Lynn, you have a good thought about the ignorance about plastics. In fact, I was wishing to myself a little after the debate why the President didn’t take that route and defeat the Marionette’s pretensions to knowledge. For example, he could have pointed out the pen that Joe was holding, the ink in said pen, the paints on the podium, etc. Ah, well – probably has somewhat to do with the comment in one of the other threads about Trump’s thinking and consequent speaking style.

Aesop, thanks for those links. Cumene! Wouldn’t have predicted that at all.

It is also interesting that the US and Poland have ‘agreed to cooperate’ on Poland’s nuclear program, which anticipates spending $40 billion on reactor construction over the next 20 years.

https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/us-back-nuclear-business-polish-cooperation-deal/

There is already a plan in place for Poland to acquire a small modular reactor (300MW) from the GE-Hitachi joint venture.

https://www.ft.com/content/f367c79a-f4da-11e9-a79c-bc9acae3b654

(paywalled link)

She then admitted that she hit a snag shortly after arising and starting to brush her teeth. Yeah, the handle and bristles are man-made using petrochemicals. The plan went down hill from there… and she hadn’t even got to where she was not going to drive to work.

The world is multi-dimensional chess and these people are still playing checkers.

In the meantime, floods and droughts & fires are all predictable consequences of “climates changing”, so there should be extra focus on reducing the human costs of such climate disasters. The CA wildfires, whether arson or natural, were made worse by human decisions influenced by “environmentalists”.

The decision to avoid burning underbrush to avoid massive wildfires was because of the environmentalists, mostly Dem supported and supporting Dems. Those who want better management of the environment, including fewer wildfires, less bad droughts, and less bad floods – such folk need to more correctly blame Dems who manage poorly.

A functioning market means we will never run out of oil, nor diamonds, nor gold. But prices will change. Oil could have become increasingly expensive, had it not been for fracking. At some point in the now-more-distant future, oil will go up in price again.
Maybe.
Unless we have more nukes, perhaps especially more safer thorium reactors.

I understand India is building some. Hope they’re successful.

Just so about batteries, David. Elon Musk is working on it and he is a genius who has made some important breakthroughs. We’ll see if he can defy the laws of thermodynamics.

Some people are experimenting with storing excess solar and wind energy in vessels as air pressure. There are many problems with that approach, also. Why not go with what we know works – nuclear? Sigh!

Then their is the issue of how to power airplanes without jet fuel, which comes from oil.

What’s ironic to me is that 20 years ago, the problem was “Peak Oil.” Where were we going to get the oil products to keep our society moving? Now, it’s get rid of oil.

Batteries can provide perhaps 2-3 hours worth of storage at a cost level which is not totally insane, thereby shifting solar generation in the period of bright sunlight to serve air conditioning and other loads after the sun is low in the sky. But it is unrealistic to think that they can store enough energy to handle the phenomenon called ‘winter’, when there is not much sun and snow may cover the solar collectors for days on end. Gas-fired power generation capacity will need to be kept in place to handle most of the peak load (80%, at a guess) for the periods when the intermittent sources aren’t available. Fuel will be saved, but at the cost of vast capital outlays. Costs per kwh would go up considerably, with bad implications not only for household utility bills but for industrial competitiveness.