Two of the fossil fuels, coal, and natural gas, are used to generate continuous uninterruptible electricity, but crude oil, the third fossil fuel, is seldom ever used for electricity, but primarily used to manufacture oil derivatives that thousands of products are based upon, and the fuels for the various transportation infrastructures.
The primary usage of crude oil is NOT for the generation of electricity, but to manufacture transportation fuels needed by the world’s aviation, merchant ships, cruise ships, militaries, and vehicles, and to manufacture oil derivatives that make 6,000 products used in our daily lives, and the economy.
After crude oil was introduced around 1900, we created various modes of transportation, a medical industry, and electronics and communications systems. Oil reduced infant mortality, extended longevity from 40+ to more than 80+, and gave the public the ability to move anywhere in the world via planes, trains, ships, and vehicles, and virtually eliminated deaths from most diseases and from all forms of weather. The consequences of abandoning crude oil and all the progress after its introduction into society could be the greatest threat to civilization, not climate change.
While just 2 of the products manufactured from crude oil are gasoline and diesel fuels for the shorter-range vehicles of cars and trucks, EV technology is making progress to replace those two products from oil. EV owners have demonstrated that their usage of EV’s for approximately 5,000 miles per year represents a real opportunity to meet that short range need with EV’s.
Governor Newsom’s call on the global community to end reliance on crude oil, represents total blindness of the fact that crude oil is the feedstock to refineries for the manufacturing of products that have led to developed countries being healthy and wealthy.
The GND that Newsom and President Biden have bought into, seeks to replace ALL fossil fuels, including the innocent bystander of crude oil that is seldom used for electricity, but necessary for products and fuels. The “green” movement is all-in for breezes and sunshine to replace coal and natural gas for electricity, but the movement has absolutely no concept that the third fossil fuel of crude oil is the feedstock to refineries to manufacture products. Any grade school educated kid can understand that breezes and sunshine, can only generate weather-dependent intermittent electricity, but cannot manufacture anything.
While Newsom sanctimoniously soaks up the glory of taking “action that is unprecedented in both nature and scale” of reducing in-state oil production, he remains oblivious to the data from his own California Energy Commission chart that any grade school student can easily observe. While Newsom bloats about reducing in-state oil production, the growing crude oil demands of the state are being met by continually increasing imported crude oil from foreign sources to meet the needs of the state. The same countries with significantly less environmental controls, that ship their oil halfway around the world, via polluting tankers, to California ports.
The domino effects from tinkering with the supply chain of crude oil, is supply shortages and soaring prices for thousands of products that support the entire medical industry, all branches of the military, airports, electronics, communications, merchant ships, container ships, and cruise liners, as well as asphalt for roads, and fertilizers to help feed the world.
A complex trade-off associated with policy choices of moving too quickly into the GND is that abandoning crude oil will further deprive and/or delay the 6 billion in this world living on less than $10 a day, from the 6,000 products enjoyed by the wealthy and healthy countries that are all made from oil derivatives, most of which did not even exist in the developed countries before the 1900’s.
Before jumping too quickly into the proverbial snake pit of the “green” religious movement, that requires exotic mineral and metals from poorer developing countries, greenies should take time to answer: How we can maintain our lifestyles and economies without regressing backwards to what the world looked like before the 1900’s?
Those exotic mineral and metals needed for the green energy movement are discussed in the 2022 Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations – Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support Clean Energy. By picking wind, solar, and EV batteries as the green solution to electricity generation, the short 3-minute video from Planet of the Humans illustrates the “blood minerals” needed from developing countries with yellow, brown, and black colored skin residents.
While the wealthy and healthy countries enjoy the products manufactured from crude oil, poorer developing countries are experiencing about 11,000,000 child deaths every year of which more than 70 per cent are attributable to six causes: diarrhea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, preterm delivery, or lack of oxygen at birth. About 29,000 children under the age of five – 21 each minute – die every day, mainly from preventable causes.
Before Governor Newsom and President Biden inflict irreparable harm to the supply chain of crude oil to the 129 operating refineries in the U.S., they best learn quickly that efforts to cease the use of crude oil could be the greatest threat to civilization, not climate change.
[FIRST PUBLISHED AT: CFACT].
PHOTO: Cargo Ship. PHOTO BY: Pedro Szekely, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0).