Posted on 08/23/2016 11:03:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
What is the “biggest unfinished business for the Obama administration?” According to a report from Bill McKibben, the outspoken climate alarmist who calls for all fossil fuels to be kept in the ground, it is “to establish tight rules on methane emissions”—emissions that he blames on the “rapid spread of fracking.”
McKibben calls methane emissions a “disaster.” He claims “methane is much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide” and that it does more damage to the climate than coal. Methane, CH4, is the primary component of natural gas.
To buttress his anti-fracking argument, McKibben is selective on which studies he cites. He starts with a paper from “Harvard researchers” that shows increased methane emissions between 2002 and 2014 but doesn’t pinpoint the source of the methane. He, then, relies heavily on “a series of papers” from known fracking opponents: Cornell Scientists Robert Howarth and Anthony Ingraffea. Within his report, McKibben mentions Howarth’s bias, but, I believe, intentionally never mentions Ingraffea’s. Earlier this year, in sworn testimony, Ingraffea admitted he’d be lying if he said that every one of his papers on shale gas was “entirely objective.”
Because of bias, McKibben claims to reach out to an “impeccably moderate referee”: Dan Lashof. Mckibben then goes on to report on Lashof as having been “in the inner circles of climate policy almost since it began.” In addition to writing reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and crafting Obama’s plan to cut “coal plant pollution,” Lashof now serves as COO for billionaire Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate America. Lashof is hardly an “impeccably moderate referee.”p>Because McKibben goes to great lengths trying to appear balanced in his conclusions, a casual reader of his report might think the research cited is all there is and, therefore, agree with his cataclysmic views. Fortunately, as a just-released paper makes clear, much more research needs to be considered before cementing public policy, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s “tight rules on methane emissions.”
In the 28 peer-reviewed pages (with nearly 70 footnotes) of Bill McKibben’s terrifying disregard for fracking facts, Isaac Orr, research fellow for energy and environment policy at The Heartland Institute, states: “Although McKibben—a journalist, not a scientist—accurately identifies methane as being exceptionally good at capturing heat in Earth’s atmosphere, his ‘the-sky-is-falling’ analysis is based on cherry-picking data useful to his cause, selectively interpreting the results of other studies, ignoring contradicting data, and failing to acknowledge the real uncertainties in our understanding of how much methane is entering the atmosphere. In the end, methane emissions aren’t nearly as terrifying as McKibben claims.”
In the Heartland Institute Policy Brief, Orr explains why it has been difficult to achieve consistent readings on methane emissions: “Tools have been developed only recently to measure accurately methane emissions, with new and better equipment progressively replacing less perfect methods.”
Throughout the section on methodology, Orr draws attention to the results of the various techniques—which he says shows “great uncertainty about how much methane is entering the atmosphere, how much is produced by oil-and-natural gas production, and how emissions can be managed in the future.” He also points out that more than 75 studies examining methane emissions from oil and gas systems have been done, yet “McKibben chose an outdated study [Howarth/Ingraffea] that used unrealistic assumptions and reached inaccurate conclusions.”
Orr calls McKibben’s assertions that methane emissions are from the oil-and-gas sector: “simplistic” and “inappropriate.” Regarding the Harvard study, he explains: “Estimating the contributions from different source types and regions is difficult because there are many different sources of methane, and those sources overlap in the same spatial area. For example, methane is produced naturally in wetlands. Methane also is produced by agriculture through growing rice and raising livestock, fast-growing activities in developing countries. This makes it difficult to calculate exactly where methane is coming from and what sources should be controlled.”
Based on McKibben’s approach, other sections of the Heartland report include: Methane and Global Warming, Repeating Gasland Falsehoods, and What’s the Fracking Alternative?
A careful read of McKibben’s statements reveals that he is aware that his plan will take away one of the few economic bright spots; that due to higher priced electricity, manufacturing jobs will leave our shores; and coal regulations will be unpalatable.
I am often asked why the anti-fossil fuel crowd has so recently turned against the decades-old technology of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that has provided such economic and environmental benefits and has become even safer due to ever-increasing advances. In his report, McKibben states what is essentially the answer I often give: “One of the nastiest side effects of the fracking boom, in fact, is that the expansion of natural gas has undercut the market for renewables.” It has upset the entire world-view of people like McKibben who’d banked on oil and natural gas being scarce—and therefore expensive. In that paradigm, wind and solar power would be the saviors. Now they are an expensive redundancy.
Worrying about whether methane emissions come from oil-and-gas activities, from agriculture, such as cow flatulence or rice farming, or from naturally occurring seeps may seem irrelevant to the average energy consumer’s day. However, when you consider that long-term, expensive public policy is being based on this topic, it is important to be informed fairly and accurately—and to communicate with your elected officials accordingly.
Efforts to minimize claims of anthropogenic global warming are acts of war.
Leftists are certainly creative with the use of twisted logic and science to achieve their goals.
The liberal “greenies” want to put “fart sacks” on cattle, you know.....
They’re against fracking because there is so much Natural Gas (95.2% is methane). Methane is naturally created in the mantle (Lawrence Livermore Labs has proven this) and therefore, most nat gas is abiotic and not a fossil fuel.
At a conference on organic chemestry in 1892 John D Rockefeller sent a representative to have petroleum labeled an organic compound, since it was made up of mostly carbon and hydrogen (CH4). This conference’s agenda was to label which compounds were organic. They complied and Petroleum (Natural Gas and Coal) were from that point forward, fossil fuels.
This was done to create an impression that the supplies were limited.
Fracking makes natural gas too plentiful. In order to keep the price high, they need to kill fracking.
Put away "fart sacks" and just bury the cows.
I would not spend a lot of time arguing that Methane is not a fossil fuel, It passes the chemistry test in that it burns with Oxygen and produces the resultant Carbon Dioxide and Water.
The rest of the facts remain true. The environmental movement is against fracking for two reasons (I believe). The first is that it supports growth. More energy will provide more electricity, more air conditioning, and more jobs for people. The second is that fracking could lead to the US becoming independent of Middle East oil production. (The rest of the world will still buy ME oil but the US could go its own way. Going our own way could result in the reduction of Muslim Wahabi training in the US and why the environmentalists are against this is beyond me, except that they are both charter members of the Democratic Party.
I do not mention global warming because fracking has resulted in a reduction in airborne Carbon (compared to coal fired electrical generation) and because growth is the main product these global warming folk are striking against. Otherwise, they would by happy to generate electricity with nuclear power plants.
LOL...Yep...They’d love that...
Wow, bummer, huh?! Better stop that...
These people think we're imbeciles.
The Globalwarmworms should simply stop beating around the bush, enough with this absurd non-science already... just ban facts, logic, and common sense and be done with it! We all know the goal is total control of the “energy economy”, what would be left of it under their burdensome misrule, and thus the total....itarian transformation of any remaining vestige of freedom and individual rights in this country and the world. Obama’s Dystopian vision would thus come to pass.
Over a period of about 50 years the entire amazon forest dies and is replaced by new trees. These trees become termite food and thus termite farts also called methane. In reality this is probably the largest source of methane in the atmosphere.
The methane we produce from fracking is burned into water and CO2.
CH4 + 202 = CO2 + 2H2O
you will find:
methane is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide
methane is 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide
CH4 on climate change is more than 25 times greater than CO2
methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2
Methane 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide CO2
Methane is about 21 times more powerful at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide
it is 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide methane...a greenhouse gas 84 times more ...
In other words, the usual crowd hasn't a clue what they are talking about. If you ask them why is CH4 more powerful than CO2 they will be dumb struck.
I don’t use GOOGLE, but I found the exact same thing in DuckDuckGo.com and Bing search
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