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Iceberg Ally Blues The Fracking Truth About Our Energy Future
by Ian R Thorpe.
According to geologists there is enough natural gas to fuel our electrical power needs
for hundreds of years trapped in layers of shale deep underground. Naturally these is
a lot of controversy about this. The watermelons (green on bthe outside, red on the
inside) are totally against is as exploiting the reserves would shift the balance of
power in the energy industry back towards the fossil fuel generators.
On the other hand there are many sensible commentators who are not screaming that
our bathtaps will pump gas into homes, lakes and rivers will burst into flames and we
will all be poisoned by toxic drinking water but are expressing sensible concerns
about what harmful longer term effects the process of extracting the shale gas might
have. Let's look at a few:
Feel the burn
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from Global research
'More than 70 years ago, a chemical attack was launched against Washington
State and Nevada. It poisoned people, animals, everything that grew, breathed
air, and drank water. The Marshall Islands were also struck. This formerly
pristine Pacific atoll was branded the most contaminated place in the world.
As their cancers developed, the victims of atomic testing and nuclear weapons
development got a name: downwinders. What marked their tragedy was the
darkness in which they were kept about what was being done to them. Proof of
harm fell to them, not to the U.S. government agencies responsible.
Now, a new generation of downwinders is getting sick as an emerging industry
pushes the next wonder technology in this case, high-volume hydraulic
fracturing. Whether they live in Texas, Colorado, or Pennsylvania, their
symptoms are the same: rashes, nosebleeds, severe headaches, difficulty
breathing, joint pain, intestinal illnesses, memory loss, and more. In my
opinion, says Yuri Gorby of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, what we see
unfolding is a serious health crisis, one that is just beginning.'
from Eco Watch
'Wilber, author of the 2012 book Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortunes and the
Fate of the Marcellus Shale, said the natural gas industry is different than
almost every other type of industry in terms of the exemptions and the
nondisclosure agreements under which it operates. All of this secrecy, doesnt
give people a true idea of what all of the risks are, he explained. And part of
my job is to show what the industry is rather than just the glossy public
relations image of itself.
Methane migration is a particularly hot-button issue in the overall discussion
on fracking. Wilber has written extensively on the topic and understands that
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methane does occur naturally in water wells.
But as for Dimock, PA, one of the battleground towns where the industry and
local residents have fought over the issue of methane migration, Wilber
reminds his readers that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection (DEP)often perceived by anti-fracking activists as a friend of
industryconcluded that the methane polluting the aquifer under the town was
thermogenic, from deeper producing formations, rather than biogenic or
naturally occurring gas that collects in shallow seeps.'
For and Against Fracking E & T (Engineering and Technology Magazine)
For:
Shale Gas refers to natural gas trapped within sedimentary shale rock
formations and is found abundantly in many regions of the world. Recent
advances in technology such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing
(fracking) have meant that access to this valuable resource is now
viable.Onshore oil and gas exploration is the best, most transformative energy
story since the transition from coal to oil a century ago. This is because what
we are getting is a far cleaner and more economic source of energy than its
predecessors or competitors. Even though gas is a fossil fuel in replacing coal
for electricity - which is the global goal - it means that we can reduce CO2
emissions by more than 50 per cent. It is also a secure source of energy because
it is globally ubiquitous.
Against:
As any good engineer knows, a complex system will consist of many parts with
potentially many dependencies between them. Changes in one part of a system
can have knock-on effects in many other places. The system that is human
society is particularly large, complex and interdependent, but this does not
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make it immune from the physical laws that govern all systems. This system is,
at present, fuelled almost entirely by fossil fuels but this is a relatively recent
phenomenon. Fossil fuels are finite though, and the rate at which they are being
burned is staggering. After slowing in the 1970s, growth in extraction has
almost ground to a halt in the last decade. While this has come as no surprise to
those familiar with the work of M King Hubbard, the economists were right
about one thing; that shortages would raise prices, which would encourage new
extraction techniques. The question is whether this is a good thing or not.
*
So with the jury still out on shale gas, wind and solar proving unreliable and
nowhere near as efficient even under optimal condistions as the scientists claimed
they would be, where do we look to keep the lights on and the wheels turning and to
met the growing demand for energy from the developing world? Fossil fuels perhaps.
Unless the vested interests that have kept the inventions ofNicola Tesla and his
scalar wave technology under lock and key for over a century suddenly relent, there
seem to be no alternatives.
Which leads us to iceberg alley.
Follow the coast of
Northern Canada from Baffin
Bay down to Newfoundland
and you have passed through
Iceberg Alley. In the past 200
years, a recorded 560 collisions
between ships and icebergs
have taken place with many
lives lost. In 1982 waves up to
65 feet high sank a drilling ship, the Ocean Ranger, killing 84 people.
Why the hell would anybody go looking for oil in such a place? you might wellask.
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In 2010 however a British oil exploration company started on the first of four
planned exploratory projects in this inhospitable place. Although the United States
and Canada have suspended the issue of permits for drilling in the Arctic, Greenland
is allowing Scottish firm Cairn Energy to start exploration operations.
This desperation for new oil supplies puts into context the oil spill in the Gulf of
Mexico this year when for three months a broken well gushed crude oil into the
waters of the Gulf. How could it happen? people asked. "Why were we drilling at
such depths that the reliability of the equipment was a completely unknown quantity
and if things did go wrong it could be somewhere between very difficult and
impossible to put them right? As Dr Peter Linke, of Germanys Leibnitz Institute of
Marine Sciences, points out, the risk multiplies exponentially in deep water. Prof
Robert Bea, of the University of California, adds: We are taking risks we do not
understand.
The answer to that is we must take such risks because we have no option. We
have no option but to drill in the Arctic.
"Yeah, but....no, but .... yeah, but," you say, "what about alternatives. What about
wind, solar, biomass?"
Why is our apparently unquenchable thirst for
fuel is driving us into ever more difficult and
dangerous territory, risking even more damaging
spills than the one from the stricken Deepwater
Horizon rig. Why are we putting lives and fragile,
ecologically important environments at risk.
According to figures from the US Energy
Information Agency the amount of oil consumed
PER DAY in the United States during 2008 was a
whisker short of 19,500,000 barrels. With 42 gallons per barrel that is over 800
million gallons a day. Looking at higher end estimates of how much oil flowed into
the gulf from the Deepwater Horizon rig blowout (74,000 barrels per day) and if we
say the spill lasted approximately 100 days that gives a total of 310,000,000 gallons
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of oil spilled.
Nobody is saying that is good. It's effing terrible in fact, but it is still less than
half a normal day's oil consumption for the United States. Seriously, with feet planted
firmly on planet reality how long does anyone think it will be before we have
developed the technologies to supply energy on that scale to meet the needs of all the
world's 6.8 billion people and not just the 300+ million who live in the U.S.A.?
Thirty years? Forty years?
Meanwhile as the vast populations of China and India begin to enjoy the rising
living standards that go with industrialisation, as the teeming masses of Indonesia
(280 million) Pakistan (240 million) Bangla Desh (160 million) and other developing
nations start to demand their fair share of the goodies then in spite of the efforts by
leaders of the developed nations (and what contribution to global warming do they
make through all the hot air generated by their expensive chinwags in the world's
most exclusive hotels and resorts?) the demand for oil will go on rising.
And so we keep drilling despite the risks.
The warm waters of the Gulf, located in a relatively benign climate and close to
Texas where the leading experts in oil well technology and disaster containment are
based is a difficult enough place to work at depth of up to 5000 feet. The Arctic is
going to be a lot worse. Apart from the winter temperatures which affect the
capabilities of both men and machines, it is very remote. The nearest stores of booms
and dispersal chemicals are thousands of miles away, and there are no big ports or
international airfields nor even good road and rail links. It would be very difficult to
even get the right personnel and equipment to the site of a blowout and twice as
difficult again for them to perform effectively. The extreme conditions make an
accidents and loss of life much more likely.
With no reliable technology for cleaning oil in icy water and the sheer
impossibility of working under seas that freeze for half of the year a spill that began
in autumn could flow for six months until the spring thaw arrived and allowed work
to get under way. And the natural micro-organisms that help degrade oil in warmer
waters cant do the job in colder seas.
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Ideally we would decide to let the oil lie on its reservoirs under Iceberg Alley.
But look again at that 800,000,000 gallons per day the United States needs just to
keep the show on the road. As Iceberg Alley is estimated to contain between 10 and
15% of the world's known remaining oil reserves letting it stay in the ground is a
luxury we cannot afford.
The coming decades promise to be a rough ride in many ways. We must learn to
cope with disasters in the form of oil spills, floods, famines, heatwaves, droughts, big
chills and "all the heartache and the thousand shocks that flesh is heir to."
Humans will cope, will survive, we always do (and if we fail nobody wi;ll be left
to care). We will equip ourselves to survive so much better however if we learn to
ignore the Fear and Panic merchants and rather than addressing problems that might
or might not arise because some mathematical model says we should we prepare for
what we know may go wrong and deal only with real problems as and when they
arise.
Guide for Calculating Energy Equivalents
I have no doubt that the truth hating Warmageddonist liberals will try to use lies,
distortions and misrepresentations to suggest all the information in the above article
is fralse. To counter that I have provided information to facilitate checking of the
quoted figures.
The amount of energy represented by one gigajoule is equivalent to about 30 litres of
gasoline, 39 litres of propane, 278 kilowatt-hours of electricity or 45.5 kilograms of
coal (source)
Energy Units and Conversions
1 Joule (J) is the MKS unit of energy, equal to the force of one Newton acting
through one meter.
1 Watt is the power of a Joule of energy per second
Power = Current x Voltage (P = I V)
1 Watt is the power from a current of 1 Ampere flowing through 1 Volt.
1 kilowatt is a thousand Watts.
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1 kilowatt-hour is the energy of one kilowatt power flowing for one hour. (E = P t).
1 calorie of heat is the amount needed to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Centigrade.
1 calorie (cal) = 4.184 J
(The Calories in food ratings are actually kilocalories.)
A BTU (British Thermal Unit) is the amount of heat necessary to raise one pound of
water by 1 degree Farenheit (F).
1 British Thermal Unit (BTU) = 1055 J (The Mechanical Equivalent of Heat
Relation)
1 BTU = 252 cal = 1.055 kJ
1 Quad = 1015 BTU (World energy usage is about 300 Quads/year, US is about 100
Quads/year in 1996.)
1 therm = 100,000 BTU
1,000 kWh = 3.41 million BTU
Power Conversion.
1 horsepower (hp) = 745.7 watts
Gas Volume to Energy Conversion
One thousand cubic feet of gas (Mcf) -> 1.027 million BTU = 1.083 billion J = 301
kWh
One therm = 100,000 BTU = 105.5 MJ = 29.3 kWh
1 Mcf -> 10.27 therms
Energy Content of Fuels
Coal 25 million BTU/ton
Crude Oil 5.6 million BTU/barrel
Oil 5.78 million BTU/barrel = 1700 kWh / barrel
Gasoline 5.6 million BTU/barrel (a barrel is 42 gallons) = 1.33 therms /
gallon
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Natural gas liquids 4.2 million BTU/barrel
Natural gas 1030 BTU/cubic foot
Wood 20 million BTU/cord
CO2 Pollution of Fossil Fuels
Pounds of CO2 per billion BTU of energy:
Coal 208,000 pounds
Oil 164,000 pounds
Natural Gas 117,000 pounds
Ratios of CO2 pollution:
Oil / Natural Gas = 1.40
Coal / Natural Gas = 1.78
Pounds of CO2 per 1,000 kWh, at 100% efficiency:
Coal 709 pounds
Oil 559 pounds
Natural Gas 399 pounds
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While the warmists rant about carbon and the Church of Scienceology Cult rave about climate
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at the bottom lead to our posts on population and water scarcity.
How Our Creature Comforts Are Baking The World
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The Futility Of Wind Farms.
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eventually leads nowhere. Wind turbines look fine on paper. If they generate at their optimum
output for 365 days a year the contribution to energy needs looks like a viable business proposition.
The problem is due to the limitations of the technology and the vagaries of the weather wind farms
are doing well if they operate at a quarter of their potential
output.
Climate Change Crooks And Liars
Though climate change alarmists claim that that "the science is settled" no longerr holds water the
arguments rage on. If anything they are getting more heated as the climate science lobby, knocked
from the moral high grounds show their true colours. But more and more evidence is showing the
climate change science was never settled and the global warming Armageddonists had built their
whole case on very flimsy evidence.
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Thinking Is Bad For The Planet
Green Scaremongering
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