Let’s get this topic on the table even though we don’t use too much electricity here in Africa..
I like what he says.
What utter idiocy. Same old garbage in a fancy new wrapper. Always easy to spot when someone wraps up their argument in rhetoric and what-ifs rather than providing hard facts.
Go and read BGs letter yourself. Go look at China’s energy mix. Go read about the tenets of just energy transformation. A lot of the factoids he throws in there are significant mis-representations.
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Hmmm…. Gates didn’t say in so many words that climate change was not a crisis.
Some years ago I was involved in something that was portrayed at the time as a lie that had been told by a particular group of people - though nobody could come up with a good reason for the propogration of this lie.
That thing was Y2K. And I’m here to tell you that it was a real thing, but also that it was misportrayed, and, more importantly, it was dealt with by 1000s of IT teams all over the world. The company that I was working for at the time ran a good, thorough program, and we found a bug that was going to strike not at midnight as we transitioned from 1999 to 2000, but when the accounting month end run happened at the end of January. Our program, run on a separate system on an isolated network, and whose hardware clock we could adjust to suit our needs, spanned 9th September 1999 - 9999, thought by some to be a dangerous value hard-coded into some systems - to March 1st 2000 so that we would deal with any issues related to leap years or not identifying leap years.
We stayed in touch with some key business partners, but we couldn’t know what, for EG, the City of Johannesburg were doing, or the cell networks, or Telkom.
Turned out most folks did OK. The world didn’t end, planes didn’t fall out of the sky, and when I stood down on the afternoon of the 1st I got home to find some talk show host telling his audience about how we’d been lied to all along.
Y2K never happened as the popular press and the grapevine said it would because lots of people all over the world took the problem seriously (or took the threat of legal action seriously) and focussed their skills on the issue and fixed it. It was there. We got it fixed in time.
And I think something similar is happening with climate change. The climate is still heating, we do need to do things, but the stuff we have done already is making a difference, not all the difference, and the landscape in which we must solve this problem keeps changing, but we also haven’t achieved nothing.The xspurts on social media saying that Bill Gates just admitted that there was a lie and he was part of it and so everything else he ever got behind is also a lie are wrong. They are grasping at headlines, not reading whole articles.
Because Durban isn’t underwater yet we think that the whole thing was nonsense to begin with.
Folks are funny like that. We can never see that a problem was headed off or that there has been progress in mitigating against whatever it is. If the world doesn’t end on schedule then, we tell ourselves, it was a lie all along.
Indeed! One success story was the Ozone layer depletion. @plonkster commented on the success of tackling this and we’ve heard nothing about it so it must have moved down on the crisis list.
I heard another message.
Why don’t big business, billionaires, political leaders follow to the letter the legislation/drive/Co2 reduction ito global warming?
China is taking huge leaps and bounds.
Versus i.e. the USA.
Read this on the late Fluffy’s (4x4 forum) profile:
If you fly or drive to an anti-fracking meeting, you have no business being there and you won’t get my ear …
Apply that to everything affecting global warming and the message to the masses will become clear when the leaders do exactly what is supposed to happen.
That the climate change/Global Warming is happening, fact.
The impact of humans on climate change/Global Warming, in my opinion, is huge.
To sort it … need the masses, corporations, politicians, countries to make a converted effort.
Watch this scene in Landman … he makes a damn good point.
Humankind needs to find a alternative to oil … we need decades to find alternatives to oil due to the immense reliance on oil in every single level of society.
Methinks, the conversation has to get real ito what alternatives do humankind have for all and sundry coming from oil. The fuel we burn is but just a part of it.
It is going to cost a massive fortune to change … question is, change to what?
Transport = EV’s are not the answer for billions of vehicles … we don’t have enough coal to burn.
We don’t have enough nuclear stations either - with their waste stored safely for thousands of years.
Global Warming conversation is not as simple as we like to think it is.
The reliance is not in oil, but in electricity. Electricity is what allows us to lead a modern life. It’s electricity, not oil, that is linked to a country’s economic prospects. If you don’t have oil, but you do have good electricity supply then your country has ticked a lot of boxes already.
There are proven links between the wealth of a nation and it’s electricity supply, women’s rights, and standards of education.
Oil is (for the time being) the one way to short cut these other measures. If you have oil then you don’t need to spend so much time on human rights, on being democratic, on educating people. That’s why there are groups vested in keeping oil pre-eminent. Not necessarily because they are not keen on educating women, giving them a vote, allowing them to drive cars, but because they already have a nice, easy way of making money and would rather not have to learn the rules of a new game.
It doesn’t have to be this way of course. Some countries have become rich because of fossil fuels and still improved on all these other indices. EG Norway with it’s massive and resilient sovereign wealth fund.
Don’t underestimate oil. In WW2 Germany was desperate to get access to the Middle East oil fields due to low supplies in Europe. This also prompted them to produce synthetic oil from coal. The US is still heavily dependent on oil. OPEC had them (and us) over a barrel in the oil crisis.
Oil is ideal for transport. Even ships stopped burning coal and now use oil/diesel.
But for sure electricity is the way to go. I’ve always said that it’s the most sophisticated energy that we have..
It’s a source of energy. It’s the energy itself that is necessary. Renewable fuels interest me. I hope they live up to the hype. Formula 1 is racing on renewables next year. The promise is that they are made from and using carbon that is already in the environment, and although they will produce emissions when burned, the net change to environmental carbon is zero.
I think there’s a requirement that each team will run their trucks on renewable fuel too, so this becomes a useful test bed.
There’s a general principle in F1 at the moment that the fuel they race on is plausibly similar to something that Shell or Petronas or whoever would sell on a forecourt. Forecourt fuel varies all over the world, but the fuel used in F1 has to fit inside a sort of chemical template that allows little room for the sort of malarkey that used to go on. Things like acetone as an additive, like a special artificial fuel developed for fighter jet planes during WW2 (in F1 this wasused for qualifying only because it was so explosive, and by one team only who had an engine supplier willing to pay for it). So if they can maintain those parameters and the fuel does not increase emissions in the atmosphere then F1 becomes a very useful proving ground, though they need to figure out how to drive the costs down.
American racing tends to rely on ethanol, and they too are now racing on green ethanol. Here the proposition is simpler. There’s no fossil fuel involved, the fuel is extracted from sugarcane waste, so doesn’t even rely on the diversion of edible substances away from the food chain and into fuel.
Energy is critical yes but it is not that simple as what we would like to make it out “the reliance is not in oil”.
I think one needs to do a deep dive in what oil is used from in and around our homes/businesses that has nothing to do with fuel for vehicles and/or electricity. 
Here, quick Google:
Oil is crucial today for powering transportation (cars, planes, ships), generating electricity, heating buildings, and as a key feedstock for manufacturing everyday items like plastics, chemicals, fertilizers, synthetic fabrics, cosmetics, and crucial medical supplies (PPE, IV bags). It’s fundamental to the modern economy, used in everything from asphalt for roads to components in smartphones and sports equipment, making it integral to daily life.
Key Uses of Oil
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Transportation Fuels: The largest use, including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel for vehicles, planes, and ships.
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Petrochemicals: A vital raw material for making plastics (polyethylene, PVC, polystyrene), synthetic rubbers (tires), solvents, detergents, and synthetic fibers (nylon, polyester).
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Heating & Electricity: Used as fuel oil for furnaces and boilers, and in some cases, to generate electricity.
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Lubricants: Essential for reducing friction in machinery, engines, and industrial equipment (motor oil, brake fluid).
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Agriculture: Fuels farm machinery and provides materials for fertilizers, pesticides, and greenhouse plastics.
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Construction: Asphalt for roads, driveways, and roofing shingles.
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Healthcare: Components in medical devices, pharmaceuticals (pain relievers, antibiotics), personal protective equipment (PPE), and everyday items like contact lenses.
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Everyday Products: Found in cosmetics, toiletries (shampoo, lipstick), paints, electronics, furniture, and much more.
I follow F1 closely and wasn’t aware of this. Motor racing tried the Formula E (or whatever it’s called) but it just doesn’t have what F1 has…
It’s one of many changes for 2026. But it’s less controversial than the moveable aero, the near total rewrite of the aero regulations, and the rumours that the new hybrid motors will run out of power before the end of the straight and so we will have the unseemly spectacle of F1 cars coasting.
I have no opinion on the motors running out of puff. I do know that the many very smart people in F1 are very good at seeing the end of the world coming. I recall that when FIA started imposing limits on engine use and the number of engines that could be used in a season, the teams were prophecying races with very few cars finishing, and all sorts of other mayhem. All that happened was that reliability improved and the mechanics got more sleep.
Anyway, the carbon neutral fuel has been scheduled for 2026 for over a year now, but there are more lurid headlings around other regulation changes than around woke green fuel.
It is Formula E. It has a deal with FIA that it can be the only all-electric single seater series, but many series now have some sort of electric component. F1 has had hybrid motors since 2014. Indycar now has a KERS component (recovers energy under braking and stores it in batteries for later use). Le Mans has been won by hybrid cars for at least a decade now. Rallying tried hybrids but is abadoning them. Indycar also has carbon neutral fuel now.
What I think Formula 1 has is amazing cornering speeds. Look at the way those cars go into corners now, the violence with which they can change direction (even compared to F1 from 20 years ago), the speed they carry through the corners.
That and very good production on TV. They have worked very hard on the camera angles, the use of drones. I don’t think any other series LOOKS as good as F1, has the production budget that F1 has.
Interesting that now Bernie Ecclestone’s vision for F1 on TV is made real. Being able to pick any car via it’s on board camera, watching the race on one screen, a chosen car (or two) on other screens, timing data on another. His idea was right all along, but couldn’t be done with the technology available at the time. Now we get all of this in 4KHD, streamed directly into our homes (if we subscribe to F1TV).
WRC appointed a single provider for the hybrid component of the power trains. In 2024 this provider (not an auto company) warned that the impact forces were too great for their system. Take more than a certain number of knocks in excess of whatever G (and all the cars did) and the system had to be rebuilt. So this was expensive, and also raised questions about well if it was hit that hard and must be rebuilt at the end of the event then is it safe during the event?
In fact there was an allowable, limited hybrid component before 2014. Lewis Hamilton was the first F1 driver to score a battery assisted win in 2009. This system was not mandated, and there was a gentlemen’s agreement between the teams to not run it due to cost and complexity. The initial system was restricted in it’s output but otherwise pretty open, so the main challenge was to make it as small and as light as possible - because of the restriction on output there was no gain in making batteries that could deliver a bigger bang.
Some interesting ideas were tried. Some teams tested super capactitors instead of lithium ion batteries. Williams had a very promising solution that involved a flywheel as an energy store. They ran into packaging issues with this, but they spun the technology off into a separate company which was later sold, with Williams getting a royalty per unit deployed in the real world. The system has been used in several series with more capacious body work that can more easily accomodate the fly wheel (including a Le Mans winning car), and has also been used in public transport (EG to help busses accelerate away from a stand still).