Climate change

[brokenshoelace]

Imagine an issue that could potentially ruin our planet (if true) and being such a moronic simpleton that you make this about...Barrack Obama.

 

[calitennis127]

Imagine an issue that could potentially ruin our planet (if true) and being such a moronic simpleton that you make this about...Barrack Obama.

Here comes the resident retard of the board talking like he is some independent mind for repeating completely fashionable notions and then misspelling Obama's first name to boot. He is a true scholar indeed. He would fit right in with the poorly educated pseudo-intellectuals in America that he agrees with.

Dumbass.

Not only that, but he is not even aware of how Obama has godlike status in the USA and has been one of the leading voices on fighting "climate change." So bringing him up as a figure in the debate makes complete sense. Obama has made himself into that kind of figure. If WokenWoolace knew 1/100th of what he thinks he does about the United States, he would be aware of this. Alas, he does not know.

 

[calitennis127]

So the basis of your argument is an article from a partisan website?

Every website is partisan. Can you show that the article I cited misquoted anyone?

Good grief.... I don't get people like you mate. This isn't a liberal vs conservative issue. This is a science issue.

And disputes over science are often at the heart of what you are calling "liberal vs. conservative" issues. But you should be made aware that Ocasio-Cortez's Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti absolutely DOES think it's a liberal vs. conservative issue.

Take a look at this article.....(you should respect it because the quote comes from the "nonpartisan" Washington Post, )

AOC’s Chief of Staff Admits the Green New Deal Is Not about Climate Change

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti admitted recently that the true motivation behind introducing the Green New Deal is to overhaul the “entire economy.”

Chakrabarti said that addressing climate change was not Ocasio-Cortez’s top priority in proposing the Green New Deal during a meeting with Washington governor Jay Inslee.

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti said to Inslee’s climate director, Sam Ricketts, according to a Washington Post reporter who attended the meeting for a profile published Wednesday.

“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” he added.

https://news.yahoo.com/aoc-chief-staff-admits-green-124408358.html

 

[brokenshoelace]

Here comes the resident retard of the board talking like he is some independent mind for repeating completely fashionable notions and then misspelling Obama's first name to boot. He is a true scholar indeed. He would fit right in with the poorly educated pseudo-intellectuals in America that he agrees with.

Dumbass.

Not only that, but he is not even aware of how Obama has godlike status in the USA and has been one of the leading voices on fighting "climate change." So bringing him up as a figure in the debate makes complete sense. Obama has made himself into that kind of figure. If WokenWoolace knew 1/100th of what he thinks he does about the United States, he would be aware of this. Alas, he does not know.

No again, it shows that you're far more concerned with a person that most republicans can't stand because a black man ruled over the country than a potentially vital issue. Why don't you debate the actual merits (or lack thereof) of climate change instead?

Can't wait for the argument that republicans didn't hate on Obama because he's black and it had nothing to do with anything. In fairness, he was far more incompetent than given credit for but I mean, I don't think a republican has any right saying that considering who they subsequently voted for.

 

[calitennis127]

No again, it shows that you're far more concerned with a person that most republicans can't stand because a black man ruled over the country than a potentially vital issue.

Actually, I chose Obama because he popped in my head after numerous photos of him with Greta Thunberg were posted on Instagram. You may not personally care but Obama has been extremely vocal on the climate change issue.

Can't wait for the argument that republicans didn't hate on Obama because he's black and it had nothing to do with anything.

There are about a million problems with this argument. Here are just some of them:

1) Obama won re-election in 2012 against a white man, and he did so in a landslide victory. If there was truly a simplistic racial backlash against Obama for winning the presidency in 2008, he would not have won again in 2012 over Romney.

2) Many of the swing voters and purple counties that Obama won in 2008 and 2012 went to Trump in 2016. Were the people who voted for Obama and then Trump a bunch of racists?

3) Describing Obama as "black" is culturally misleading and incorrect as a matter of genetics. He is half-white, and there is no way he would have won the Democratic nomination without the backing of white so-called liberals who he connected with temperamentally. The idea that Obama's entire identity - racially and culturally - is "black" is utterly preposterous. He was raised by a white grandmother and had an experience growing up that was much closer to most regular white youth in the suburbs than black kids in urban areas.

In fairness, he was far more incompetent than given credit for

Correct. Obama did not exactly set the world on fire with awesome policy. For the most part the economy was stagnant and he was not able to deliver on his healthcare promises, with premiums going up to absurd levels in some states such as Arizona. Also, the problem of Islamic terrorism (the rise of ISIS, the frequent attacks in Europe, etc.) did a lot to undermine his credibility with much of the electorate after Obama promised to transform U.S. Middle-Eastern relations at Cairo in 2009 and then dismissed ISIS as the "JV team" to al-Qaeda before they went on their rampage through Iraq and Syria. He looked arrogant and incompetent simultaneously.

but I mean, I don't think a republican has any right saying that considering who they subsequently voted for.

I don't see how Trump can be called incompetent. Inarticulate, yes, but not incompetent. The economy has done very well for the most part and he has made some significant strides in foreign policy and trade policy. Don't you appreciate that he has tried to get U.S. troops out of Syria in opposition to the military and foreign policy establishments?

Why don't you debate the actual merits (or lack thereof) of climate change instead?

Sure, but I don't even know where to start. My choosing Obama for the purposes of this discussion was not by any means an accident because I don't view the climate change alarmists as serious voices in science. The people who are loudest about this matter are generally high school students, journalists, and political commentators, not scientists. Fighting "climate change" and "global warming" is currently a fashionable cause for the left that has more to do with social attitudes than rigorous science.

I don't think Ocasio-Cortez is a dumb person, but two years ago she was working in a restaurant. And she is the one who introduced the Green New Deal to the public discourse. Am I supposed to regard her as some kind of final authority on scientific matters? Better yet, should I view a 60-year-old pothead such as Bill Maher as a serious voice on scientific matters?

Now, as for the substance.....

Let me just start here, and I'll keep it to this one point for now. In the United States it is becoming trendy to ban plastic straws. Supposedly this is going to help save the planet from something really, really bad happening to the oceans. But this movement doesn't even begin to correspond to reality. Let me illustrate how absurd this is with two pieces of information:

1) There was a recent clean-up of the Anacostia River near Washington, D.C. It found 36 tons of trash and within that 36 tons, there were only 4,000 drinking straws totaling about 4 pounds, or 1/18,000th of the total waste. Would you like to explain to me how restaurants in Washington D.C. sanctimoniously banning plastic straws is helping the Anacostia River?

2) An April 2018 article in Forbes stated that "Five Asian Countries Dump More Plastic Into Oceans Than Anyone Else Combined."

• China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam are dumping more plastic into oceans than the rest of the world combined

Now would you like to explain to me how a few restaurants in the United States banning plastic straws is going to solve this problem?

Also, I know very well that white leftists in the United States will never criticize these Asian countries for their pollution because it wouldn't feel right based on race. China and Vietnam can pollute to their heart's content without Greta Thunderbird saying a word about it.

 

[mrzz]

Good points above, @calitennis127.

As a comment, it is way to common that serious policies/attempts to solve real world problems are reduced to "symbolic/propaganda" attitudes, and the plastic straws is just one among too many examples. Needless to say that this ends up being a big shot in the foot. Instead of bringing the subject to the conversation, it gives people a false sensation that they are actually doing something and the problem is actually solved only by that.

The pollution issue in Asian countries have a huge cultural component to it, and surely this cannot be addressed by anyone using the modern PCish lexicon.

 

[Jelenafan]

Good points above, @calitennis127.

As a comment, it is way to common that serious policies/attempts to solve real world problems are reduced to "symbolic/propaganda" attitudes, and the plastic straws is just one among too many examples. Needless to say that this ends up being a big shot in the foot. Instead of bringing the subject to the conversation, it gives people a false sensation that they are actually doing something and the problem is actually solved only by that.

The pollution issue in Asian countries have a huge cultural component to it, and surely this cannot be addressed by anyone using the modern PCish lexicon.

So what is this huge cultural component to Asian countries?

 

[mrzz]

So what is this huge cultural component to Asian countries?

Well, first my expression "Asian countries" cannot be read as a generalization, Asian countries are completely different from each other. This is true to "some" Asian countries, each in its own way.

Some Asian countries have a different relation to waste, in comparison to what we are used to in the western world. India, for example, have, nowadays, great state-sponsored programs focused to stop littering, actually the largest one in the country across all areas is related to sanitation.

Simply, for a large part of the population, it is not part of their "culture" to give a proper destination to waste. Of course there is a socio-economic component to it, but it is not only that. Littering It is simply less problematic for a good part of its population than it is for an average western citizen.

So it is only natural that an Indian city would have way less restrict laws to control, for example, carbon emission, from industries to cars. It is just another case of "littering" (in the sense of not giving a proper destination to the waste created by human activity).

Similar, but no completely analogous, reasoning is valid for China. Brazil (where I live) has one of the largest Chinese communities outside China, and it is very common to hear from second generation immigrants, or even first generation immigrants who visit their homeland after 20 to 30 years away, that they struggle with some aspects. "It is too dirty", I heard countless times. Anecdotal? Yes. But I don't have much doubt it is statistically correct.

So I am really not surprised by the fact that the top 15 most polluted cities in the world are in China and India alone. Mind it, they are not the largest 15 cities in the world. (yes, there is the industrialization component to it).

Other countries, like the Southeast Asian countries, have tourism as a very important economic activity and that contributes a lot for the "sea of plastic" effect that we see on the media. In the end, it is their responsibility, but western people contribute heavily in this case (some be polluting directly, some by not caring about what happens to the waste they produce. They can put it all in the bin in their resorts and it still ends up in the ocean).

By the way the article Cali quoted is based on this interesting report, which by its turned is based on this article from Science magazine. Both are very good reading material (I still haven't read it in detail).


Please note that in all above I made no distinction whatsoever about carbon emission and plastic pollution, which are two very big and yet very different environmental problems. Climate change analysis are mostly centered on carbon emission only. Again (just to repeat what I posted other times, but not sure if you were following the conversation), I am not a climate change "denier", in the sense that I am fully convinced that Anthropogenic Climate Change is there. What is obvious for me is that there is no consensus on the scale of it, on the rate that it is evolving, and, more importantly, the correct policies out of it. To reduce emission is obviously good in principle, but no, I won't simply (and literally) buy the solution from someone who only wants to sell his products and uses the environmental card only as a propaganda tool.

 

[Jelenafan]

Well, first my expression "Asian countries" cannot be read as a generalization, Asian countries are completely different from each other. This is true to "some" Asian countries, each in its own way.

Some Asian countries have a different relation to waste, in comparison to what we are used to in the western world. India, for example, have, nowadays, great state-sponsored programs focused to stop littering, actually the largest one in the country across all areas is related to sanitation.

Simply, for a large part of the population, it is not part of their "culture" to give a proper destination to waste. Of course there is a socio-economic component to it, but it is not only that. Littering It is simply less problematic for a good part of its population than it is for an average western citizen.

So it is only natural that an Indian city would have way less restrict laws to control, for example, carbon emission, from industries to cars. It is just another case of "littering" (in the sense of not giving a proper destination to the waste created by human activity).

Similar, but no completely analogous, reasoning is valid for China. Brazil (where I live) has one of the largest Chinese communities outside China, and it is very common to hear from second generation immigrants, or even first generation immigrants who visit their homeland after 20 to 30 years away, that they struggle with some aspects. "It is too dirty", I heard countless times. Anecdotal? Yes. But I don't have much doubt it is statistically correct.

So I am really not surprised by the fact that the top 15 most polluted cities in the world are in China and India alone. Mind it, they are not the largest 15 cities in the world. (yes, there is the industrialization component to it).

Other countries, like the Southeast Asian countries, have tourism as a very important economic activity and that contributes a lot for the "sea of plastic" effect that we see on the media. In the end, it is their responsibility, but western people contribute heavily in this case (some be polluting directly, some by not caring about what happens to the waste they produce. They can put it all in the bin in their resorts and it still ends up in the ocean).

By the way the article Cali quoted is based on this interesting report, which by its turned is based on this article from Science magazine. Both are very good reading material (I still haven't read it in detail).


Please note that in all above I made no distinction whatsoever about carbon emission and plastic pollution, which are two very big and yet very different environmental problems. Climate change analysis are mostly centered on carbon emission only. Again (just to repeat what I posted other times, but not sure if you were following the conversation), I am not a climate change "denier", in the sense that I am fully convinced that Anthropogenic Climate Change is there. What is obvious for me is that there is no consensus on the scale of it, on the rate that it is evolving, and, more importantly, the correct policies out of it. To reduce emission is obviously good in principle, but no, I won't simply (and literally) buy the solution from someone who only wants to sell his products and uses the environmental card only as a propaganda tool.

Mrzz, thanks for explaining on these cultural components. Do you think these cultural components can be substantially modified in the decades to come?

I thought your point was interesting that western tourism contributed to the waste in some Asian countries.

 

[mrzz]

@Jelenafan, that is a good question. I find it only normal that different cultures deal differently with some basic issues, however this particular aspect it is most likely connected to how fast each country transitioned to the fully industrialized period, because the quantity and the nature of human waste changed dramatically from one situation to the other. I remember talking to some older people in a a place which used to be a bit remote here in Brazil, and some local fisherman still had the habit of throwing their waste between some rocks in the rocky coast. That seemed so strange to me (after all, those people lived out of the sea), but then I understood: in the old days their trash was mostly organic -- and in much smaller quantities. It would naturally vanish quickly. Then the thrash changes but the habits remain, at least for a while. With time, people change their habits though (but there was one old man there who kept throwing his trash between the rocks until he died). Now amplify that to full national scale...

So, yes, I believe this cultural components will be modified, because, on one hand, they naturally evolve, and in the other, the moment it becomes a state problem, changes are forced from top to bottom. Those changes sound artificial at first but years go by and they might become "cultural" just as well...

 

[calitennis127]

Broken, Moxie, Federberg, tented, ChrissyK - where are all of you commenting on this savage assault of the environment in China? I hope you are aware that if there is one country more than any other that needs to be confronted on this issue it is China. Do you guys seriously think that Starbucks not having plastic straws in Seattle is going to clean up the masses of garbage and dead fish in China's lakes and rivers? How is that a rational position?

 

[calitennis127]

How the hell are plastic drinking straws in the U.S. going to save a whale that died in 2018 in Songklha, Thailand because it had 80 plastic bags in its stomach?

 

[calitennis127]

So I check the boards a week after my posts on extreme pollution in China and other Asian countries, and of course, Federturd, tented, Muh-muh-Moxie, and "the scholar" have said absolutely nothing about this serious issue, despite their self-righteous attitude about "the need to combat climate change."

This shows how unaware all 4 of them are about critical information in this debate and also how intolerant they are of dissent. If someone says something unpleasant - no matter how factual or well-documented - then they simply ignore it and go on believing the same easily refuted nonsense they have always believed.

It is especially funny that the "scholar" has no comment on this topic. I did not expect Moxie to have a comment because this would require some intellectual rigor, but can't the scholar take a hack at it? Or what about the hyper little glib boy named Federberg?

You'd think he'd have something to say about whales dying in Thailand from plastic intake but I guess not.

 

[mrzz]

Just found out that people are pressing Federer to drop his Credit Suisse contract because, according to them, Credit Suisse is hurting the environment. If he does not stand his ground it will take me some effort to continue to root for him. Unfortunately the guy is too PR oriented, so I cannot hope for a response like "fuck you, I decide my sponsorship contracts".

 

[Federberg]

The world’s energy system must be transformed completely
It has been changed before, but never as fast or fully as must happen now
Schools briefMay 23rd 2020 edition
May 23rd 2020

FOR MORE than 100,000 years humans derived all their energy from what they hunted, gathered and grazed on or grew for themselves. Their own energy for moving things came from what they ate. Energy for light and heat came from burning the rest. In recent millennia they added energy from the flow of water and, later, air to the repertoire. But, important as water- and windmills were, they did little to change the overall energy picture. Global energy use broadly tracked the size of a population fed by farms and warmed by wood.
The combination of fossil fuels and machinery changed everything. According to calculations by Vaclav Smil, a scholar of energy systems at the University of Manitoba, between 1850 and 2000 the human world’s energy use increased by a factor of 15 or so.

The expansion was not homogeneous; over its course the mixture of fossil fuels used changed quite dramatically. These are the monumental shifts historians call “energy transitions”. They require huge amounts of infrastructure; they change the way the economy works; and they take place quite slowly.
James Watt patented his steam engine in 1769; coal did not exceed the share of total energy provided by “traditional biomass”—wood, peat, dung and the like—until the 1900s (see chart overleaf). It was not until the 1950s, a century after the first commercial oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, that crude oil came to represent 25% of humankind’s total primary energy. Energy transitions were slow largely because the growth in total energy use was fast. In the century it took oil to capture a quarter of the total, that total increased. They are also always incomplete. New fuels may reduce the share of the pie that old fuels control, but they rarely reduce the total energy those fuels supply. Much more “traditional biomass” is burned by the world’s poor today than was burned by the whole world in 1900.
To give the world a good chance of keeping global warming, measured against the temperature pre-coal, well below 2°C (3.6°F) will require an energy transition far larger and quicker than any before it. In the next 30-50 years 90% or more of the share of the world’s energy now being produced from fossil fuels will need to be provided by renewable-energy sources, nuclear power or fossil-fuel plants that bury their waste rather than exhaling it.
During this time, the pie will keep growing—but not necessarily as fast as it used to. The direct relationship between GDP and energy use, which held tight until the 1970s, has weakened over the past half century. It is possible for growth per person to continue without energy use per person increasing. Though the population is no longer growing as fast as it did at the 20th-century peak of its increase, it will still be the best part of 2bn higher by mid-century. And all those people should be able to aspire to modern energy services. Today more than 800m people still lack electricity—hence all that burning of traditional biomass.


The good news, however, is that governments say they are willing to push through the change. Previous transitions, though shaped by government policy at national levels, were mostly caused by the demand for new services that only a specific fuel could provide, such as petrol for engines.
The growth in renewable-generation capacity is the exception. It has not been driven by the fact that renewable electrons allow you to do things of which those from coal are not capable. It has largely been driven by government policy. This has not always had the near-term effects for which such policy should aim. Germany’s roll-out of renewables has been offset by its retreat from nuclear, and its emissions have risen. But subsidies there and elsewhere have boosted supply chains and lowered the cost of renewable technologies.
During the 2010s the levelised cost (that is the average lifetime cost of equipment, per megawatt hour of electricity generated) of solar, offshore wind and onshore wind fell by 87%, 62% and 56%, respectively, according to BloombergNEF, an energy-data outfit (see chart overleaf). This has allowed deployments that were unthinkable in the 2000s. Britain now has 10,000 offshore wind turbines. They are built by developers chosen based on how low a price they are willing to take for their electricity (the government pledges to make the cost up if the market price falls below it).

In 2015 winning bids were well over £100 ($123) per MWh, far higher than the cost of fossil-fuel electricity. Thanks to predictable policy, fierce competition and technical progress, a recent auction brought a bid as low as £39.65 per MWh, roughly the level of average wholesale power prices. Solar and onshore wind are even less expensive. About two-thirds of the world’s population live in countries where renewables represent the cheapest source of new power generation, says BloombergNEF.
Solar power is the really spectacular achiever, outstripping the expectations of its most fervent boosters. Ramez Naam, a bullish solar investor, recently recalibrated his expectations to foresee a future of “insanely cheap” solar power. By 2030, he reckons, in sunny parts of the world, building large new solar installations from scratch will be a cheaper way of getting electricity than operating fully depreciated fossil-fuel plants, let alone building new ones. Michael Liebreich, a consultant on renewable energies, speculates about a “renewable singularity” in which cheap renewable electricity opens up new markets that demand new capacity which makes electricity cheaper still.
Even without such speculative wonders, the effect of renewables is appreciable. Together with natural gas, which America’s fracking revolution has made cheaper, solar and wind are already squeezing coal, the energy sector’s biggest emitter (a megawatt of coal produces a stream of emissions twice the size of that given off by a megawatt of gas). In 2018 coal’s share of global energy supply fell to 27%, the lowest in 15 years. The pressure that they can apply to oil is not yet as great, because oil mostly drives cars, and electric cars are still rare. But as that changes, renewables will come for oil, as they are already coming for gas.
There are stumbling blocks. Neither the sun nor the wind produces energy consistently. Germany’s solar-power installations produce five times more electricity in the summer than they do in the winter, when demand for electricity is at its peak. Wind strengths vary not just from day to day but from season to season and, to some extent, year to year. This amounts to a speed bump for renewables, not a blockade. Long transmission lines that keep losses low by working at very high voltages can move electricity from oversupplied areas to those where demand is surging. Lithium-ion batteries can store extra energy and release it as needed. The economic stimulus China announced in March includes both ultra-high-voltage grids and electric-vehicle-charging infrastructure.

Thou orb aloft, somewhat dazzling
As the sun and wind account for a larger share of power, renewables might store power by splitting water to create hydrogen to be burned later. More ambitiously, if technologies for pulling carbon dioxide back out of the air improve, such hydrogen could be combined with that scavenged carbon to make fossil-free fuels.
In doing so, they might help remedy the other problem with renewables. There are some emissions which even very cheap electricity cannot replace. Lithium-ion batteries are too bulky to power big planes on long flights, which is where artificial fuels might come in. Some industrial processes, such as cement-making, give out carbon dioxide by their very nature. They may require technology that intercepts the carbon dioxide before it gets into the atmosphere and squirrels it away underground. When emissions cannot be avoided—as may be the case with some of those from farmland—they will need to be offset by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere either with trees or technology.
None of this happens, though, without investment. The International Renewable Energy Agency, an advisory group, estimates that $800bn of investment in renewables is needed each year until 2050 for the world to be on course for less than 2°C of warming, with more than twice that needed for electric infrastructure and efficiency. In 2019 investment in renewables was $250bn. The big oil and gas firms invested twice as much in fossil-fuel extraction.
If governments want to limit climate change, therefore, they must do more. They do not have to do everything. If policy choices show that the road away from fossil fuels is right, private capital will follow. Investors are already wary of fossil-fuel companies, eyeing meagre returns and the possibility that action on climate change will leave firms with depreciating assets.

But governments need to make the signals clear. Around the world, they currently provide more than $400bn a year in direct support for fossil-fuel consumption, more than twice what they spend subsidising renewable production. A price on carbon, which hastens the day when new renewables are cheaper than old fossil-fuel plants, is another crucial step. So is research spending aimed at those emissions which are hard to electrify away. Governments have played a large role in the development of solar panels, wind turbines and fracking. There is a lot more to do.
However much they do, though, and however well they do it, they will not stop the climate change at today’s temperature of 1°C above the pre-industrial. Indeed, they will need to expand their efforts greatly to meet the 2°C target; on today’s policies, the rise by the end of the century looks closer to 3°C. This means that as well as trying to limit climate change, the world also needs to learn how to adapt to it. ■

The world’s energy system must be transformed completely

It has been changed before, but never as fast or fully as must happen now

www.economist.com

 

[Federberg]

1.35 Cents/kWh: Record Abu Dhabi Solar Bid Is A Sober Reminder To Upbeat Fossil Fuel Pundits - CleanTechnica

A rather meaningful piece of energy news went almost unnoticed in recent weeks. The Abu Dhabi Power Corporation announced the lowest tariff for solar energy in the world. The new record came as the winning bid for the upcoming 2 GW solar power plant, the Al Dhafra Solar PV project, set the...

cleantechnica.com

 

[Federberg]

Playing politics while Texans freeze? Gov. Abbott grilled after blaming Green New Deal for his state’s power woes

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has singled out renewable energy as the culprit behind his state’s devastating power outages, sparking accusations that he is trying to skirt responsibility for the crisis.

www.rt.com

 

[Federberg]

 

[Federberg]

In a breakthrough experiment, nuclear fusion finally makes more energy than it uses

The sun creates energy through nuclear fusion. Now scientists have too, in a controlled lab experiment, raising hopes for developing clean energy.

www.sciencenews.org

 

[tented]

In a breakthrough experiment, nuclear fusion finally makes more energy than it uses

The sun creates energy through nuclear fusion. Now scientists have too, in a controlled lab experiment, raising hopes for developing clean energy.

www.sciencenews.org

It’s an interesting development, but still seems a long way from being useful.

I‘ve changed my mind about nuclear energy. Based on information I’ve encountered in the last few years, it isn’t the problem it used to be. There’s newer, cleaner technology available which could be implemented to produce lots of energy, and scale back the consumption of fossil fuels.