Skip to main content

Am I Getting Through?

Almost as a direct challenge to my March 26th  post, I got this lovely comment on my recent article in the Austin Statesman:
Most important message
Re: April 10 article "Deep drilling reflects era's decline, Texas expert says."
The article by professor Tad Patzek about the planet's declining oil reserves contains the most important message your paper can publish this year.
As he points out so clearly and simply that anyone who reads it must understand, our species is driving heedlessly toward a very messy extinction unless we change both our driving habits and our reliance on fossil fuels. Any rational Austinite who reads and faces up to the facts stated in this article will become an ardent supporter of local light rail as well as a carbon tax.
And he/she will advise his/her children and grandchildren to move closer to downtown, near a rail line and a farmer's market, or else become self-sufficient farmers themselves unless they can somehow acquire the money and technology required to drill ultra-deep offshore wells.
Pat S. Holloway
I would like to thank Mr. Holloway for his kind words.  I am also very happy that what I write is not completely useless to the public.

Comments

  1. Your writings are most certainly not useless. We must never give up ,for it is our very survival that is at stake. Thank you for your work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your writings are pretty much useless to the public and lack political realism.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I would like to learn what you are thinking about my posts and encourage you to share

Popular posts from this blog

Ascent of the Angry and Stupid

Scientifically speaking,  stupid  people harm themselves while also harming others. In addition, stupid people are irrational and erratic, and are very dangerous to others. After discussing the destructive role of the stupid in any society whatsoever, I will focus on the delicate interplay of actions of intelligent and helpless people, who in balance make or break a functioning democracy.  Unless things change fast in the US, we can kiss our democracy goodbye for decades. If you want to see how a virulent ascent of the stupid looks up close, and what implications it has for our fight against social injustice and climate change, please watch the brilliant " Don't Look Up " movie. Unvaccinated people demonstrating in Los Angeles. There are tens of millions of the raving mad and/or angry, stupid people in the US and other developed countries. Source: New York Times , 12/25/2021. I overlapped at UC Berkeley with Professor Carlo M. Cipolla for a decade, until his death in t...

Confessions of a Petroleum Engineer and Ecologist

I just attended an SPE workshop, "Oil and Gas Technology for a Net-Zero World – Defining Our Grand Challenges for the Next Decade."  Of the 60 people in the audience, I knew 1/3, some very well.  It makes sense, because I have been an SPE member for 40 years, and a Distinguished Member for 20 years.  Last year, I received an SPE EOR/IOR Pioneer Award for my work at Shell and UC Berkeley on the thermal enhanced oil recovery processes that involved foams, and their upscaling to field operations. This was nice, because Shell recognized me as one of their best reservoir engineers, and in 1985 I received an internal Shell Recognition Award for the same work. But I am not a mere oil & gas reservoir engineer.  First and foremost, I am a chemical engineer and physicist, who has thought rigorously about the sustainability of human civilization , ecology and thermodynamics of industrial agriculture and large biofuel systems, as well as about the overall gross and net prima...

Goodness, mostly

  So I am listening to the Polish internet radio, " New World ." A small group of young people there exudes such gentle happiness and unobtrusive presence that I am instantly transported to a better world of my youth. Today they discussed and read some of the poems of Wisława Szymborska, a great Polish poetess who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in literature. Today we celebrate the centennial anniversary of her birth.  A new complete collection of  Szymborska's poems and letters just came out, all 724 pages of them.    A young woman with an especially pleasant voice reflected calmly: "We must greet strangers and always reply to their greetings. I have noticed that seeing good, happy things brings more of them to my life. It is as if goodness is passing me by very fast and unless I see it instantly it vanishes. Puff!"  Then they played a short recording of another young woman, who sent her early morning greetings accompanied by the quiet cries of young an...