Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: When it comes to energy matters, as in all matters that affect our health or fiscal wellbeing, we tend to be our own worst enemies. There are two components to the global warming surge:  greenhouse gases, which insulate the planet and prevent heat energy from radiating into space, and heat exhaust generated by human activity. The latter is often overlooked and forgotten by most people but is just as critical a factor in global warming. We wrote a blog a few years back highlighting the thermal inefficiency of internal combustion engines (ICEs) which on aggregate pump out a heck of a lot of waste thermal energy compared to their transport energy use (Throwing Away 3 of every 4 Gallons of Gasoline Bought). This is one area in which electric vehicles (EVs) crush ICEs:  EVs use a much greater proportion of their energy to move people and stuff and emit far, far less waste thermal energy. Point to EVs. But there is a myriad of other personal choices that people can make today, without switching to EVs, that will on aggregate reduce the rate of global warming.

For one thing, individually and collectively, we need to stop doing dumb things. On a recent tour of Calgary during a heat dome (heat wave) when local temperatures approached recorded maximums for an extended period, l observed several dumb activities. In Fig. 1, there can be seen several propane fueled fires burning as decorative night lights.

Any person with a modicum of chemistry knowledge can calculate how many joules of heat energy were pumped into the environment on that already overheated evening. On a single basis this probably doesn’t have a butterfly effect on the environment. But then in Fig. 2, we see a lovely dining spot in Calgary in which at lunch time, some diners are cooled by big fans, while decorative fires burn elsewhere.

Now I started to wonder why, during a heat wave, people, in this case restaurants and hotels, were burning decorative fires. What sense did it make to pump more heat into an already overheated world?

It gets worse. On this trip to Calgary, I toured a couple of new residential tenement buildings. In each building, there was a natural gas fireplace burning away quietly in the main lobby. I asked one building manager why she thought it necessary to burn a fireplace during a heat wave. She replied, “Some of our tenants feel chilled by the AC, so they like to sit by the fire.” Perhaps a better option would have been to turn down the AC a bit and stop pumping more heat into an already hot environment?

It’s not just a Calgary thing. Fig. 3, shows the “River of Fire” festival in Providence this weekend.

This bane of unnecessary waste heat extends beyond places trying to look fancy or in vogue. It extends into the realm of big trucks, the kind that adle-brained noodniks (Canadianism for rednecks) love to drive while “rolling coal” to impress other noodniks (EPA Finds Rolling Coal Is Making Pollution Worse in America).

It extends to one garbage truck per second hauling yesterday’s fast fashion to a landfill or incinerator. (These are the economic, social and environmental impacts of fast fashion).

And it especially extends to prince of privilege Prime Ministers who jet hither and dither from a fire in Jasper on the west side of the continent one day (Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with Jasper fire evacuees) to a sporting regatta in Newfoundland on the other side of the continent the next day. (Trudeau’s Regatta Day appearance). Vanity knows no bounds with some people it seems.

Greenhouse gas emissions are measurable and hence the fight to curb those. Human vanity is broad and immeasurable but just as damaging to our world, and we haven’t yet paid enough attention to fixing that.

Vive l’Alberta Libre!

In Memoriam, Mom.

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: As is usual every spring, many large entities ranging from super major oil producers to large Wall Street firms and global organizations release annual energy statistics, reports and forecasts about the world’s energy state. Invariably discussed are subjects like energy mix, demand or supply projections. Often these entities will venture into discussing oil prices and associated forecasts. All those entities have big research budgets and teams of analysts, statisticians and economists pouring over mountains of data. However, even with all those highly paid personnel, and I suspect some added AI, those big entities are at best equal to the analysis undertaken by OWOE staffers, but more often than not, much worse. Apparently, nobody can beat curiosity, whisky and voodoo.

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: OK, another inciteful blog but that’s the OWOE writing team’s style, gleefully stoking controversy.

The term “fossil fuels” is one of the greatest marketing triumphs that the environmentalists ever adopted. “Fossil” suggests old and outdated, coming from some pre-historic, ancient, way-back, long-ago-dead biologic entities. The uses for fossil fuels also reflect “old” technologies, cooking, training and steam shipping (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Using Fossil Fuels from Ancient (left) to Modern Times (right)

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: The U.S. Federal Government is a huge organization that is staffed by some very bright people. There are also nearly 1,000 advisory committees in Washington, comprising leaders from industry, science and the arts. For the most part, the advisory committees concern themselves with publicly available information and have public meetings, but there are a few which require security clearance and concern themselves with confidential matters of state. These advisory committees are a valuable resource upon which the Federal Government can call to review policies and assist with formulating strategies.

Guest blog by Manny Topiques Here are some interesting and somewhat offbeat energy stories that haven’t gotten much media attention over the past year.

Is coal the new future for clean energy? In an amazing new discovery just announced by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the Perseverance Rover discovered an outcropping of high quality space coal not far from the spacecraft’s 2021 landing site. Using its rotary percussive coring drill, the rover was able to penetrate approximate 6 meters below the planet’s surface to confirm that this outcropping was the surface exposure of a large deposit of anthracite space coal. Further exploration on future missions will be required to determine if this deposit is native to Mars or the remains of a meteor that impacted the surface in the distant past.

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: Change is inevitable unless you’re well established. There is a reason why empires are lost to history, governments are overthrown, businesses collapse, and academia becomes irrelevant. The established organizations or systems could not change fast enough to respond to imminent threats, emerging technologies or changes in consumer habits.  When faced with such challenges established systems, especially governments, harden themselves. In extreme cases you end up with kingdoms such as North Korea. But in most cases, you end up with economically declining and socially irrelevant states like Canada. It is a problem of ossification of thought, of edicts being churned out ever more frequently with worse effects. It applies to everything from healthcare and education to defense and energy policy.

T’was the night before separation when all through the Land
The Liberals were dancing, excessive tax revenues in hand.
While the stockings of residents, homeless or not
Were filled with inflation and expenses that came from dumb Liberal thought.

The homeless were nestled where they put their heads
While visions of affordable housing danced in their heads.
And Granny in Cape Breton, her home heated not,
Cursed feebly at Ottawa for the heat pump they brought.

OWOE has pointed out similarities between today’s Big Oil and last millennium’s Big Tobacco several times over the years. In September 2022 we published “Don’t Blame the Suppliers, Unless They Are Big Oil” where we shared articles documenting the efforts of the fossil fuel companies to engage in a public relations campaign to sow doubt in the science of climate change by following the playbook of the tobacco industry. And in August 2023 we published “Big Oil Stuns Again” where we addressed the greenwashing that the oil companies are currently engaged in and speculated that Big Oil’s lack of civic responsibility might become legal liabilities in the future, similar to what happened with the tobacco industry. Recent events have made it even more clear that, yes, Big Oil is following in the footsteps of Big Tobacco and is likely to meet a similar fate.

Bill Luyties, OWOE Technical Editor: There is no doubt that the world needs oil and will continue to need it for some time while the transition to renewable energy plays out. There is also little doubt that that burning of fossil fuels and associated carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere have contributed greatly to the current crisis that is global warming (see 97% of active climate scientists agree). Examples of the impact on the world’s climate are all around us – from the record-breaking temperatures around the world, to the forest fires in Canada, California, Spain, Greece, and Hawaii, to the melting glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic and rapidly rising sea levels. So, where does Big Oil fit into this ongoing transition? The last several years have seen Big Oil, which has been the source of much of the public misinformation about climate change, pushing the narrative that they will be part of the solution. How is that going?

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: There are a lot of peculiarities about Canada that foreigners do not understand and residents shamefully ignore. For one, Canada is one of the biggest money laundering countries in the world.  Ask any person on the street about the dangers of corruption and he or she will point to places overseas, oblivious to the extensive graft in Canada. Graft and corruption exist at every government level and in every region of Canada. But the governments choose to overlook these things. Coupled with outright incompetence, Canada does not look good for common folks striving to make a better life.