Fracking

[KeithE]

I used to be fairly positive about fracking (1/2 the carbon footprint than oil) but experience has shown it is:

dangerous- read the litany in the “archives” at the right.

depletes our dwindling water supply -

polluting -

causes earthquakes -

causes methane release -

and it’s capacity is not really that great. -

Short term profits - no doubt, but not wise.

[Mrs Haruo]

I was impressed that the City of Santa Clara CA had water from it's own wells when I first moved there, instead of importing it from far away places like most surrounding cities. No rationing like most surrounding towns when we were in a serious drought around 1977. As the electronics industry boomed in the area it was billed as a "Clean Industry". Not so when manufacturing chemicals were in many cases, dumped in the back yard. Soon those who worked for the water company weren't drinking Santa Clara water. We had small babies at home and started on bottled water service for drinking and cooking water. When I read in the local paper that our bottled water company was drilling a well in their parking lot a mile from our house and in the middle of the industrial section of town, I asked some very hard questions and got some very evasive answers. Don't try to fool the daughter of a chemist with a major in mining engineering. I didn't sleep through science classes either. If I lit a match to my kitchen faucet and it turned into a little Bunsen burner, I would be one angry mother.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Presume you are right re: GW & drought. Would any measures taken by the US since 1970 have mattered if the country adopted any and all climate change proposals during that period?

[KeithE]

[David Flick]

[David Flick]

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

I'm trying, duh, to get you to say that if the US had aggressively implemented co2 restrictions and whatever else was proposed would it have affected the global climate situation such that the present drought would have been reduced or avoided?

[Dave Roberts]

William, I don't think any of us know how all the models of the universe work. I guess I am willing to err on the side of caution rather than on the side of big risks. As far as I can tell, this is the only earth we will ever have until the vision of Revelation 21 is fulfilled.

[William Thornton]

[Sandy]

I've become fairly interested in Marcellus shale gas extraction in the past four years, and particularly in the past year, since I now live in and work on top of a gas reservoir with three wells within a mile and a half. Both the school and my house utilize well water, but our water table is less than 200 feet down, well above the shale layer. When they first started fracking, about four years ago, the water level in the lake behind us was unexplainably dropping. Apparently, a well being developed about three miles away caused the dam to settle and leak. In our county, we haven't had any problems so far. South of us, in Washington and Greene Counties, where the gas field is much larger, the well explosions and blow outs are getting hard to count.

My biggest aggravation with the whole thing is that the companies who are extracting the gas, and making quite a pile of profit, aren't paying taxes. That's right. Zip, nada, nothing. Gas reserves in Pennsylvania will amount to the greatest energy extraction in the state's history, several trillion dollars worth of natural gas by the time they get it all, and the state will not realize a single penny from it, until a new legislature and governor come along and put a stop to it. The energy companies threatened to boycott development if the state levied a tax on the production, and the Republican lackeys who had been bought off by campaign contributions did their bidding. They even let two of the companies write the regulation legislation, which puts the burden for environmental cleanup on the state. I don't doubt that your information on environmental impact is correct, Keith. But this is another egregious example of the power of profiteering and corporate dictatorship. Money talks and it usually gets what it wants.

[William Thornton]

I don't disagree. Here in GA some of the poorest counties are rich with kaolin. The kaolin industry is powerful enough to bypass local gummits and get what they want from the state legislature, e.g., no extractive taxes.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

NYT says connecting GW to CA drought is hooey.

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

Back to fracking. More announced today.

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[Mrs Haruo]

Thanks for the graphs, Keith. They help me reconstruct my own timeline of letters from relatives up and down the west coast and into the Rockies. You can argue "Gummint" this and warmer earth and future ice age all you want, but it's the people that mean the most to me. Dad's memories of a caravan of "Okies" coming thru the little town near where he lived in Southern Idaho, and wanting to join the other kids in throwing rocks and jeering "Keep going, Get out of town", and as a 12 year old, knowing it was wrong, but he said it was the first time he had seen families poorer than his, and it made him feel superior and ashamed at the same time.
When the San Francisco Bay area had a water shortage, most water companies to imposed limits on how many gallons a household was allowed each month, and if you went over your quota, fines could be imposed and you could have a nasty surprise in your next water bill. Or your water could be turned off if you continued to use more than your allotment. With a brand new baby in the house, the question of cloth vs. disposable diapers became much more of an issue if you had to figure out how much of your allotment would go to the laundry room, the same thing with washing bottles and making formula with tap water that often tasted "Off" . I was glad I was a nursing mom. I figured that no matter how rough things got, I could feed my baby if I had enough to eat and drink.
My aunt's orange grove was another worry. If the trees didn't get enough water and gave a poor crop-- or dried up entirely, that was a kick in the family's income for the year. Arguing over theories and graphs and government policy is one thing. Being personally effected in your day to day life is another. When the entire neighborhood seems to have given up on baths and sent the kids to the city pool to get chlorinated, the water gets kinda thick.

[David Flick]

[William Thornton]

Keith, I thought that when the NYT disagrees with Obama on a GW conclusion it was both newsworthy and something that you would be intrigued about. As for which models I believe in, I am agnostic and you are better at telling me what you believe than what I believe. The whole business is smoke and mirrors, climatological alchemy, impenetrable to laypeople but valuable to those seeking funding.

[KeithE]

[KeithE]