| | | Managers running the Fortune 500 certainly disagree with you. You can't operate technology intensive companies without having the ability to also understand man-made Global Warming.
Rising Carbon Dioxide levels in ocean water have made oceans more acidic and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen since the start of the Industrial Revolution, and that's clearly a man-made event. People who disagree with this are uneducated, delusional or liars. Simple as that.
Are there other factors changing the climate as well? Yes, but the impact created alone by CO2 generated by human activity is creating an unacceptably immense financial impact. This is self-interest.
Chevron's Pascagoula refinery was built to withstand a "100 year" hurricane, and it's experienced six "100 year" hurricanes since it was built. We'd joke about what the hell is wrong in Engineering that they're getting this so wrong.
Chevron factors in the cost of a potential carbon tax into proposed capital projects even though the CEO John Watson hopes changing technology can quickly reduce the price of reducing CO2 emission without a carbon tax because the cost comes out of everyone's standard of living. Chevron has also been a leader is geothermal and solar energy production. - wsj.com - chevron.com
Exxon's Board and CEO Rex Tillerson agree CO2 generated by human activity is changing the climate to an unacceptable degree and the release of CO2 and other heat trapping gases, as they're identified, need to be greatly reduced. As you might expect from an engineer, Rex Tillerson sees this as an engineering problem which simply means processes need to be redesigned. - washingtonpost.com - nationalreview.com
But on the other hand these engineering costs don't look good for coal, which is why Exxon sold all of their coal properties. It's possible to capture and sequester the carbon dioxide but the price isn't favorable when natural gas is so inexpensive in the United States and likely to be so for a very long duration.
Technologically, energy storage is the biggest challenge - it has to be reliable, safe and inexpensive. Germany was an early adopter of renewable energy but their effort is now stalled until energy storage technology matures. In the interim they find themselves in the laughable process of replacing nuclear plants, which became quite unpopular there after Chernobyl, with lignite-coal-fired power generation. This isn't quite as stupid as it looks because nuclear power plants can't vary output to adapt to peaks and valley in renewable energy generation, but lignite-coal-fired power generation can. |
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