Comments by "Jim Taylor" (@jimtaylor294) on "Why You Should Love Fossil Fuel | 5 Minute Video" video.

^ The earth's climate has Always been changing, for over 1 billion years. It is not in man's power to control the climate, so that's a moot argument anyway. (not to mention it's immensely arrogant to believe that somehow we can do to the earth in a couple of centuries of industrialization, what has happened without us, many times) Jamie Brennan Not quite. The UK had been losing industry since the 1960's. By the late-1970's many companies were faced with three options: • Stay and hope the lousy business climate got better someday. • Go bankrupt, as many were in the face of the badly run economy and militant trade unions that put productivity through the floor and costs through the roof. • Outsource abroad, where governments were more accomidating, services like electricity and logistics more affordable, and the workforce less indoctrinated by politicians into expecting something for nothing. Unsurprisingly most companies that could chose option #3. Had the various UK governments of 1957 - 1979 been serious about industry, the rise of outsourcing might have been partially mitigated.
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"There is no profit to be made in the destruction of the planet. It is very bad for business." - the Kingpin
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If anyone wants an example of how much better our quality of life and health is; read up on how bad inner-cities pollution was in the mid-1800's. With poor quality but cheap Black Coal in typical use, Horses the main mode of transport, industries like Tannaries close to / amongst residential areas, and all the same public health issues that'd existed since medieval times... and the result was fetted, gloomy, stinking and often smog blanketed visions of hell [to anyone in the present day], where life was short, infant mortality was through the roof, disease was everywhere, and prospects poor. Put it this way: Can anyone alive today say they've even heard of someone getting Rickets on Land?. (in the 1800's multiple cities had cases of it, due to a combination of poor diet and [due to smog] sunlight deficiency)
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^ That doesn't make any sense.
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@LittleLion93 I wasn't stating that FF's weren't still dirty, rather that we've progressed in reducing to near insignificance the very worst aspects thereof. (from coal dust & soot, to atmospherically damaging sulphur emmissions, we're much better off now, and still improving upon the methods that made that possible) In the grand scheme of things, it makes sense for society to gravitate toward the least dirty fuel source that is practical. That's why roads are no longer ankle deep in horse effluent, like Paris routinely was in the 1800's, and why Trains and Ships now run on Diesel, instead of Black Coal. The latter in particular is of note, as coal wasn't just dirty, but harder and more labour intensive to readily transfer. Coaling Yards had to damp down the coal with water, lest the air get choked with highly flammable & toxic [to humans anyway as it would mix with moisture in the lungs to produce suffocating thick black gunk] coal dust. If we can progress that much in a few generations, then I'd say we'll be even better off in the near future.
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@LittleLion93 I saw the point of the video as being to illustrate out how much less polluting our use of such fuels is today, a positive trend that is often ignored. From what I've seen PU is pro-Nuclear, though that wasn't the subject of the video. Renewables' have their uses, but have practical limitations, and can cause enviromental damage too if improperly used. (from hydro power consuming habitable land whilst also harming marine life & agriculture, to wind turbines being a major threat to birdlife) Unless major innovations are made with tidal power and orbital solar, I think that fossil fuels - and technically perpetually renewable "crop oils" - will be around for a long time yet, albeit in even cleaner form than that typically seen today.
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@horseofcoursetack True. Solar could only meet our needs if we could collect it from Orbit (free of clouds and other factors that reduce efficiency), and that's a long way off still. Wind... well the unpredictability of it, combined with the problem of Volt Drop when transmitting electricity over long distances, make it inefficient for all but coastal communities. Nuclear is good stuff, but technically finite in the very long term, as only so much of the raw ore exists on the planet. Sweden's use of [non-recyclable but combustable] Rubbish as a power source is a sound idea, also done in other countries like Japan, and once common over the UK in a cruder form, when every town had a "Dust Destructor".
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If anyone wants an example of how much better our quality of life and health is now, alongwith the state of our typical living enviroment; read up on how bad inner-cities pollution was in the mid-1800's. With poor quality but cheap Black Coal in typical use, Horses the main mode of transport, industries like Tannaries close to / amongst residential areas, and all the same public health issues that'd existed since medieval times... and the result was fetted, gloomy, stinking and often smog blanketed visions of hell [to anyone in the present day], where life was short, infant mortality was through the roof, disease was everywhere, and prospects poor. Put it this way: Can anyone alive today say they've even heard of someone getting Rickets on Land?. (in the 1800's multiple cities had cases of it, due to a combination of poor diet and [due to the smog] sunlight deficiency)
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