fossil-fuels

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(Revised August 27, 2023)

How can we produce enough energy to live well without creating a level of greenhouse gases that generates an increasingly hostile climate? Alternative energy sources like wind and solar are part of the answer, but it isn’t going to be easy to replace the massive quantities of energy currently derived from non-renewable sources such as coal, natural gas, and oil. A useful hub for information on ‘green energy’ sources, defined as those that do not increase the world’s output of carbon to the atmosphere, can be found here.… Read the rest “Geothermal, a continuous, infinite, energy source without greenhouse gases or radioactive waste”

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“Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together. It’s official: taking to the roads in an SUV’s got nothing on cattle flatulence . . . “ This is a direct quote from a recent web post of a climate sceptic. It restates a popular meme about climate change, favoured by conservative commentators: that man isn’t the most important agent of global warming, it’s the farting cows, stupid.… Read the rest “We Need to Talk About Methane”

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(Updated September 1, 2023)

The discovery of oil in the province of Alberta in 1947 soon led to the desire to transport it to the west coast of Canada, and in 1953 oil began to flow through a pipeline built by the Trans Mountain Pipeline Company (route of all pipelines discused in this post in red on the map above). The pipeline took oil from Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, over the Rocky Mountains, to Vancouver on the coast of British Columbia.… Read the rest “Using Numbers Instead of Adjectives to Evaluate an Economic Decision”

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The acronym SEWTHA stands for the title of the book ‘Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air’, written by the late Sir David MacKay (above, on his bike), who was a physicist profoundly interested in the energy future of the world. In SEWTHA, he uses the physicist’s toolkit to analyze how much energy we use, how we obtain it, and, most importantly, how we can replace our current use of fossil fuels with sustainable energy sources.… Read the rest “The Great Common Sense of SEWTHA”