Guest post by David Middleton
First up: Yoko Ono and friends…
‘Fracking kills’: Yoko Ono joins star-studded cast fighting against hydraulic natural gas drilling in upstate New York
John Lennon’s son Sean Lennon, actress Debra Winger, songstress Natalie Merchant and “The Avengers” actor Mark Ruffalo have also spoken out in opposition to the extraction process criticized for potentially contaminating water supplies and damaging the environment.
By Glenn Blain / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Friday, January 11, 2013
ALBANY — Hydrofracking is not the most glamorous of issues but the gritty subject is bringing a lot of glitz to the state Capitol.
Yoko Ono, the widow of ex-Beatle John Lennon, and son Sean Lennon became the latest celebrities to visit Albany Friday to press for a ban on the controversial natural gas drilling.
“Fracking kills,” Ono said at a press conference with other drilling opponents. “And it doesn’t just kill us, it kills the land, nature and eventually the whole world.”
[…]
Now it’s the 4th graders’ turn…
Fourth-graders have concluded fracking’s bad
By Steve Israel
Published: 2:00 AM – 01/13/13
If it were up to nearly four dozen future voters at a Middletown elementary school, fracking would be banned in New York — and the rest of the world.
Just listen to what those fourth-graders at Maple Hill Elementary School have to say about the controversial natural gas extraction method of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking:
“It could cause methane explosions, poison water and kill people. It killed cattle,” says 9-year-old Philip Gazer.
“Sometimes, because of fracking, earthquakes could happen,” says 9-year-old Sagnik Chakraborty, citing minor earthquakes in Ohio apparently caused by the underground injection of fracking waste.
Bottom line for the fourth-graders in the classes of Mary Hayes and Patricia McGorry?
“We don’t want to be poisoned by fracking,” says 11-year-old Nancy Jaime.
[…]
There you have it. Yoko Ono is either not smarter than a 4th grader or she has a strong desire to spend winters freezing in the dark. The wellhead price for natural gas in the US is currently in the range of $3.00 to $3.50/mcf.
The shale boom is the single biggest reason why natural gas prices are so low in the USA compared to most of the rest of the world…
Without fracking, there would be no shale boom and US natural gas prices could be $8/mcf or higher.
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Yoko Ono is scientifically to fracking as Hansen is scientifically to coal. : )
Another thought => To paraphrase a line from a John Lennon song,
John
But, no knowledge of state-of-the-art drilling and fracking techniques and practices?
Wouldn’t this be kind of a once-sided analysis or presentation then?
(Practically) anyone can outline the dangers of fire, yet, we use ‘it’ continually and everywhere safely … (automobile engines – internal combustion, jet engines, gas heat, gas cook stoves, water heaters, electrical power generation, and so on)
.
Hydraulic fracturing can’t cause any disasters of any kind.
See the following…
Dallas earthquake not caused by fracking… And neither was the Ohio quake.
More “Fracking” Nonsense About Earthquakes
Fracking has been in common use for more than 50 years. Horizontal drilling and multi-stage frac jobs on shale formations have been going on since the 1980’s in Texas. The only thing that’s “fledgling” is the expansion of oil & gas operations into States unaccustomed to such activity.
Erm… No… Not even close.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=O0kmskvJFt0]
See: Halliburton, Hydraulic Fracturing, Fluids Disclosure
And, next time…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG1ObrqpPao&feature=player_detailpage]
Reminds me of the lyrics to a song by Roger Waters…
‘…Did you understand the music, Yoko, or was it all in vain?’
– from ‘The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking’ (1984)
I think we know the answer to that one.
I started out as a physics major, but switched to earth science during my first week in college… I decided I did not want to take all that math. Earth science only required 2 semesters of calculus. My advisor said I should take Calculus III because it used the same text book. Next thing I knew, I was taking differential equations, linear algebra and wound up with a minor in math. My first employer decided that I was a geophysicist, rather than a geologist because I minored in math and took differential equations. I think the main reason I was promoted into management back in 2007 was because I can use PowerPoint and Excel… Life is funny.
What’s even funnier? I work the Gulf of Mexico. Fracking and the shale boom have essentially erased the value of Gulf of Mexico natural gas. I ought to be in favor of a fracking ban and siding with the Good Will Fracking crowd, higher natural gas prices would be great for our bottom line… 😉
Frack off Yoko nono.
I emailed this link to a friend who works across town at Chesapeake Energy… his reply was extra colorful and one can almost make out the laughter from this distance.
We will be glad to sell the New Yorkers all the energy they can afford.
I don’t think that the gov’t will ever officially nationalize the energy industry. Obama has misused the Dept. of Energy program to subsidize alternative energy R&D and abused the regulatory power of the EPA and Interior Dept. in an effort to effectively nationalize the nation’s energy industry. In concert with his efforts to drive up the cost of coal- and natural gas-fired power plants, Obama has aggressively pursued an agenda of financing expensive power plants with taxpayer dollars. Many of these taxpayer-guaranteed loans have gone to financially strapped companies, lacking the means to repay those loans. In most cases local utilities were coerced or enticed into signing long-term purchase agreements to buy electricity at nearly double the cost of coal- and natural gas-generated electricity. The sole justification for this centralized Enviromarxist industrial policy is the Lysenko-like junk science of anthropogenic global warming.
The capex for solar power plants averages between $6- and $7-million per MW of installed capacity. Coal-fired plants generally run less than $2-million per MW and natural gas plants currently run less than $1-million per MW. The average retail residential electricity rate in the U.S. is currently less than 12¢ per kWh. The levelized generation cost for the plants being financed by Maobama is more than 20¢ per kWh. His centralized Enviromarxist industrial policy will drive the wholesale cost of electricity to nearly double the current retail rate.
The US Navy has been spending close to $30 per gallon for biofuels; while conventional JP5 is selling for about $3 per gallon.
The US Army recently commissioned s solar PV installation at White Sands Missile Range. Siemens will make an 18% ROI on their investment and the Army will only pay $0.08 per kWh for the electricity because the taxpayer picked up 27% of Siemens’ cost to build the plant. This solar installation will provide 10% of the base’s electricity. A gas-fired plant could have provided 100% of the base’s electricity, cost less than half-as-much to build and have an LCOE of $0.05 per kWh.
One need not literally seize the assets of businesses and install gov’t bureaucrats into management position to effectively nationalize those businesses. All it takes is to make them dependent on gov’t and/or direct their activities through regulatory constraints.
Simple solution. Don’t allow places with fracking bans to buy fracked gas. They have to buy the more expensive stuff.
Either Yoko is being used and is too dumb to know it, or she’s a watermelon. I kinda think watermelon.
Hearing the little kids poisoned by Green Lies is just plain sad. When this all turns around, sweeping anti-democracy and ant-civilization out of the schools HAS to be a priority or this same problem will be back again as it was before. This stuff should never have been allowed in schools in the first place. Where are the people who are supposed to look out for threats to society? Don’t they recognize this as a threat? Where are the people who are supposed to protect civilization?
Where are the people who should be arresting the likes of Al Gore and Rajenda Pachauri for fraud and crimes against humanity? Where’s the sheriff and his posse? Seriously, somebody should be looking at these guys AND the crooked scientists AND the crooked politicians. That there are SO MANY to arrest shouldn’t be an excuse not to arrest any. Somewhere, their files are fat. Somewhere, someone is waiting. Or am I just being an optimist again?
One can only come to one conclusion: Ono, her compadres, and indeed the entire environmentalist aka “green” movement hate humanity, particularly poor people. Fracking is just a convenient vehicle, as is manmade warming/climate change. They suffer from a mass psychosis.
Washed-up Yoko straining to gain relevancy by playing agent provocateur. Yawn.
Shut up and sing. Well, you sing, Natalie. Yoko, you just stand there.
Thanks, David, interesting post.
Some of your commenters might like to know about guar gum, being important to fracking, ice cream, and other common items.
http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/1370/fracking-vs-ice-cream-the-guar-gum-connection-updated
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A couple of years ago the term “rare earths” appeared in the works of the MSM. These are elements useful in the equipment of green-technologies; wind turbines being an example. While not actually rare, “rare earths” do require mining and that, of course, is something the élites do not wish to see. The solution is to out-source the supply to places where environmental issues can be ignored by those who seek to rapidly expand personal wealth.
The use of coal, gas, and nuclear fuels are highly regulated in the USA. Fracking is regulated by the various states because the Feds had their heads in the sky – actually because drilling was practically shut out of federal lands the Gov. had little to offer. They still don’t and get some “push-back” from state regulators when they try.
Getting back to the dangers of fracking versus the mining of rare earths, take a look at the next to last photo in the sequence here:
http://helablog.com/2012/01/new-photos-show-why-china-is-the-world%E2%80%99s-worst-polluter/
Here is a link to a Chromium waste story:
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=11171
“A 5,000 tonne stockpile of highly toxic chromium wastes was recently discovered, dumped around a factory in China’s Yunnan province.
But this is only the tip of a massive problem: according to Greenpeace, no fewer than a million tonnes of the poisonous material still remain to be cleaned up around the country.”
eworrall1 says:
January 23, 2013 at 12:28 am
Might need to use something other than gas if the world gets much colder. This winter its so cold in Siberia, natural gas is condensing to a liquid in the pipes, causing supply to fail to the worst affected regions just when it is needed the most
—————————————————-
Methane boils at -164C so it must be very cold in Siberia. Actually, you must have been reading about liquid condensates. These valuable and are usually removed at the source and not put in the pipline.
What is meant when someone is called a “watermelon”?
Watermelon
Green outside, red inside; see:
Kyoto Protocol The German plan
The Secret History of Climate Alarmism
A very German story of power politics disguised as environmentalism
AUG 9, 2010, VOL. 15, NO. 44 • BY JOHN ROSENTHA
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/secret-history-climate-alarmism?page=2
part of page 2:
To understand how this could be so—and, above all, how it could have been so widely overlooked—we should return to the German commission of inquiry’s report and consider the date of its submission. October 2, 1990. One day later, German reunification took place. When the commission proposed its ambitious target of a 30 percent reduction in CO2 emissions for Germany and other “economically strong industrialized countries,” the inevitable demise of East Germany’s highly inefficient, enormously carbon-intensive industries was already underway. This is significant because the commission also proposed backdating the reference year for measuring emissions reductions to a year before the actual coming into force of the treaty. The reference year that would finally be settled upon was none other than 1990.
This reference year assured Germany a substantial carbon savings windfall from the phasing out of East Germany’s obsolete industrial infrastructure. According to official statistics, from 1990 to 1995 CO2 emissions in the eastern German states fell by a whopping 44 percent.
My link above is for page 2 of a multi-page story. Sorry for that.
Green on the outside and red (AKA Communist) on the inside. I prefer to refer to these sort of people as Enviromarxists or Envirostatists.
Jack Simmons says:
” http://blog.heritage.org/2013/01/22/fracknation-sheds-truth-on-fracking-debate/
I hope they rerun this program. I missed it.”
It was presented on AXSTV which usually reruns shows. Checking with my DirecTV guide, I see that it is scheduled to be re-broadcast on on Saturday 1/26/2013 at 9:00 AM PST. I’d guess it will probably be re-run again.
Why would anybody think that fracking is good. And why do we need it??
MIT NANOR technology as well as LENR will obsolete oil and most other forms of energy…
Why support something that may contaminate domestic water supplies??
Fracking’s been going on for over 50 years. What has the activist upset is that it’s now big step toward relieving our (US) dependence on foreign oil.
As far as Yoko goes, someone tell Obama’s going to start doing this again and watch her head explode!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Rulison
TYPO
“someone tell Obama’s going to”
Should be “someone tell her Obama’s going to”
Bottom line is that fracking may be an issue depending on the specifics of the local geology. As with any proposal, it should be properly assessed on a case by case basis.
I’m glad I live in a state (Texas) that doesn’t subscribe to this trash.