Interesting perspctive on energy.

[Hippie Rancher]

from the CEO of Shell oil.

Including discussion of greenhouse gasses, and climate change (they seem to believe it and they ought to know!)

For a second opinion, we appealed to climate change calculations made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These calculations indicate that a Blueprints world with CO2 capture and storage results in the least amount of climate change, provided emissions of other major manmade greenhouse gases are similarly reduced.

http://www.shell.com/home/content/about ... 12008.html

 

[Jogeephus]

This will require hard work, and time is short. For example, Blueprints assumes CO2 is captured at 90% of all coal- and gas-fired power plants in developed countries by 2050, plus at least 50% of those in non-OECD countries. Today, none capture CO2. Because CO2 capture and storage adds costs and yields no revenues, government support is needed to make it happen quickly on a scale large enough to affect global emissions. At the least, companies should earn carbon credits for the CO2 they capture and store.

As a licensed Carbon Sequesterer, I disagree with this statement. We are already doing that thru good forest management and conservation practices. Georgia Power was on the forefront of this several years ago with its Green Program where they paid landowners to plant pine plantations to offset and store their emissions. Well managed, actively growing forests will store up to 8 tons/acre of CO2 each year. What they are proposing is a do nothing "Shell Game" - no pun intended toward Shell Oil Co. - where we fill out mounds of paperwork indicating where and how much CO2 is being stored in the trees. This is will create a touchy feel good industry that the consumer will ultimately end up paying the 1.2 trillion dollar tab in higher prices due to the emission offset and storage costs. While I should welcome this as I am in a position to make gobs and squirts of money if this proposal is implemented. But I don't believe in BS do nothing programs that do nothing but generate paperwork and jobs for bureaucrats.

If this goes into affect, I do hope you realize that the US gov't will - if they want to practice what they dictate - need to start extensive logging of the forests in the pacific NW. Especially the virgin forests as they have peaked in their CO2 storage ability and are bad for our environment.

If implemented in the form that was presented to me, this will take thousands and thousands of acres out of agriculture and put them in tree plantations. I can also see the remaining cropland rent going over $200/acre/year due to CO2 speculators and world trading of carbon credits. All because I filled out a ream of paper and told the CO2 to go in a certain tree. Of course the CO2 would have not known to do that without your paying me to tell it to do so. So I guess I earned my money.

To me, conservation is the answer. Sound conservation practices should be the rule in every aspect of life for it holds the solution to many if not all these problems. A ream of paper does nothing.