![methane_bubbles[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/methane_bubbles1.jpg?quality=83)
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
An Aussie Green politician has attracted publicity, by “setting fire” to water in an Australian river, as part of a propaganda attack against local gas fracking operations. But CSIRO scientist Damian Barrett has been quick to dismiss the scare, stating that methane seeps are well known in the area, and that the methane in the video is likely from natural sources.
River on fire in Greens MP’s video is natural, not fracking, says CSIRO
Jeremy Buckingham says scientists ‘making excuses’ for CSG industry after footage shows him touching off sheet of flame on the Condamine river.
The CSIRO has defended its independence after a Greens MP, whose footage of burning methane on a Queensland river went viral, accused the government-funded research body of “making excuses” for the coal seam gas industry.
Jeremy Buckingham, a member of the New South Wales parliament’s upper house, posted the video, which showed him lighting the surface of the Condamine river with a barbecue lighter and sending flames licking around the boat, on his Facebook page on Friday. By Sunday it had been shared 13,000 times and had 2.2m views.
The CSIRO began studying methane seeps in 2012 in the Condamine river, which is near Chinchilla, about 300km west of Brisbane, after locals reported seeing bubbles. The gas is most evident at an area called Pumphole where the video was filmed. It is just over 5km from the gas field but there is a gas well within 900m, according to Buckingham.
Speaking to Guardian Australia, Buckingham said it was “implausible” that the gas flow was not linked to the coal seam gas industry, which expanded in the area in 2011.
“It would be the most remarkable coincidence that the very thing that we warned would happen has happened in the middle of a gas field and it’s totally unrelated,” he said.
But Professor Damian Barrett, research director of the CSIRO’s onshore gas programme, insisted it was “unlikely” that the gas seep was linked to fracking in the region.
Barrett said there were naturally occurring fissures in the rock in that part of the Darling Downs where, owing to the coal beds being less than 100m from the surface, methane had been known to leak out. At least four of those fissures are in a 3km stretch of the Condamine river, including Pumphole.
When even the über green Guardian dismisses an environmental scare story, that story is busted.
The video of the “burning river” publicity stunt:
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Get some wells drilled under the area to remove the gas to useful purpose and relieve the pressure.
Win, win.
Sorry for our US cousins – apparently there’s an election in Scotland as well.
This video is a must see … or perhaps read … as apparently the (english) BBC thought it needed subtitles even for the English.
https://youtu.be/SNp2v7D4Wrc
So this guy starts a fire — did he bother to put it out????
If he is a typical Greenie he would not. Greenies are notorious for protesting and then afterwards leaving the area a dump for others to clean up.
I live in Portland Oregon and have seen that many times. Sometimes the Greenies leave a cleanup group behind but you would think that each Green would take care of his own trash. No, during the protest all junk gets thrown to the ground. The news reporters never cover the aftermath of the protest to expose the hypocrisy. I have come to the conclusion that in a Green run world the environment would be totally “trashed”.
Eugene WR Gallun
Methane is common in the water wells around here, and has been long before there was any drilling for oil and gas. As is H2s to varying degrees.
The mistake in the video is that they did not have Bill Nye do it.
Would have been much more credible.
/grin
Good one!
Cherry picking the land in addition to the historical data is never a good thing, but not unexpected from climate con games.
He was interviewed on CBC radio and insisted that CSIRO always supported industry. I always thought they were a bunch of greenie alarmists. What am I missing?
To a greenie alarmist, anyone who isn’t sufficiently alarmist is a shill for industry.
Fracking it would reduce or stop the seeps by drawing the pressure down. Indeed fracking here would be an ameliorating thing to do. The incident shows the dishonesty of much of the political class. If this green guy has an urgent cause, deceit wouldn’t be necessary. Green now a days means anti fossil fuel, CO2 and methane. Killing birds and bats by the millions is okay as is local villagers in China digging pits into rare earth-bearing clays and dumping sulphuric acid in to extract rare earths for making neodymium/dysprosium magnets for wind turbines, leaving behind radioactive thorium, much of the rare earths, acid and God knows what to find its way into the rivers and groundwater.
http://www.broadbright.com/pdf/In%20China,%20Illegal%20Rare%20Earth%20Mines%20Face%20Crackdown.pdf
So let’s add fish, people and countless other creatures and plants to the dead bat and bird toll.
Causing the contamination of Colorado rivers by bursting containment dams in order to see what’s in there?
The NSW Greens parliamentary critic for Mines and Industry searches for gas leaks with a lighter?
His mentor, former Australian Greens head, Dr. Bob Brown, did say in his letter to “Fellow Earthians” that “We people of the Earth exist..” because of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago so perhaps Buckingham was seeking to propel himself into a permanent orbit in the “Global Parliament” advocated by the Greens to rule us sustainably.
“The pursuit of eternity is no longer the prerogative of the gods: it is the business of us all, here and now.”
http://greensmps.org.au/content/news-stories/bob-brown-delivers-3rd-annual-green-oration
The level of dishonesty is mindblowin with these groups. How they act with impunity is a major flaw in our system. We need watchdogs against these groups like the lefties demanded against business, food and drugs. No one is above the law. We meet to make these liberals fear the government that they love by applying the same rules to them they apply to others.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mUNBwqovI9U
Fracking gasholes !
Seemed appropriate for this thread
It seems “implausible” hey? That is the limit of the thought process of a politician who refuses to be informed. These political types really do believe they have powers of comprehension that the rest of us don’t have.
This gas is coming out at a rate from a clean flowing river. Not a swamp as others “prove” as a natural occurrence. The fact the nearest fracking point is one km away and nobody has supplied a geo map of natural inclination of fractures/sediment beds.
HOWEVER, note on the RT video. This gas “leak” is between two fences each side of the river. What an amazing coincidence.
David Middleton in a comment above very helpfully provided us with a map of all the gas bores in the vicinity of the Condamine River seep that Jeremy Buckingham set alight. If you could note which of the facilities on the map is the “nearest fracking point is one km away” I would find it very helpful for clarity in this discussion.
When the first English settlers arrived in the 1800’s, the Australian Aboriginals had a name, Min Min for ghost lights created by spontaneous combustion of methane across a wide area of outback QLD. But no-one expects a Green politician, such as Buckingham, to know that.
its called ‘natural’ gas.
It almost goes without saying, although some politicians are too stupid, that if you have obnoxious natural methane gassing, that you immediately start safely extracting natural (cooking) gas. Two birds with one stone. Cheap gas and more fish. Less obnoxiousness. A richer community with some well paid workers.
What the frackers are doing is extracting the gas from a coal seam, so that it can be used as an energy source. Until the coal-bed methane (“coal-seam gas” if you’re in Oz) business got started, coal was usually extracted in underground mines. As the coal was opened up, methane would seep out continuously, and sometimes quite violently. It all went to waste in the atmosphere. Methane is why underground coal mining was such an unbelievably hazardous way of life. I would guess (in the absence of taking the time to look it up) that the overwhelming majority of coal mine accidents have been gas-related rather than ground collapse incidents.
Now, after the gas has been leaked off by the evil frackers, the (more or less) gas-free coal can be mined safely, and all its contained energy is put to use.
If I remember right, the earliest coal-bed methane operations just let the gas out to the atmosphere or flared it off. It was simply a way of making the coal safe for mining. Now it’s used as an energy source.
Obviously, the rocks above this particular NSW coal seam must contain a lot of natural fractures, hence the natural methane leaks. So instead of just leaking away, the methane is being used. I wonder why this is considered a bad thing?