Download or read book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels written by Alex Epstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could everything we know about fossil fuels be wrong? For decades, environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet at the same time, by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better. How can this be? The explanation, energy expert Alex Epstein argues in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We’re taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives—their unique ability to provide cheap, reliable energy for a world of seven billion people. And the moral significance of cheap, reliable energy, Epstein argues, is woefully underrated. Energy is our ability to improve every single aspect of life, whether economic or environmental. If we look at the big picture of fossil fuels compared with the alternatives, the overall impact of using fossil fuels is to make the world a far better place. We are morally obligated to use more fossil fuels for the sake of our economy and our environment. Drawing on original insights and cutting-edge research, Epstein argues that most of what we hear about fossil fuels is a myth. For instance . . . Myth: Fossil fuels are dirty. Truth: The environmental benefits of using fossil fuels far outweigh the risks. Fossil fuels don’t take a naturally clean environment and make it dirty; they take a naturally dirty environment and make it clean. They don’t take a naturally safe climate and make it dangerous; they take a naturally dangerous climate and make it ever safer. Myth: Fossil fuels are unsustainable, so we should strive to use “renewable” solar and wind. Truth: The sun and wind are intermittent, unreliable fuels that always need backup from a reliable source of energy—usually fossil fuels. There are huge amounts of fossil fuels left, and we have plenty of time to find something cheaper. Myth: Fossil fuels are hurting the developing world. Truth: Fossil fuels are the key to improving the quality of life for billions of people in the developing world. If we withhold them, access to clean water plummets, critical medical machines like incubators become impossible to operate, and life expectancy drops significantly. Calls to “get off fossil fuels” are calls to degrade the lives of innocent people who merely want the same opportunities we enjoy in the West. Taking everything into account, including the facts about climate change, Epstein argues that “fossil fuels are easy to misunderstand and demonize, but they are absolutely good to use. And they absolutely need to be championed. . . . Mankind’s use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous—because human life is the standard of value and because using fossil fuels transforms our environment to make it wonderful for human life.”
Download or read book Petroleum Natural Gas and Coal written by Bernard Durand and published by . This book was released on 2018-08-09 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to provide basic knowledge to better understand the nature of fossil fuels and their importance in the economies of the industrialized countries. The book also explains why their future availability will play a vital role in the future economic and social transformations in these countries.
Download or read book Petroleum Formation and Occurrence written by B.P. Tissot and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 715 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current and authoritative with many advanced concepts for petroleum geologists, geochemists, geophysicists, or engineers engaged in the search for or production of crude oil and natural gas, or interested in their habitats and the factors that control them, this book is an excellent reference. It is recommended without reservation. AAPG Bulletin.
Download or read book Hydrocarbons from Coal written by B. E. Law and published by Amer Assn of Petroleum Geologists. This book was released on 1993 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fossil Future written by Alex Epstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels draws on the latest data and new insights to challenge everything you thought you knew about the future of energy For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing--including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people. And contrary to what we hear from media “experts” about today’s “renewable revolution” and “climate emergency,” reality has proven Epstein right: Fact: Fossil fuels are still the dominant source of energy around the world, and growing fast—while much-hyped renewables are causing skyrocketing electricity prices and increased blackouts. Fact: Fossil-fueled development has brought global poverty to an all-time low. Fact: While fossil fuels have contributed to the 1 degree of warming in the last 170 years, climate-related deaths are at all-time lows thanks to fossil-fueled development. What does the future hold? In Fossil Future, Epstein, applying his distinctive “human flourishing framework” to the latest evidence, comes to the shocking conclusion that the benefits of fossil fuels will continue to far outweigh their side effects—including climate impacts—for generations to come. The path to global human flourishing, Epstein argues, is a combination of using more fossil fuels, getting better at “climate mastery,” and establishing “energy freedom” policies that allow nuclear and other truly promising alternatives to reach their full long-term potential. Today’s pervasive claims of imminent climate catastrophe and imminent renewable energy dominance, Epstein shows, are based on what he calls the “anti-impact framework”—a set of faulty methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values that have caused the media’s designated experts to make wildly wrong predictions about fossil fuels, climate, and renewables for the last fifty years. Deeply researched and wide-ranging, this book will cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about the future of our energy use, our environment, and our climate.
Download or read book Coal Oil and Natural Gas written by Geoffrey M. Horn and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Explains how these fuels were formed, where they are found, how they are used, what kinds of problems they can cause, and how scientists are finding ways to use them more wisely and safely."--P. [4] of cover.
Download or read book Coal written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1995-06-13 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) was given a mandate in the 1992 Energy Policy Act (EPACT) to pursue strategies in coal technology that promote a more competitive economy, a cleaner environment, and increased energy security. Coal evaluates DOE's performance and recommends priorities in updating its coal program and responding to EPACT. This volume provides a picture of likely future coal use and associated technology requirements through the year 2040. Based on near-, mid-, and long-term scenarios, the committee presents a framework for DOE to use in identifying R&D strategies and in making detailed assessments of specific programs. Coal offers an overview of coal-related programs and recent budget trends and explores principal issues in future U.S. and foreign coal use. The volume evaluates DOE Fossil Energy R&D programs in such key areas as electric power generation and conversion of coal to clean fuels. Coal will be important to energy policymakers, executives in the power industry and related trade associations, environmental organizations, and researchers.
Download or read book Carbon Democracy written by Timothy Mitchell and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2013-06-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A brilliant, revisionist argument that places oil companies at the heart of 20th century history—and of the political and environmental crises we now face.” —Guardian Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called “the economy” and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East. In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy—the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.
Download or read book Petroleum from Coal written by Anthony N. Stranges and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-04-18 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Petroleum from Coal shows why and how Friedrich Bergius and Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in 1913-26 invented and developed synthetic fuel processes; explains why and how Matthias Pier at BASF- IG Farben and Otto Roelen at Ruhrchemie successfully industrialized the syntheses during the Nazi-World War II years; and analyzes the pre- and post-World War II vicissitudes of the synthetic fuel industry. The research of Germany’s scientists in the 1920s-40s made them world leaders in synthetic fuel studies. Information on the synthetic fuel processes has come from the Allied teams who went to Germany and Japan during World War II’s closing months and from British, American, and Canadian synthetic fuel investigations.
Download or read book The End of Oil written by Paul Roberts and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2005-04-05 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A stunning piece of work—perhaps the best single book ever produced about our energy economy and its environmental implications” (Bill McHibbon, The New York Review of Books). Petroleum is so deeply entrenched in our economy, politics, and daily lives that even modest efforts to phase it out are fought tooth and nail. Companies and governments depend on oil revenues. Developing nations see oil as their only means to industrial success. And the Western middle class refuses to modify its energy-dependent lifestyle. But even by conservative estimates, we will have burned through most of the world’s accessible oil within mere decades. What will we use in its place to maintain a global economy and political system that are entirely reliant on cheap, readily available energy? In The End of Oil, journalist Paul Roberts talks to both oil optimists and pessimists around the world. He delves deep into the economics and politics, considers the promises and pitfalls of oil alternatives, and shows that—even though the world energy system has begun its epochal transition—we need to take a more proactive stance to avoid catastrophic disruption and dislocation.
Download or read book Coal written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2007-12-21 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coal will continue to provide a major portion of energy requirements in the United States for at least the next several decades. It is imperative that accurate information describing the amount, location, and quality of the coal resources and reserves be available to fulfill energy needs. It is also important that the United States extract its coal resources efficiently, safely, and in an environmentally responsible manner. A renewed focus on federal support for coal-related research, coordinated across agencies and with the active participation of the states and industrial sector, is a critical element for each of these requirements. Coal focuses on the research and development needs and priorities in the areas of coal resource and reserve assessments, coal mining and processing, transportation of coal and coal products, and coal utilization.
Download or read book Energy Systems written by Nick Jenkins and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy supply is foundational to modern society, but damaging to the environment. This book takes a 'systems view', from extraction of primary fuel, through conversion to usable energy, and transportation to point of use. It explores initiatives to generate electricity in an environmentally benign manner, and decarbonise the supply of energy.
Download or read book Coal Wars written by Richard Martin and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late 18th century, when it emerged as a source of heating and, later, steam power, coal has brought untold benefits to mankind. Even today, coal generates almost 45 percent of the world's power. Our modern technological society would be inconceivable without coal and the energy it provides. Unfortunately, that society will not survive unless we wean ourselves off coal. The largest single source of greenhouse gases, coal is responsible for 43 percent of the world's carbon emissions. Richard Martin, author of SuperFuel, argues that to limit catastrophic climate change, we must find a way to power our world with less polluting energy sources, and we must do it in the next couple of decades—or else it is "game over." It won't be easy: as coal plants shut down across the United States, and much of Europe turns to natural gas, coal use is growing in the booming economies of Asia— particularly China and India. Even in Germany, where nuclear power stations are being phased out in the wake of the Fukushima accident, coal use is growing. Led by the Sierra Club and its ambitious "Beyond Coal" campaign, environmentalists hope to drastically reduce our dependence on coal in the next decade. But doing so will require an unprecedented contraction of an established, lucrative, and politically influential worldwide industry. Big Coal will not go gently. And its decline will dramatically change lives everywhere—from Appalachian coal miners and coal company executives to activists in China's nascent environmental movement. Based on a series of journeys into the heart of coal land, from Wyoming to West Virginia to China's remote Shanxi Province, hundreds of interviews with people involved in, or affected by, the effort to shrink the industry, and deep research into the science, technology, and economics of the coal industry, Coal Wars chronicles the dramatic stories behind coal's big shutdown—and the industry's desperate attempts to remain a global behemoth. A tour de force of literary journalism, Coal Wars will be a milestone in the climate change battle.
Download or read book New Sources of Oil and Gas written by S. S. Penner and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Sources of Oil & Gas: Gases from Coal, Liquid Fuels from Coal, Shale Tar Sands, and Heavy Oil Sources is a collection of papers that covers various concerns in exploiting alternative sources of oil and gas. The book first covers the essential features of developing coal-gasification and coal-liquefaction technologies, and then proceeds to discussing the results of a detailed evaluation of technologies for shale-oil recovery. The last article discusses the assessment of research areas that affect the prospects for oil recovery from oil sources and tar sands. The book will be of great use to researchers and practitioners of disciplines involved in the fuel industry.
Download or read book Petroleum and Coal written by Hrishikesh Baruah and published by M.D. Publications Pvt. Ltd.. This book was released on 1997-03 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of the book has been to focus on the origin, occurance, migration (of petroleum, exploration, drilling or mining of the hydrocarbons, and their uses, particularly the petrochemicals. Side by side, an attempt has been made to divert the attention of the people on the fact that it take a lot of painful efforts to extract petroleum and coal. Though it is a fact that the world cannot survive without these two non-renewable resources, it should be seen that the wants are minimized as far as possible.
Download or read book Petroleum Science and Technology written by Chang Samuel Hsu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aimed at students and professionals, this book covers every major aspect of petroleum: the origin of fossil hydrocarbons and their chemical/physical properties; discovering hydrocarbon reserves; recovering oil, gas, and bitumen; purifying gas; the chemical and physical characterization of crude oil; refining crudes into fuels and lubricants; and converting simple chemicals into solvents, polymers, fibers, rubbers, coatings, and myriad other products, including pharmaceuticals. Readers will learn how the industry operates, from "upstream" exploration and production, "midstream" transportation to "downstream" refining, and manufacturing of finished products. The book also contains unique chapters on midstream operations, learnings from major accidents, and safety/environmental laws and regulations. It builds on the authors' previous books and teaching material from a highly rated course that is taught at the Florida A&M University/Florida State University (USA).
Download or read book Biobased Industrial Products written by Committee on Biobased Industrial Products and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Petroleum-based industrial products have gradually replaced products derived from biological materials. However, biologically based products are making a comeback--because of a threefold increase in farm productivity and new technologies. Biobased Industrial Products envisions a biobased industrial future, where starch will be used to make biopolymers and vegetable oils will become a routine component in lubricants and detergents. Biobased Industrial Products overviews the U.S. land resources available for agricultural production, summarizes plant materials currently produced, and describes prospects for increasing varieties and yields. The committee discusses the concept of the biorefinery and outlines proven and potential thermal, mechanical, and chemical technologies for conversion of natural resources to industrial applications. The committee also illustrates the developmental dynamics of biobased products through existing examples, as well as products still on the drawing board, and it identifies priorities for research and development.
