1] If the question is “Is fracking safe?”, then the answer is YES, it’s safe for the oil companies, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it. Is it safe for the locals? Well, if history is any indication, then NO, there will be a massive economic and environmental toll to pay, using tax dollars, which oil companies don’t pay. But, hey, three and a half a gallon at the pump, buck-o, what’s your problem?
2] Ethanol production starts with extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and ends with releasing it back out … thus it’s said to be “carbon neutral”. This addresses the pollution issues, if you happen to believe CO2 is a pollutant. I believe they make auto engines in Brazil that run on ethanol alone, maybe this addresses the efficiency issues. WARNING: Don’t even run E10 in your boat, ethanol is hydroscopic, meaning it attracts water. You don’t want your engine water-fouled when the tide’s going out.
3] Is there a reference on the claim that cows are 30% efficient? I thought that was more like 5% at the slaughterhouse, half that if you include trucking and grilling. That 16 ounce steak used 50 pounds of corn.
4] This article is off-topic (3053/what-s-the-likeliest-doomsday-scenario), but we do need to stipulate we remain “Absent a breakthrough in solar power, …”. We bathe in kilo-Joules half the day long, that’s enough energy to give one cancer. Plants use it, why can’t we? Maybe we’re not as highly evolved as we think we are.
5] The Pacific Northwest has always used 100% renewable energy sources for the production of electricity. I’m paying 7.8 cents per kW hr, and I’ve seen 4.8 cents at my mum’s house. The negative is salmon populations are down 99.9%, but the fishermen who use E10 gasoline in their boats haven’t been complaining.
Its one thing to subsidize solar panels in the hope that solar panels will one day become cost competitive with electricity off the grid.
Is ethanol like that? Are we hoping that as we use more ethanol, the return will increase to 800% like sugar cane?
I don’t know if you realize how important cheap gas is to our economy right now. If gas rose to $6/gallon we would enter another recession. So there is a massive economic toll to pay for NOT fracking.
As far as economic and environmental tolls for oil fracking. They seem minimal.
Carbon neutral and not very efficient.
Yeah but I can’t really build steaks any better or cheaper than corn feed.
I can make gasoline better and cheaper than ethanol.
Fish can breathe in water, why can’t we? Perhaps we aren’t as highly evolved as we think we are.:rolleyes:
Let me know when you reach grid parity with solar.
Looks like 80% but its still a big number. And I’m OK with economically feasible hydro projects (its effectively another form of solar power). Hell I’m OK with any economically feasible power source. So make it economically feasible and I’ll bite.
What I don’t like is when people act like we need to turn our backs on fossil fuels in order for renewables to have a chance to develop or soemthing. That is bullshit.
The Pacific Northwest uses mostly hydroelectric for its renewable energy. Now, don’t get me wrong-- Hydro is great. It’s carbon-neutral, its environmental impact is strictly local, it’s both reliable and fast-responding, and it’s cheaper even than fossil fuels. It’s pretty much got everything you could want from a power source. If we could produce 100% of our needs with hydro, I’d be overjoyed.
But we can’t. Hydro power is only practical where you’ve got high-volume rivers that significantly drop in elevation. And because it has all of those great properties I’ve mentioned, we already have a hydro dam nearly everywhere that it’s practical to put one. There’s almost no room for expansion, and the places that don’t currently have much hydro power will never have much hydro power.
Yes, but after listening to the latest candidates for Governor and Lt Governor, I bet Texas has a surprising amount of gas and hot air. Certainly, there’s enough supply of that to provide the entire country with power for the next 100 years.
Other way around. Texas in a drought isn’t great for hydro power, but hydro power is great for Texas in a drought. Most hydro dams are also water management dams, especially in a dry area like Texas, and those reservoirs can help you get through droughts.
It keeps the water from flowing out out to the ocean. So unless you’re telling me that none of the water makes it out to the ocean as it is, having dams can help retain water even if they aren’t producing hydro power.
One steak feeds you one meal, 50 pounds of corn feeds you for a week.
The question isn’t whether we should or shouldn’t frack, but whether it’s safe to do so. I think the larger issue is to whom we assign the burden of proof … should the oil companies be made to prove it’s safe before we let them continue … or do we wait until the tufu-puking, NPR-listening, liberal-whack-job environmentalists to prove it’s unsafe … or (my favorite) turn ELF loose.
Hydropower in the West Texas desert … better to build windmills instead. Global warming is good news for Texas … although Houston will be underwater, the rest of Texas should be sub-tropical rain forest.
If your house sits on land below, say, 20 feet above sea-level right now … seriously … I’d move.
The lakes might be dry now, but they’d have dried up even quicker without the dams. Dams help with droughts, but they don’t completely solve every drought-related problem ever.
I would be a lot less hesitant to bash fracking if it wasn’t for this “proprietary” liquid mess that is being pumped into the earth that nobody, not even those doing the pumping, seem to be able to tell us the ingredient list.
I understand the need for companies who come up with these things to ensure that nobody steals their ideas and work. But those companies have to know that if they were more forthcoming with the contents that there would be less resistance to fracking which would make their job selling the stuff easier.
Unless they really don’t want us to know what’s in that crap…
Considering how fast the oil companies have jumped on this technique, I’d say they want to get the extraction done before we find out.
Update from Hanford, they’ve stopped pumping because of hydrogen gas build-up. They’ll miss the 2014 deadline for the low-level radioactive containment. The tanks leaking the high level radiation is still on schedule for a 2065 containment deadline.
My understanding is that that study you reference focuses on fracking at natural gas production sites. Is it not possible that the numbers used in the OP relate to fracking at oil production sites? I’d assume that a natural gas site would want to preserve as much NG as possible, while my understanding is that oil sites are perfectly fine with letting NG burn off, float away, etc.
I find it frustrating that these arguments appear to be sufficient to kill the idea of 100% renewable energy so easily for so many.
We take a few issues, most of which could be fairly trivially worked around, and hold them up as a reason not to take the entire notion seriously. And to suggest that it’s not a way forward due to potential environmental damage is to totally ignore both advances in renewable technology which greatly reduce these problems, as well as the considerable damage caused by our current energy choices. I hear people talking about wind farm bird strike and totally failing to mention the devastating effects that the loss of habitat to fossil fuel related activity and the changing climate are having nd will continue to have on these populations.
Generally speaking, across the range of renewable energy sources, it is widely believed there is sufficient energy to meet our requirements, both present and future. What we lack is the political and societal will to initiate the change.
Yes, it’s complex and requires development and a lot of infrastructure, but the fact that it cannot be done in the next 10 or 20 years is not a reason to never start. And the observation made in point 2 of the original article is essentially valid. If we don’t have the infrastructure and alternative systems on hand when our current energy sources are exhausted then we will be in a very bad place, to put it mildly.
At the very least, we need to accept that the infrastructure is going to take a long time to change and stop using it as a reason for inaction. I mean, the existing infrastructure, from the coal mines, gas and oil fields, refineries, pipelines, trains, trucks, tankers, filling stations, power plants, transformers, transmission and distribution lines, and hundreds of millions of gasoline, kerosene, diesel, and fuel oil engines didn’t just spring up overnight. I couldn’t put a figure on it, but we’d have to be looking at some of the most extensive and costly infrastructure ever made by man. We’re talking trillions of dollars over multiple generations.
I think the widely accepted reality is that this infrastructure cannot continue indefinitely. It will take a massive investment of money and time to transfer to an alternative infrastructure, and the idea that the replacement would be best if it was both renewable and (relatively) clean should not be too controversial.
From what I can see, there are no substantial technological or economic barriers to achieving this goal, and yet the discussion and calls to inaction continue while the clock keeps ticking. While we wait, the window of opportunity to limit the effects of climate change slowly and irrevocably closes.
At any rate, that is the way I see it.
Here is some further reading on reliability and costs of a 100% renewable global energy supply, if anyone is interested in having a read.
Its not blinding us to the potential problems. The money is part of what makes it a viable energy option.
So are the lakebeds dry all year or does water make it to the ocean at any time of the year because with good dams, none of the water ever has to make it to the ocean.
Don’t we have a patent system for that?
At current prices? Who believes that? or are you saying that with infinite money we could meet all our energy needs with renewable energy?
Yes, and every one of those pipelines were built with profit in mind. Every one of those coal mines were dug with profit in mind. Maybe the government can engage in some basic research but if we can’t make solar energy cost competitive, we will simply have to wait until energy costs rise until they are cost competitive. Sour crude was practically worthless for a long time because the cost of extraction and refining was simply not cost competitive with cheap light sweet crude. Now with oil prices where they are, sour crude is being refined. So either the cost of solar panels drop to match coal or the cost of coal rises to match the cost of solar panels.
I missed this when you posted. But since the thread is active again, albeit somewhat incoherently, I see it now.
You’re making a distinction between sites that doesn’t really exist. Approximating greatly, the determination whether to keep NG or burn it depends more on if you have somewhere to put it (e.g. a pipe) than on anything else.
I saw an article – I believe in The Washington Post, although I cannot now cite it – which strongly implied one reason Congress was unhappy about fracking was that at one point the companies doing the fracking asked Congress for permission to keep their proprietary fracking fluid formulas secret, and Congress consented, explicitly under condition that benzene was not in the formulas. When the above-cited report came out, it was clear (as reading the report shows) that benzene was in a lot of the formulas. Congress was (supposedly) furious that the companies had blandly claimed “no benzene” to keep their formulas out of the public eye and, in fact, used benzene. Not unlike God saying “thou shalt eat of any tree but this one,” they were unhappy to have their authority flouted so cavalierly.
It disturbs me that alot of people seem to misunderstand hydro dams. Some fool even went as far as to claim the amount of water going out is less than the amount coming in.
This violates basic physics, although to a small extent, they may be 1/2 right: Nearly all hydro dams are designed to be far too large for the area. At this ridiculous size, they tend to leak alot of water into the ground.
But at the time they were first used for electricity, they were trying to keep up with coal power. The only way to do that was to flatten a huge pile of land and use the resulting pressure to make up the difference.
Some hippies and environmentalists seem to have developed a rather stupid aversion to this type of power in the meantime, but the fact is a responsibly sized hydro station is no threat at all to any part of the surrounding environment.
I’ve said before, these free energy sources don’t (or shouldn’t) produce alot of power at one spot. It seems to mostly be the american/capitalist way to suck everything out of something until it blows up in your face, instead of building smaller, long term, more efficient systems like the rest of the world does. Fracking is of course, a perfect example of this.
In fact, humans have been using the potential energy of rainwater for longer than we have records for. Including water wheels to power flour mills, and wheels powering religious ‘artifacts’ in order to impress potential believers in the roman ages when the christians were 1st trying to wow everyone with how great their religion was.
Anyway, that’s just hydro dams. I have several (very inefficient by todays standards) solar cells that have lasted over 30 years, despite what someone else thinks about maintenance, but that’s another story.