"Lord Ron Oxburgh, former non-executive chairman, Shell UK; chairman, House of Lords select committee on science and technology; honorary professor, Cambridge University"

Impressive title to be sure. His remarks, as reported here, however, must be said to leave much to be desired. A quick look:
"The problem arises as populations grow, and expect to achieve the standards of more developed countries, with free access to cars and transportation."

Have any of you ever been given "free" access to cars and transportation? O.K., since your college days, when for some of you, Dad sprang for the wheels? Talk about starting from a broken premise and working your way outward!

The follow on sentence is given with no proof, and is so astounding that the need for proof should be considered ABSOLUTE:

"This has led to a growing fleet of vehicles to meet that need, and in contrast to the Hirsch Report (pdf) he felt that it would likely take over 40 years to change to an alternate method of propulsion."

(!!!!!) I ask, no, this time I BEG any thinking person to consider that statement for a few moments, please. In a 40 year window, the U.S. electrified the countryside, built the interstate highway system, changed from steam trains to Diesel on the rail, changed from prop planes to jets in the air, built the U.S. nuclear power industry, and completely built the television industry. The U.S. did not do any one of the above in 40 years, they did ALL OF THE ABOVE IN THE SAME 40 YEARS (roughly 1938 to 1978), oh, and in our spare time won a world war went to the moon!

If Lord Oxburgh were a 20 year old, I could understand him not knowing the above, but given the face I see in the photo shown, Lord Oxburgh was alive to see most of what I have just described. His 40 conjecture, without ironclad proof, is to be considered completely nonsensical on the face of it.

But he soldiars on....
"By gasifying coal, processing natural gas, or gasifying biomass we can sequentially process these into a liquid fuel to meet the need. However if this were done on a global scale the Greehouse gasses (GHG) produced by the first two would be at a disastrous level."

Let's lay aside the greenhouse gas for a moment (although the line about building coal fired plants to provide "breathing room" is almost too good a straight line to pass up!), and talk about the conversion efficiency of the above schemes....They are what I have often referred to as "death by one thousand conversions." The "sequential processing" of high carbon fuels into a liquid fuel require the building of not one industry but about a half dozen interlocking industries, all of which must be built at the same time, and infrastructure provided to move, store, and consume the new product. In America, we cannot even get an old fashioned straight forward oil refinery built!

I will just take the coal gasification thing, (right now, that's the new/old hot ticket in my home state of Kentucky). First, you have to have a vibrant coal mining industry, with all the machinery and labor needed for that, then a CTG (coal to gas) industry, a GTL (gas to liquid industry), and then some type of processing to refine the syn crude on out to finished motor fuel. Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, the massive water handling operation, and then some method of waste water disposal, and some type of carbon sequestering industry, which doesn't even exist yet, because it is about time we finally quit laying the carbon issue aside, given that the rest of the program is such a catastrophe.

Now think for a second....Lord Oxburgh thinks it will take 40 years (!!) to chang the propulsion of vehicles, but thinks we can build the above type of "sequential processing industries in much less time??

It is complete nonsense. Oxburgh's program makes the plug hybrid auto and the PV and concentrating solar industry look like small beans to pull off by comparison.

Once more, we are seeing people falling for the same petroleum industry pap....there are no alternatives, and if there are, they will take far too long and do far too little. It is us in the petroleum business or nothing.

I am holding out hope that the folks gathered at Cork are clever enough not to be taken in. Either way, if the petrol industry hopes to make that argument, surely the next time they will use arguments more coherent than those attributed to Lord Oxburgh.

Roger Conner Jr.
ThatsItimout