The Hill today has a detailed story on a Cornell University report that says natural-gas “fracking,” endorsed by Obama, among others, is pretty terrible for the environment. What? In The Hill? Oh, the coal lobby must have bought a bigger ad in their paper than the natural-gas lobby.
“The [greenhouse gas] footprint for shale gas is greater than that for conventional gas or oil when viewed on any time horizon, but particularly so over 20 years. Compared to coal, the footprint of shale gas is at least 20% greater and perhaps more than twice as great on the 20-year horizon and is comparable when compared over 100 years,” states the upcoming study from Howarth, who is a professor of ecology and environmental biology, and other Cornell researchers.
Remember when human beings were good at this science thing? Yeah, not anymore. We’re never going to improve on these destructive fuel sources that were literally created by DINOSAURS. [The Hill]
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At least we will be able to heat our poisoned water for tea.
P.S. Lettuce all welcome "winning the suture" to Wonkette tag world.
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Isn't the water already hot?
Mongo likes gas!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6dm9rN6oTs
You could do what I do and heat your house with a combination of whale oil and orphans.
How could natural gas be bad? It has the word "natural" in it.
Yeah, just like "natural" disasters. C'mon, lighten up, Japan!
I love to watch when members of the same dickwad family fight in public.
So we get more global warming to go with out poisoned water. Lovely.
We are so fracked.
So say we all.
Just saw the Time mag cover with a big ol' piece of shale and the caption like "this will save the world" or something. It's just going to get worse so you might as well start chaining yourselves to the frakking machines or whatever evil technology they use to extract this crap.
You atheist! Dinosaurs didn't create anything, they were created by Jesus in order to be used as food and transportation. If mankind hadn't Sinned, we would be riding them now instead of needing cars and aeroplanes.
Oh, really now. Who wouldn't want fire on tap at their kitchen sink?
Lord knows the hobo beans we all eat now make enough of it.
Imagine what good will come when Mormon Oil Bishops take their petroleum-based fortunes and spread their bullshit religion ("Watch me pull a religion ouf of my hat!") all over the planet.
But what about ORGANIC gas?
And somewhere, there's a redneck in a torn-sleeve Busch shirt touching a Sarah Palin mural, saying that we'd "have our god damn energy supply right here in 'Murka, t'weren't for those stupid environmental regulations."
You mean there's another reason to stick a tube in my butt?
There appears to be a copywriter error in this report. It is not spelled "Fracking," but "Farting."
Your article held my attention up to the ridiculous notion that these fuel sources were created by the dinosaurs. Perhaps you've heard of something called the Abiogenic theory of the origin of oil, which proves that oil is produced from chemical reactions in the Earth, in contrast to the scientific community's consensus that oil is produced from the bodies of animals and/or plants. The theory is promoted by Nobel prize winner and former rent boy for James O'Keefe, Jerome Corsi. I'm waiting on your retraction.
How'd it get there? Who put it there? You can't explain it!
That is a fascinating theory, which has some support even from a few non-lobotomized folks. It is hardly the most wacko theory ever proposed.
In fact, there is no doubt that — given sufficient energy and pressure and maybe a dusting of the right catalyst — one could create perfectly good petroleum out of carbon and hydrogen and a few odd bits. And the deep Earth is certainly full of thermal energy and pressure.
The fundamental problem with the abiogenic theory of petroleum is not the absence of evidence in its favor, nor the large body of evidence favoring an organic source; but rather, the fact that it is useless, even if true.
All of the petroleum we have ever extracted has been located in reservoirs no more than a few miles deep. Oil resources companies like Schlumberger have, by now, looked bloody near everywhere for such reservoirs, and are now finding oil in situations that are ever harder to extract from. But still only a few miles deep.
That's because we do not have the materials technology to drill, say, fifty miles deep, even if we somehow knew there was a fucking Atlantic Ocean of oil down there. So, even if oil is abogenic, our access to it is restricted to those bits that seep up into near-enough-to-the-surface reservoirs. One would assume that those reservoirs were originally filled over some hundreds of millions of years before we started extracting from them. Elementary diffusion theory suggests that ones we have now emptied will take at least a few million years to refill.
Also, too, there is no indication of refilling.
So, a useless theory. Actually, I have nothing against useless theories — sometimes they help to explain how the universe works. But they are irrelevant to, you know, public policy.
A pile of spent fuel rods in every home would provide American families with ample light and heat. Plus we'd save a bundle on haircare products. Win-win.
Even worse? A lot of that oil you US Americans mostly buy is from Alberta which in turn comes mostly from the Tar Sands. The Tar Sands happen to be the biggest single point source of CO2 in the world, but shockingly no one in Canada City knows that because well our PM… PM Moobs is from Alberta and a denier of global warming.
Because… Only hippies like solar power! Or because solar power needs *gasp* government subsidies (just like every other energy source ever) to be profitable at the moment! Or because Jesus didn't put SOLAR PANELS in the earth!
Sarah's new mantra would be Frack Baby Frack, except it might give Bristol the wrong idea.
Everything give Bristol the wrong idea. The Palins are like minks only less attractive and good-natured. . . . And less useful when skinned.
I'm always conflicted when reading horror stories about fracking, because my family has land right on the Marcellus Shale, and probably starting in the Fall when all the pipes and wells are completed on our land and royalties start, we're gonna be RICH, BITCHES! On the other hand, I don't want the Susquehenna to catch fire. Wealth or environmental principle? Wealth or environmental principle? Wait, I'm American: of course it's wealth! Haha, sorry environment!
Number 9,564 of the 10,000 ways we can shit in our own nest. Our insistence on our own self-destruction is matched only by our inventiveness.
FWIW, and acknowledging my thorough incompetence in this area (but pointing out that I can actually read and do simple math), there seems to be slightly less here than meets the eye.
First, using the reports own numbers, about 40-45% of the "fugitive" methane emissions from "fracked" shale gas comes from pipeline leakage (for conventional-well gas, that's 60-80%, because the source — non-pipeline — leakage is higher).
But my real problem is this: the report estimates that the total fugitive methane loss from fracked wells is 3.6 to 7.9%, whereas from conventional wells, it's 1.7 to 6.0%. But then they conclude from this that fracked gas leaks from 20% (7.9% vs 6.0%, obvs) to around 100% (3.6% vs 1.7%) more than conventional.
This is statistics abuse. If the best you can do is come up with ranges of 3.6 to 7.9 and 1.7 to 6.0, you have no business making ratios of the lows and the highs. If you believe your range numbers, all you can say is that the ratio of fracked to conventional is 3.6/6.0 = -40% to 7.9/1.7 = +364%. 'Cause you don't know what the real numbers are. I mean, 1.7 to 6.0 is 3.85 +/- 56%.
Don't misunderstand me — there are lots of good reasons to be dubious about fracking, and the impact of fugitive methane releases from any kind of natural gas production and transportation deserves very serious study (and, one hopes, mitigation). But this particular report just seems a bit sensational to me.
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