Gas Fracking

[Gemmill 36113]

Looks like this is going to be approved across the UK. It's caused two earthquakes to date, and there are serious concerns about the effect it has on the water supply as it's hard to contain the contamination that it causes. Watch the trailer for the documentary "Gasland" below:

 

 

There are towns in the US where people can turn their taps on, hold a match to the water coming out, and set fire to the water that's coming out of the taps (shown in the documentary, which is well worth a watch). This is as a direct result of gas fracking contamination.

 

Article from today's guardian:

 

http://www.guardian....ets-green-light

 

Canny scary that this is getting the go-ahead over here.

Edited April 17, 2012 by Gemmill

[Monkeys Fist 39253]

I'd love to see a list of shareholders for Cuadrilla Resources, the company involved in this.

 

Then cross reference it with Cabinet members.

[Kitman 2188]

They're trying to get it banned in nz, for obvious reasons

[Gemmill 36113]

It's fucking scary man. I can't believe it's getting the thumbs up over here. The environmental impact if the groundwater gets contaminated could be huge.

[Brock Manson 0]

Right when we're facing the worst drought since the 70s. The timing is impeccable.

 

It's incredible to think the oil and gas services can do this sort of operation unhindered.

[Brock Manson 0]

The Torygraph's take on the matter:

 

How to save ourselves from the new Middle Ages: stop building bird-choppers and start fracking

 

 

 

By Tim Worstall Energy Last updated: April 17th, 2012

170 Comments Comment on this article

 

A fracking site in Pennsylvania (Photo: Getty)

So it turns out that fracking for shale gas really is more effective at making the earth move than all the onanism of the enviros over windmills. We should thus get on with drilling and stop building the bird-choppers.

In a shocking surprise anyone attuned to the way government actually works, this is in fact what is about to happen. Or at least what the current Government seems to be inching towards, after an official report found that the technique caused two small earthquakes last year (one of them near Blackpool) but recommended the wider use of it nonetheless.

Welcome to the most important point you never get taught about economics: there are no such things as solutions. All we've got, all we can ever have, is a series of trade-offs. Are there problems with fracking for shale gas? Sure there are: it causes earthquakes, as this report confirms. I've written elsewhere about US reports into the contamination of groundwater and yes, this too happens. Almost all of those cases come from inadequate care of water and chemicals being used and spilt on the surface. The one case that might be of deep contamination, of contamination of an aquifer, is due to the very odd geology of the area.

And yes, fracking is noisy, noisome and annoying, and we would all really rather no one did it in our back garden.

On the other hand, this "civilisation" thing is pretty good too. The fact that we can heat our hovels, that something gets piped in to turn that tartare into burger, that we have plentiful hot water to keep the lice count down – all of these are among the things that have made the last century or two the most pleasant to live in of all human history.

So we've our trade-off here: heat and power for all, as against a minority of us having to put up with burly men penetrating Gaia with their massive drills. One can understand the opposition of the more anti-phallocentric greenies to this idea, but what about all us sensible people? A reasonable trade-off or not?

The Guardian is the home of such greens, as we know, and their bleater-in-chief makes this point:

Unlike fracking, the alternative put forward by green campaigners does not involve moving the Earth, but would instead require a seismic shift in policy. "We should be developing the huge potential of clean British energy from the sun, wind and waves, not more dirty and dangerous fossil fuels," said Friends of the Earth's head Andy Atkins.

Well yes, we could do that, we really could. Mount more bird-choppers, use the weak sunlight of our rainy isles, digest all the sewage in the country and power ourselves that way. Except this is a different set of trade-offs. The first one that leaps out at you from any of the various calculations is that they all assume that we'll cut our energy use in half. No, really, it's at the heart of all of them, whether the numbers come from Greenpeace or DECC. It is always and everywhere assumed that we'll be happy with a forward-to-the-Middle-Ages movement.

The second is that this method will be vastly more expensive than any energy system which uses fossil fuels. For this is our very problem in a nutshell. If renewable energy technologies actually were cheaper than fossil fuels, then we wouldn't be having any of these arguments in the first place. We'd all be happily sacrificing eagles to Mother Earth and leaving the oil in the ground. The very fact that we have laws, renewables obligations, taxes and regulations to force us to do this is all the evidence anyone needs that it is more expensive.

This expense is important as well: we are lazy, greedy shaved apes, and we want as much as we can get for the least effort. Which includes heating, light and cooking for the least part of our income that we can get away with, leaving more of such cash for the other things in life. Trade-offs again: less heat, less power, less everything in fact, in return we get to delay global warming by, what, seven months? Assuming that we do something and no one else does, that is?

Let's come back to the great trade-off that we need to make up our minds on as a result of this new report. Yes, fracking causes earthquakes. So, do we go fracking for gas or don't we?

Do we all get to be warm and toasty for a century or more or do more pictures fall off Lancastrian walls as they shake and tremble alongside the piercing of Gaia's veil?

Put like that's it's pretty clear isn't it? Sorry, Blackpool.

[tooner 243]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2012/04/17/environment-fracking-earthquake-studies.html

 

Two separate studies are providing insights into the earth-shaking consequences of the controversial gas extraction process known as fracking.

Both studies confirm that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, can trigger manmade earthquakes. The process involves blasting water, sand and chemicals deep into the ground to fracture rock to obtain oil and natural gas.

Energy companies are increasingly using the technique across Canada, where there is already regular seismic activity and an ever looming threat of various sized tremors.

The U.S. Geological Survey is set to release its findings Wednesday that a "remarkable" increase of quakes in the U.S. midcontinent since 2001 is "almost certainly" the result of oil and gas production.

U.K. experts, meanwhile, point to a study released Monday that found recent earthquakes in northwest England were caused by fluid injection into a nearby fault zone as evidence fracking can be safe when conducted by responsible operators.

The consultants' report, commissioned by the U.K. government and published on Tuesday recommends that fracking should be halted temporarily if there is a tremor greater than magnitude 0.5 on the Richter scale. Cuadrilla Resources, a company that halted its fracking activities in northwestern England following tremors of magnitudes 2.3 and 1.5 in April and May last year, has said that is acceptable.

Opposition to fracking has ramped up since the release of the 2010 documentary "Gasland," which shows residents of small town Colorado setting alight tap water they charge was soured by nearby oil industry activity.

[LoveTheBobby 1]

Haven't the UK to meet EU directives on the amount of renewable energy we use (hence the increased windfarms/farmers becoming millionaires etc ?) Funny how this can be offset by allowing "chemicals" to be pumped into the ground . It fuckin stinks . Quite literally .

[Bizza 105]

Absolute lunacy, how pumping toxic chemicals into the ground can be anything but bad is beyond me. It might not get into the water table in the immediate future but surely at some point it will.

[JawD 39]

Because our water network is rock solid and wouldnt have leaks because of this, Mentalists.

[Gemmill 36113]

Osborne to offer tax breaks to any companies engaging in cracking in the UK. Nice one Gideon.

[Holden McGroin 5147]

Just watched Gasland.

 

Pretty scary stuff.

[MarsBruno 0]

Well...if they can fuck this up, imagine what the proposed nuclear dump in Cumbria is going to do to your health. Sleep tight kiddywinks, only 23 sleeps till xmas.

[Renton 18246]

Does anyone on this thread really have a clue about this? Any geologists for instance? Thought not.

[Happy Face 29]

None of us being geologists is no reason to shut down the conversation. None of us are Premier league mangaers either but we've got a helluva lot to say on Pardew and Newcastle.

 

Natural to be concerned about the effects of a process already banned in other European states being pushed through by a government opposed to regulation and more politically motivated by stimulating the economy than protecting the environment.

[Gemmill 36113]

Does anyone on this thread really have a clue about this? Any geologists for instance? Thought not.

 

Helmet.

[Alex 31032]

Helmet.

[Renton 18246]

None of us being geologists is no reason to shut down the conversation. None of us are Premier league mangaers either but we've got a helluva lot to say on Pardew and Newcastle.

 

Natural to be concerned about the effects of a process already banned in other European states being pushed through by a government opposed to regulation and more politically motivated by stimulating the economy than protecting the environment.

 

I love it when people trot out the tired football opinion cliche like it has any relevance. Fact is no one on this board has a Scooby about the environmental impact of fracking and the relative pros and cons of it. I had heard, for instance, it is more environmentally friendly than wind power in terms of CO2 emmisions, which is why the US are actually performing better than us on global warming targets. Bullshit? Maybe, maybe not. Which is why I'm not going to take an uninformed dogmatic view of it.

[JawD 39]

But surely any opinion is based on what knowledge you hold. If you hold little then you can still have an opinion, there's just a smaller chance of it being factually correct.

[Renton 18246]

I don't think there's any value on opinions held through ignorance. Which is what I expect is happening here.

 

We need energy. If tracking is such an environmental disaster I'd like concrete unbiased evidence of why this is the case, and what the alternatives are, before rejecting it out of hand.

[Happy Face 29]

I love it when people trot out the tired football opinion cliche like it has any relevance. Fact is no one on this board has a Scooby about the environmental impact of fracking and the relative pros and cons of it. I had heard, for instance, it is more environmentally friendly than wind power in terms of CO2 emmisions, which is why the US are actually performing better than us on global warming targets. Bullshit? Maybe, maybe not. Which is why I'm not going to take an uninformed dogmatic view of it.

 

Of course the football analogy has relevance. CT has produced volumes on that topic. We all talk about subjects we know little about. We learn from being involved in the conversations with other people who know more too. I went for a read on Wikipedia and that thanks to Gemmill's raising the issue and I learned a little. Not enough to say it shouldn't ever happen, but enough to find out that there's a big question mark.

[Happy Face 29]

I don't think there's any value on opinions held through ignorance. Which is what I expect is happening here.

 

We need energy. If tracking is such an environmental disaster I'd like concrete unbiased evidence of why this is the case, and what the alternatives are, before rejecting it out of hand.

 

Perfectly valid. Would you not also like that concrete unbiased evidence before granting licences?

[Renton 18246]

 

 

Perfectly valid. Would you not also like that concrete unbiased evidence before granting licences?

 

Depends what evidence you're talking about. It's almost impossible to prove something is completely safe without the benefit of hindsight. It's like the ridiculous argument the green peace luddites put up against GM crops.

Edited December 3, 2012 by Renton

[Happy Face 29]

Depends what evidence you're talking about. It's almost impossible to prove something is completely safe without the benefit of hindsight. It's like the ridiculous argument the green peace luddites put up against GM crops.

 

If we were talking mobile phone signals I agree we should proceed and monitor the alleged dangers. There's nothing to suggest it causes harm...until it causes harm. And we're constantly researching the dangers.

 

Drilling 8km down, pumping pressurised water and toxic chemicals into the crust of the earth, expanding cracks in the bedrock and withdrawing the valuable product, while leaving behind the toxic waste sounds harmful in the first instance, and probably needs some monitoring. Unfortunately the energy companies doing it tend not to invite outside geologists on site to monitor the process, in fact they collude with government to narrow the scope of whatever research is done. Hardly sounds like they believe it's more environmentally friendly than the wind.