Is there an entire psycho-industrial complex built around the idea of helping people like this, when their ultimate reason for their actions is that they just want to annoy those higher up in the world? economy? Could that account for the undiscoverable attacks on the energy system that keeps us all alive, but withers away from the attack? Do activists to a certain extent simply want to get under the skin of ‘Big Oil’?
Drunk talking philosophies have a surprising overlap with today’s energy conversations, because the quality and tone are so similar (to some extent; the leaders When it comes to our current energy challenges, we lack not only intellect but even drunken enthusiasm). I have sworn off the topic of energy conversations during the summer months (hence the very few columns lately) because the energy world currently defies description. Equally powerful movements of, one aim to deconstruct the current energy system, the other encourage it to produce more.
Sometimes these opposing views come from the same mouth, a few days apart. Discussion is a challenge, a natural consequence of asking the people who messed up the current system why they did it, when the consequences are clearly dire (if someone asked, they probably also would say they do it just to be annoying – I have no idea and never will).
I was withdrawn from exile, at least temporarily, by the announcement of positive/interesting energy news that determined the nature of any significant progress on the ‘energy transition’. ‘ How will.
First of all, it needs to be profoundly demonstrated that today’s giddy rush to renewable energy / ignoring hydrocarbons is nothing but a recipe for disaster, and the doom of billions of people. If that’s your silent (or not) vision for how to drastically reduce global emissions, then, the Museum of Failed Dictators has floor space, but since it won’t work, we have to figure out for ourselves what will reduce our global footprint.
The whole world wants to live like the West, and should be allowed to live like the West, but the scarcity of resources will actually make that very difficult.
It is the ultimate ‘environmental’ movement – the effort to maintain the excellent standard of living we have achieved by using the resources we take from the earth much more wisely.
Think of a typical $500 Best Buy second-hand TV. They used to cost $3,000, but now so cheap, we buy them then throw them to upgrade to the latest version. Embedded in that old-fashioned TV were all sorts of minerals and metals, in small quantities each requiring a mining and processing facility and entire shipping process.
Taking a gram of any such substance and throwing it in a landfill doesn’t sound too cruel, but all those grams constitute an environmental nightmare in the form of new mines and supply chains, all what it takes to get that gamut into the TV .
It’s humanly disgusting to throw things like that in the trash, but that’s what we do, because it doesn’t make economic sense to save that gram. But we should, somehow. If the incentives are right, the market will find a way.
I had the pleasure of not even thinking about energy during the summer, but came across an interesting story that at least somewhat revived the seemingly forgotten (or at least old-fashioned) concept of energy reduction. reduce, reuse, recycle. It sounds like a cliché now, but those three words are the foundation of any environmental progress we can make in the next decade or two.
Benefits come out of those words in tangential ways, one of which is or should be the constant drive to optimize what we have, instead of forgoing something that’s still good and diverting precious resources. price to build something new.
Crux OCM, a company that has developed software that automates certain pipeline operations, like the autopilot for aircraft/pilots. The company’s software can expand throughput production capacity by up to 10%. They made the news last week with a notification of a new customer, Phillips 66, who plans to deploy the software on their network.
I don’t really know much about the company beyond public documents, and I don’t have a pipeline that I can call my own. But the concept of building a company or a sub-industry just for the sake of increasing the efficiency of what we’ve built is exciting and full of potential.
Think of the potential value embedded in software like this. Some areas in North America’s oil and gas production scene cannot develop without the next pipeline. It’s probably safe to assume that anyone who watches energy knows how difficult it is to build new pipelines.
Canada and the US produce millions of barrels of oil per day and many tens of billions of cubic feet of natural gas per day. The ability to increase throughput by up to 10 percent has huge consequences, and if the alternative to moving that ten percent is to build tens of billions of dollars of new pipelines – if it can be built.
What I find very interesting and exciting about developments like this is that whatever “energy transition” process develops over the next 10-15 years will be dominated by ideas like this – using better than existing resources. Same goes for better windows in houses, same goes for better material recycling to prevent mining/mining/building them in the first place.
Between that and the world’s transition from coal to natural gas, we could make an absolutely massive impact on our environmental impact (and here I’m talking about important aspects). most important of “environmentalism” – reducing habitat destruction, reducing demand for new mines/infrastructure/processing/transporting raw materials, etc.).
If you get the chance, fill the ears of your elected representatives with general energy ideas. They may welcome it; It can’t be easy for any brain to openly deny themselves on a daily basis the way they currently do on the energy file. 29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html
Find out how the world fell into such a disastrous energy state and how to get out – check out “Fossil Fuel Madness” at Amazon.ca, Indigo.caor Amazon.com. Thanks for the support.
Read more insightful analysis from Terry Etam here, or email Terry here. PS: Dear email reporters, email flow is welcome, but I’m having tracking issues. Apologies if comments/questions go unanswered; they are not ignored.
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