Gas against wind
Here's an article I wrote for this week's Spectator about UK energy policy. Wind must give way to gas before it ruins us all, and our landscapes.
Which would you rather have in the view from your house? A thing about the size of a domestic garage, or eight towers twice the height of Nelson’s column with blades noisily thrumming the air. The energy they can produce over ten years is similar: eight wind turbines of 2.5-megawatts (working at roughly 25% capacity) roughly equal the output of an average Pennsylvania shale gas well (converted to electricity at 50% efficiency) in its first ten years.
Difficult choice? Let’s make it easier. The gas well can be hidden in a hollow, behind a hedge. The eight wind turbines must be on top of hills, because that is where the wind blows, visible for up to 40 miles. And they require the construction of new pylons marching to the towns; the gas well is connected by an underground pipe.
Unpersuaded? Wind turbines slice thousands of birds of prey in half every year, including white-tailed eagles in Norway, golden eagles in California, wedge-tailed eagles in Tasmania. There’s a video on Youtube of one winging a griffon vulture in Crete. According to a study in Pennsylvania, a wind farm with eight turbines would kill about a 200 bats a year. The pressure wave from the passing blade just implodes the little creatures’ lungs. You and I can go to jail for harming bats or eagles; wind companies are immune.
Still can’t make up your mind? The wind farm requires eight tonnes of an element called neodymium, which is produced only in Inner Mongolia, by boiling ores in acid leaving lakes of radioactive tailings so toxic no creature goes near them.
Not convinced? The gas well requires no subsidy – in fact it pays a hefty tax to the government – whereas the wind turbines each cost you a substantial add-on to your electricity bill, part of which goes to the rich landowner whose land they stand on. Wind power costs three times as much as gas-fired power. Make that nine times if the wind farm is offshore. And that’s assuming the cost of decommissioning the wind farm is left to your children – few will last 25 years.
Decided yet? I forgot to mention something. If you choose the gas well, that’s it, you can have it. If you choose the wind farm, you are going to need the gas well too. That’s because when the wind does not blow you will need a back-up power station running on something more reliable. But the bloke who builds gas turbines is not happy to build one that only operates when the wind drops, so he’s now demanding a subsidy, too.
What’s that you say? Gas is running out? Have you not heard the news? It’s not. Till five years ago gas was the fuel everybody thought would run out first, before oil and coal. America was getting so worried even Alan Greenspan told it to start building gas import terminals, which it did. They are now being mothballed, or turned into export terminals.
A chap called George Mitchell turned the gas industry on its head. Using just the right combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) – both well established technologies -- he worked out how to get gas out of shale where most of it is, rather than just out of (conventional) porous rocks, where it sometimes pools. The Barnett shale in Texas, where Mitchell worked, turned into one of the biggest gas reserves in America. Then the Haynesville shale in Louisiana dwarfed it. The Marcellus shale mainly in Pennsylvania then trumped that with a barely believable 500 trillion cubic feet of gas, as big as any oil field ever found, on the doorstep of the biggest market in the world.
The impact of shale gas in America is already huge. Gas prices have decoupled from oil prices and are half what they are in Europe. Chemical companies, which use gas as a feedstock, are rushing back from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Mexico. Cities are converting their bus fleets to gas. Coal projects are being shelved; nuclear ones abandoned.
Rural Pennsylvania is being transformed by the royalties that shale gas pays (Lancashire take note). Drive around the hills near Pittsburgh and you see new fences, repainted barns and – in the local towns – thriving car dealerships and upmarket shops. The one thing you barely see is gas rigs. The one I visited was hidden in a hollow in the woods, invisible till I came round the last corner where a flock of wild turkeys was crossing the road. Drilling rigs are on site for about five weeks, fracking trucks a few weeks after that, and when they are gone all that is left is a “Christmas tree” wellhead and a few small storage tanks.
The International Energy Agency reckons there is quarter of a millennium’s worth of cheap shale gas in the world. A company called Cuadrilla drilled a hole in Blackpool, hoping to find a few trillion cubic feet of gas. Last month it announced 200 trillion cubic feet, nearly half the size of the giant Marcellus field. That’s enough to keep the entire British economy going for many decades. And it’s just the first field to have been drilled.
Jesse Ausubel is a soft-spoken academic ecologist at Rockefeller University in New York, not given to hyperbole. So when I asked him about the future of gas, I was surprised by the strength of his reply. “It’s unstoppable,” he says simply. Gas, he says, will be the world’s dominant fuel for most of the next century. Coal and renewables will have to give way, while oil is used mainly for transport. Even nuclear may have to wait in the wings.
And he is not even talking mainly about shale gas. He reckons a still bigger story is waiting to be told about offshore gas from the so-called cold seeps around the continental margins. Israel has made a huge find and is planning a pipeline to Greece, to the irritation of the Turks. The Brazilians are striking rich. The Gulf of Guinea is hot. Even our own Rockall Bank looks promising. Ausubel thinks that much of this gas is not even “fossil” fuel, but ancient methane from the universe that was trapped deep in the earth’s rocks – like the methane that forms lakes on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.
The best thing about cheap gas is whom it annoys. The Russians and the Iranians hate it because they thought they were going to corner the gas market in the coming decades. The greens hate it because it destroys their argument that fossil fuels are going to get more and more costly till even wind and solar power are competitive. The nuclear industry ditto. The coal industry will be a big loser (incidentally, as somebody who gets some income from coal, I declare that writing this article is against my vested interest).
Little wonder a furious attempt to blacken shale gas’s reputation is under way, driven by an unlikely alliance of big green, big coal, big nuclear and conventional gas producers. The environmental objections to shale gas are almost comically fabricated or exaggerated. Hydraulic fracturing or fracking uses 99.86% water and sand, the rest being a dilute solution of a few chemicals of the kind you find beneath your kitchen sink.
State regulators in Alaska, Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming have all asserted in writing that there have been no verified or documented cases of groundwater contamination as a result of hydraulic fracking. Those flaming taps in the film “Gasland” were literally nothing to do with shale gas drilling and the film maker knew it before he wrote the script. The claim that gas production generates more greenhouse gases than coal is based on mistaken assumptions about gas leakage rates and cherry-picked time horizons for computing greenhouse impact.
Like Japanese soldiers hiding in the jungle decades after the war was over, our political masters have apparently not heard the news. David Cameron and Chris Huhne are still insisting that the future belongs to renewables. They are still signing contracts on your behalf guaranteeing huge incomes to landowners and power companies, and guaranteeing thereby the destruction of landscapes and jobs. The government’s “green” subsidies are costing the average small business £250,000 a year. That’s ten jobs per firm. Making energy cheap is – as the industrial revolution proved – the quickest way to create jobs; making it expensive is the quickest way to lose them.
Not only are renewables far more expensive, intermittent and resource-depleting (their demand for steel and concrete is gigantic) than gas; they are also hugely more damaging to the environment, because they are so land-hungry. Wind kills birds and spoils landscapes; solar paves deserts; tidal wipes out the ecosystems of migratory birds; biofuel starves the poor and devastates the rain forest; hydro interrupts fish migration. Next time you hear somebody call these “clean” energy, don’t let him get away with it.
Wind cannot even help cut carbon emissions, because it needs carbon back-up, which is wastefully inefficient when powering up or down (nuclear cannot be turned on and off so fast). Even Germany and Denmark have failed to cut their carbon emissions by installing vast quantities of wind.
Yet switching to gas would hasten decarbonisation. In a combined cycle turbine gas converts to electricity with higher efficiency than other fossil fuels. And when you burn gas, you oxidise four hydrogen atoms for every carbon atom. That’s a better ratio than oil, much better than coal and much, much better than wood. Ausubel calculates that, thanks to gas, we will accelerate a relentless shift from carbon to hydrogen as the source of our energy without touching renewables.
To persist with a policy of pursuing subsidized renewable energy in the midst of a terrible recession, at a time when vast reserves of cheap low-carbon gas have suddenly become available is so perverse it borders on the insane. Nothing but bureaucratic inertia and vested interest can explain it.
end
Comments (45)
Shale gas is the best energy news in at least the last 50 years. It wasn't so long ago that we were supposed to be running out of natural gas. Now we have hundreds of years of supply, much of it from domestic sources in Western countries.
Natural gas is the best fuel for electricity generation: highly efficient, low environmental impact, and low capital cost. With this new abundance, it also makes sense to convert vehicles to compressed natural gas fuel. That would help to solve the Western world's biggest energy and strategic problem -- our dependence on oil imported from the Middle East.
However, you are too hard on wind energy. It has many benefits. Like all energy sources, including natural gas, wind also has its detriments. If there is one lesson we have learned in the energy business, it is the benefit of diversity of supply. There is no one single answer to our energy problems. The energy business is cyclical, so what looks good today often isn't in 5-10 years. Think of the cycles for oil, gas, coal, nuclear and renewables. Each one has gyrated between the ultimate solution and scourge of mankind.
It isn't apparent today what problems there will be with natural gas. But with an eye toward history, it is pretty safe to say that in the next 5-10 years, new issues will emerge and we will regret putting all our eggs in that basket.
Excellently put!
MW from Florida, Matt's anti-wind stance is entirely reasonable when you consider that our government is about to spend £200 billion on installing turbines for a measly 30GW of electricity. A similar sum spent on gas-fired CHP connected to district heat networks has the potential to supply zero-carbon heat at near zero (operational) cost to every home in the UK; and heat accounts for 80% of the average homes energy use. And guess what, it would also be producing nearly 30GW electricity.
Current policy appears, imho, to have little or nothing to do with sustainability, reducing carbon or dealing with fuel poverty. (and a lot to do with paying tax money to farmers and landed gentry)
Matt,
It might be worthwhile to consider in print the issue of transportation of the fracced natural gas. It clearly wouldn't be an issue for gas located near the origins of the existing US pipeline system, but where such infrastructure doesn't exist? If the wellheads are dispersed and do not tend to be of very high capacity, how is the gas going to get where it's needed? Maybe this will be the impetus for smaller package generating stations of the sort more recently built here by third parties.
As an aside, I was involved in the construction of an industrial project northeast of Houston. There were 14 pipeline easements running through the 68 acres none of which was then in use and going in many directions. We were able to organize the site so as not to have any serious construction on top of any of the easements and we did have to get releases from each of the owners to do what we did do - a railcar storage yard.
And then there is wind/gas, perhaps the silliest cocktail for modern power production ever to emerge in Christendom. The idea, promoted widely by the American Natural Gas Association and the American Wind Energy Association (whose CEO emerged from ANGA), is that natural gas would enable renewables like wind by shadowing its relentless volatility. A wind/gas dance fandago might be a swell way for the natural gas industry to shelter income via wind’s tax avoidance power. And to create a PR slogan based upon the deception of half-truths. Although natural gas can indeed infill wind’s relentless volatility, the costs would be enormous while the benefit would be inconsequential. Rate and taxpayers would ultimately pay the substantial capital expenses of supernumerary generation-- with little or no reduction in fossil fuel consumption or CO2 emissions.
What all should understand better than they do is that the more wind, the more need for fossil fuels. Wind can never be an alternate source of energy nor an additive power producer--since it cannot provide modern power without enormous, highly inefficient supplementation.
Thank you for writing this.
Wind is only one lie in the Greenie Fairy Tale. As Al gore has conceded, Ehtanol takes more energy to produce than the final product contains. The same with photo-voltaic. Read "Green Prince of Darkness" at Faux Science Slayer (dot) com for the truth about this molecular erosion process. Solar cell produce less energy than required for manufacturer. While at that website read "Fossil Fuel is Nuclear Waste" for the truth about abiogenic oil production. Methane is lighter than air and has not been 'trapped' under ground since Earth's creation. All petroleum products are produced by fission of large atoms into "elemental" atoms. Saturn's moon Titan has Methane clouds, Methane oceans and Methane polar ice caps...and has never had one dinosaur. Wake up to the TOTAL green lie....it's not just about 'greenhouse gases' anymore.
“Ausubel thinks that much of this gas is not even “fossil” fuel, but ancient methane from the universe that was trapped deep in the earth’s rocks – like the methane that forms lakes on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.”
Thomas Gold must be chortling from the grave.
You should start an e-petition against this insanity. I think it could get a record number of signatures.
You are right in that modern fracturing techniques have opened huge reserves of natural gas at prices no other energy source can match. A similar breakthrough for recovering even larger deposits of methane hydrates will eventually follow. Market forces, environmental damage and viewshed loss will eventually catch up with these so-called "green energy" schemes that can't compete on a level playing field.
Hello why dont you enlighten yourself by reading this:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shale-gas-concerns
@MW - there is nothing good about generating electricity from wind. It is extremely inefficient, and no technological fixes will change that fact. Wind is highly unreliable. If you don't think so, then ask your hospital to run exclusively on wind power the next time you have surgery. Think about it - would you risk your life on the reliability of wind-generated power? The cost is high, and isn't coming down. Birds are killed in high numbers (wind farms are best located in migration routes), and more people have been killed in the last 10 years by wind turbines than by nuclear power plants.
Other than that, what's not to like? Stephen J. Gould once wrote that a scientific theory is considered proven when to claim otherwise is perverse. To claim that wind power on an industrial scale is anything but a disaster is perverse.
MW says "wind energy has many many benefits". I agree, like eh, like eh , like eh - stick around maybe I'll think of one later on.
A good Article, Matt and on cue, too.
Such a shame we still have comments in support of that rediculous power solution, wind. I can see absolutely nothing to further any more money going in to wind (subsidy rent seekers notwithstanding).
In support of this contention we have to look at the kinetic energy of the wind which is expressed by a single physical formula by which all aspects of wind turbine funstionality and costs are outcomes from this one formula, thus:
Es=f.Mspec.V3 where:
- Es is the kinetic energy/sec of moving air
- f is a calculating factor whichincludes blade diameter
- Mspec is the specific mass of impelling air
- V3 is the cube of the windspeed
Note: the specific mass of air = 1,18kg/m3
of water = ~ 1000kg/m3
The power o/p of a wind turbine varies max/min according to windspeed and the factor V3. This cube factor is the death knell of reliable, stable electricity output from wind turbines. I absolutely rules out Base Load capabilities. What this means is that wind does not contain enough, stable kinetic energy.
It is impossible to change these chareacteristics by any innovation. The wind is naturally uncontrollable and no compensation can fully control wide output variations and poor kinetic qualities.
Questions have been raised about the economics of shale gas extraction.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26gas.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&...
I was skeptical about your claim that birds were being sliced in half by turbines. So far, the number is something less than 1000.
"By our math, that comes to 274 to 822 birds a day killed by wind farms across the country." -- http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2010/may/03/checking-geo...
And consulting this [ http://www.fws.gov/birds/mortality-fact-sheet.pdf ] there are far more dangerous things to birds than wind turbines, including buildings and pesticides. Are you going to lobby for them to be removed? And what's worse, unsightly wind turbines or ruined coastlines and poisoned watersheds or mountaintop removal?
Regarding the efficacy of fracking, surely you don't think that poisoning the ground water people rely on is worth prolonging our addition to fossil fuels? You do realize this is already happening? Oh, sure, Gaslands wasn't accurate so that means oil shale is safe. Based on the strength of your argument against wind turbines, I have no faith in the rest of it.
Love the book, love the blog, love the article, love the optimism. That said, I have a piece of (humbly offered) advice: more debunking of the "fracking" fears/scares. The images of people lighting their tap water on fire has gotten massive coverage, and devoting one sentence dismissing those fears won't sway the "true believers". The PR war over shale oil is going to be all about flammable water (and other similar fears), so the more you and others can effectively refute the anti-frackers, the quicker we can begin exploiting this great new source of energy. Thanks for all you're doing.
I agree that gas is the energy source of the future, and that wind is not so green (because of the rare earth metal it uses), but you made two stupid assumptions, first that solar paves deserts, with solar panels getting cheaper and cheaper i think in the future we will see more and more roofs covered in solar panels, and two, you say that we will shift to hydrogen. How is that when there is no hydrogen in its pure form on Earth?
I agree that gas is the energy source of the future, and that wind is not so green (because of the rare earth metal it uses), but you made two stupid assumptions, first that solar paves deserts, with solar panels getting cheaper and cheaper i think in the future we will see more and more roofs covered in solar panels, and two, you say that we will shift to hydrogen. How is that when there is no hydrogen in its pure form on Earth?
Re Marko's comment, I do not endorse a shift "to hydrogen" as a pure fuel. I endorse a shift from carbon-rich fuels like coal to hydrogen-rich fuels like gas (CH4), that is to say, fuels with a lot of covalently bonded hydrogen atoms.
Not even Greenpeace thinks burnt hydrogen is a pollutant, surely. (H2O).
Matt
What a devastating article. How can anyone after reading it not believe that we in Europe, and particularly the UK, are being robbed blind by politicians who are either insane or corrupt?
Definitely worth a bookmark.
Excellent article. Also I would point out that CO2 is a benign gas that nourishes plant life.
Matt says "Not even Greenpeace thinks burnt hydrogen is a pollutant, surely. (H2O)"
It could be much worse than you think.
Here is my predicted SummaryForPolicymakers for the new UNEP 'NO HOH' initiative-
"H2O is a dangerous greenhouse gas and pollutant. Using the same definition for atmospheric lifetime as that adopted for CO2, the 'atmospheric lifetime' of H2O is essentially infinite. Most industrial processes, transportation and even breathing involve the uncontrolled emissions of H2O vapor into the atmosphere. There are tens of thousands of deaths each year caused by overexposure to H2O, many of these being young children. In its solid or liquid forms, H2O is responsible for trillions of dollars of lost global GDP. Many island nations are completely surrounded by this corrosive condensate. It is imperative that the UNEP's de facto redistribution of wealth currently based on dangerous CO2 pollution should be broadened to include the much more dangerous H2O emissions, to compensate developing countries impacted by this deadly pollutant."
I agree with the article except with one qualifier. A sound energy policy looks to the future. I live in Ontario Canada where we are close to sources of coal that could be used in our existing coal plants that have been shutdown due to the economic recession (yes the recession, not because wind and solar has replaced them). Refitting these plants with clean coal burning technology makes more sense at 33% efficiency than does gas at 50% when you look 100 years down the road. That same gas can be used to heat homes at very nearly 100% efficiency. That will save gas reserves which will still be needed 100 years from now. If the coal truck shows up at my great-grandkids door, I think they will be much disappointed having grown up with the convenience of gas. Certainly, wind and solar-electric have no place in the mass production of electricity. This has been proven by our fast rising electricity rates, and it is unreasonable to assume that there will be any leap in technology in those two fields that will ever make them viable. The wind will remain low capacity and unpredictable, and solar-electric will never reach efficiencies large enough to be viable for anything other than small scale battery chargers. (Solar for heating does have merit however). Another thing too, nuclear will remain strong, and I predict that Canadian Candu technology will play an important part in that trend after Fukushima. Our design is inherently safer than anything out there, but that is another topic. A sound energy policy is required; something we do not have in Ontario Canada with the Fiberals in charge.
I agree with the article except with one qualifier. A sound energy policy looks to the future. I live in Ontario Canada where we are close to sources of coal that could be used in our existing coal plants that have been shutdown due to the economic recession (yes the recession, not because wind and solar has replaced them). Refitting these plants with clean coal burning technology makes more sense at 33% efficiency than does gas at 50% when you look 100 years down the road. That same gas can be used to heat homes at very nearly 100% efficiency. That will save gas reserves which will still be needed 100 years from now. If the coal truck shows up at my great-grandkids door, I think they will be much disappointed having grown up with the convenience of gas. Certainly, wind and solar-electric have no place in the mass production of electricity. This has been proven by our fast rising electricity rates, and it is unreasonable to assume that there will be any leap in technology in those two fields that will ever make them viable. The wind will remain low capacity and unpredictable, and solar-electric will never reach efficiencies large enough to be viable for anything other than small scale battery chargers. (Solar for heating does have merit however). Another thing too, nuclear will remain strong, and I predict that Canadian Candu technology will play an important part in that trend after Fukushima. Our design is inherently safer than anything out there, but that is another topic. A sound energy policy is required; something we do not have in Ontario Canada with the Fiberals in charge.
Aha i get it :), cleaner burning carbon fuels, anyway concerning pollution, we are more conserned about co2 (stuff that we breath out), than ozone holes, and regional pollution by factories, like in the rare metal mines in china or other industries.
Oh dear.
Firstly, the size of the "Blackpool gas field" is completely unverified. So far their estimates are estimates - that's all. They need to do a lot more drilling to improve their data.
Secondly, to keep shale gas flowing you need to keep drilling and keep fracking and the more you produce the more you need to drill and frack.
Shale gas "reservoirs" aren't anything like a conventional gas reservoir. This means it isn't anything like as cheap as conventional gas and the general view is that shale gas companies aren't making any money.
"Using just the right combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) – both well established technologies..."
This is all of the weight you're going to give to hydraulic fracturing in this article? No mention of flaming tapwater or poisoned water tables? This article is terribly misleading.
Matt, this piece is one of your best. Thanks. I think it's the perfect piece to link to for an introduction to the benefits of natural gas to both the economy and the environment.
On the subject of George Mitchell, it occured to me that maybe he should be nominated for a Nobel Prize? I recently finished a fine book called the Alchemy of Air that describes the history of what we now know as the Haber-Bosch process, where nitrogen is fixed from the atmosphere ultimately to make fertilizer. Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch won separate Nobel prizes in chemistry for their work (invention and industrialization, respectively). Mitchell's work will surely be just as important. I don't know how active Mr. Mitchell was in developing the new extraction techniques. Bosch made important technical contributions, such as Bosch holes.
So like you'd rather have the water table destroyed with hazardous, toxic chemicals. You *want* to be able to light your water faucet on fire. You are clueless, as is everyone commenting here who agrees with you.
Once again Matt Ridley's prescient insight rides the optimistic wave to the future. Some of the commenters would do well to read Michael Shermer's THE BELIEVING BRAIN before they display their beliefs via comments, again.
Some interesting points, but rather seems to be an article justifying gas instead of a true comparison.
Ok, so direct drive wind turbines use Neodymium, but maybe you should balance that with: Lots of other motors/generators use Neodymium too. One big wind turbine manufacturer, Enercon, doesn't even use Neodymium in its turbines...
Bird deaths - I'm sure you could dig deep enough and find that gas drilling operations disrupt and ultimately affect bird populations too. Not to mention, lots of other man-made things kill birds too.
Finally, the whole point of renewables, is once built they are slowly paying back their carbon use. Shale gas operations never will. So you're sort of comparing apples and oranges.
(Nice equation CliveG, fairly pointless, as you might as well say 'you can't ensure the right breeze at the right time' you don't need maths to prove that...)
Recently, a shale gas field of perhaps 2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas has been located on land in Lancashire. This should soon offer copious and secure and supply for many decades. We should now should expect and demand a rapid reduction in the costs of energy. Our rulers should face a stiff penalty if this demand is not met
With reduced consumer confidence threatening our economy, reducing energy costs would be more helpful than Quantitative Easing (aka Inflationary investment in banks and businesses) for an impoverished public will not use their products or services anyway.
To facilitate this,
1- The present cartel of Energy suppliers must be broken
2- The new gas field should be developed by several independent enterprises unrelated to the present cartel, aimed to compete aggressively in a genuine price war.
3- Wind Power should only be developed further when reliable in all weathers and cheaper than gas!
If the UK abolished ALL carbon dioxide production, global temperatures in AD 2100 might fall by 0.02% ! What a prize...at what a cost.
For a further and wider examination of the dangers of "Green" ideology please Google my Paper "Can Space Save the Planet?" given 2 years ago at a BIS Symposium on the eponymous subject.
Zealotry is clearly ahead of facts in this case, with Humanity itself standing in for the Jews in Nazi Germany, Kulaks in the old USSR, and landlords in Mao's China. Nowadays our zealots do not aim to gas or shoot people ; mass murder through artificial famine is easier to cover up or ascribe to incompetence rather than malice, and will [rove far more effective.
2 years ago , such a thesis seemed even to me a bit OTT; now, however, it is a clear and present danger...
"Still can’t make up your mind? The wind farm requires eight tonnes of an element called neodymium, which is produced only in Inner Mongolia, by boiling ores in acid leaving lakes of radioactive tailings so toxic no creature goes near them."
Matt: is your fact checker on vacation?
Try running that through The Economist !
My word - what a combination! Your article is patronizing, biased and obtuse. (Where on earth are your references?)
However, a number of your points you raise are valid (if taken a little out of context/comparison), others are over-exaggerated, but a number of more controversial elements of your proposed solution are conveniently put aside.
It's worrying your trying to publicly convince people via a limited and skewed view of the matter. Energy production is such a complex and often mis-represented matter, with a staggering amount a mis-information banded around, that starting a slagging match between technologies muddies the water further & simply entrenches strong opinions deeper.
I don't think I've come across your writing before - but people calling this your "best" disturbs me.
My word - what a combination! Your article is patronizing, biased and obtuse. (Where on earth are your references?)
However, a number of your points you raise are valid (if taken a little out of context/comparison), others are over-exaggerated, but a number of more controversial elements of your proposed solution are conveniently put aside.
It's worrying your trying to publicly convince people via a limited and skewed view of the matter. Energy production is such a complex and often mis-represented matter, with a staggering amount a mis-information banded around, that starting a slagging match between technologies muddies the water further & simply entrenches strong opinions deeper.
I don't think I've come across your writing before - but people calling this your "best" disturbs me.
So a rational and accurate argument is once again met with by scare mongering.
.....Questions have been raised about the economics of shale gas extraction.....
A piece of poor quality innuendo, based on out dated information and facts everyone already knew. There are undoubtedly shale gas companies losing money, but the market has an easy solution for that, less drilling and a resulting marginally higher price.
.....Regarding the efficacy of fracking, surely you don't think that poisoning the ground water people rely on is worth prolonging our addition to fossil fuels?.....
What poisoning? The Shale is nowhere near the water table.
.....No mention of flaming tapwater or poisoned water tables? .....
He didn't mention dragons or pixies either. Why should he mention things that don't exist.
.....Bird deaths - I'm sure you could dig deep enough and find that gas drilling operations disrupt and ultimately affect bird populations too....
Domestic cats kill more birds than anything else. The particular problem is the type of birds that windmills kill, many of them being rare, and the numbers are far greater than fossil fuel industries.
Um, hello? Fracking? Are you guys completely insane? Well, go ahead and do whatever you want to do over there in the Land of the Free. But don't come running over here to Ireland when you run out of clean water!!!
There's only one solution to increasing energy needs - LESS PEOPLE ON THE PLANET. And I don't mean less 3rd World people - they don't use even a 1/4 of the energy we do! I mean you, you fat slob on your western couch consuming like there's no tomorrow.
I live in South Texas, where all those third world people"Horrified" is so concerned about are coming for jobs. The Eagle Ford Shale is huge - so huge that the builder of a Motel 6 south of San Antonio had his rooms rented for the next five years by a drilling company.
I used to be a journalist before retirement, so I passed along a tip that the small town of Cotulla had its water source lowered by more than a hundred feet by the drilling and fracking, so you know I'm open-minded about this. Turns out it wasn't true, and reporters can never find the areas supposedly ruined by the drilling. We can, however, find all the new pickups people are buying with their gas money and good jobs - and we can see the downward pressure on gas prices from the new finds.
As to Horrified's desire for "LESS (sic) PEOPLE ON THE PLANET," I suggest he can begin the population thinning with himself - but those people never take the hint.
"Horrified", I'm horrified that you could suggest that energy poverty in the 3rd world is a good thing. Oxfam, other NGOs, and western governments are trying to keep new coal plants from being built in Africa. This is sad, given that coal-generated electricity is cheap, reliable, and dispatchable. Maybe it is dirty compared to natural gas, but coal’s a lot cleaner than burning wood or dung inside one’s abode.<br />
Yes, we use a lot of energy, but we use it efficiently. (Please look up Jevon’s paradox.) The Soviet Union consumed more energy than the US, yet their plants were so inefficient that the energy delivered to their comrades was less than to US customers.<br />
I suppose some of our energy use could be considered frivolous, like, say, surfing the internet. Which evidently you are doing, unless you’re able to send electrons through the aether magically.
Will the gas stop flowing if the wind is too high, too low or to gusty. When it is cold and there is no wind, a common occurance when we get a high pressure in the winter, does the gas consume electricity to stop it freezing?
In Denmark engineers have invented a system to stop people being driven nuts by the flicker from windmills. if it is sunny they shut it down when the shadow falls across a house.
So to the above list add wheh the sun is in the wrong place.
Fine article Matt.
I see you get a troll now and then.
The link "Posted by, Mouritsen (not verified)
Friday 14th October 2011 - 21:05pm" is more than 15 months old. He/she is encouraging us to educate ourselves, yet it seems his/her education is complete. Way to go;-)
About the flaming tap water: I live in the Marcellus shale region, and people here have been lighting well water on fire since they've been digging wells, with no relation to gas drilling. That would have been one of the first signs of an energy resource around here. There are a few wind farms around here as well, and all I can think of when I see them is how truly ugly and menacing they look, especially when they're working (that is if they're working).
Information about gas from shale, and the effect on prices in the USA has been on the Blogosphere for years. I posted about gas from shale on Bishop Hill two years ago and that blog has some true intellectual giants. However the responce was to downplay its importance and question the true recoverable amounts of gas.
To sit here in front of my pc and see that the UK governement STILL has not got the message is truly hard to take.
"borders on the insane. Nothing but bureaucratic inertia and vested interest can explain it" - no it is not insane, nor is it bureaucratic inertia or vested interest.
It is the deliberate dismantling of the economy by people who want to depopulate the planet. We are now post-industrial, post-democratic and heading for the new dark ages of feudalism at its worst. Some people will make money on 'renewable" resources along the way, together with the corrupt, psychopathic politicians who do the bidding of inbred banking families.
It has been deliberate policy to deny Africa the means to bring itself out of poverty by exploiting energy reserves for the benefit of its people - and the eco-fascists have done a wonderful job of ensuring that billions of people will starve to death.
And it is all based on murderous lies - peak oil, man-made global warming, etc - that use emotionality rather than facts. Todays schoolchildren are being indoctrinated to hate humanity and save the polar bears!!! Never mind that the earth has been through much warmer periods and that didn't kill the polar bears off!
This agenda has taken decades to put into place and we are near the end - carbon taxes will destroy industry for ever, generations of people will grow up where there are no jobs and no skills. With the indoctrination and stupidification of the masses no-one is going to raise a whimper against the mass culling of society because they have all been brainwashed.
With the complicity of the banker-owned media no-one is able to get the facts about energy. It's a mistake to assume that governments have our best interests at heart - they are not stupid but they are greedy and self-perpetuating.
[...] Gas against wind | The Rational Optimist… [...]
Here is an example of what gas,or or whatever you may call it has caused
http://www.naijavideos.com/view/5322/nigerias-oil-the-niger-delta/