#oil is renewable

[dosesofcommonsense]

EV car owners don’t realize the car, tires, electronics, and trim on the car was made from oil. That EV car is one giant virtue signaling soapbox that doesn’t actually clean the environment.

[hope-for-the-planet]

From the article:

Now, according to official statistics, China’s sales of electric vehicles and hybrids have in fact reached a tipping point. They’ve accounted for more than half of retail passenger vehicle sales in the four months from July, according to the China Passenger Car Association, a trend that’s poised to send appetite for transport fuels into a decline that will have a major impact on the oil market. [...] “The future is coming faster in China,” said Ciaran Healy, an oil analyst at the International Energy Agency in Paris. “What we’re seeing now is the medium-term expectations coming ahead of schedule, and that has implications for the shape of Chinese and global demand growth through the rest of the decade.” For a global oil market, which has come to rely on China as its main growth driver for most of this century, that will erode a major pillar of consumption. The country accounts for almost a fifth of worldwide oil demand, and gasoline makes up about a quarter of that.

[catboymafia]

[zulizenz]

Murder is a natural cause. I love her

[reasonsforhope]

"The amount of electricity generated by the UK’s gas and coal power plants fell by 20% last year, with consumption of fossil fuels at its lowest level since 1957.

Not since Harold Macmillan was the UK prime minister and the Beatles’ John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time has the UK used less coal and gas.

The UK’s gas power plants last year generated 31% of the UK’s electricity, or 98 terawatt hours (TWh), according to a report by the industry journal Carbon Brief, while the UK’s last remaining coal plant produced enough electricity to meet just 1% of the UK’s power demand or 4TWh.

Fossil fuels were squeezed out of the electricity system by a surge in renewable energy generation combined with higher electricity imports from France and Norway and a long-term trend of falling demand.

Higher power imports last year were driven by an increase in nuclear power from France and hydropower from Norway in 2023. This marked a reversal from 2022 when a string of nuclear outages in France helped make the UK a net exporter of electricity for the first time.

Carbon Brief found that gas and coal power plants made up just over a third of the UK’s electricity supplies in 2023, while renewable energy provided the single largest source of power to the grid at a record 42%.

It was the third year this decade that renewable energy sources, including wind, solar, hydro and biomass power, outperformed fossil fuels [in the UK], according to the analysis. Renewables and Britain’s nuclear reactors, which generated 13% of electricity supplies last year, helped low-carbon electricity make up 55% of the UK’s electricity in 2023.

[Note: "Third year this decade" refers to the UK specifically, not global; there are several countries that already run on 100% renewable energy, and more above 90% renewable. Also, though, there have only been four years this decade so far! So three out of four is pretty good!]

Dan McGrail, the chief executive of RenewableUK, said the data shows “the central role that wind, solar and other clean power sources are consistently playing in Britain’s energy transition”.

“We’re working closely with the government to accelerate the pace at which we build new projects and new supply chains in the face of intense global competition, as everyone is trying to replicate our success,” McGrail said.

Electricity from fossil fuels was two-thirds lower in 2023 compared with its peak in 2008, according to Carbon Brief. It found that coal has dropped by 97% and gas by 43% in the last 15 years.

Coal power is expected to fall further in 2024 after the planned shutdown of Britain’s last remaining coal plant in September. The Ratcliffe on Soar coal plant, owned by the German utility Uniper, is scheduled to shut before next winter after generating power for over 55 years.

Renewable energy has increased sixfold since 2008 as the UK has constructed more wind and solar farms, and the large Drax coal plant has converted some of its generating units to burn biomass pellets.

Electricity demand has tumbled by 22% since its peak in 2005, according to the data, as part of a long-term trend driven by more energy efficient homes and appliances as well as a decline in the UK’s manufacturing sector.

Demand for electricity is expected to double as the UK aims to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 because the plan relies heavily on replacing fossil fuel transport and heating with electric alternatives.

In recent weeks [aka at the end of 2023], offshore wind developers have given the green light to another four large windfarms in UK waters, including the world’s largest offshore windfarm at Hornsea 3, which will be built off the North Yorkshire coast by Denmark’s Ørsted."

-via The Guardian, January 2, 2024

[zee-man-chatter]

So just to clarify this, a Russian scientist published papers in the 70′s stating that oil is actually produced from methane gas rising up from the earth’s crust and then being digested by bacteria leaving the byproduct of oil. And there is hard proof of this too. Many oil wells considered dry, and left for time, were checked later and oil was gradually coming back. This can only be explained by the methane/bacteria theory, oil IS renewable. Since at least the mid-70′s we’ve been fed the false peak oil story, well, it’s just not true. It is also not a fossil fuel.

[feckcops]

The public wants to save the planet – as long as it doesn’t personally inconvenience them

“Back in July, Just Stop Oil (JSO) experienced something unusual – they found they were the ones being protested. An alternative group called Just Stop Pissing People Off attempted to block Just Stop Oil from engaging in disruptive protests and interrupted their events, saying that the climate crisis is real but that JSO is distracting and alienating people. The counter-protests tell us a great deal about Britain’s contradictory attitude to the climate crisis.

“Broadly, Brits understand that the climate crisis climate change is a major problem. 65% of us are worried about the climate crisis (versus just 28% who aren’t) while the same proportion supports the government’s aim of reducing Britain’s net carbon emissions to zero by 2050 ... Eight in 10 back more tree planting, subsidies for energy-efficient homes and higher taxes for high-carbon companies. 62% would support a requirement for all energy production to come from renewable sources. But this enthusiasm has its limits.

“When asked if they would back policies that would impose limits on what they personally can do, Brits quickly turn against them. For instance, two-thirds oppose the idea of a limit on how much meat they can buy, and a majority oppose banning petrol and diesel cars ... Even though 62% of voters back the idea of requiring all energy to be renewable, just 39% want to ban new North Sea oil fields, and a mere 32% want to prohibit the sale of gas boilers ...

“The British public is not as supportive of action on the climate crisis as many environmentalists would hope. We favour general, uncontentious ideas – net zero, tree-planting, tax rises on high-carbon companies – but when asked for our opinion on a climate policy that would directly affect us personally, we baulk. This is partly due to worries about the cost of living, but it’s also about avoiding personal inconvenience.

“Just Stop Pissing Everyone Off perfectly encapsulates the British attitude to the climate crisis: sure, it’s a problem, but not ours. As Homer Simpson once asked: ‘Can’t someone else do it?’”

[estraven-ai-2022]

At this rate I fully expect tumblr users to start advocating to bring back the whaling industry to power our lights because according to them animal products good, petroleum bad.

[tomorrowusa]

Kamala is pro-climate. She won't be getting billion dollar donations from oil execs like the ones which Trump solicited.

This is the last paragraph from an article at Slate about how the presidential campaign has been shaken – not stirred.

How will Harris campaign on climate? Harris doesn’t like the oil industry, and she can prove it: As California’s attorney general, she sued several of the worst climate villains you know (Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP) and even tried to curb drilling and fracking off her state’s coast. Though she entered the 2020 Democratic primary as a climate hawk, Harris moderated on the issue as Biden’s running mate, and she hasn’t made it a key plank of her vice presidency. Still, as fossil-fuel executives shower Trump with checks and (allegedly) accept quid pro quo arrangements, you can expect Prosecutor Harris to make clear she can never be so corrupted by Big Bad Oil. (As for the rest of her climate agenda? Frankly, it’ll probably depend on whether her choice for veep hails from a fossil-fuel state.)

As for worry about VP choices being from fossil fuel states, I hear that the state of Minnesota has only a negligible amount of oil, coal, and gas. Gov. Tim Walz runs a state that's greener than most.

Minnesota gets 30.70% of its energy from renewable sources. That compares with 0.90% for Kentucky, 2.20% for Pennsylvania, 2.30% for Louisiana, 8.30% for Arizona, and 12.50% for Indiana. (source)

No president is going to be perfect because no human is perfect. But Kamala Harris is the the most climate friendly president we could reasonably expect this decade.

[odinsblog]

I think the thing that's important for us to remember is that cost volatility is actually all about fossil fuel dependency.

The more that we are dependent on fossil fuels, it means the more we are dependent on global events. As we saw with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as we see with the choices that come out of the UAE, as well as many other regions of the world, oil and gas development and drilling in Latin America, as well as in the United States. The more dependent we are on oil and gas, the more crazy our prices are going to be, and the more up and down our prices are going to be. And the fact that, for example, we have not developed electric or alternative energy vehicles earlier is one of the reasons why we pay such close attention to gas prices to begin with.

And we would not be as sensitive to the changes in energy costs if we weren't so fossil fuel dependent.

And Donald Trump knows that.

The oil and gas industry knows that.

And that is why they finance huge parts of lobbying our government in order to keep the country entirely dependent on fossil fuels.

Now, if you prefer gas cars and gas stoves, you're free to make that choice.

But what we haven't had is accessible and broad choices for something else. EVs have been in development, but for a very long time, they've been financially inaccessible to a lot of people in this country. The Inflation Reduction Act helped change that. We got huge tax breaks for both new and used EVs. If you're trying to buy one off your neighbor or whatever that may be, as well as many other things that are accessible, whether it's induction stoves, heat pumps for one's home, et cetera. But the oil and gas industry is deploying all of their political and special interest money towards one central goal, which is to keep virtually every American completely dependent on their product.

And Donald Trump is very closely aligned with them.

And not only that, but the larger point is that it's not a coincidence that his authoritarian tactics are tied to fossil fuels.

This is a global phenomenon.

And what we are seeing is authoritarianism is very, very closely linked with oil and gas interests around the world.

That's Putin, that's Trump. That's folks like Bolsonaro. That's a lot of the political instability we see out of Saudi Arabia, the UAE.

And I believe that it is not a coincidence, because you have one central industry that has a clear vested, both political and financial interest, and an authoritarian…that is also increasingly becoming politically unpopular, by the way, because the vast majority of Americans believe that the U.S. should start winding down our subsidization of the fossil fuel industry. They want to see clean energy alternatives available to them and financially accessible to them. And they understand that it's just more volatile to be so chained to fossil fuels.

And so the only way that you can really empower both financially a political sect, is through the fossil fuel industry, the oil and gas industry.

The Koch brothers are an oil and gas dynasty who had such large influence on our political system. They come from an oil and gas dynasty, or rather, came. One of them has passed, there's that, but then you see that link crossing across the world, and the ascent of authoritarianism, paired with the fact that every single one of them is very closely aligned to the fossil fuel industry.

And the ascent of the fossil fuel industry is not a coincidence. It's not a mistake.

And in fact, the democratization of our energy system, which is a means of production that has been privatized and concentrated into the hands of the very few, the democratization of our energy system means that people have the potential. We're doing this in Puerto Rico. When you have a battery pack on your house, when the power goes out, you're not as dependent on a central system. You have a backup reserve in case of an emergency, you can give energy to your neighbor.

This is what the democratization of our energy system looks like.

This is also what a fairer economic system that is less volatile for everyday people looks like as well.

And that is a direct threat to authoritarianism.

It's a direct threat to the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few.

But it also represents a shift for the betterment of mankind and our democracy.

—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, noting the link between the fossil fuel industry and authoritarian regimes

[crazysnakey]

Don't forget the reason the U.S. is supporting Israel's genocide of Palestine - hell, 90% of the reason they ever get involved into something in the Middle East is for ulterior purposes regarding oil.

That and the Ben Gurion Canal project, which you can learn more about:

Also this short video explaining the canal's significance and full history in summary:

Simply put,

[dosesofcommonsense]

[drfriedrich]

☆Portrait of Stede Bonnet | Oil paint, tinted paper

[zulizenz]

I could just use a little of this attitude right now

[bumblebeeappletree]

Final Fantasy VII community have you heard about

✨🌿Solarpunk🌱✨

Solarpunk is a lot like cyberpunk where you’re fighting companies and the unjust system that rules that are destroying the planet and the ability to hold live on it. And the goal is to find a balance to live together with technology and nature and become sustainable for the planet.

(Sounds kinda familiar huh? 👀)

Typically a lot of Solarpunk stories take place after the fight has been won and these systems are in place. Ultimately it’s kinda like a utopia but we all have to constantly work to make our lives and the places we live in a better place as utopias are actually well. Impossible.

But Final Fantasy VII? After the downfall of Shinra? Everyone working together to help heal the planet and work on energy sources that won’t drain the planet is just prime for Solarpunk.

This post is just a little introduction for Solarpunk because I’m sure not everyone want a full on essay on what Solarpunk is. But if this interests you, take a look at the Solarpunk tag and some Solarpunk books for inspiration 👀