Only if there's someone there (here) to say it and ONLY if there are others around to Hear and Understand it....

Color me pessimistic.

well what would you do if your buddy Exxon Mobil was just indicted on environmental crimes by the state of NY?

Fusion will eventually come to pass. Maybe even matter-anti matter. The science is ther, just not the technology to support it yet.

Yes indeed, which is why a lot of companies have hired "futurists" (and pay attention to sci-fi) to try to jump ahead. HGWells comes to mind...

Not just the statists, but the big corporations, manipulating the situation for their own use.

Exactly, and BP will be in both sides with their carbon recapture and wind farms to boot!

Cheer up Freedom, we haven't lost yet. Think of us a Britain in June-July 1941 : "Never has so many owed so much to so few" .

I find the fact that an oil company mentioning carbon taxes disturbing in the max. That is indeed the pot calling kettle black. I see them playing both sides of the coin, and encouraging or even financing politicians to impose carbon taxes, and then getting into those associated businesses, trumpeting their kindness to earth and cleaning up, and the rest of us are dead broke paying for it.

So now the statists will find a way to obstruct using
those resources, in order to hamper industry, and
attempt to make life on earth unlivable.

The article ended on a sour note, but the first part was inyourfacegreenies great. What it is saying is that the same thing that happened in agriculture is happening in petroleum: Predictions of starvation in India by the 1970's were forestalled by the development (in the 1950's and 60;s) of short wheat and better fertilizers. Now we have the predictions of fossil fuel depletion by 2050 being derailed by technological improvements in extraction processes.

Predictions, such as the famous case of London being buried by horse droppings by 1890, do not take into account qualitative changes in technology (ie cars) - they always rely on projecting current tech into the future.

Jan

I suspect that the burning of oil will decrease as new technologies find better ways to release energy for us. By 2050 we probably wont be using much oil for the purposes we use it for now.

If Eyton's "economic" $80 per ton on carbon went into effect, the result could be a $200 "tax" per ton of coal burned. (He said 'carbon' but the 'tax' would likely be on tons of CO2, not carbon. One ton of coal burned creates about 2.8 tons of CO2.) Thermal coal costs about $42 per ton at present and about 40% of the electricity in the US comes from coal fired power plants.
Think a 500% increase in electricity fuel costs would be "economic" for people in the US?

I post about significant positive tech advances whenever I see them, but I don't post the minor ones or those posted before. You got to this one first ;^)
Just don't have much positive to say lately about politics, government, privacy, individual liberty, religion, the American socialist-fascist-corporatist state.
(grin)
Election campaigns have that effect on me.

we'll see what he gets. I want one positive post from you so I know all can be right in our world, freedom :)

"an $80 per tonne price on carbon would make onshore wind technology competitive with gas-fired power and would also make carbon capture and sequestration with gas-fired power economic."

Yes, and a 500% tariff on imports from China (and other cheap labor countries) would make manufacturing in the US viable.
The problem is that demand would nosedive and a depression would ensue, while government took the funds from tariffs and increased repression of freedom.

Any action that transfers power and wealth from individual producers to government looters is not a solution, but an increased problem.
Eyton, BP's Group Head of Technology is a poor communicator if he believes that is "economic."
I hope that the headline is more accurate.