The article below originally appeared on July 17, 2014 around the time the teaser pitch from the Oxford Club folks started circulating. The ad is being seen by lots of our readers again now, and we’re getting a lot of questions about it, so we re-post it here for your information… the ad seems unchanged since we first saw it, and the following article has not been updated or edited.
Careful readers will note just how disingenuous it is for Oxford to continue their promotions using this same ad, because the plant that was supposed to start selling “gasoline without oil” in “months” is now likely at least two years from even starting construction — Sasol, the company that planned the massive investment and trumpeted the size and scope of it last year (and yes, Sasol is the stock teased in the ad, still), shelved the gas-to-liquids plant last year.
It may still get built someday, but with oil prices low it sure won’t be built soon and the company has postponed making a final decision on construction. And while the ad has been touting 50%+ gains in “weeks” and 165% gains in “months” from the climb they expect in the share price of Sasol (SSL), the truth is that the ad started running a little over a year ago, when SSL was near all-time highs close to $60, and the shares have been cut in half since.
That’s no surprise for an energy company, of course, and everyone makes bad picks and loses money when the market goes against their thesis (I sure do), but continuing to run essentially the same promotion for almost two years, with no acknowledgement of the fact that the planned plant now has no chance of being built and operational within the next few years, is taking it a bit too far. Perhaps that’s why we’ve had so many folks writing in to say, “no, they say the plant is just about to start selling gas so it can’t be Sasol” … but no, the facts and details in the ad haven’t changed and they’re still clearly about Sasol, it’s just that the real world has changed in the year since the ad started running… and the crazy hype of the ad now seems even more completely ridiculous once you compare it to that real world.
Maybe Sean Brodrick still likes Sasol, or he and the Oxford Resource Explorer folks think it’s a beaten-down opportunity for other reasons now, or maybe they’re just running the ad because it still works to get attention from readers like you and I … regardless, they’re still sending this ad, and we’re still getting questions, so here’s that original article from the Summer of 2014 (and yes, we included the several hundred reader comments from the past year at the end if you’d like to see them):
—from 7/17/14—-
Sean Brodrick is touting a company that can create much cheaper gasoline — and, of course, he’d like you to sign up for his Oxford Resource Explorer newsletter to learn all about it.
So he provides some hints and clues that serve to whet your appetite — enough to make it seem real, and to seem like you can almost touch those juicy profits. But oh, wait, first please send us your $49 (don’t worry, that’s “on sale” from $159, and is far less than the $7,995 he says his research is worth).
Which leaves us no choice. We don’t like to be manipulated into buying stuff, and we don’t like secrets — so what is the stock? We’ll sift through the clues and tell you what he’s really pitching. If you want to subscribe to his newsletter after that, well, that’s up to you — but don’t do so just to find out about a secret stock. That’s like getting married just because you want to find out about whether or not your beloved sleeps with his socks on.
On to the clues, then.
“Real gasoline created… Without Using Oil!
- Works in Any Vehicle
- 46% Cheaper (Profitable at $1.71 a Gallon)
- 40% Cleaner Than Today’s Gasoline.
“Early Investors Could Make 90.5%… 281.9%… And Even 1,063% in a Few Years…”
The precision really adds to the believability, right? If you say something’s going to double, well, that’s a throwaway line and we know you’re guessing. But if you say it’s going to go up 90.5%, well, you must be actually doing math! Maybe you’re right!
Or maybe not. That’s why he says “could” and “in a few years” — as always with a teaser pitch, there are plenty of “maybes” to protect against future complaints (and lawyers).
Here are some more clues to get us going.
“A little-known company is doing what should be, by all conventional logic, the impossible.
“It’s creating gasoline… without using oil.
“To everyone but company insiders, this may sound like science fiction.”
The first thing that came to mind, even before we piled up the clues to shovel them into the Mighty, Mighty Thinkolator, was algae oil — that’s probably because the Motley Fool has been repeating their teaser ads for algae oil company Solazyme (SZYM).
But no, Brodrick isn’t teasing Solazyme as a gasoline-maker (probably a good idea, SZYM is focusing first on higher value-added stuff, industrial and food chemicals, because algae oil is expensive to make — they did get their new plant opened in Brazil and the stock jumped up a bit this Spring, but it’s now back to around where it was when we covered that teaser first in December). His pitch is about using natural gas to make gasoline.
No, not using natural gas instead of gasoline — that would be the pitch advanced so often for perennial disappointer Westport Innovations (WPRT) and their natural gas fuel injector technology that helps vehicles (especially heavy trucks) run well on CNG or LNG. Natural gas as a feedstock, instead of crude oil, for making gasoline.
The economics are obviously good for that process if it can be at all efficient — at least for the US, where natural gas prices are so very low compared to oil, and that appears to be the crux of Brodrick’s argument. Here’s a bit more from the ad:
“This company will soon create enough gasoline on American soil to fuel more than 10.3 million cars a year… and ramp up from there.
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just click here...“Experts at a secretive U.S. House and Energy Committee meeting recently predicted this fundamental alteration of chemistry will have a ‘substantial impact on the U.S. economy.’
“Cambridge Energy Research Associates calls it, ‘the biggest innovation in energy,’ in terms of scale and impact.
“The Brookings Institution reports that this new process, ‘will account for 24% of all of the liquid gas supply in the United States by 2017.’ ….
“… the origins of this story begin with technology forgotten since World War II…
“These were secrets filed away for over 70 years… buried in dusty archives… only recently rediscovered….
“Today, it costs companies like Exxon Mobil an average of $77 to create a barrel of gasoline using oil.
“This little-known company creates ‘gasoline without oil’ for just $36 a barrel!”
OK, so that “Technology forgotten since WW II” bit probably caused a few of you to fire a few synapses in your brains… what was that company that used German technology to make gasoline? Hmmm….
The ad goes on to tease the huge profits that can be made in energy, particularly from big cost savings or new production techniques or similar breakthroughs — like the directional drilling, hydraulic fracturing and new cements that have created fortunes and built new name-brand companies like Halliburton and Baker Hughes (or, in the early days of gasoline, John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil).
And Brodrick is even careful to emphasize that although this technology is still a big breatkhrough, it’s not new and it’s not as risky or “out there” as ethanol, “algae gas” or “sun gas”. It is in use now and is, apparently, scaleable and profitable …
“Right now, this company is quietly producing 34,000 barrels per day in a small desert nation… far from the spotlights of Wall Street.”
So you hear “natural gas” and “small desert nation” and you probably think of Qatar. Good work!
Now let’s throw on the Fischer-Tropf process that was used in Germany to create diesel fuel from coal, and we’re getting tantalizingly close to revealing this “secret” stock.
More clues…
“Soon, it will distribute this ultra-cheap gasoline all across America…
“As I write this, trucks are clearing land for a plant to come on line just months from now.
“People driving by can’t imagine the scale of what’s going to go on here.
“Covering 650 acres… it will rise out of a Gulf Coast bayou… With direct access to the massive natural gas fields pumping out record amounts of natural gas across Texas and the rest of the U.S.”
And Brodrick says he expects natural gas prices to fall again with rising production, and crude oil prices to rise, which would just make the spread even better for this secret company. So who is it?
OK, we’ll take you out of your misery — Brodrick is teasing the South African giant Sasol (SSL).
Which is indeed one of the global experts on using the Fischer-Tropf process and other innovations to refine solid (coal) or gaseous (natural gas) energy sources into liquids. That’s not because they took off as global innovators who pursued this fantastic new technology, it’s because they used to be the state-controlled oil company in South Africa, and no one wanted to sell them crude oil under apartheid… so they had to come up with a way to use their abundant coal as an industrial and transportation fuel.
And the story is certainly a very compelling one, at least in the big picture: The US has abundant and inexpensive natural gas and a fantastic gas distribution system, Sasol is building a huge liquefaction plant in Louisiana to refine and catalyze the gas into gasoline and other valuable chemicals, and gasoline and those chemicals are priced on the international markets so are much more valuable than the mostly-landlocked natural gas, which should create great profits.
Brodrick quotes a “Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist” as well, in calling it “one of the most improbable and important American business stories of the past decade.”
That article is here, from the Wall Street Journal a couple months ago — just in case you’d like some confirmation or more background on the size of their operations.
I’ve invested in Sasol in the past, back during the last oil runup in 2006-2008 or so, and haven’t looked closely at them very much since — but they are building that $20+ billion plant in Louisiana and they have built a similar plant in Qatar and have plans to expand globally. It is a more complicated firm than just these gas-to-liquids plants, though that’s part of their growth strategy — they still have huge operations at home in South Africa, and it’s a big company with a market cap approaching $40 billion.
The stock is not particularly expensive, it trades at less than 11X expected 2015 earnings and pays a small dividend, and their balance sheet appears pristine — not sure where they’re getting the $20 billion to build these new plants, since they don’t currently have any net debt, but they do have the flexibility to add some debt to the balance sheet and they may have partners or government incentive smoothing the way as well.
Sasol has said in the past that they need oil to be about 16X more expensive than natural gas for these plants to work (that’s presumably using the price/barrel for crude, and the NYMEX/henry hub price for natural gas per mcf, the two standard measures) — right now oil is a bit over $100 and natural gas is back down to $4 so that’s a ratio of about 25, well within their zone of profitability.
Brodrick is pretty far outside the mainstream in his prediction of “90% growth in the coming weeks… 281% in the next few months… and 1,063% in the next couple of years” for this company — analysts are predicting that earnings will be pretty flat, about $5.46 for the just-ended fiscal year and $5.33 for the current year, and that the earnings will rise by less than 2% a year for the next five years.
I don’t know who will be correct about that future growth (and it’s only two analysts providing those average estimates), but these are extremely long-term capital building projects, they are complicated, and Sasol does have a substantial amount of exposure to foreign currencies along the way. They have boosted revenues substantially over the past decade, but it definitely hasn’t been a straight line.
So … that’s about all I can tell you in half an hour of catching up on Sasol — yes, they can make gasoline cheaper with natural gas than you can with crude oil, but that’s after this $37 billion company builds a $21 billion complex (and keeps building similar-sized operations in other areas and countries), and assuming that pricing dynamics remain friendly for the gas-to-liquids operations… it looks to me like it’s still a well-run company but not one that’s likely to see windfall profits overnight, and that it’s worth considering the risks of building these huge projects like their US plant in Louisiana and bringing them into profitable, steady operation.
That’s just me and a few minutes of though and reading, though — it’s your money, so if you were to buy Sasol you’d want to understand it quite a bit better than that. So go forth, researchify for yourself, and come back and let us know: Is Sasol right for your portfolio? Do you think it’s going to return profits of 90% in “the coming weeks?” Just use the friendly little comment box below to share your thoughts.
This appears to be the type of investment for the young that have a long term objective. The most worrisome factor is that world conditions could have major effects on the whole area of power generation, use and price.
Make haste…… Slowly.
The article overlooked the most important mis statement in the promo. The claim was “This product could be used to replace gasoline in any vehicle without any type of modification”.
It costs about $7000 to convert a car to natural gas. The only natural gas vehicle I know of sold in the USA is a Honda Civic which sells for $7000 more than a gasoline powered Civic. They had so many problems with the natural gas powered Civic that they may have stopped making it.
Another minor detail. Natural gas is not readily available in the USA so good luck if you’re planning an out of the area trip.
There is some good news, however. You can have a natural gas system installed in your home that can fuel your natural gas powered vehicle and save about 20% on the cost of the fuel. It only costs about $4500 for the installation.
“This Product” refers to the synthetic gasoline made from natural gas by Sasol — not natural gas itself.
Thanks for saving me a lot of time (these promo’s are incessant!). Worth considering and doing one’s own due dilligence.
RConversion to another type of power generation in our cars simply isn’t likely to happen. Gasoline is here to stay. It’s why fuel cell tech wont in its present form be commercially viable. Converting NG to gasoline is he most logical next step. And if Volkswagen continues to make a better engine, I’ll just buy a Volkswagen. Forget the planet just make life here better!t
You missed EVERYTHING that this article was about!! EVERYTHING!!
It’s not about using natural gas DA!! It about converting natural gas
into gasoline!
So for about $11,500 you can take advantage of natural gas for your car.
And maybe a map to all natural gas stations.
what a bunch of stupid investors…you guys making your idiot comments missed the entire point. This is NOT the old Fischer-Tropf process. It is not LPG or LNG. Pay attention. This is NEW technology to CREATE a facsmile gasoline without oil using a proprietary process by catalyzing syngas made from natural gas for less than 50% the cost of producing conventional gasolines. But that’s ok. Your ignorance will serve to provide opportunity to the rest of the investor pool that actually perform due diligence BEFORE spouting ignorant comments that are far from the truth of the matter. Move along now, it’s ok, these are not the droids you are looking for.
They are either that stupid or they are trolls for those that have the most to lose.
Siluria Technologies also claims to have an efficient method to produce ethylene and
to convert the ethylene to gasoline or other fuels. They seem to have adequate funding.
Siluria Technologies also claims to have an efficient process to convert natural gas
to ethylene and the ethylene to gasoline and other fueis.
Siluria has some big names behind it but is still pre-IPO. You cannot buy it.
There is a privately held company, in part funded by Texas A&M that claims to have a process that is significantly more effective. They have a demo site in production in Robertson County Texas. Co name is Synfuels International. Don’t appear to be publicly traded.
Their website has some ‘interesting’ content, such as “The Definitive Guide to Monetizing North Slope Natural Gas as a Strategic Energy Resource”: http://www.synfuels.com/BinderWhitepaperforCongress.pdf
About 7 years ago ExxonMobil abandoned plans for a similar plan in Qatar where gas was available for pennies.
Do you know anything about Sun Gas also an alternative to oil. Sounds interesting
I see this as a short to medium term shot at best. Long term – 20 years or more, I expect to see most carbon based fuels replaced by nuclear power plants making tons of electricity with much of that replacing coal and gas fired electric plants and a lot going to generate hydrogen from water to fuel the vehicles that currently guzzle gasoline or diesel (or jet fuel). Maybe wishful thinking but once the right wing stops denying climate change (and science in general) it maybe might happen. But I won’t hold my breath and won’t invest in SSL either.
I don’t know anybody who denies that the climate changes. In the 1970’s Time Magazine ran 3 cover stories about the certainty that we were entering a new ice age – at that time you would undoubtedly condemn those that said we actually were going to enter a period of warming. The climate models showing that “horrific” warming have essentially all been wrong (especially over the last 17 years) – The arrogance that “scientist” (especially those who get huge grants to study climate change & will continue to get them so long as the fear mongers tell us of the horrors of human caused climate change) can actually predict the long range weather is amazing. But wait, you have studied this and of course you are 100% right and the right is 100% wrong.
Not 100 % wrong — close to it, though.
The fact that Time Magazine ran 3 cover stories doesn’t provide evidence of anything.
When 97% of climate scientists say man-made climate change is happening, I choose
not to bury my head in the sand. Understand that there is a difference between climate
and weather.
You do realize that the 97% figure has been debunked, don’t you?
Boomstick, would you cite your information?
Thank you for saving me the trouble of pointing htat out.
Climate scientists are not real scientists. They are nothing but statisticians! They are taking the statistics from past years and fitting it to whatever formula their bosses are paying them to prove. If you don’t get required results you lose your grants. Most professors in universties are grant whores. Plain and simple. There is not one legitimate physicist that believes in man-induced climate change. Except for the chem-trails. Those need to be stopped completely.
Al sounds like a Tea Party Charter Member and seems as poorly informed as most of them. As a former professor, I think he doesn’t know crap about what most professors do–but many of the basic ideas that underlie entire industries come from them. Yes, there are some who are worthless as in any other profession. And his circle of physicists is obviously quite small–and I would bet that any Al does know also reject evolution. (As for me :Educated at M.I.T-electronic eng., Univ of Chicago-Physics & Math; Purdue (MBA–Quantitative focus). But to the main point: greatly appreciate the dissection of the Broderick promotion on “cheap gasoline” and a lot of profits. Anyway, it seems to be good marketing, I suppose. And not much different from many of the other investment advisory services. Things have gone down hill since I first bought life memberships from Agora, one then called Taipan, and Stansberry about 12-14 years ago. Maybe we need something in the investment world that is being used in the political to check “things” for distortions, outright lies, how performance is measured, etc. I was surprised that this was done under the umbrella of Oxford. But in the past decade or two “investment advisory services ” have become an industry!–that probably needs a bit of surveillance by the SEC.
well 100% of scientists said ours was the only galaxy and ran Edwin Hubble out of town for proposing otherwise. so much for 97% of scientists who really have no idea if there is or isn’t man made climate change. no one can prove it one way or the other. PERIOD. that said, if my kid pees in the pool, I can live with that BUT if all the neighborhood kids come over and all pee in the pool, I’d have a problem. so we need to stop peeing in the atmosphere, and on the ground, or in the ocean … etc etc. simple as that.
Hurray for you Frederick!
…now I gotta pee!
I learned about global warming in class at college in the 70s. The scientific community then, as now, said we were facing global warming, not cooling. Time magazine, while better than Fox News, should not be used as your source for science. The real money is on the side of oil and gas producers to try and confuse the public — apparently they have done a decent job on you — virtually everything you have written is wrong. The climate models that showed a warming have been correct, and the polar ice caps are melting at a much faster rate than predicted. Scientists don’t predict weather in the future, they predict long-term warming. And yes, you are pretty much 100% wrong.
Sorry Dude, but the polar ice caps are in fact GROWING, not shrinking, and the average temps have been falling for years. The numbers coming out of the “models” are invalid because the numbers going into the models have been fudged, and that has been shown definitively by comparing annual data recorded to NOAA’s adjusted data. The Earth goes through cycles of heating and cooling and the climate is in a constant state of change, and it’s pretty arrogant to think that we can actually impact it, especially with ridiculous stories about the “hole in the ozone” and “the greenhouse gas effect. When Mount Penatubo blew back in the 1980’s, it released more cloro-fluorocarbons into the air than mankind had produced in it’s entire history. Fortunately for us, the “science” everyone is touting totally ignores the fact that every time lightning strikes, ozone is reconfigured into diatomic oxygen; the “hole in the ozone” created over Mt. Penatubo was completely closed in two months. NASA’s own satellite data debunks man-made global warming and the entire agenda of the “climate change crowd,” and maybe you missed all the Wikileaks-sourced emails disclosing how the whole thing was dreamed up and the numbers fudged. It’s a scam dreamed up by some people who wanted to start a carbon credit exchange, which would put billions per year in their pockets, and they’ve managed to dupe a whole lot of people who get emotionally-attached to “the sky is falling” scenarios and want government to step in as a surrogate parent and save them from it. So before you bring your politics to a place where people are trying to discuss how to invest and make money, you might want to A) focus on how to make money and B) check your facts before you sanctimoniously call someone who is better informed than you an idiot.
mmmmmmm We better have Gumshoe put a line item in his budget to send you up to the North Pole so you can research “directly” on how the Polar Ice Caps are growing. While you are there, please ask the Polar Bears how Life is treating them, as their environment is fading away — Before you go up, be sure to stop off in the Rockies in Montana and talk with the wildlife there about how your theories apply to living things in their region. Several species have been devastated. A Hint: spend less time on your soapbox preaching, and more time actually working in the field. Your mind may be expanded.
90% of the worlds glaciers are in retreat – melting. That does not happen in a world that is getting colder or in a world that is staying the same. That happens in a world that is warmer then it was in the past. This is supported by a century of independent scientific measurements, decades of NASA photographs from space, etc. You can debate the cause all you want but the fact is that the world is warmer then it was in the past or the glaciers would not be melting.
Jackson you correct, and climate change when it happens has been ongoing for millions of years. It is more likely due to solar cycles, and other external factors. In addition, I saw where the data was fudged. Lots of well researched stories written about that. Last I too remember the coming of the next ice age stories.
Man made global warming that will cause a dire catastrophe is a scam.
1. It’s Mount Pinatubo, not “Penatubo”.
2. Pinatubo blew in 1991, not “the 1980s”.
3. CFCs are manmade. They do not occur in nature. http://cfc.geologist-1011.net/
As good as it gets when it comes to a real world explanation ! Brilliant… Required
reading for all the youngsters who have any interest in the TRUTH !
Two recent books conclude we are likely headed into cooler to colder times.
One written by a ChemE R&D Engineer, see: http://theinconvenientskeptic.com
One written by a geologist: http://climatewholestory.com/
Well, yes, and the sunspot cycle is predicting global cooling so we had better start taxing carbon fuels because obviously CO2 is now even having a disastrous effect on the sunspot cycle!
The oil companies want to sell oil and make profits and my well say and promote whatever they have to to achieve that end. The pro Anthropogenic global warming crowd does the same thing as evidenced by the fudged numbers etc. That leaves us peons who like to argue an issue like this in a quandary and that is who to believe. The cure to the problem of Anthropogenic warming is obvious. World wide use of crude oil in 1985 was about 50 million barrels a day and that was enough to generate cries from the left of doom. Today the world uses about 90 million barrels a day and we all know what needs to be done ( I’m talking to you believers now) Cut back on your usage or I wont believe you are serious. I don’t see anyone of you adopting a lifestyle of no use of fossil fuels like the Amish do, and that’s what it would take to convince me you’re serious, no cars no electricity etc. As a matter of fact most of you wont even commit to not driving any more than you have to or even keeping your speed down to 55 MPH to conserve fuel but you think that a carbon tax is going to solve your problem? Give it a rest man
Well said,,,,Who can tell me what the optimum global temperature should be?
The question is what to do about climate change and who is responsible. Human contribution to the proposed causes is equivalent to the ratio of the thickness of a dime to a football field – the 100 yard one. There was also much more warming in the first half of the twentieth century than the second, so go figure.
The global warming Jihadist’s claimed the artic circle would be thawed to the point that ships would be able to pass through it for the first time in history during the summer of 2013. Rich people traveled north in their yachts to be among the first to sail through. However, the polar ice cap actually froze 60% larger that summer, trapping 20 yachts in the ice. They had to be rescued, and their yachts are still there. Global warming is a great scare tactic used by alternative energy people to scare the masses into funding their research and development at tax payer expense. I am all for alternative energy to be developed, but not because some people lie about global warming. I grew up in Kansas. The climate in my home area has changed since the sixties. Warmer winters with less snow, cooler summers with more rain and higher humidity. That’s due to more farm irrigation, more farm ponds, more lakes, and more trees. Last summer was a very cool summer, just as it has been this summer in Oklahoma where I moved a few months ago. I’m inclined to believe its due to the cooler air coming down from the artic.
Just common sense. An education is great in the hands of the honest, but in the hands of the dishonest, well the book of Romans says “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools! ” There are a lot of educated fools in this world, and I’d just bet many of your top global warmest are working for those who seek to destroy the foundations of truth that this country was built on. After all, none of them are highly vocal in China where the greatest polluting is going on. And I’ve been behind the Iron curtain to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. Its a polluted pig sty also. So why aren’t they protesting there. Oh, because its easy and profitable to attack Americans, and China and Russia will financially support the Liberals in who attack this nation. Don’t like what I have to say, I’ll see you on the day of Judgment. There won’t be any lying on that day.
God has nothing to do with it , whatever God you believe in, there is no God
Rod, unless you want to discuss a relevant investment — like maybe a publicly-traded atheist bookstore with growing profits (unlikely but possible) — personal religious or anti-religious postings really have no place in an investment forum.
Whoa, Nellie!
It was Stan who dragged inappropriate religious inclinations into this forum with his talk of “…to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.” and “…see you on the day of Judgment.”
Please don’t blame any of the rest of us for a retort to this gratuitous provocation.
Thank you.
Ah Stan, did it happen to occur to you that you cited two countries where there is no free speech in order to complain about Anything that was really going on??
It’s takes more faith to be an atheist than otherwise. The Hubble space scope tracks galaxy motion and track it back to a point. There’s nothing behind that point, alluding that something (God?) started the universes at that point. Maybe they just started from nothing…..right.
Jim, to an atheist ,faith is a dirty word. We don’t know yet how the universe started, but if you claim God started it you have not explained anything because now you must explain how an intelligent creature came into being.
AMEN! THOSE DAMNED IDIOTS FROM THE “ACLU” WILL BE ON YOU NEXT!
For Steven Ritter:
You must have slept through class or maybe you’re just a liar or full of crap.
Time magazine wasn’t anyone’s source for science in the article/issues reference above.
You would have to be completely ignorant and closed minded to think so, much less write
such a statement.
Time magazine wrote many articles in many issues in the ’70’s, at least 1 entire issue “reporting” the science of the day from so called “climate scientists”. Time wasn’t the source of the science and if you were even a fraction of being as informed as you would like one to believe you would have known this fact. The science that was “reported” was the consensus opinion of the climate cooling and global cooling fanatics of the day. The solution was just as ignorant an idea as the ideas for the nonexistent global warming, code named climate change, contemporarily reported. The plan was to cover the poles of the planet with something black to absorb and retain more of the heat of the sun.
There’s an idea, maybe the sun has something to do with the temperature of the earth.
Rather, than continue to expose yourself as a complete ignorant ass go find an issue of that era of Time magazine and read it and the sources cited, etc. For example:
April 8, 1977 – Cover title – How to survive the coming Ice Age”.
Sub title – 52 things you “any dumb-assed liberal that believes this crap” – can do to make a difference. Note: “any dumb-assed liberal that believes this crap” added for effect by me.
Gore’s chart filled with repeating spikes, during his talks on climate change/global warming, were remarkably informative—-yet, he never fully explained them—–his, and other explanations, all leaned towards first ‘selling’ people on global warming–which there definitely is….and by any means, including fear-mongering.
….but he FAILED to emphasize adequately, that the corresponding FREEZE cycles occur along side/overlapping the warming cycles, and have for over 650,000 years of ice-core records….until the one we’re in now, which is more than double the size of all previous measured cycles.
What I got from that chart, more than the speeches, was that:
===1] Mechanization based on burnable fuels and pillaging planetary resources for the last 130 yrs. or so, has made a profound impact on otherwise “normal” cycles;
===2] We should be investing in serious cold-weather gear, loads of insulation in all our buildings, and better, more disaster-proof infrastructure…..because the serious warming cycle we see melting ice world-wide—is about to become a corresponding ice age redux.
No fear-mongering—just prudently aware.
Thank you for your posts, Chimonger.
Solar cycles are an adequate explanation of ice ages,,Exactly how would increased CO2
cause an ice age? You do know that at one time all the carbon contained in fossil fuels was in the atmosphere as CO2 and plants and animals grew profusely. I think we can agree that Al Gore did things for political reasons,,such as adding ethanol to gasoline which actually causes more CO2 to be added to the atmosphere than the gasoline alone would.
The #1 cause of global warming is… the Sun.
The #1 cause of global warming hysteria is bought and paid for by people who profit from it, either in power or with programs and grants.
The #1 believers in man made global warming or the poor dumb and ignorant people who need some cause to make them feel alive and fill the void in their souls.
We grow up wanting to believe scientists, journalist and teachers are honest and of solid character. That these people are beyond reproach with high degrees of personal integrity. It turns out that they are in the same character class as your average POS politician.
So if you want to believe groups of people who have shown themselves to be whores. Who gravitate toward power, self aggrandizement, ego gratification and money at the expense of integrity and honesty then by all means take up the banner and proclaim to the world that man made global warming is real and then please stop adding to it..
Yes! Environmentalists are out to destroy the planet!
Well said! Thanks
Harold:
Your comments are well taken. There have only been about 300 North West Canadian Arctic passages since 1906 or so and only 20 in the last 10 years which indicates to me that the ice is not gone as the commentators would like you to believe and all the polar bears have died for lack of seals. The locals in Tuk tells the last 30 years have been warmer than the previous 30 but that is because of a gradual warming that occurs ever 300 years or so and they say it is good thing otherwise they would be sitting under an ice sheet 800 ft. thick.
Gov’t research money distorts true science. True science tells us the volcano eruptions put more CO2 in our atmosphere than coal fired power stations but the left has the media, and the media elects our politicians and you know the rest.
Only question I like to ask both partie,s pro or con, is: Why are there marine fossils found in Montana? At one point, it seems that portion of the US was submerged beneath a sea. Now, it isn’t. Further, please also look into the varve cycle. It shows clear paterns of warming and cooling in lake bed slits and clays without human intervention.
Man may lie but the geologic column doesn’t.
The Sahara used to be a plush area. There are marine fossils all over it. We used to have ice caps here. Of course we have “climate change”. Always have and always will. The warming enthusiasts all rely on one thing…modeling. Out of curiosity I looked at it and found inputted ECS numbers 70% higher than average of studies (gives warmer readings) and numerous other bad or omitted data.
Gore predicted Artic ice would be gone by 2015…still here. And measured to be getting thicker. He is worth more than Romney now selling his warming agenda. All the scientists promoting this are the ones getting big money for grants for GW. As always follow the money. If their grant money goes away I bet they move on to other things.
There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
1809 – 1892
The USA’s contribution to global warming is the preverbial “drop of sand” in the bucket in a worldly comparison. Yes, we have emissions, no doubt about it. Although if we reverted to the short lived (Ross Perot pie chart mentality) and composed an emission spewing chart by industrialized countries….you would see that China, India & Russian bloc countries outweigh us grossly. And, they have ZERO intent to invest in reducing emissions. So, until the “Major’s” start to reduce their contributions to the Worlds End {sic} whats the point? Why should the USA try to carry the brunt of the worlds salvation? Are we not just assuming the role of SISYPHUS in this futile attempt to single-handily save the world.
Well said.
IMHO, based on information gleaned elsewhere, China in particular, has staggered under the effluent caused by industrialization. They have had to deal with massive health issues from that effluent, and damages to other things. They have done their best, as fast as they can to jump on the Solar bandwagon, and to that effort, they have been churning out solar panels as fast as they can manage. They were trying to firsts sell them to clients in USA, where the market for them has been steadily climbing. BUT…they have periodically discontinued overseas selling, in order to catch up on their own installations, to lower their ecological footprint.
So is India.
I don’t know about Russia.
Developing nations were desperate to narrow the development gap between developed and under-developed countries—so they used the most common fuels available. THEY also see the end of the Petrol market looming, and the filth and damage done by Petro fuels / other dirty burnable fuels AND, they see the epic challenges to feeding 9 Billion people work-wide.
These kinds of problems are enough to make ANY economist or leader blanch and have untenable nightmares. Moving towards Solar and other renewable fuels as fast as they [and we] can, is prudent.
But huge ships of State do not turn on a dime. Neither do long-standing profiteering industries give up their proven market shares for anything they cannot see as comparably profitable and controllable.
The process takes time [barring some incredible developments that could move it faster].
There’ll be more damages before things get cleaned up, out of ignorance, and other factors.
There will be plenty of ills, deaths and losses before things get cleaned up and re-organized.
Change happens–what it will look like, depends on everyone inputting what they want it to look like, to their fearless leaders….otherwise, those fearless leaders will keep kowtowing to Industries’ wishes to keep doing business-as-usual—making necessary beneficial changes take far longer.
As I recall, at the time of the Kyoto Accord the talk was that Western nations had already gone through their period of industrialization, and now the Third World should have their chance to catch up, and therefore shouldn’t have to constrain themselves with obligations to reduce their CO2 and other such emissions.
It is truly amazing how technologically clueless the greater part of the American public is …….. time for you to repair to the science library … Global warming? ……… Indeed ……
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was found in the past fudging scientific data in order to prove their points regarding climate change. A large number of scientists all over the world now demonstrated that indeed the climate changes (as it always did in the history of our planet) but the main factor in that activity is the Sun, specifically Sun spots and solar wind. Man made contribution, they believe, is relatively small compared to the Sun’s activity.
The 2009 Mann et al. study found warmth exceeding 1961–1990 levels in Southern Greenland and parts of North America during the Medieval climate anomaly (defined for this purpose as 950 to 1250) with warmth in some regions exceeding temperatures of the 1990–2010 period. (Wikipedia). There were no large scale fossil fuel consumption and cars in that time period.
SteveF Absolutely correct,,In fact ancient unknown villages just emerging from the ice render evidence that they were successfully growing wheat,,,something that is still not possible till it warms up a little more. Good work.
If ignorance is bliss, you must be one happy camper!
As you must be speaking from experience I will accept your comment..
I am far from feeling bliss.
Bill Vogt… What??? He cites FACTS and you call him ignorant??? You are a prime example of Mark Twain’s quote…”It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled.”
1
After the debacle in Japan with the nuclear power plant that was severely compromised by the sunami a few years back; you can forget about nuclear power here in this country. Those very same environmentalist “nut jobs” that promote climate change theory (the climate is always changing), are just a rabidly anti-nuclear power as they are anti-everything else. Oh and before you label me as some odd ball conservative “nut job”; understand that I have little or no use for “scientists” who admit that it is okay to lie about their data while at the same time suppressing data that proves that the global environment is not warming. When you color your science to further a political agenda; you credibility suffers with me.
“I expect to see most carbon based fuels replaced by nuclear power ”
What a horrifying thought.
Sean Brodrick is probably not a Chemical Engineer. Most of you that post on this website have no expertise to conceive, design and evaluate the economic feasibility of a proposed organic process. I call this the Obama Syndrome. Just cause you or Sean Brodrick say it is, doesn’t make it possible.
How about the switchgrass to ethanol requirement as part of a Congressional wet dream. Did that become feasible? Are the oil companies still paying penalties for not complying with EPA or Energy Department requirements for production capability?
There are too many people making statements without the credentials to understand, evaluate and backup these intellectual masturbations. Organic (carbon) processes require MEGA $$$$ and the infrastructure to bring them on–stream.
Yes, that’s why the plant is expected to cost $21 billion. With a B. And, given the nature of such projects, will probably end up costing quite a bit more.
BRAVO !!
I’d like to know what the mysterious catalyst is and who, if anyone, has a lock on it. After all, it’s the catalyst that makes possible the extraordinary yields of gasoline from natural gas.
Great work Gumshoe!
Simon the catalyst is iron/cobalt mesh screen. Nearly century old technology and well known. Sorry no secret to make $$$$ there.
Making gas from coal with 45% gross margins.
I suggest you look at SCOK. Facility is being built and will be compleated by 4th qtr.
CO loaned the company money to build the plane..
China going green.
What do you think, Oh Mighty Guru of Gumshoedom. Will you ever get around to reviewing “The Secret Pact: to Save America”? I get an email once a day from the OxfordClub on it. Please save us from the suspense. I want to be saved!
When I was a small boy my father ran a small oil lease in Pennsylvania. He had a compressor to pump natural gas into the ground to drive out the oil. When the oil was recovered, the excess gas was vented to the atmosphere (long before we dreamed of an EPA). This process created liquified natural gas which many people in the area used in their cars. Other than a lot of engine knocking, it seemed to work okay. And it was “free”.
John Harris has got to be kidding. Global warming is not science,,,it is a religion. Go to Climate Depot web site and see real science. If it is settled it is not science, global warmers are the anti science people not “right wingers”. Wake up and support a real economy not some dumb utopian dream.
Tim – I checked out Climate Depot. Spent about 10 minutes clicking on some the links. All I saw was pages of opinions — Did not see any FACTS that contradict the science of global warming.
Did you go to the charts showing the predictions of global warming by the “scientist” and the actually temperature change for the last 18 years? I constantly hear that 97% of scientist agree on man made global warming – and I am sure you believe that, though there are plenty of sources to show that is not true (the response of course is that anybody who doesn’t believe in human caused warming is not a scientist and therefore doesn’t count). So let me ask – if humans disappeared from the Earth, does that mean the climate would be static – all warming would stop – and if it would not stop, why would it increase? Most weather people have trouble predicting the weather for the next few days, yet everyone is convinced that they can accurately predict it for the next 100 years – they were wrong in the1970’s when the fear was of the predicted coming ice age – and while the earth may warm more, possibly they are wrong again today.
Let me ask you this Harold, do you think we can do anything we want to this planet with out any consequences? I do not need a science degree to know that we are killing this planet, only common since. Polution and over population will be the death of us all. If we do’nt blow each other up first.
science? hahahahahahahaha evidence? .o4 + increase in Temps.
Better buy a truckload of sunscreen.
HiPockets what is you CV? Mine 45 yrs. as a professional chemical engineer in energy.
The community of real scientists ( not faux scientists ) that I belong to conducted our Ninth Annual Global Climate Conference in Las Vegas. The top researchers were there at videos of the conference are listed at http://www.heartland.org. Continuing dialogue occurs at wattsupwiththat.com, CA.org, CO2.org.
My favorite is fauxscienceslayer.com. Having been involved in the science since Kyoto 1992, I can say without reservation you have drunk the Kool-Aid.
Could be . . . . . . . :>)
Check out NOAA.gov (the National Climatic Data Center) if you would like some hard facts on Global warming from science organizations around. For example this link:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2013.php,
It details the “State of the Climate in 2013 ” report from the the July 2014 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS Vol. 95, No. 7). As the assessment now known as the BAMS State of the Climate report pushes into its third decade, international participation is at an all-time high. From atmospheric chemists to tropical meteorologists, more than 420 authors from institutions in 57 countries contributed to this year’s report.
In 2012—for the 23rd consecutive year—mountain glaciers worldwide lost more mass through melting than they gained through new snow accumulation. The net mass loss was equivalent to just over 2 feet of water. Observations for 2013 for all 30 historically monitored “reference glaciers” are still being analyzed, but based on data from Austria, Canada, Nepal, New Zealand, Norway, and the United States, it’s highly likely that 2013 will become the 24th year with an average negative glacier mass balance.
And yes there is much more information than that in support of global warming. But hey why read scientific facts and analysis and make an informed decision when you can make sweeping statements about global warming without proof of source or specific evidence and not have to Read and Think before talking!
Well said, Mark!
For me, I have to wonder why I am being made to feel GUILTY about using energy that nature has stored from using life to produce from carbon dioxide, energy(sunlight) and water, organic material. Using the arguments so far introduced, then I could argue that LIFE gone amok used up the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, allowing sunlight to escape back into space and caused global cooling, ice ages etc. And how/ do we separate Humans from Nature. Are we not part of Nature? Is not what we do part of the natural order of things??
It’s the GUILT
Let’s be realistic. Climate models are not worth the powder to blow them to hell.
I was in the aerospace business for a very long time. Early in my career, I thought
modelling was science, until I got dirt under my nails “building” models. It did not
take me long to realize that I could make a model have any result I wanted, as long
as I made the right assumptions and included only the parameters necessary to
create the results desired. In fact, later in my career, when someone would suggest
that we “model” some process, I would ask, “What do you want the result to be?” The
reason for my question should be obvious. Proof of the pudding is that there are many
climate models, and, most of them don’t agree.
I’ll accept empirical climate data. And, some of that would suggest that global warming is indeed occurring. Is that primarily caused by human activity? Hummm??? Show me the science here. And, don’t give me the Al Gore arm waving. I can’t handle that. What he knows about climate science, I forgot in the fourth grade.
Gi-Go as we used to say.
Al Gore started on his global warming band wagon after he lost the presidential race. Sore loser. Who needs a president that would sell his nation out because he didn’t get elected?!!!!! It was the Chinese Red Army who funded Bill Clinton and Al Gore to get elected in the first place. They paid them off by building their economy with American support and technology. Now Al Gore pays them still by trying to destroy the American economy. A Liberal will sell his soul to feed his belly!
Yeah Stan, that post REALLY sounds like a reasonable person….. yeah, the Red Army funded them. And, they’ve been out to destroy the world ever since! They couldn’t possibly have just been passionate about what they Believed in, right?? Maybe aliens took over their brains, too. (Or, just yours from the sound of it!)
Gore isn’t stupid he is worth more than Romney now selling his GW to the masses.
I don’t know if we are the main contributors to global warming but it does look like we have global warming. We probably are the main contributor to the dramatic increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that certainly has helped trap a great deal more heat in our atmosphere. So I think we should be aware that there is a possibility that runaway heat build up could make our planet uninhabitable in the future. To me the stakes are too high not to consider reducing our use of fossil fuels.
I agee with your thinking, Yvonne. Thanks for your post.
Yvonne, please consider that those who espouse “runaway heat buildup” otherwise known as the tipping point theory are the same ones that are Hungry to get you and/or wealthy (altruistic guilty feeling people)to donate mostly large sums of money to their research projects, from which they draw large salaries and/or bonuses (for raising mo’ money). “Chicken Little” fears have always been a good sell to make lots of money. Please don’t fall for their BS.
To follow up on my previous post, The most likely cause of climate change is a shift in the axis of rotation of the earth. This is co incident with a change in the earths magnetic field as shown in the geologic record and was most likely caused by a passing massive star or black hole near(in astromical units AU’s) our solar system. In geologic time is was quick, in human time it was very slow. There was no tipping point in human time. Another fact you should research is that the Oceans (5/6’s of the earths surface) are a hugh sink/buffer for carbon dioxide, and Ocean life converts CO2 into organic material and it settles to the Ocean floor. Less of an argument is that increased CO2 should cause the plant life to accelerate growth. Are you being over run with plant life???
Hope this helps. And, oh yeah, we tell our children the story of “Chicken Little” so they will learn not to listen to con men and Pump&Dumpers and lose their money. Happy Thanksgiving and don’t be used as a pawn in their schemes to make money without working for it.
If you look at most of the modeling they did from the 80’s about 98% of where they predicted we would be now is wrong.
Hey Tim, are you from Arcadia California? If you are I am your cousin!
Two companies, SASOL and Royal Dutch Shell, have technology proven to work on a commercial scale. PetroSA completed semi-commercial demonstrations of gas-to-liquids used by the company in 2011.[6] Royal Dutch Shell produces a diesel from natural gas in a factory in Bintulu, Malaysia. Another Shell GTL facility is the Pearl GTL plant in Qatar, the world’s largest GTL facility and there are reports that Shell is looking at the feasibility of a GTL facility in Louisiana, US.[7][8][9] SASOL has recently built the Oryx GTL facility in Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar and together with Uzbekneftegaz and Petronas builds the Uzbekistan GTL plant.[10][11][12] Chevron Corporation, in a joint venture with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation is commissioning the Escravos GTL in Nigeria, which uses Sasol technology.
I think John Harris and Carbon Bigfoot each nailed it in his own way. With the successful engineering of the Tesla electric vehicle, I think we will have a middle class affordable electric car that can challenge a Mustang on Sunset Boulevard before any company can manufacture US$ 1.77 per gallon gasoline out of anything. 20 years ago, this might have been a bet, but today, thank God there are more than Republicans on the planet, and some of us actually believe in global warming – because we do not have some lobbyist paying us to not believe it,
I heard somewhere that Republicans believe in free markets and competition have I been misinformed? Electric cars are fine in theory although the sources of the bulk of electricity are still dirty. Anyone who can afford the Teslas currently on the market and not a wheel in Hollywood is bound to be a Republican. How about giving people driving the internal combustion jobs that most cars currently on the road are a break? I do hope you are careful about which Republicans you express your belief in GW to. Proclaming it before the Republican National Convention, for example, could be hazardous to your health., We sometimes Democratic sometimes Green Party adherents are much better mannered and would welcome you into our ranks.
At last, a reasonable Republican! I will be able to tell my granddaughter, “Yes, Virginia, there is a reasonable Repuplican.” :>) Just teasing . . . . .
Funny how electric cars are considered “Green” while the derive their power from natural gas or coal fed power plants?….is’nt that just kicking the can down the road of denial?
JProvi218 – Right now, some of the electrical power needed for electric cars is derived from non-natural gas or coal fed power plants, so right now electric cars are at least a very pale “Green”. As more sources, such as solar and atomic, become available, the “Green” will become darker and darker.
Yeah. A whopping > 0.5% for non-natural gas other “green” energy makes up the balance of 2%, including bird shredders. Coal provides 45% of electricity, nuclear 20%, natural gas 20%, the balance is hydroelectric and oil. We are never going to run out of carbon from oil, shale oil, natural gas and methyl caltrates. Oil is used in over 4000 products and counting not just vehicle fuel.
The German ingenuity of the Fischer/Tropche (spell?) process was used by the Nazis in WWII to make crude diesel from coke oven gas by-product of the coal/coking process. That’s why the Nazis seized the Romanian Refineries and oil fields-none in Germany. An improved version of F/T process is what Shell or Sasol use with improved equipment and refined catalysts. CapX as Travis points out will slow the implementation.
Although I find this website interesting-thanks Travis for providing this platform. I would not put much faith in the “comments or opinions of individuals without expertise”.
A primer in energy/global climate is available from Amazon and written by my colleague Steve Goreham and called “The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism”. Wonderfully written, referenced and researched by a fellow engineer. We only deal with facts and money, not junk science or innuendo. I encourage all of you to order, read it and if you don’t understand it, science is not your bag and stop making embarrassing statements.
Article with additional info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-tropsch
Brief blurb on Sasol is in Wikipedia article: “The largest scale implementation of Fischer–Tropsch technology are in a series of plants operated by Sasol in South Africa, a country with large coal reserves, but little oil. The first commercial plant opened in 1952, 40 miles south of Johannesburg. Sasol uses coal and now natural gas as feedstocks and produces a variety of synthetic petroleum products, including most of the country’s diesel fuel.
In December, 2012 Sasol announced plans to build a 96,000 barrels a day plant in Westlake, Louisiana using natural gas from tight shale formations in Louisiana and Texas as feedstock. Costs are estimated to be between 11 and 12 billion dollars with $2 billion in tax relief being contributed by the state of Louisiana. The planned complex will include a refinery and a chemical plant.”
A Tesla EV is affordable? Last time I checked one of those things cost over $100k. That doesn’t seem very affordable for the middle class. Get an EV that costs the same as a conventional Camry, goes 300 miles between charges, doesn’t take hours and hours to charge, then we’ll talk.
We bought our Tesla model S for $67,000 and got $5,000 back on our taxes. We got the smaller batter though. It cost hardly anything to charge and maintenence is practically zero. Instead of applying the huge disc brakes you just let the electric motor slow you down as it recharges the battery. The car is considered the safest car in America on the road.
Reminds me of the comment re routine maintenance of GM’s EV-1 electric vehicle: it was said that when the car was sent to the garage for regular maintenance, all they could do was top up the windshield washer fluid and rotate the tires. There was nothing else to maintain.
In Shreveport, LA , there are several natural gas stations (CNG).
The price at the pump today is $1.70 per gallon.
All of our city buses, etc. run on natural gas.
The ratio of oil to gas costs, is it the normal units of measure, barrels and cubic feet, or energy equivalent? A barrel of oil is 5.5 million BTUs (roughly) and the $4 for gas is about 1 million BTUs? Well could be wrong but the ratio from Sasols point of view would more likely be energy equivalence?
That’s just the way they’ve described it to make it easy for us financial flacks, I think — presumably there are many other measures, but the general 16X number, or one in that neighborhood, is one they throw around a lot.
The (greater than) 16 number refers to the value of a barrel of oil divided by the cost of 1000 cubic feet (commonly referred to as 1 MCF) of natural gas, or its near-equivalent 1MMBTUs. point being that if natural gas is cheap enough, that ratio will be greater than 16, and they then (think they can) make money doing the conversion process, after investing the necessary capital to build the plant. And that’s essentially just what Travis said in his article.
Interesting that She’ll built a huge gas to gasoline project in Australia several years ago. And after announcing a similar project in LA with the advent of cheaper gas as feedstock, decided not to build/invest in another plant. Beware!
I’m looking at Future Fuels rather than Solazyme.
There’s this – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7
I also like this – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_RX-8_Hydrogen_RE
Dear sirs or madam:
Please tell me if this technology is available today.
Thank you. Harvey B. Young
Yes, there are several plants in existence and one being built in Louisiana.
Hyundai is already producing a Hydrogen fueled car in their Tucson model SUV that is being piloted on the market right now and available to some public. Some of the hydrogen is being produced at local landfills in So. Cal using solar technology. One obstacle is that their are few fueling stations to fill up at thus currently impeding where you get to travel. Leased vehicle is $500 a month which includes fuel and maintenance also vehicle leases have no option to buy vehicle at end of lease.
SASOL is at a near all time high now. That is not the time to buy a stock. I got burned by Brodrick a few years ago on some oil company stocks. Everyone was at a near all time high and went straight down shortly thereafter. Russian climate scientists have been saying that the planet might be entering a mini ice age for the next 40 years or so. Who’s right?