State of the Union

Discussion in 'The Thunderdome' started by kptvol, Jan 24, 2012.

  1. droski

    droski Traffic Criminal

    I've never seen a study proving, or even strongly indicating, that fracking causes poisoned ground water if done properly. logically it shouldn't. now it is true that many of the places that we find natural gas are unstable already so you do have to be careful.
     
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2012
  2. droski

    droski Traffic Criminal

  3. CardinalVol

    CardinalVol Uncultured, non-diverse mod

    Disagree. If she's Buffet's essential right-hand (wo)man then my guess is she's more than willing to go along with this. I'm willing to wager she could have said stop at any time. Instead, she makes a TV appearance last night.

    Read another article that said she is paying a 35.8% rate. I'll assume this is includes state taxes, which mean's she's probably in the 33% bracket. Factor in her deductions and such, an my guess is her and her hubby bring in 350-400 a year.
     
  4. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    The ability to specifically nail down the contamination to water is virtually impossible because the formulas for hydrofracking lubricant are proprietary and thus secret. We don't even know what they are pumping beneath our feet.
     
  5. droski

    droski Traffic Criminal

    why would they be pumping anything but water? that's what they are trying to replace. or are you refering to stuff leaking during the drilling process?
     
  6. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    They don't just pump water. They add various (proprietary) mixtures to it.
     
  7. droski

    droski Traffic Criminal

    interesting. do you have an article or something that talks about this?
     
  8. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    EPA study shows hydrofracking leads to water contamination, environmental pollution | Alaska Dispatch

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html?_r=1

    The natural gas and fossil fuel lobby is way out in front as far as combating and suppressing this kind of information. It is getting impossible to hide, however, in regions in the West due to the dependency on clean ground water.

    Hydrofracking as practiced is not clean and it is not "sustainable." We're meddling with aquifers that took thousands of years to fill, millions to form, and that we were already tapping out on the order of a few hundred years. Now we are contaminating and cracking them. It's stupid and short-sighted.
     
  9. droski

    droski Traffic Criminal

    Thanks for the article. This seems to be the jist of the argument:

    The level of radioactivity in the wastewater has sometimes been hundreds or even thousands of times the maximum allowed by the federal standard for drinking water. While people clearly do not drink drilling wastewater, the reason to use the drinking-water standard for comparison is that there is no comprehensive federal standard for what constitutes safe levels of radioactivity in drilling wastewater.

    Indeed, most of these facilities cannot remove enough of the radioactive material to meet federal drinking-water standards before discharging the wastewater into rivers, sometimes just miles upstream from drinking-water intake plants.


    I guess the question is if drinking water standards are appropriate for rivers. Seems like this is something that could be correctable without torpedoing the industry. Also whether the environmental benefits of natural gas over other fuel sources makes it worth the side effects of drilling.
     
  10. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    We can't have radioactive rivers and non-radioactive drinking water. That isn't how hydrology works.

    Notice that while the Right is calling for the EPA to be shut down for meddling too much and "hurting jobs," in reality it has been so busy fooling around with untenable plans for CO2 regulation that are the tail wagging the dog, that is blindly signing off on hydrofracking without due diligence simply because the Green lobby is cumming in their pants over clean-burning natural gas. The lobbying element of this on both sides of the aisle is also disturbing.

    Politics and environmental issues just don't mix well.
     
  11. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    Keep in mind also that their are chemical contaminant issues with this that we don't even know due to the proprietary nature of the lubricant mixture for hydrofracking. a few parts of a million of some carcinogenic chemicals would be horrible for human health as well as the environment, but would be virtually undetectable if we don't know to look for them.
     
  12. droski

    droski Traffic Criminal

    Understood. The support for ethanol is really disturbing as well.
     
  13. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    It's the tail wagging the dog. Folks are tripping over themselves to find clean alternatives (and make a buck on being the ones to be the sheikhs of it) that they don't give a damn if there are other consequences even more immediately dangerous associated with the alternatives.

    The ethanol thing is just criminal, in that it puts all the burden on both the American poor and the 3rd world destitute.
     
  14. CardinalVol

    CardinalVol Uncultured, non-diverse mod

    Tis why the fine folks at UT are trying to make it off of switchgrass.
     
  15. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    There are still issues with that, that the fine folks at UT downplay and gloss over. That switch grass will be competing for agricultural space with corn and other grains all the same, still influencing their supply. Should it become more profitable to grow fuel rather than food, the same sort of issues will crop up.

    EDIT: No pun intended.
     
  16. CardinalVol

    CardinalVol Uncultured, non-diverse mod

    Eh, my post was meant as sarcasm. There's a lot of problems I have with it, one of which is it was/is a black hole for cash in the form of federal grants.
     
  17. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    I am trying to butter my bread off of federal tax funding, so I can't complain too loudly about that without being a complete jack ass. I will say that money marked for that would be better diverted to alternative fuel research involving algae, seaweed or kelp simply because at least they are not spatial competitors with our precious farmland. Seaweed and kelp have their own environmental costs associated with them, in terms of having to fertilize which is terrible for fish and animal life, but perhaps those things can be coupled with salmon farms or other aquaculture to create a completed cycle.
     
  18. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    Of course, guess what one of the things we feed fish: yup, corn. It's a complex problem that shouldn't be receiving the pork barrel treatment.
     

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