Fossil fuel industry stranded asset risk in the trillions is at the doorstep. The ultimate solution for the crisis of further CO2 emissions seems to be at hand, hopefully just in time.

Pons and Fleischmann 1989

It’s taken 24 years and the loss of some great scientists but finally the birth of cold fusion is reaffirmed by the strapping Italian lad that it has grown into. Several megawatt cold fusion machines are now being delivered to US customers. Rumours persist that those customers include US DOD and other federal agencies.

That cold fusion is now (once again) proven can be found in an independent report by an international team of scientists publishing in this on-line journal of science ARXIV paper.

While the science community will be abuzz about this another world of people will undoubtedly be even more engaged. Cold fusion always was and remains the technology that is capable of ending humanities reliance on the enormously polluting climate changing fossil fuels.

Cold fusion — the most watched news story of all time.

When cold fusion was first introduced to the world in March of 1989 the story of it quickly caused it to become the most watched news story of all time. Far more people around the world paid rapt attention to the sage of cold fusion than those who watched the first man land on the moon.

click to enlarg!

The cold fusion panacea for the evils of the fossil and fission energy age however instantly captured the attention and ire of those whose energy investments in fossil fuels would become stranded assets if cold fusion were allowed to be real. It’s been a 24 year long war of mis and dis -information and editorial spin. And for good reason as reports on what might happen in a world without fossil fuels emerges as a necessary part of eliminating CO2 emission.

UPDATE Jan 2015 —

Cold fusion is now being replicated at high temperatures well over 1000° C!

BREAKING NEWS Cold fusion as hot as the hottest flame … click to read more

World Oil price collapses.

World Oil Price Collapse 2014 as producers rush to pump more oil assets out of underground resevoirs

Stranded Assets

“Investors in carbon-intensive business could see $6 trillion wasted as policies limiting global warming stop them from exploiting their coal, oil and gas reserves”, according to a recent report on what might (ought to) happen as climate change solutions are imposed or arrive as new technology.

Of course these authors never considered that a more direct solution to the crisis of CO2 and climate change might be a technological revolution such as what cold fusion delivers.

The top 200 oil, gas and mining companies spent $674 billion last year finding and developing fossil fuel resources, according to research by the Carbon Tracker Initiative and a climate-change research unit at the London School of Economics. If this rate continues for the next decade some $6 trillion risks being wasted on “unburnable” or stranded assets, according to the report, released today (Spring 2013).”

In the fossil fuel industry company valuation and credit ratings methodologies do not typically inform investors about their exposure to these stranded assets, despite these reserves supporting share value of $4 trillion in 2012 and servicing $1.27 trillion in outstanding corporate debt over the same period.

Lord Stern

“Smart investors can see that investing in companies that rely solely or heavily on constantly replenishing reserves of fossil fuels is becoming a very risky decision. The report raises serious questions as to the ability of the financial system to act on industry-wide long term risk, since currently the only measure of risk is performance against industry benchmarks.” Professor Lord Stern (Chair, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics in a report on the potential risk to the fossil fuel industry from a climate change solution imposing it’s demise.)

Paul Spedding, an oil and gas analyst at HSBC, said: “The scale of ‘listed’ unburnable carbon revealed in this report is astonishing. This report makes it clear that ‘business as usual’ is not a viable option for the fossil fuel industry in the long term. [The market] is assuming it will get early warning, but my worry is that things often happen suddenly in the oil and gas sector.”

The early warning came in March of 1989 and it resulted in 24 year war against cold fusion. As the many groups, including my own, deliver on the promise of cold fusion the fossil fuel industry and it’s financial partners will need to rise to the occasion.

Trillions in oil and gas investment at risk

HSBC has warned that 40-60% of the market capitalisation of oil and gas companies was at risk from an alternative to fossil fuel arriving, with the top 200 fossil fuel companies alone having a current value of $4tn, along with $1.5tn debt.

Lord McFall, who chaired the Commons Treasury select committee for a decade, said: “Despite its devastating scale, the banking crisis was at its heart an avoidable crisis: the threat of significant carbon writedown has the unmistakable characteristics of the same endemic problems.”

CO2 will remain a problem

While this new source of emission free cold fusion energy can prevent more CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere we still have the crisis of the nearly trillion tonnes of fossil CO2 already emitted that is changing climate and destroying ecosystems, especially the ocean plankton pastures. That CO2 already emitted, yesterday’s CO2 is a lethal overdose to much of life on this blue planet. Cold fusion offers a means to prevent a second lethal overdose from being administered to Mother Earth but it is not the anti-dote to the first lethal dose.

But there is a solution that can replenish and restore the ocean pastures and in doing so convert hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 into ocean life itself at the cost of mere pennies per tonne. Like cold fusion the proof has been demonstrated and is ready for large scale deployment. Perhaps just in time these twin scientific discoveries have been transformed into technologies that will reverse the harm we have done in our pell mell burning of fossil fuels.

It’s time for people to call on government and industry to save the world, and make a little money on the side…. not the other way around!