Greenie Weenie Flip Flops

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

The ability to produce clean burning natural gas from shale could transform the global energy economy. Right now we burn about 7 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas to generate about 24 percent of the electricity used in the United States. The U.S. burns a total of 23 tcf annually to heat homes and to supply industrial processes as well produce electricity. Burning coal produces about 45 percent of U.S. electricity.

A rough calculation suggests that 100 percent of coal-powered electricity generation could be replaced by burning an additional 14 tcf of natural gas, boosting overall consumption to 37 tcf per year. The EIA estimates total U.S. natural gas reserves at 2,543 tcf. This suggests that the U.S. has enough natural gas to last about 70 years if it entirely replaced the current level of coal-powered electricity generation.

Similarly, it would be notionally possible to replace the entire current U.S. gasoline consumption with about 17 tcf of natural gas per year. So replacing coal and gasoline immediately would require burning 54 tcf annually, implying a nearly 50 year supply of natural gas.

What about the greenhouse gas implications? The EIA estimates that the U.S. emitted 5.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2009 (the last year for which figures are available). Burning coal emitted 1.75 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Similarly, burning petroleum in the transportation sector emitted 1.7 billion metric tons of CO2, of which about two-thirds came from consuming gasoline. By comparison, the natural gas burned to generate electricity emitted 373 million metric tons of CO2. A rough calculation suggests that replacing coal and gasoline with natural gas would reduce overall U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by about 25 percent.

Given its greenhouse gas benefits, environmental activists initially welcomed shale gas. For example, in August 2009 prominent liberals Timothy Wirth and John Podesta, writing on behalf of the Energy Future Coalition, hailed shale gas as “a bridge fuel to a 21st-century energy economy that relies on efficiency, renewable sources, and low-carbon fossil fuels such as natural gas.” The same year, environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr., head of the Waterkeeper Alliance, declared in the Financial Times, “In the short term, natural gas is an obvious bridge fuel to the ‘new’ energy economy.”

That was then, but this is now. Practically en masse, the herd of independent minds that constitutes the environmentalist community has now collectively decided that natural gas is a “bridge to nowhere.” Why? In his excellent overview, The Shale Gas Shock [download], published last week by the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation, journalist Matt Ridley explains: “As it became apparent that shale gas was a competitive threat to renewable energy as well as to coal, the green movement has turned against shale.”

http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/10/environmentalists-were-for-fr
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__________________
A_J's corollary #3, “The New Age Liberal maintains contradictory positions comfortably compartmentalized. (This is because the New Age Liberal is a creature that believes in consensus as a short-cut to an examination of the facts and a reasoned judgment about said facts.)”

 

[Byron In Exile]

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What do 262E and 270C mean?

 

[Powertone]

just say NO to energy

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

What do 262E and 270C mean?

http://www.stangnet.com/mustang-forums/833992-hitech-stg-2-vs-comp-262s-vs-comp-270s.html

Poor, poor IBMr's...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

just say NO to energy

We must become Walden Pond, reading and writing poetry by candlelight...

I wanna kill cops!
Their heads we lops!
It never ever stops!
Cap Bush in the chops!

"I'm in the Wright House bay-bee, rap all night 'cause I shoot all day, Wright House baybee..."
__________________
A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States...,
John P. Holdren
White House Office of Science and Technology Director

 

[Byron In Exile]

http://www.stangnet.com/mustang-forums/833992-hitech-stg-2-vs-comp-262s-vs-comp-270s.html

Poor, poor IBMr's...

But why do you put them at the end of your post?

 

[off2bed]

I thought this was a thread about those sandals made from recycled tires.

 

[zipman]

When I traveled through northeastern Pennsylvania in March for my TIME cover story on shale natural gas, it wasn't hard to find unhappy homeowners like Sherry Vargason. Vargason, who lives on a cattle farm in rural Bradford County, has leased her land for shale-gas exploration, and a well was drilled a few hundred feet from her front door. Not long after, she began to experience problems with her water, which comes from an underground well on her property. It turned out she had unusually high levels of methane in her water — so high, in fact, that it posed an explosive threat to her home.

Methane is the main component of natural gas, and Vargason naturally connected the methane in her water to the gas operation just outside her home. But though the gas company installed a venting system on her well to reduce methane buildup, it denied there was any connection between drilling and contamination — a position the industry as a whole has maintained for years. "Unless you can prove how the contamination came, you can't do anything about it," Vargason told me.
(See "Frack: Is Shale Natural Gas Worse for the Climate than Coal?")

As it turns out, however, that proof may not be so elusive. A new study published in the May 9 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that methane levels in water wells near shale-gas hydrofracking sites are 17 times higher than they are in wells that are far from shale-gas operations. The peer-reviewed paper is the first independent scientific confirmation of something advocates, environmentalists and homeowners have passionately argued, and that the gas industry has vociferously denied. "We found a clear relationship between how near someone's drinking water was to a gas well and the concentration of methane in the water," says Robert Jackson, the director of Duke University's Center on Global Change and a co-author of the PNAS study.

The Duke researchers collected and analyzed water samples from 68 private groundwater wells across five counties in northeastern Pennsylvania and New York State where hydrofracking is taking place. Sixty of those wells were tested for dissolved methane, and most of those showed some levels of the gas. That's not terribly unusual — low levels of methane are often present in groundwater in that region, a fact that gas companies constantly cite when defending themselves from accusations of environmental contamination. But the study found that the water samples taken closest to gas wells had concentrations of methane that reached the dangerous level, enough to require urgent "hazard mitigation" action. And the researchers can say with confidence that the methane in the affected water wells came from drilling; they analyzed the dissolved gas — generating a sort of chemical fingerprint — and found that it was thermogenic methane, which comes from the same rock layers targeted by gas drillers.
(See TIME's cover story "Could Shale Gas Power the World?")

While the results are alarming, it's important to put them in perspective. Even if methane from drilling was clearly getting into water supplies, the researchers found no evidence that the chemicals used in the fracking process or the toxic wastewater left over after a fracking job had contaminated groundwater. Methane — while potentially explosive — doesn't pose a known health risk in water. "This is good news and bad news for companies and homeowners," says Jackson. "We did find methane a lot more often than we expected, but there was no evidence of fracking fluid."

Jackson theorizes that the methane most likely escaped through leaky well casings close to the surface, at the depth at which groundwater is found, though he couldn't rule out the possibility of gas escaping via underground fractures created during the fracking process. Still, the study should alleviate — for now — environmentalist fears of fracking chemicals and wastewater toxifying groundwater supplies.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2070533,00.html#ixzz1M3nJZx4W

 

[Karen Kraft]

What do 262E and 270C mean?

When you add 262 and 270, you get 532.

Then multiply the E and C and obtain EC ( European recognized "energy constant").

Using simple arithmetic we see that the product is 532 / EC.

Use this number to compare energy expended in obtaining grants, as a factor of gross energy subsequently yielded. Allow 2 hours per day for lunch. It's free.

 

[Byron In Exile]

When you add 262 and 270, you get 532.

Then multiply the E and C and obtain EC ( European recognized "energy constant").

Using simple arithmetic we see that the product is 532 / EC.

Use this number to compare energy expended in obtaining grants, as a factor of gross energy subsequently yielded. Allow 2 hours per day for lunch. It's free.

0x262E = 9774, 0x270C = 9996.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

But why do you put them at the end of your post?

Oh, you poor IBM'r, We Mac people see the Mercedes Peace Symbol and the two finger Peace Symbol...

 

[Byron In Exile]

Oh, you poor IBM'r, We Mac people see the Mercedes Peace Symbol and the two finger Peace Symbol...

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n307/byroninexile/hh/ebcdic.jpg

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

You see computer commands, I see turkey feathers for Thanksgiving Art.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

More on pending legislation:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/how_to_switch_to_cng_while_sav.html

 

[off2bed]

Oh, you poor IBM'r, We Mac people see the Mercedes Peace Symbol and the two finger Peace Symbol...

It's not a Mac/Windows thing. My Windows computer sees your images.