Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 04/16/2011 12:58:01 AM PDT by neverdem
Gas industry dismisses claim that shale-derived natural gas is worse than coal for the climate.
In the calculus of global warming, natural gas is generally considered to be preferable to coal as a fuel. That's because, on a per-joule basis, burning methane, the primary constituent of natural gas, produces less carbon dioxide than burning coal.
But, earlier this week, the conventional wisdom was shaken by researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who argue in a study to be published in Climate Change1 that, over a 20-year period, the use of natural gas extracted from 'gas shales', porous rocks that hold the gas in minute pockets throughout the rock, could be worse for the climate than coal. Their study also estimates methane releases from conventional gas production and transportation over a 20-year period, which are less than from gas shales, but could also be significant...
--snip--
The rocks are shattered by high-pressure injection of water in order to release the methane more easily. According to the new study, by biogeochemist Robert Howarth and his colleagues, between 0.6 and 3.2% of the gas can escape to the atmosphere during this process...
--snip--
"This study lacks credibility and is full of contradictions," Russell Jones, senior economic adviser for the American Petroleum Institute, based in Washington DC, said on his organization's website. "The main author is an evolutionary biologist and an anti-natural-gas activist who is not credentialled to do this kind of chemical analysis."...
--snip--
As for concerns about data quality, Howarth is the first to admit it's a problem. "I fully agree the data weren't what one would like. I'm hoping this will help free up the logjam of industry refusing to turn over data, so that one can get a better handle than we've been able to do so far."
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
The above link goes to the abstract from Howarth et al.
Studies Say Natural Gas Has Its Own Environmental Problems (Barf alert!)
The last link is the NY Times version of the story.
The agenda of these elites is government subsidies of every kind and, rationalizing it all, fundamentally anti-human self-loathing.
The NYS legislature has shut down fracking in NYS. Cornell gets tons of Grant money.
“biogeochemist” What University carries that program? Another observation-As a chemist, he should know, methane is methane-one molecule of carbon, four molecules of hydrogen—nothing else. This guy was probably hired by the coal industry.
Job #47 for a GOP Congress and President.
Get out of the grant business.
1. Save billions
2. Starve liberal professors and universities
3. Reduce the incidence of unscientific drivel.
If he was, they didn't tell him. Ithaca hasn't been much in the news lately, but it is a ultra-left sime pit.
every equation is divided by zero.
Well, then the silly bastards have exposed their ignorance. The Bakken and Three Forks reservoirs which are being produced aren't shale, but a mixture of dolomite, sand, silt, and limestone. I know, I've been doing the geology on these wells since 2000.
There are shales involved which are the source rock for the hydrocarbons, but the hydrocarbons migrated into the reservoirs long ago.
Bloody idiots don't even know the geology of the formation and they are babbling this sort of BS.
I won't even spend time on the tectonics, except to say the volcano in Iceland probably had more relation to the Earthquake in Japan than anything going on in the Williston Basin.
The left ought to be concerned more with the disaster of ethanol than the gas from shale issue. Ethanol’s burn emission is far worse and its energy quotient is less. Lose lose from the left.
LOL! Maybe we should start the ad campaign....Liberals? LOSING!
They want us to live in caves.
You sir are a thinker. This is a common tactic to under the table funding of so-called experts who have never ventured out of their theoretical world to prove anything of which they espouse.
Dow was losing its worldwide patent for R12 and all of a sudden we have holes in the ozone. R12 is banned and all of a sudden Dow has R134a on the shelf just waiting. BTW, there were never any holes in the ozone, just natural thinning because of the polar shifts from one season to another which changed the level of available solar effect that creates the ozone layer in the first place.
Amazing. One would think that a biologist would be aware of the carbon basis of all life, and have encountered some discussion of the carbon cycle along the way.
What I would like to see are some studies determining the minimum concentration of carbon dioxide that plants can extract from the air. When carbon dioxide drops to that minimum level, the total mass of plant life will drop so that the minimum level will be maintained. When plant biomass decreases, animal biomass will necessarily decrease.
The Earth itself is sequestering carbon dioxide and has been throughout its history; do we really, out of stupid fear of "global warming", want to hasten that process?
That's not true.
If we were to try to live in caves, they'd go all apoplectic about destruction of blind fish habitat...
Man has changed not on iota, he seeks to dominate and enslave others, while exalting himself. With grandiose plans the Pharaoh greased the stones of his pyramids with the blood of these same slaves. It was all for the greater glory, maybe he even thanked them for dying so the few could live so luxuriously.
Never forget, no matter the rhetoric, no matter the original intention of those we exalt to public office. They are human beings, if you allow them to "lord" over you, eventually you and your "kind" will be the grease for their skids.
Strange that with all the hype about increased CO2, there is not a word about a corresponding DECREASE in O2.
Broach that to an AGW Worshiper and watch for the reaction. Priceless.
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