The prescience of BBC reporters knows no bounds. Here Michael Fitzpatrick, the latest “science and technology” guru on the web team, tells us in no uncertain terms that the world’s aviation industry as we know it is doomed. He intones/drones:
Facing a fate shared by other fossil fuel guzzlers, the jet will have to find alternatives to burning kerosene if it is to survive beyond the middle of the next century. Which is when, according to the most optimistic figures, the Earth gives up its final barrel of oil.
So there we have it. The BBC will have its heart’s desire – the likely end of all jets by 2150 unless “alternatives can be found to kerosene”. We are on offical warning, and of course, this will be a cause for massive celebration for the eco crusaders at White City because they can now sense we will be forced back to Shanks’s pony, and to live through subsistence farming in nice eco mud huts with windmills on top.
There’s just one problem that would have taken Mr Fitzpatrick – had he been so inclined – just a few minutes to research. As Matt Ridley eloquently points out in his book The Rational Optimist, Jeremiahs like Mr Fitzpatrick have been predicting such fuel shortages for time immemorial. In 1939, the US Bureau of Mines told the world that oil would run out in ten years. Jimmy Carter said the same thing in 1979. He did so so when known reserves were 550 billion barrels. By 1990, 600bn barrels had been used, and reserves totalling at least a further 900bn barrels had been found; on top of that, 6trillion barrels of reserves are known in the mountains of Venezuela. Of course, they will be costly to extract; but complexity and cost of extraction have not been the real barrier in most of the history of oil drilling. As Mr Ridley so eloquently points out, human ingenuity has consistently led to solutions that would once have been unthinkable.
The real agenda here, I suspect, is that the BBC hates aeroplanes because they allow nasty inferior social classes to go abroad; they fervently want this to stop.
Bang on (except for the typo in the date).
I’m reading The Rational Optimist now; it’s highly recommended.
There is nothing so dangerous as an idiot with the wrong information.
Oil is not running out, people like Fitzpatrick seem to think that the geological forces which create oil have suddenly stopped. They haven’t. And they won’t.
Oil is being created all day every day all over the world.
Some Texas wells that were capped in the 1930s because they were dry have recently been re-opened and are productive again.
The only oil shortage will be when we get it out of the ground too slowly to satisfy demand, and we can get it out a lot quicker than we currently do, only OPEC prevents this and that’s to keep the price nice and high.
The world is swimming in oil, don’t let any fool tell you different.
Surely the middle of the next century is around 2150?
There are huge untapped reserves of oil on the planet, the south Atlantic and north pole to mention but two.
Perhaps beeboids should cut back on THEIR flying then if they want to save the planet?
Exactly. The Today Program still hasn’t reply to my query as to whether John Humphrys recently flew to China to interview John Prescott about his mission to cut carbon emmissions.
‘Course he didn’t – he took a slow boat…
Well anyting would be slow with the lardo on it! hmm just wondering does the planet speed up when the lord of the pies is on a plane ?? is his fave film ‘steaks on a plane’?.
Sorry it’s a Friday and the suns gone to me head !. 😛
Air travel is to be SOLELY for Yentob clones. the common proletariat MUST NOT BE PERMITTED TO FLY
Assuming you meant the middle of the ‘next’ century and not ‘this’ century then surely if we haven’t figured out a better way to produce energy than fossil fuels then I’d be very suprised. Dead, but very suprised of course.
Yet again I’m surprised (As if) by the news promulgated by one of the bBCs so called experts that we are all doomed. Anybody who knows me, knows I’m a spotter and as such keep my nose to the ground on all things military. Two mags I purchase Combat aircraft and Aircraft monthly (Along with Janes and the Economist) have for the past few years been regailing me with stories about the US Airforce has been trialling its jets to use bio-fuels not just reserch aircraft but actual big jets such as the C17 , ground huggers such as the A10 and fighter jets such as the F/A 18.
Now unlike the bBC the Military looks to the future which is why we have radar,microwaves,Sat phones, the internet, the jet engine etc..
In fact in Oct of this year i read a nice article in the economist on how the world is looking at algae derived drop in fuels . (In fact my latest copy is behind me in its white paper bag)
But then good stories for the bBC don’t seem to have anything to do with the people who fund it’s leftist views, but rather are based on a small (but growing) minority which is why so many Haj stories have surfaced this week on the bBC.
(Part 2)
In fact the last link I post has this to say on the matter of EADS flying a small aircraft (unlike the yanks and normal big aircraft)
Exhaust gas measurements have indicated the algae biofuel contains eight times less hydrocarbons than crude oil-derived kerosene. In addition, levels of nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide content are considerably lower in the biofuel, with up to 40% less nitrogen oxides and around 10 ppm of sulphur oxides compared with 600 ppm in conventional jet kerosene.
According to EADS, microalgae create at least 30 times more biomass per cultivation area than, for example, rapeseed and as they can be grown on poor quality land using non-potable or salt water, their cultivation does not compete with food production. To replace 10% of the world’s kerosene needs in 2025-30 would require 100,000 sq. km of jatropha farming compared with 6,000 sq. km of algae beds, says the company. Because the growth of algae requires high amounts of CO2, they can be grown in industrial plants near CO2-emitting factories, thus also eliminating the need to transport large quantities of second-generation biomass like jatropha.
Pounce,
There you go a sensible and probably workable solution to a possible non-problem, or at least a cleaner replacement for an old polutant.
But will the BBC ever report it or other stories like it? Too much of an advert for the comapnaies involved perhaps? Or maybe they prefer to continue with their abstenace solutions? But why would abstenace seem more favourable than replacement by better? Could it be that they want the oil to be used by someone else instead? China maybe? Too paranoid perhaps or is that why the left are so pro-AGW?
Damn this keyboard – that’s companies and abstinence.
Apologies :-[
BBC staff won’t need to worry about the end of oil and jet aeroplanes. For the Olympics in Australia in 150 years or so the 400 plus BBC staff will set sail on a luxury liner for a lengthy voyage down under, followed by another one when the games are over.
It’ll be months of champagne and fine food for them, not just a few weeks as now.
And if there’s no oil for petrol, BBC staff and guests will probably spend millions on sedan chairs instead of taxis to travel around London.
…unless “alternatives can be found to kerosene”
Which seems to imply that, after tens of thousands of years of innovation and advance, developing a new fuel is beyond the capabilities of us humans.
I’m not sure whether I’m more disgusted by the anti scientific stupidity of the BBC (I shouldn’t be, as I gave up on “Today” after Naughty proudly boasted of being only semi educated when introducing a simple scientific article) or their low opinion of hmanity (again, I shouldn’t be as they keep telling me we’re all too stupid to think for ourselves and need a strong government to make decisions for us).