Interesting summary of comments, Ian. Feels like a tidal wave, dunnit? Combine this massive rebuffArchived Message
Posted by Rhisiart Gwilym on November 2, 2019, 7:10 pm, in reply to "Re: drill or drop..."
with the further fact - as mentioned in this summary - that the Brit frackers, like their US progenitors, are working at a continual financial loss, with no sign of profit, or even balancing the books, anywhere in sight. All in all, an encouraging prospect that the fracking lunacy is going to die of its own insanity before too long.
Disquieting, though, to see the ritual promotion of 'renewables' (which are not quite as unproblematic as the word suggests), which are in any case clearly restricted to only ever producing a smallish fraction of the energy that we splurge now, and which absolutely demand either a) some hyper-efficient electricity-storage technology which currently doesn't exist, and isn't even in credible prospect; or b) an entire standard generating grid, on constant standby for rapid ramping up when the 'renewables' output drops drastically on cloudy days, at night, and on still-air days. Gail Tverberg at 'Our Finite Earth' is ruthlessly authoritative, and unconvinced about the feasibility of such a system. She also points out that it would have to be gas powered, since that's the only form of orthodox generating system which can be ramped up quickly enough when the 'renewables' output is going down.
Gail, and other fully-savvy technicians, also point out the really awkward fact that we have no known way to create, install and maintain 'renewable' systems (at least in their modern incarnations) without constant - and permanent - energy subsidies from other sources - which, inevitably, means fossil-hydrocarbons. This is apart from the huge energy subsidy embedded in the back-up generating network, which also has to be maintained as well as fuelled, at considerable extra energy cost.
Ultimately, I fear, we have a couple of deeply-unpopular-amongst-green-folk bullets to bite: That there is simply going to be a whole lot less on-tap energy - of any kind - available to us in the future, whatever strategy we undertake; and that the entire panoply of 'renewables' is actually turning out to be a bit of problematic damp squib - which throwing oodles more money at it won't cure.