I will have to think about whether I post this blog on Facebook, as it may offend some people. It would be interesting to see how many people are offended by the fake expletive used in the title, and how many are given pause by my opinion about accessing energy currently hidden in shale under many parts of the US.
I was a casual fan of the original Battlestar Galactica (BG), but the remake was much better. I did not remember that the first show also used the fake expletive, and according the Wikipedia they spelled it with a "c" similar to the current practice of pumping water and chemicals into the earth to try and get some gas back out.
This compilation of all the FRAKs from season one of the newer BG series was just too good to pass up:
Click on Frak clips to be taken to the YouTube site to watch these.
I realize that we like to accrue lots of energy to support the needs and wants of our citizens, but I believe that there are safe ways to get that energy, and quicker easier ways to get it. Bad things often happen when we take the easy way out, as I can attest to from personal experience. I think that some of that is happening in this particular extraction method of hydraulic fracturing.
The New York Times has two recent articles which relate to this issue. The first discusses the results of fracking itself, and the second has to do with a horrible accident at sea as the Russians rush to step up oil production in the Arctic and other offshore regions, since the returns from their land based rigs are starting to decrease.
I don't want to only bring up the downsides of fracking, so if you want to do some research on the energy industry's perspective on the safety of this process, a good place to start is here.
I will now leave you to do some research on your own to weigh this Shakespeare inspired question (a shout out goes to Heritage Coffee in Juneau and their support of the Theatre in the Rough coffee series which inspired this blog).
 |
| borrowed from http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/files/2011/08/fracking.preview.JPG |
I was a casual fan of the original Battlestar Galactica (BG), but the remake was much better. I did not remember that the first show also used the fake expletive, and according the Wikipedia they spelled it with a "c" similar to the current practice of pumping water and chemicals into the earth to try and get some gas back out.
This compilation of all the FRAKs from season one of the newer BG series was just too good to pass up:
Click on Frak clips to be taken to the YouTube site to watch these.
I realize that we like to accrue lots of energy to support the needs and wants of our citizens, but I believe that there are safe ways to get that energy, and quicker easier ways to get it. Bad things often happen when we take the easy way out, as I can attest to from personal experience. I think that some of that is happening in this particular extraction method of hydraulic fracturing.
The New York Times has two recent articles which relate to this issue. The first discusses the results of fracking itself, and the second has to do with a horrible accident at sea as the Russians rush to step up oil production in the Arctic and other offshore regions, since the returns from their land based rigs are starting to decrease.
I don't want to only bring up the downsides of fracking, so if you want to do some research on the energy industry's perspective on the safety of this process, a good place to start is here.
I will now leave you to do some research on your own to weigh this Shakespeare inspired question (a shout out goes to Heritage Coffee in Juneau and their support of the Theatre in the Rough coffee series which inspired this blog).
Fractious response.
ReplyDelete(sorry, I could not resist)
There were several talks and posters at the AGU meeting on fracking-induced changes in permeability of host rock (GW contamination), and injection-related pore fluid pressure changes / induced seismicity. I went to just a few. One statement I heard often was that the size of quakes due to injection had some kind of a hard upper limit. I can tell you with 100% confidence that that is utter nonsense. I was so annoyed about that conclusion that I don't remember what else people were saying...
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, as you obviously know much more about the science behind this than I do! I would love my weight to have a "hard upper limit", which I guess it technically could, given the breaking strength of skin, but I understand your frustration with that comment. That type of statement is of little solace to people whose house foundations are cracking and drinking water is being poisoned.
Delete