Dara O’Briain TV - First on the Moon: The Untold Story TV - Joseph J Romm - Mark Williams TV - Ronald Top TV - George Monbiot - Carl Sagan - Elon Musk - Black and White film TV - David Suzuki - Nikola Tesla - Jeff Goodell - Billie Holiday - James Buchan - Margaret Atwood - Michael Mosley TV - Christopher Monckton - The Times online - Associated Press - Dispatches TV - Viva Riva! 2011 -
In the 1920s space pioneer Robert Goddard invented liquid fuel rockets. Dara O’Briain’s Science Club IV, BBC 2012
Armstrong decided to override it and take manual control of the vehicle. But by now the spaceship had veered a long way off course. The module was lost. And that wasn’t all. The descent engine’s fuel-tank was running critically low. With the module still at five hundred feet it was rushing into unknown terrain – the odds did not look good. With the fuel running out the astronauts were faced with a dilemma. Sixty seconds. Thirty seconds. Apollo eleven had landed with barely fifteen seconds of fuel to spare. First on the Moon: The Untold Story, Discovery 2005
Hydrogen is a much tougher alternative fuel than any other alternative fuel we’ve ever pursued. Dr Joseph J Romm, author The Hype About Hydrogen
This is a replica of Murdoch’s model. A top-secret design for a vehicle that could pull carriages along the road ... Murdoch continued developing his model vehicle throughout the 1780s ... He was fascinated by high-pressure steam. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s2e3: Gas on Wheels, Discovery 2005
This time extracting gas from coal ... He soon became so successful that he lit his own house. The first house lit by gas in the world. And Murdoch’s employers soon turned gas-light into big business. From 1805 mills and factories were to work shifts around the clock using their own gas generating plants. It wasn’t long before everyone wanted the new light. ibid.
One of the most extraordinary pieces of machinery in the entire industrial age in my opinion – this is a Scrubber. The idea in our computer-dominated nano-technology world that the way to remove ammonia from gas is to scrub it with brushes underwater seems fantastic. But that’s what the machine does: gas is bubbled through water and scrubbed by slowly revolving brushes, and this is how town gas was cleaned throughout the whole of its life as a fuel supply. ibid.
200 years later Murdoch’s coal gas was readily available. It could be fed into an engine and ignited again and again and again. ibid.
This is a single-cylinder four-stroke engine which uses petrol as a fuel. Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations s4e6: Europe – Exploding Engines, Discovery 2006
The angry men know that this golden age (of fossil fuels) has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusing those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but knowing at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings. George Monbiot
Coal, oil and gas are called fossil fuels, because they are mostly made of the fossil remains of beings from long ago. The chemical energy within them is a kind of stored sunlight originally accumulated by ancient plants. Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene. Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relatives. Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive than they are because we’re not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the US. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that externality remains unpriced. Elon Musk
There are still two thousand gas lamps in the London area. But the 102 here in the Temple are the only ones turned on by the paraffin torch of a lamplighter. Black and white film, cited Night on Film: An A-Z of the Dark, BBC 2011
Just as fossil fuels from conventional sources are finite and are becoming depleted, those from difficult sources will also run out. If we put all our energy and resources into continued fossil fuel extraction, we will have lost an opportunity to have invested in renewable energy. David Suzuki
The universal utilization of water power and its long-distance transmission will supply every household with cheap power and will dispense with the necessity of burning fuel. The struggle for existence being lessened, there should be development along ideal rather than material lines. Nikola Tesla
Compared to coal, which generates almost half the electricity in the United States, natural gas is indeed a cleaner, less polluting fuel. But compared to, say, solar, it’s filthy. And of course there is nothing renewable about natural gas. Jeff Goodell
They think they can make fuel from horse manure. Now, I don’t know if your car will be able to get 30 miles to the gallon, but it’s sure gonna put a stop to siphoning. Billie Holiday
The use of refined petroleum as fuel, which began in the 1850s, freed hundreds of millions of people from the toil of centuries, gave hundreds of millions more a life of ease and plenty, and, by allowing great cities to feed themselves from every corner of the world, multiplied the population of the earth fivefold. James Buchan
We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we’re so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil and its derivatives, because it’s not going to be around for ever. Margaret Atwood
Energy: it led to the formulation of a new law of physics, one that is absolutely fundamental. It is called the first law of thermodynamics ... A mathematical description of energy known as Conservation of Energy. It states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So you can never get more out than is contained in the fuel you put in. Michael Mosley, The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion, BBC 2010
ClimateGate: These are people who deserve to go to prison for a very long time. And I’ll tell you why I’m so angry about it ... Global warming isn’t killing anyone and it’s not going to kill anyone. What is killing people and it’s killing them by the millions of starvation now is the effect of the global warming scare. Because many nations including the United States have taken up to a third of their agricultural land out from growing food for people who needed it to buying bio-fuels for clunckers that didn’t. And that has meant in the last year or two a doubling, and I mean a doubling, of world food prices. Lord Christopher Monckton, interview Alex Jones
Food prices would soar in biofuels switch, says Unilever. The Times online article Carl Mortishead 7th August 2006
Rapeseed biofuel ‘produces more greenhouse gas than oil or petrol’. The Times online article 22nd September 2002
Converting land for biofuel worsens global warming: study. Associated Press article 7th February 2008
Britain’s new emissions scandal: after VW cheated pollutions tests then what became known as dieselgate, welcome to lorrygate: we’ve uncovered cheating of pollution controls on a massive scale. Dispatches: Britain’s Diesel Scandal, Channel 4 2018
Lorries with emulators make that air quality worse. ibid.
They [hauliers] could be prosecuted in the magistrates’ court but so far none have. ibid.
The city has run out of fuel. And it’s going to get worse. That’s when we’ll take advantage and sell our merchandise. Viva Riva! 2011 starring Patsha Bay & Manie Malone & Hoji Fortuna & Marlene Longage & Alex Herabo et al, director Djo Tunda Wa Munga, opening scene