In the U.K. there is a big ridiculous row over this well concealed gas well in Balcombe, that the Balcombe Parish Council didn’t even object to when Cuadrilla’s application for planning permission to drill for shale gas went before them.
The noise being made by the anti-frackers in America is equally ridiculous, they can’t even protest the right well sites. “The protesters do not seem concerned with such details”
Josh writes:
Given the recent protests about Fracking, I thought some cartoons on the subject might be a good idea.
Suggestions for further Fract Sheets are very welcome!
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
taobabe:
At August 9, 2013 at 10:40 am you ask
I answer: because some people want to switch their lights on and not off when the Sun goes down.
Richard
I am no warmest by any measure and am pretty pleased with the amount of oil and maybe even natural gas this country will be able to produce through fracking but… to act like there are not serious problems environmentally with fracking is short sighted and makes me questions your motives Anthony. I don’t want to question your motives; one of the things that attracted me to your arguments was your stance as a conservationist. I believe folks in the environmental movement need to return to the basics of clean air and clean water. Fracking I feel needs more regulation and better oversight. It is a filthy practice that if done correctly could be good for everyone. Images from the Dakota’s fracking fields should be evidence enough to show that wells are not hidden behind trees and the surface water sources close to fracking areas are far from pristine. The trucks coming and going from areas around wells and the machinery used to create and run the wells in of themselves make for unsavory environmental conditions that most Americans would never want to live near unless they were making tons of cash from it. You pride yourself on research and facts how about applying the same here.
And how many thousand, or million, others could share in your windfall logging solution? On the same farms? Ijit.
No. That is harder to say. Fractfact can be easy to say, it just rolls off the tongue when you say it out loud. It is also mean to coincidence with the “Fract Sheet” and it is meant to be a form of satire of double-speak. “Frackturedfact” sounds like some misguided fact, but fractfact does not. But a fractfact is a misguided fact. Which makes it all the more ironic. I believe there is another word for what I am trying to convey, but I cannot think of it.
Living in West Virginia, USA, I’m right in the middle of the fracking and shale boom. Although the gist of the cartoon is correct a shale well pad is a bit more extensive than a pipe coming out of a ground, you have a retention pond and brine tanks as well plus whatever else is deemed necessary to the long term operation. That said, a producing well site could easily be hidden and, yes, in no way impacts the immediate environs and viewshed as does a wind farm (we have those as well), though it depends upon the individual drilling company as to any remediation beyond a simple cleared area with grass. Some companies actually want the sites to be seen, not only for security concerns but also as advertising for the industry. All of the ones I’ve seen are clean and of no real impact to surrounding properties.
Add in power density of NG/oil vs wind vs reliability and it’s no contest.
The bigger problem we have here are “orphan wells” and non-shale wells. The former are an ecological and safety hazard and the later are simply neglected as the money is in the drilling of new wells. I have a 30 year old gas well 300 feet from my home that used to be swabbed twice yearly, the site kept mowed of vegetation and the well maintained as problems arose. Three years ago the shale boom hit and the well is now only visited once a month as someone comes to get the monthly production chart from meter. There are broken parts that have simply been discarded in the weeds. No one cares except me since I get free gas, so I find myself tending it and keeping the above ground operation in good shape, however one day it will simply drown itself out, had it been tended properly it could produce for decades, and become yet another orphaned abandoned well head left for the state to take care of when it becomes a problem.
Robert says (August 9, 2013 at 11:38 am): “The bigger problem we have here are “orphan wells” and non-shale wells.”
Which raises the question of “orphan” wind turbines and farms.
For those who think this might be propaganda… look at the real world.
Let’s play a game, follow the link below. Can you spot the 11 gas wells in this picture?
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/display/ShowImage?imageUrl=/storage/natural gas production – windmills.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1374396078042
Look hard and you actually can.
Because the picture is taken from the air.
But even so, I bet you spot the wind turbines first.
OK, link doesn’t work (everything has gone like this today).
Try this link to the source article on Bishop Hill.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/7/21/energy-impact.html
And play; it’s fun.
For the eco-loons fracking is a serious threat , that is a threat to the type of energy supply cries they wish to see come about . As although they longer say it in public they still regard energy as ‘to easy ‘ and ‘to cheap ‘ for the people to get and know there is no chance of any return to the ‘pastoral paradise’ they seem to think we should all live in, until this changes .
In reality if you could come up with completely green and cheap way to create power , with unlimited supply , they still find ‘reasons’ to oppose it becasue the bottom line is they don’t want the people to have such a supply.
[i]Kit Carruthers says:
August 9, 2013 at 9:13 am
“richardscourtney says:
August 9, 2013 at 8:55 am
Not necessarily – if you build a smart grid then you can counter intermittency. Not yet done, but apparently achievable, especially if you include other tech such as solar PV, wave, tidal, nuclear, etc.[/i]
I think that the correct answer to this is “pigs fly”.
Wind and solar require 100% backstopping by conventional and nuclear power. All the wishing in the world will not erase this requirement.
http://ontariowindperformance.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/chapter-3-1-powering-ontario/
Please note that there have been times when wind disappears entirely from the power grid. These times are random and not restricted to any season. The only predictable “blackout times” for wind occur after each and every major storm system rolls through Ontario.
People continue to believe that wind is always producing at least 25-35% of faceplate power — but it’s simply not true. Not even today. At least 31 times this year alone — up to Jun 26, 2013 the Wind dropped to less than 5% of faceplate value — effectively Zero (<18 MWatts). We draw a minimum of 16000 MW and typically 26,000 MW on a hot summer days. Wind often goes to Zero during summer months — or is close to maximum on cool windy summer days — usually weekends when the power is not needed.
Wind is uncontrollable. All the statistical manipulation in the world can only give the appearance of usefulness.
Joe Public @10:18, that water well is for monitoring the groundwater. As for gas, those yanks use funny words for their fuel. We call our liquid fuel petrol, they call the same thing gas even though its not – go figure. 😉
Brian H says:
August 9, 2013 at 11:21 am
“And how many thousand, or million, others could share in your windfall logging solution? On the same farms? Ijit.”
Brian – your impoliteness aside – a heck of a lot more if people don’t waste energy like we westerners do. Large areas of Earth need no heating energy, at least most of the time, and others use it to vast excess, or use transport energy to vast excess. Like it or not we are all going to have to face up to these issues… you can call me whatever you want but that fact still remains, no matter how loud you shout. There is, ultimately, no alternative.
Horizontal wells drilled in and near Fort Worth Texas
http://i.imgur.com/giJ5o.jpg
@JFD
“I studied air compressors and pressure storage vessels one time but could not find insulation good enough to hold the heat in the compressed air vessels. Simply expanding the air back to atmosphere was not even close to being cost effective.”
Is it possible to use something with a phase change like propane but with a more useful liquefaction pressure? The heat could was well be stored chemically. I think Garth Foxcroft came up with a cooking device that worked that way. It was (direct) solar charged, separating two chemicals that floated away from each other. Turning it over caused them to mix and the whole thing got hot enough to cook on. When you want the gas pressure to be released, the chemically stored heat could be applied to the stored liquefied gas regaining the energy.
Thanks for bring up the subject – I had not considered the system loss by allowing the compressed gas to cool. Time to strap on the Inventing Hat.
@RA Cook –
Well said – wind is an environmental as well as an economic disaster. But then “green” has never been about the environment – it’s only about totalitarian control and taking of that to which one is not entitled.
Well, Kit and others – here’s the Keeling curve from yesterday.
Would anyone care to describe, either qualitatively or quantitatively, what it would look like if we didn’t have any of the bird shredders blighting the environment.
http://imageshack.com/scaled/large/24/gprz.png
http://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mortality/
No bird death is good but…
Wind turbines may kill 33,000 birds per year, and, as in the case of electrocutions, these birds tend to be large and scarce (e.g. raptors)
Domestic and Feral Cats – may kill 500 million birds per year or more.
Electrocutions kill tens of thousands of birds per year. This occurs mainly when large birds such as raptors make contact between a live electrical wire and a ground such as a pole. The relatively small number of birds affected belies the significance of this threat, since species such as Golden Eagle are more susceptible.
Window strikes – estimated to kill 97 to 976 million birds/year
Cars may kill 60 million birds per year.
Humans are not good for birds!
richardscourtney says:
…because some people want to switch their lights on and not off when the Sun goes down.
___________
Richard, there are such things as solar batteries for home, business, and utility use. You wouldn’t be left energy-less at night.
Ya know, the cartoon made me think of a new product, by it appears I was too late…….
http://northeastwindmills.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Disposible_Landscape_lg.gif
Think about it {°¿°}
http://ansnuclearcafe.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/wind-farm1.gif
Kit….until you quit wasting energy NOT generated by wind/solar posting your whatever here,then you are a hypocrit.If you lived by what you are trying to shove down our throats here,you would not even have a computer. You wood(pun intended) be out harvesting your garden before the fluffy mammals ate it!
Like they say,you can’t fix stupid.
It’s a textbook illustration, not a cartoon.
I wonder about a cartoon of the backup generators. Everybody is familiar with stop and go driving, and how that kills your gas mileage and your engine life and in fact your tailpipe contents. Of course, that’s just what these backup generators are going through. While “backing up” instead of driving forwards??
Showing all the windmills as 10% filled in, and 90% outline only?
taobabe says:
August 9, 2013 at 3:50 pm
There is nothing preventing you from buying the equipment you list, along with solar cells to power them, and giver ‘er a try.
Then in a year or two, return and report. Keep track of all costs and tell us how your experiment compares to electricity rates from the grid.
It should be interesting.
Found in: alexwade said on August 9, 2013 at 9:56 am:
As opposed to Fractured Fairy Tale?
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Fractured-Fairy-Tales-Volume/dp/B000A345C6