This opinion should create quite a stir amongst enviros. – Anthony
Air pollution is a far more pressing problem – particularly for emerging economies such as China and India – than the challenges posed by greenhouse warming.
A deadly pollution known as PM2.5 is currently killing over three million people each year, primarily in the developing world, demonstrates Richard Muller (Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley since 1980) in Why Every Serious Environmentalist should favour Fracking. His co-author, Elizabeth Muller, is his daughter and co-founder (with him) of Berkeley Earth, a non-profit working on environmental issues.
Watch the animation:
As such, air pollution is currently harming far more people than the more distant challenge of global warming – particularly for emerging economies such as China and India. They state:
“The Health Effects Institute estimated that air pollution in 2010 led to 3.2 million deaths that year [across the world], including 1.2 million in China and 620,000 in India. And the pollution is getting worse as global use of coal continues to grow…
The Mullers argues that both global warming and air pollution can be mitigated by the responsible development and utilisation of shale gas:
“China not only has the greatest yearly death toll from air pollution, but is also key for mitigating global warming. China surpassed the US in CO2 production in 2006; growth was so rapid that by late 2013, China’s CO2 emissions are nearly twice those of the US. If its growth continues at this rate (and China has averaged 10% GDP growth per year for the past 20 years) China will be producing more CO2 per person than the US by 2023. If the US were to disappear tomorrow, Chinese growth alone would bring worldwide emissions back to the same level in four years. To mitigate global warming, it is essential to slow worldwide emissions, not just those in the developed countries. And we feel this must be done without slowing the economic growth of the emerging world…”
“It is believed that China has enormous reserves of shale gas, perhaps 50% larger than those of the US. If that shale gas can be utilised, it offers China a wonderful opportunity to mitigate air pollution while still allowing energy growth… Industry experts believe that the cubic metres of gas recovered from a given well can be doubled in the near future by better design of the fracking stages to match geologic formation characteristics. And they also believe that number could double again in the next decade. Soon that will mean four times the production for only a minor increase in cost. Such an advance is expected to turn currently difficult fields into major producers, to open up fields in China, Europe, and the US that are currently unprofitable.”
The authors consider some of the concerns raised by opponents of fracking; and conclude that they are either largely false or can be addressed by appropriate regulation.
Developed economies should therefore help emerging economies switch from coal to natural gas; and shale gas technology should be advanced as rapidly as possible and shared freely.
And China and Europe are well placed to take advantage of fracking. The high price paid in China and Europe for imported natural gas, typically US$10 per million BTU (compared to the US$3.50 in the US) means that the cost of shale drilling and completion can be much higher and still be profitable.
The Mullers conclude that environmentalists should recognise the shale gas revolution as beneficial to society – and lend their full support to helping it advance.
Source: http://www.cps.org.uk/publications/reports/why-every-serious-environmentalist-should-favour-fracking/
h/t Steven Mosher
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J. Philip Peterson! Good to hear from you. Thank you, so much. It’s always such a BUMMER (and it happens all the time) when I post a video and no one watches it, especially one that moves me to tears as that one does.
So thankful you took the time to tell me and for your affirmation.
How is the art selling?
And, in informed circles, you ARE a “famous artist.”
Hey, everybody (just in case SOMEONE reads this), click on J. Philip Peterson’s name and look at his BEAUTIFUL PAINTINGS. All are lovely, some are stunning.
Here is a concerned environmentalist’s view about fracking.
Every carbonphobe should also favor nuclear energy. But nooooooooo even though it’s ‘less’ dangerous to the planet ie it won’t destroy the biosphere.
“Rud has no understanding of what Shell is doing for example.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10300263/Shell-shuts-down-8.3bn-project-in-China.html
While it may be true that human life is considered cheap in China, this is not something unique to the current crop of totalitarians. China’s been like that for a loooooong time. Whatever valuation may be placed on human life, the instant that fraced gas is a cheaper play than brown coal, those mines will close with a sound like thunder. Economic realities can’t be ignored forever, and only a fool would believe the Chinese don’t have a sharp eye on the bottom line.
Janice Moore says:
December 6, 2013 at 3:52 pm
============
” He seems so unhappy.”
Start to worry when he seems happy.
There are many solutions to current real environmental problems and future energy needs. These include-
– Natural gas in the short term.
– Full baseload thorium power in the medium term.
– Lunar He3 in the long term.
However there is no solution to current real environmental problems and future energy needs that includes –
– Dr. Richard Muller.
Anybody notice how US CO2 emissions are falling so fast.
Anybody notice how US SO2 emissions are falling so fast.
Anybody notice how Green UK and Germany’s emissions are still rising fast.
Duh, Natural Gas electricity generation from the recent rise of Natural Gas supplies from fracking.
Advice from the fake skeptic is always fascinating.
Excellent post and explanation. May I suggest you pull out that part of your post that strictly addresses how fracing/fracking (which is it?) works with the porosity of the rock explanation, to how sand remains to allow the gas to rise to the surface, to how the water is RECOVERED at the surface….and then label the post How Fracking Works. Add an illustration that shows how far down the tracking is, way below aquifers, since most people (the loudest complainers) think that somehow tracking occurs inside the aquifer!
I look forward to your paper explaining more, or whatever it is you are working on, and I hope it gets picked up here.
re: typos in December 6, 2013 at 4:42 pm…My auto-correct insists on changing FRACKing to tracking, and even when I make corrections, it does something on its own after that. Annoying.
Is that what happens during CPR when 40,000 PPM of CO2 are blown into the patient’s chest?
This is an aside from the main topic, but due to EPA involvement in the burning of firewood for home heating in our fair city of Fairbanks, AK, I’ve spent some time looking at the basis of the claims of harm from “PM 2.5”. I am nowhere near a conclusion, but I’m becoming concerned that there is scientific misconduct involved. To dip your toe in, search for ”flawed pm 2.5 studies”.
BTW Janice, thanks for pointing out J. Philip Peterson’s work. Very nice indeed.
@ur momisugly Dr. Bob on (December 6, 2013 at 1:50 pm)
PM2.5 is a perhaps misleading metric. It includes all particles under 2.5 microns (2.5 x 10-6) in size. However, particles almost 1000 times smaller (in the nanometer (10-9 range) may have a greater effect on health than larger particles. The visible smoke from diesel vehicles is mostly in the 30 to 500 nm range. (Kittelson 2006, pg 31). Kittleson calls this range of particles the accumulation mode, one of two ranges of particles sizes produced by engines, the other one of which he calls the nuclei mode, with diameters ranging from 3-30 nm. However, the visible particles may not be the most harmful as the smaller particles may go deeper into the lungs (Kittelson 2006, pg 15).
Spark Ignition (i.e. gasoline) engines can also produce high concentrations of very small particles but the particles are generally smaller than those produced by diesel engines. These smaller particles don’t absorb as much light and, therefore, aren’t as visible as the larger particles emitted by diesel engines. Interestingly, greater fuel economy demands are leading to more direct injected (DI) gasoline engines. Most diesel engines have direct injection, where fuel is injected directly into the cylinder. Gasoline engines have, up to now, generally used indirect injection, where the fuel injectors spray into the intake valves but are mounted in the intake manifold. DI gasoline engines seem to have much higher emissions of ultra-fine particulates, similar to the emissions from non-filtered diesel engines. (Färnlund, et al. 2001)
Färnlund, et al. 2001 state that the largest number of particles from spark ignition engines were in the smallest size category of 10 nm, but that their equipment could not measure particles that were smaller than that. That raises interesting issues about gasoline vs. diesel engines, especially with regard to modern clean diesel engines.
Stoeger et al. 2005 compared 6 different ultrafine carbon particles using live mouse models. Particles were instilled into the lungs and, after 24 hrs, the mice were euthanized and the tissues sampled for inflammation. Reference diesel exhaust particles (DEP) produced the least inflammation while spark-generated ultrafine carbon particles (ufCP) generated the most. Specifically:
It should be kept in mind that Stoeger et al. 2005 measured immediate inflammatory responses. Longer-term exposure may have different results (i.e. diesel particulates may be found to have a significant inflammatory response), but it is still interesting.
I was reading about Muller’s “Nemesis” theory. If you look this up, you will never believe anything that comes from him again.
Muller hasn’t done enough Junk Science so now he gets into the PM2.5 Junk Science???
@Steven Mosher says:
December 6, 2013 at 1:41 pm
and
@Steven Mosher says:
December 6, 2013 at 11:27 am
You just cannot help being an a$$hole, can you? You might have something to say, but either you cannot write, or you simply cannot forbear showing a juvenile and rude contempt for those to whom you are responding, or both. I do wish I could “ignore” you on this site, because you add nothing of value, at least in commentary. I feel sorry for one so socially lacking.
And, Mod, if you kill this, that’s fine with me. I just get tired of his stuff.
@ur momisugly Mike Kinville — you’re welcome!
Mann talks about Muller here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/scientist-rips-apart-the-new-york-times-coverage-of-climate-change-2013-12?pundits_only=0&comments_page=0#comment-52a28c096da811ac1fa704d5
same old stuff from Mann.
I commented – quite ranty actually – Mann gets up my nose.
Of course all of this discussion about particulates is based on the EPA’s lying about how bad it is for people, claiming it can kill and then hiring people to be exposed to much higher levels. When nothing happened to these people, they buried the study and claimed it lethal.
Tom, many thanks for your posts. First class on many counts. Can you add water usage and chemical usage, including volumes and recovery. Anthony, can you make toms reports a post in their own right. Ground breaking and myth busting indeed.
It is about the cost of energy in the end.
Expensive, or cheap, for those who need it is what matters.
What can you afford at the direction of those who arbitrarily set energy policy?
Think about it!
Video redacted !
Not!
Don’t forget what this man told you!
He meant it!
An article I wrote on air pollution earlier this year.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/may/30/co2-overhyped-as-air-pollution-threat/
Whenever I see a statement like:
“A deadly pollution known as PM2.5 is currently killing over three million people each year…”
I always ask myself “ How did they determine that?” And so should everybody. You can bet there are not 3 million people with: “cause of death: an overdose of PM2.5” on their death certificate.
I have been retired for a number of years so my knowledge is getting a little outdated. But back in the early ’80’s when I was working under contract to EPA on mobile source pollutant exposure, The model used by EPA for cancer deaths due to pollution exposure, was called a “one-hit, no threshold” model. This means that one exposure to any level of pollutant would cause some deaths.
The curve of “deaths per 1000 population” ( Y axis) versus “pollutant level” ((X axis) was a straight line drawn from some very high concentration of pollutant for which there was some data that showed some cancer deaths, down through the 0,0 point. Thus guaranteeing that now matter what level of pollution there was (as long as it wasn’t zero) there would be some cancer deaths.
Now the number of cancer deaths per thousand for a given concentration of pollutant from the curve might well be a small fraction (say 0.001) but when multiplied by the population of a country (say 2 billion for China) you get lots of deaths (in this example, 2 million).
My bet is that the “one hit, no threshold” model was use to get the numbers in the first line of this post. Which IMO means it is meaningless.
I think you should change your name to “Wise
OldEngineer.” Re: yours at 10:23pm, I’ll bet you’re right.There is two types of fracking – coal and shale
Coal fracking, as performed in NSW and Queensland in Australia, uses water to force the escape of gas from the coal seam. The water that returns to the surface is highly saline and full of toxic chemicals.We are talking Tonnes of salt and Megalitres of toxic water. Very hard to dispose of. There is serious, and understandable public opposition to this type of fracking especially as it’s being sourced from prime agricultural land where the water table and aquifers are at stake.
New shale deposits have been found in the Woomera district of South Australia possibly as rich as Saudi Arabia – that’s where fracking should be performed in Australia..
It should also be noted that we have copious amounts of natural gas that doesn’t require fracking and reports are that even more is yet to be discovered.