Reply to post: Re: one who questions the orthodoxy

Motivated by commerce, not conscience, Google bans ads for climate change consensus contradictors

Jellied Eel Silver badge

Re: one who questions the orthodoxy

In the first role it's often open to substitution, in the second not so often. The stuff that's been burned needlessly isn't available as a substrate. In similar vein the hydrocarbon used to make one-use plastic bags can also be substituted with paper.

This is kinda the problem, ie what problem are we trying to solve? So Google probably uses more energy than aluminium smelters. There are substitutes for Google.

Fossil fuels are substitutable, ie we can create synthetic fuels and have done since the 1920's with the Fischer-Tropsch and Sabatier processes. Germany did that during WW2, South Africa during anti-apartheid sanctions. So if we really have to, we can make 'fossil' fuels.

But neo-Luddites want to ban fossil fuels. Slight snag, shutting down petrochemicals means shutting down all the products created from those barrels of oil. Including some fun ones, like ammonia & fertiliser production, which we'd need a lot more of, if we're also going to go meat free.

Or we could carry on extracting oil & gas, but only for uses approved by the Green Board. But without revenues from oil & gas, all those products would be expensive. Plus what do do with the fractions that are now forbidden.

And of course there's energy. Without petrochemicals, there would be no 'renewables'. With no energy, there'd be no chemicals either, and we're seeing that with some industries shutting down due to high energy costs. Especially industry that needs reliable power, which renewables can't deliver. Cut power to either Google or an aluminium smelter, and you get a big & expensive mess.

But that's politics. Our descendents may be sitting in fusion powered & heated classrooms on Mars learning about work in the off-world colonies, and wondering why their ancestors thought the Earth had an exclusive monopoly on resources in our solar system.

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