TheMillerCircle.org

Hydraulic Fracking Model

Many small communities in America are faced with decisions about whether to allow hydraulic fracking, the process of injecting, under high pressure, water sand and organic solvents into wells to free and collect natural gas for energy use. Thanks to GW Bush, this process has been removed from oversight function by the EPA, so there is virtually no regulatory control on this process and quite often we don’t even know the chemical composition of the slurry pressure ejected into the wells. We do know however, that much of it stays in the ground and carries with it a potential for a disastrous outcome, particularly to water supplies that are housed in adjacent aquafers. One report I read some time ago claimed that benzene derivatives, known carcinogens, were actually part of one analyzed injection cocktail. Interestingly, Governor Rick Perry of Texas just signed a bill (June 2011) that will force fracking companies operating in Texas to post the chemical composition of their fracking fluid beginning in 2012. No other state has passed a similar law. Neighborhood commitments to fracking often start when one member of a community leases drilling rights to one of the gas companies. An action by one person in a town can lead to an avalanche of others signing up to get the financial benefits, but often without understanding the risks or the threat imposed to the public water supply and the value of homes and neighborhoods that typically depreciate. I found it very enlightening to read Stanley Fish’s article in the NYT today, describing a town meeting on the subject of fracking that he attended in Andes, New York. A bunch of sensible people got together and decided their community and small town would be ruined by such drilling practices and resolved to ban the practice of allowing fracking leases in the town. Whether they can make this ban work or not remains to be seen, but the spirit is  willing. For more information on fracking you can visit here.   

RFM

• Comments Off

Alberta Tar Sand Field

Last Saturday, a group of demonstrators in Washington DC began what may be the largest protest in decades for what is a combined  environmental and greenhouse gas emission issue. This protest is an effort to stop the transport of Alberta tar sands oil in the planned 1600 mile pipeline that will run all the way from Northern Alberta, Canada, across stretches of American farmland, to reach the Gulf of Mexico. The pipeline will transport some 830,000 barrels of oil per day. This is not a traditional source of oil. The tar sands must be heated and then diluted with water to be suitable for pipeline transportation. It is an expensive process that adds to the carbon footprint of the project. The protest comes at a time when the State Department is assembling its final recommendation and report to President Obama, which will be completed by the end of this month. After that the Obama administration will have 90 days to decide whether it’s in the national interest to proceed with construction of the pipeline. This Keystone XL project has been the focus of concern for environmentalists and climatologists because, the burning of tar sand oil increases carbon emissions by 40 percent over that from more conventional petroleum sources. In addition, the mining of tar sands is destructive to the boreal forests  or Taiga of Northern Alberta (740,000 acres of forest land will be destroyed). The oil and gas industry is claiming that 20,000 jobs will be created, so Obama’s decision looks more difficult than it would have been if the economy had now been producing large numbers of jobs, something that will not happen anytime soon.

As of yesterday sixty five protestors have been arrested, including Bill McKibben, head of 350.org.  Although Congress has weakened the ability of the EPA to control greenhouse gas emissions, the pipeline call is exclusively Obama’s. It doesn’t go through Congress, so Obama’s promise in the campaign of 2008, to champion the reduction of greenhouse gases will be on the line with his decision. A few days ago, Bill Mckibben wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post summarizing the situation and reminded us about Obama’s words during the Presidential nomination process: this is “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Three years later this sounds a little hollow.

James Hansen, perhaps the best known climate scientist in the world, has warned us about the threat of greenhouse gases, and sent out a note on June 11, 2011 warning about the dangers of using the Alberta tar sands as a source of fuel. According to his analysis, the Alberta tar sands contain about 400 gigatons of carbon dioxide (once burned as fossil fuels), enough to raise the carbon dioxide level in

Before and After Alberta Tar Sand Mining

the atmosphere by 200 ppm. His projection is dire: if we allow the Alberta tar sand oil to be implemented as a fuel source, we run the danger of forcing the environment into a tipping point in which it won’t matter what we do in controlling greenhouse gas emissions in the future. As he says “game over.” In time, the polar ice caps and Greenland ice will melt, the sea levels will rise by 270 feet and the planet will become far more inhospitable to humans and most of the animals around us. So, does Obama hold the future of humanity in his hands with this decision? This issue is not structured like one in which a compromise can be reached–you either use the tar sands or you don’t and you either expose the planet to a riskier long-term carbon problem or you don’t. Quite understandably, these are not the kinds of decisions that any President would like to make, but Obama has shown a complete lack of zeal for stamping his Presidency with  an environmental component. We know exactly what Obama’s predecessor GW Bush would have done–he was in the “drill baby drill” corner. Obama is not the same kind of leader we had in Bush, so there is still some hope that this source of oil will not be tapped–that it will be left in the ground and instead use this moment to begin the process of developing alternative sources of energy as part of a new jobs program. What I find interesting about this event in Washington, is that I first saw news coverage of the protest through The Guardian, a British newspaper (they are often way ahead of the NYT in developing leading stories) followed by Common Dreams, who linked to that article and I have yet to see any television news coverage of the event. In today’s NYT an editorial appears that describes how the State Department has already delivered two flawed reports on the environmental impact of the pipeline plan. It seems the news media wants to regard this as a non-event and if so, that will make Obama’s decision that much easier. We are at a moment in history when environmentalism has virtually no political clout and it seems a serious attempt at job creation is without political momentum as well.

RFM

• Comments Off

Fig. 1 Planet Earth (NASA)

Every educated person on the planet has heard about the threats to human existence imposed by Global Warming. Yet, few of us are knowledgeable enough to explain the basic mechanisms that determine our climate, especially when talking to those among whom are doubting members of the choir. Understanding the essential elements of Global Warming requires effort and an intellectual expenditure, but you can converse intelligently on the subject, while stopping short of explaining the situation on the basis of a thermodynamic theory of equilibrium. Besides, the earth’s climate has never truly been in any form of equilibrium–some positive or negative driving force or energy imbalance has always been trying to change our climate, though, until now, such changes have taken place over millenia, not over the two hundred plus years of the industrial revolution.  Our climate has always been changing, even though the time constants for change are way beyond a human lifetime, and lie properly scaled and recorded within the geological and paleoclimatological record, which gives up its secrets slowly. But once properly deciphered that record reveals a surprisingly coherent history for those willing to put the effort into interpreting the scrolls, or to be more accurate, deciphering the core drillings of oceans and glaciers. Of course, we don’t yet have a complete story. There are large gaps in our knowledge, but we know enough already to be mesmerized by our planetary history and the forces that have shaped our climate. And we should know enough to be alarmed and very wary about our future.

It is now clear that never before in our climate history have we witnessed the kind of experiment now underway–the forcing of our planet to go through something it has never experienced before–a sharp, man-made increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide that is now taking place and pushing us towards a climatological precipice that we might not be able to escape. But if we act quickly, this experiment is still under our control, depending on whether we can muster the political will to curb our use of fossil fuels and restore energy balance to keep the planet as it was, with atmospheric carbon dioxide at 350 parts per million (ppm) or less ; it is now at 387 ppm and rising at a rate of about 2 ppm per year. The alternative is that we run the risk of higher levels of carbon dioxide that will trigger the melting of Greenland and the polar ice caps and eventually raise our sea level by 270 feet! We are probably not at risk for a sea level increase of that magnitude during this century, but we do run the risk of having this kind of sea level rise take place, and once it starts, there will be nothing we can do to stop it. Not only will this massive ice melting proceed out of our control, it will cool the local regions where the melting takes place, impact our weather systems and change the driving forces for oceanic currents. The emergency we must address now has been created by the fact that the carbon dioxide we have put into the atmosphere has a very long half-life and its actions on our planet will be with us for a  very long time. Couple this reality to the fact that we are already seeing weather patterns that reflect Global Warming and you inescapably conclude that our short-term climate does not look good–it will inescapably be more violent. But, we can still do something for the long-term, by acting soon and now is not too early. There is little doubt that if we continue to burn fossil fuels through a business-as-usual mode, our planet will be markedly different and our planetary future will be seriously in doubt. In many ways, that’s the shock–not only that the climate is never in equilibrium, but that it is also super-sensitive to the very fuels we have chosen as our cheapest form of energy. For too long we have assumed constancy in our climate lives: that luxury has now gone, at least the assumption part of it.

• Continue reading or Leave a comment... Comments Off