The UK should be going mad for fracking

[American_Jihad]

James Lovelock: The UK should be going mad for fracking

6/15/12 By Leo Hickman

Scientist James Lovelock is the man behind Gaia theory, and once predicted doom for our climate. He discusses nuclear (good), wind power (bad) and why fracking is the future

James Lovelock is packing up. In one sense, the celebrated scientist and environmental author is simply moving house. Boxes and piles of unsorted papers scatter the floor of his home and "experimental station" located in a wooded valley on the Cornwall-Devon border. But, in another sense, at the age of 92, he is finally leaving his life of scientific study and invention behind; a career that included the formulation of the Gaia theory, his highly influential hypothesis that the Earth is a self-regulating, single organism. His personal effects, notebooks and equipment are being logged and archived ahead of entering London's Science Museum's collection later this year.

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Indeed, earlier this year he admitted to MSNBC in an interview reported around the world with somewhat mocking headlines along the lines of "Doom-monger recants", that he had been "extrapolating too far" in reaching such a conclusion and had made a "mistake" in claiming to know with such certainty what will happen to the climate.

But Lovelock is relaxed about how this reversal might be perceived. He says being allowed to change your mind and follow the evidence is one of the liberating marvels of being an independent scientist, something he has revelled in since leaving Nasa, his last full-time employer, in the late 1960s.

He says it will be the topic of his latest book, due out next year, which has the working title Adventures of a Lone Scientist. He smiles: "My publisher keeps telling me: 'Can't you do a more cheery book this time?'"

Moving house has handed Lovelock the chance to pore over the everyday objects resulting from his life's work, most of which have been in the attic for decades. He picks up an undated invitation to MI5's Christmas dinner at a restaurant in London. In his other hand, he holds an old envelope stamped: "On Her Majesty's Service: Top secret." (As a freelance scientist, he's worked for many organisations.) There are get-well cards from the likes of the astronomer Carl Sagan, sent when he had heart problems in the early 1980s.

He finally finds the letter from Nasa: "I'd read science-fiction since I was a small kid, so when I got a letter from the director of space flight at Nasa I was gobsmacked. I realised I didn't want to spend the rest of my life as a civil servant, and I didn't like the idea of having everything planned right up to my retirement. My boss [at the National Institute for Medical Research in London] said I'd be a fool to ignore it and out of all that, ultimately, came Gaia."

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Lovelock says he's doubtful that internationalist efforts of this sort achieve much: "Whenever the UN puts its finger in, it seems to become a mess. The burden of my thoughts are very much that the climate situation is more complex than we at present are capable of handling, or possibly even in the future. You can't treat it as a scientific problem alone. You have to involve the whole world, and then there's the time constant of human activity. Look at how long ago the Kyoto treaty was – 15 years ago – and damn all has been done. The human time constant is very slow. You don't get major changes in under 50-100 years, and climate doesn't wait for that."


James Lovelock: The UK should be going mad for fracking | Environment | The Guardian

 

[waltky]

Mebbe dey should call `em earth-fracks...

Should companies get fined for causing man-made earthquakes?
June 22, 2012 - Companies can face stiff penalties for contaminating water or polluting the air, but should companies face similar penalties for causing man-made earthquakes?

Under current law, companies can’t face any penalties for cause a man-made earthquake, which several studies have shown are a rare event. A recent study by the National Research Council found hydraulic fracking rarely cause earthquakes large enough to be felt, but the study found injection wells, which companies use to pump waste water underground, could be connected to increased seismic activity in parts of the country. The energy industry has fought off allegations that earthquakes can be tied to natural gas drilling, maintaining that the process is safe and earthquakes caused by fracturing are often times to minor to be felt. But studies have found injection wells are a different story.

An injection well outside of Youngstown, Ohio has been tied to more than a dozen of small earthquakes in the area. Those quakes have caused officials to change rules regarding injection wells in the state. In Lincoln County, Oklahoma, residents felt a 5.6 magnitude earthquake in November 2011. According to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the agency that oversees oil and gas production, the state saw more than a 1,000 earthquakes in 2010, up from the 50 yearly average two years prior. Matt Skinner, an official with OCC, said most of those earthquakes have happened in Lincoln County, which has more than 181 injection wells.

Companies are required under the Safe Drinking Water Act to test some proposed sites to see if injection wells could cause earthquakes, but as E&E writes, those regulations don’t apply to wells connected to the nation’s onshore oil and natural gas fields. The recent NRC study stopped short of asking for federal guidelines on man-made earthquakes or injection wells. However, analysts say the report begs the question whether federal regulation is needed. “It seems to lead to a call for some sort of federal intervention,” analyst Kevin Book, managing director of the Washington D.C.-based consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners, told E&E.

What do you think? Should companies with injection wells that cause man-made earthquakes face environmental penalties or should the federal government have some sort of regulation on injection wells?

Source & Poll

See also:

EPA blasted for requiring oil refiners to add type of fuel that's merely hypothetical
June 21, 2012 - Federal regulations can be maddening, but none more so than a current one that demands oil refiners use millions of gallons of a substance, cellulosic ethanol, that does not exist.

"As ludicrous as that sounds, it's fact," says Charles Drevna, who represents refiners. "If it weren't so frustrating and infuriating, it would be comical." And Tom Pyle of the Institute of Energy Research says, "the cellulosic biofuel program is the embodiment of government gone wild." Refiners are at their wit's end because the government set out requirements to blend cellulosic ethanol back in 2005, assuming that someone would make it. Seven years later, no one has. "None, not one drop of cellulosic ethanol has been produced commercially. It's a phantom fuel," says Pyle. "It doesn't exist in the market place."

And Charles Drevna adds, "forcing us to use a product that doesn't exist, they might as well tell us to use unicorns." And yet, they still have to pay what amounts to fines: "Why would they ask them to blend any at all if it doesn't exist?" Pyle said. "Because they know that they can squeeze some extra dollars out of them." The EPA does have discretion to lower the annual requirement. And one supporter explains, that's what the agency is saying. "We are going to reduce your blending obligation by 98 percent because we feel that that’s the right thing to do," says Brooke Coleman, the executive director of the Advanced Ethanol Council of the Renewable Fuels Association. "We are going to maintain your blending obligation on the gallons that we think are going to emerge."

The EPA, which would not speak on camera, is still hoping production of cellulosic ethanol will emerge. A study by the Congressional Research Service, however, says the government "projects that cellulosic bio fuels are not expected to be commercially available on a large scale until at least 2015."

Drevna of the refiners association says they had no other choice left since EPA insisted they still had to blend some of the nonexistent cellulosic ethanol. "We've had to go to the courts and litigate this thing is because they just turned a blind eye to us," Drevna said. So the refiners are now suing the EPA, in part because the mandate gets larger and larger-- 500 million gallons this year, 3 billion in 2015 and 16 billion in 2022. And still, not a gallon of cellulosic ethanol in sight.

Read more: EPA blasted for requiring oil refiners to add type of fuel that's merely hypothetical | Fox News

 

[bobgnote]

Should companies face penalties, for putting fucktards, up to spamming?

The government needed to subsidize CO2-neutral biomass research and ban fracking, long ago. Fracking is a clue, petroleum has been treated like a religion, when religions have been freaking and fucking around, when we need to ban the several kinds of fucking, by religions and petroleum industry, period.

But instead, the government likes to entertain fucktards, while trying to compensate, for an increasingly idiotic population, by letting a bunch of illegal aliens into the US, in the vain hope the genetic pool won't collapse.

Democrats hedge their disillusioned constituencies, with naturalized citizens. Democrats seek to compete with pubs, for idiot-recruits, which may have been spawned up, as Christians or Jews. I have no idea why any of the many Muslims would vote for a Democrat or a Republican, but black Obamney probably gets some Muzzie support.

But for all the crosstards, there's no cross-breeding. The many aliens don't cross-breed, while the failing number of US-born idiots are losing North American culture, to what is essentially an invasion, of proliferating Catholic culture, which tends to go to church at some Pentacostal outfit, as much as it confesses.

Now that the Pope believes in global warming, the dilemma about emergencies related to global warming intensify, while breeders lose their catechism, or the Pope will have to go, for birth control, and idiot representatives will have to move past cap and trade, to radical re-greening.

But nobody is moving, to re-green. The Pope isn't for birth control. The aliens try to out-breed local idiots, and the aliens are clearly winning. People with common sense wander around, in traffic.

But the aliens just bonk up a load of little migra-bait. The idiots who live here, in the US aren't up to enough cross-breeding, to keep up, with lawyers and laborers and putas and taco-vendors and dope-dealers and machetes. What can be done, for idiots?

So nobody gets the CO2-neutral biomass or re-greening DONE, past queer arguments about cap and trade, while US-born idiots masturbate, fucktards make little idiots, and aliens breed, with each other, since who wants to get with a fucking idiot, over Iglis? Do YOU have science or common sense? Welcome to my dilemma.