I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

bluedahlia

A Bigger threat!

Add methane emissions to the growing list of environmental risks posed by fracking.

Opposition to the hydraulic fracturing of deep shales to release natural gas rose sharply last year over worries that the large volumes of chemical-laden water used in the operations could contaminate drinking water. Then, in early January, earthquakes in Ohio were blamed on the disposal of that water in deep underground structures. Yesterday, two Cornell University professors said at a press conference that fracking releases large amounts of natural gas, which consists mostly of methane, directly into the atmosphere—much more than previously thought.

Robert Howarth, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, and Anthony Ingraffea, a civil and environmental engineer, reported that fracked wells leak 40 to 60 percent more methane than conventional natural gas wells. When water with its chemical load is forced down a well to break the shale, it flows back up and is stored in large ponds or tanks. But volumes of methane also flow back up the well at the same time and are released into the atmosphere before they can be captured for use. This giant belch of "fugitive methane" can be seen in infrared videos taken at well sites.

Molecule for molecule, methane traps 20 to 25 times more heat in the atmosphere than does carbon dioxide. The effect dissipates faster, however: airborne methane remains in the atmosphere for about 12 years before being scrubbed out by ongoing chemical reactions, whereas CO2 lasts 30 to 95 years. Nevertheless, recent data from the two Cornell scientists and others indicate that within the next 20 years, methane will contribute 44 percent of the greenhouse gas load produced by the U.S. Of that portion, 17 percent will come from all natural gas operations.

Currently, pipeline leaks are the main culprit, but fracking is a quickly growing contributor. Ingraffea pointed out that although 25,000 high-volume shale-gas wells are already operating in the U.S., hundreds of thousands are scheduled to go into operation within 20 years, and millions will be operating worldwide, significantly expanding emissions and keeping atmospheric methane levels high despite the 12-year dissipation time.

Howarth said he is particularly concerned about fracking emissions because recent data indicates that the planet is entering a period of rapid climate change. He noted that the average global temperature compared with the early 1900s is now expected to increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next 15 to 35 years, which he called "a tipping point" toward aggressive climate change. More and more fracking would speed the world to that transition or undermine efforts to reduce emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The notion, Ingraffea said, that shale gas is a desirable "bridge fuel" from oil to widespread renewable energy supplies several decades from now "makes no sense" in terms of climate change.

Howarth and Ingraffea spoke from Cornell, where they also released a paper (pdf) that is about to be published by the journal Climatic Change, which details their analysis. It follows up on a paper they published in April 2011 that comprehensively analyzed emissions from fracking. The gas industry disputes that paper. So does Cornell geologist Lawrence Cathles, in a commentary in Climatic Change. He estimates that fugitive emissions are only 10 percent of what Howarth and Ingraffea maintain, and that shale gas would indeed be a good replacement for home heating oil and for coal used in power plants.

Capturing the big belch of gas could prevent the problem. Ingraffea said capture is difficult because the gas is emitted along with the flow-back water, but a procedure known as a "green completion," in which special equipment traps the gas, has been shown to work. Regulators do not require that step, however, and the market price of methane is less than the cost of capturing it in that way, so drillers have no incentive to do so for economic reasons.

bluedahlia

Now I'm off to buy that rubber hammer!

crazy4carrots

St. Paul was right -- the love of money is the root of all evil.  And that's exactly what's behind the naysayers on global warming.  They couldn't care less what happens to the only planet we know is habitable; shareholder interest comes first.  Quick bucks now, ecological disaster later.

bluedahlia

bluedahlia

If this is true, the drug companies are gonna frackle us! 

http://www.whiteoutpress.com/articles/q32013/supreme-court-rules-drug-companies-exempt-from-lawsuits

bluedahlia

bluedahlia

bluedahlia

Anonymous

ooohohh...Blue, I want to sit under those large pink roses, and inhale.  Hope all in Toronto are safe and DRY.  News reports are frightening.

What the bartender said. 

crazy4carrots

Sunny -- checked in with my relatives in Toronto and all survived!  Although my niece's sump pump failed and she and her SO were hauling pails of water out of the basement by the light of a candle and flashlight -- power was finally restored this morning.  Approx. 5 INCHES of rain fell in the space of 2 hours -- a record!  We on the south side of Lake Ontario got a few sprinkles during the night.....whew!

Anonymous

C4C - I'm gonna stop complaining about our daily rain...which is happening now...5 inches is a heckuva lot of rain and it a short time period, more dangerous than most people can imagine - but we won't get into "global warming" cuz it doesn't exist...jeeeeeez - what is it gonna take for leaders of the world to WAKE the F up?

Bren-2007

Hi Everybody!

Yay ... it's not raining today.  Never fear, it will be back tomorrow ... according to NOAA. So, I mowed the hell out of the fields ... now I'm a mess and in pain ... but it's done!

Blue ... love the cabbage roses!  I've got lots of wild roses growing around here.  They only bloom once though in the summer.

Athena ... thinking of you ... and like you, wishing it was fall again!

Hope everyone is having a good Tuesday.  So excited ... tomorrow I'm meeting my sis in Roanoke and we're going to a great little shop called "Chocolate Paper."  They have lots of chocolate and thousands of different and unique greeting cards.

hugs,

Bren

PS .. Blue ... are the glads from your garden?  This is the first year mine haven't come up.

bluedahlia

No Bren they aren't.  But they are breathtaking!

bluedahlia

bluedahlia

QuinnCat

97% of scientists, using science (testing hypotheses without bias), believe in man-made climate change.  

May 11, 2013 1:14 PM Will Conservatives Come to Grips with Climate Change?

 By Ryan Cooper

With the grim news that the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration registered over 400 parts per million for the first time in human history, a level not seen for millions of years, Coral Davenport has an encouraging piece in National Journal profiling the few lonely activists trying to bring the right out of the conspiracy swamps on climate change. This particular aside is a great demonstration of why only 6 percent of scientists identify as Republicans:

In January 2012, just before South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary, the Charleston-based Christian Coalition of America, one of the most influential advocacy groups in conservative politics, flew Emanuel down to meet with the GOP presidential candidates. Perhaps an unlikely prophet of doom where global warming is concerned, the coalition has begun to push Republicans to take action on climate change, out of worry that coming catastrophes could hit the next generation hard, especially the world’s poor.

The meetings didn’t take. “[Newt] Gingrich and [Mitt] Romney understood, … and I think they even believed the evidence and understood the risk,” Emanuel says. “But they were so terrified by the extremists in their party that in the primaries they felt compelled to deny it. Which is not good leadership, good integrity. I got a low impression of them as leaders.” Throughout the Republican presidential primaries, every candidate but one—former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who was knocked out of the race at the start—questioned, denied, or outright mocked the science of climate change.

Soon after his experience in South Carolina, Emanuel changed his lifelong Republican Party registration to independent. “The idea that you could look a huge amount of evidence straight in the face and, for purely ideological reasons, deny it, is anathema to me,” he says.

But he’s since come around to try to help conservative climate activists. Mainstream Republicanism is saturated with climate denialism, but Davenport details the few folks doing the yeoman’s work of trying to make science palatable again on the right:

[S. Carolina Rep.] Inglis would pay dearly for his support of the so-called carbon-tax swap. The following year, he lost his primary election to a tea-party candidate, Trey Gowdy. And Inglis knows his position on the climate was the reason. “The most enduring heresy was saying, ‘Climate change is real and we should do something about it.’ That was seen as a statement against the tribal orthodoxy.” […]

For the moment, however, Inglis has taken on the arduous task of bringing his party back to him. Last summer, he founded the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, a nonprofit organization based at George Mason University, focused on convincing conservatives, particularly young ones, that climate change, caused by carbon pollution, is a serious threat—and on pushing for the carbon-tax swap as a fundamentally conservative economic solution. Since last fall, Inglis and a cohort of conservative economists have made their case at a dozen events, including talks at colleges and universities in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi.

Like I was saying earlier, this kind of work is the most important in American politics. (Florida conservatives ought to be especially interested.) Whatever policy the economists and scientists come up with, conservatives will almost certainly be able to strangle it in Congress or kill it in the courts. Bringing conservatives to the table would be a hugely positive development.

 

crazy4carrots

It's way past time that the smart Republicans divorce themselves from the TeaParty (aka Know-nothings).  Let Palin, Cruz and the rest form their "Freedom" Party (as Palin has hinted) and maybe the Repubs and Democrats working together can save the U.S. from destroying itself from within, and taking the rest of us down with it.

IllinoisLady

C for C....what you said !!!!!  T Partiers = bunch of friggin' loonies bar none.  Blue & Kam -- you read those pieces and need nothing else.  About the only part of being a conservative that is even close to good is their huge ability to not is things.  They are the greatest of pretenders there ever was.  Think I'll just go smell some of the roses and pretend all the real dummies of the world have disappeared.  That would be the two I've already mentioned.

Jackie

IllinoisLady

This is probably the only thing I could ever agree with this man about and I can only do that if I don't look too hard at the picture or say his name too loud because he definittely belongs with the already mentioned group.

bluedahlia

bluedahlia

I love this guy!

QuinnCat

Racism is everywhere, apparently even in the Big Brother house - a cross section of young people in this country.  I think the little blond girl from Texas can't hold her feelings back.  So much for post-racial America.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/big-brother-racist_n_3529903.html

crazy4carrots

One clever person commented that the Supreme Court's decision re the VRA was similar to taking away  a stoplight that had been installed 40 years ago because of the high number of accidents that had occurred at the intersection.  Forty years later, the number of accidents had been reduced by about 95% so the city councillors decided there was no reason for the stoplight anymore and they ordered it removed.

QuinnCat

C4C - the more I observe racists, the more I realize that many of them cannot self-identify, or plain identify, what racism is.  And this is not to excuse them, but they are so deep into denial, they choose not to see it.   If they see a news report of African Americans waiting in a mile long line to vote, they just think something got screwed up.  They can't possibly imagine that requiring a Voter ID might be difficult to obtain for someone for economic reasons.  They seem to refuse to see the world from a different viewpoint.  Rigid, close-minded.

I find the Big Brother racism story interesting, because it allows one to observe a white woman hurling racial slurs at her housemates, but when confronted with it by her housemates, she is not even aware of the racial slurs that (naturally) come out of her mouth.  I see so many denials about racism existing in this country, but it could quite possibly be that the behaviors are so inculcated in some, they can't even see it in themselves.  It explains some of the posting I see elsewhere about racism not a factor, blah, blah.  Only a racist can really say that, if you think about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3sIaYUxOLs

IllinoisLady

Get Together    Youngbloods ---  way back

Love is but a song we sing
fears' the way we die
You can make the mountains ring
or make the angels cry

Though the dove is on the wing
and you may not know why

*Come on people now
smile on your brother
everybody get together
and try to love one another right now

Some may come and some may go
He will surely pass
When the one that left us here
returns for us at last
We are but a moment's sunlight
fading in the grass

*Come on people now
smile on your brother
everybody get together
try to love one another right now

*Come on people now
smile on your brother
everybody get together
try to love one another right now

*Come on people now
smile on your brother
everybody get together
try to love one another right now

If you hear the song I sing
you will understand...listen
You hold the key to love and fear
all in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
Its there at your command

*Come on people now
smile on your brother
Everybody get together
try to love one another right now

*Come on people now
smile on your brother
Everybody get together
try to love one another right now

I said.....

*Come on people now
smile on your brother
Everybody get together
try to love one another right now
right now
right now

Edited by Mods to remove html jargon

Each day I am thankful for nights that turned into mornings, friends that turned into family, dreams that turned into reality and likes that turned into love. ~~~Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross

pupmom

Jackie, I love that song. Sadly, many never got the message. 

Belinda44

Been away on vaca.  Catching up on reading here and in the news.  Just saw this on the Daily Beast.  Unbelievable......we continue to turn the clock back in certain states......

"Ohio Gov. John Kasich might have just signed into law the most expansive set of restrictions to abortion access in the country. The Midwest state's new law has many outrageous provisions: it defunds all of the state's Planned Parenthood clinics and imposes a gag order on rape-crisis centers to keep counselors from informing rape victims that they are legally entitled to abortions if they want them. The law not only mandates that a woman undergo a preabortion ultrasound—and pay for it herself—it also redefines pregnancy as occurring before a fertilized egg makes its way into a woman's uterine lining, potentially making even IUDs illegal."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/07/the-fringe-factor-the-perils-of-sex-ed.html

crazy4carrots

Disgusting, Alexandria.  So....since many, many fertilized eggs never manage to implant themselves in one's uterine lining, will women be accused of potentially aborting their babies every time they menstruate?  I'm suggesting that used sanitary supplies be sent to the Governor for checking.

If nothing else, all these hateful, mean-spirited and illogical laws will provide plenty of work for the law profession, and keep smart, thoughtful and caring women from voting Repub for several elections to come.  The pendulum has already swung far enough to the right to begin making its way back to the centre.

gardengumby

C4C - I certainly hope that you are correct about the pendulum swing, because I've HAD it with the right's craziness.  My husband says that if women won't get out and vote for their own interests, they deserve what's going to happen to them, but what I think he doesn't understand is the brainwashing effect of the evangelical religions.  My brother-in-law attends an evangelical church with his girl friend, and my toes curl at some of the things that come out of their mouths on occasion.

As for the fertilized egg being a pregnancy even before it's implanted - the religion I grew up in banned women from using IUD's for that very reason.  I told my husband a long time ago (25 years??) that I was afraid of the amount of control over women's bodies the religious right was going to try to exercise - he thought I was crazy - he doesn't anymore.....

In regard to the Voting Rights Act...  In my opinion, the supreme court truly messed up.  Of course they wouldn't have done this - but what they should have done in my opinion was enable it across all states.  Every state should be required to have a federal review of voting laws before they can be changed.  For us to have different ways of voting - or different requirements for voting - for federal offices is simply crazy.

alexandria58

So many lawsuits.  So little time.

Anyway, am 61 years young today.