Gasland The Dark side of Natural Gas

[vfx]

For those who thing Natural Gas is a "clean" burning transportation alternative to gasoline derived from oil or that using natural gas to create electricity is just OK for EV use give a listen or read this interview promoting the new film GASLAND The film's site has a short video you have to see!

Hydraulic fracturing is a process of injecting, at incredibly high pressure, a huge volume of water — they use between 2 and 7 million gallons of water per frack to fracture the rock formation.

Not so great for living things around it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=127593937

This should give you an idea of what is going on:

"The gas industry is very powerful, and their power in Congress is well shown. They were exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act by the 2005 Energy bill. The Safe Drinking Water Act monitors underground injection of toxin. They were also exempted in previous years from the Clean Air Act, the Superfund Law. ... It's an unregulated industry."

Related thread

[vfx]

There is now a video now online: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/613/index.html


Another audio to try:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/1...r_theo_colborn
Cheney got Congress to exempt fracking from the safe drinking water act and the EPA plans to take 2 years to study fracking.

[vfx]

CNN on the process:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/02/fra...ex.html?hpt=C2

Although hydraulic fracturing has been around for decades, it has never been done on such a massive scale so close to major population centers.

[SteveTheTech]

The NPR piece was what journalism really should be.

The stories of farmers being forced to sign their land rights over if a certain percentage of people in their communities have already signed is a shame and a sad sign of the lengths we (as Americans)are willing to allow companies and the government to take advantage of us and then get us to pay taxes on it.

In certain places and under certain circumstances this type of extraction strategy works very well and is very efficient.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8

Only time will tell.

[TEG]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/20...aby,-drill-now

[dpeilow]

Wyoming Air Pollution Worse Than Los Angeles Due To Gas Drilling

'Fracking' Disposal Sites Suspended, Likely Linked To Arkansas Earthquakes

[dpeilow]

Natural Gas From Fracking Emissions Can Double Those From Coal : TreeHugger

[William13]

The actual data given for the article is very old (from the 1990s), has poor sampling, makes biased assumptions (assuming that since methane was not considered a potent greenhouse gas in the 1990s that the measurements were under reported), claims gas and coal and oil final efficiencies are similar enough not to matter, claims 30% matters a lot in beginning of paper and that 10% doesn't near the end of the paper, and dismisses the relative home furnace efficiencies I quickly found on the Web (90-97% for methane and 56-80% for oil and no American domestic coal furnaces).

I hope that future studies fix these problems. Poorly done review studies only confuse the serious issues we face.

The New Scientist article criticizing wind power as potentially disrupting the weather (in another thread) is hyperboly at it's finest. The only risk occurs when windmills are everywhere. Even then the risk is way smaller than greenhouse gas concerns.

The methane from cattle may be a bigger risk.

There is risk with everything we do. Humans live longer, better, healthier (in spite of obesity, sedentary lifestyle and tobacco), happier, warmer, cooler, and more fulfilled than ever before in history. Flat earth lovers of the "egalitarian hunter gatherers" need only go to Borneo where there is over 30% male homicide rate.

As you can tell I appreciate technology. Model S #S234.

[JRP3]

I appreciate technology as well but it's consequences can't be ignored.

[Norbert]

Just How Green Is Natural Gas? - Technology Review