Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Stevew on November 16, 2010 at 19:28

Thanks for posting this. Bad news? I don't know how accurate it's science is but I hope someone on our side is working on it.

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Permalink Reply by Robert Duke on November 16, 2010 at 20:20

Looks to me, based on a quick read, like the science is "to be supplied", and the quality of the science is at this point completely unknown; it could be entirely political and speculative, or they may have a point. My guess is that they are pointing to escape of more methane, ie., natural gas, into the environment, and methane is I believe considered a pretty potent greenhouse gas, and then if you want to have fewer greenhouse gas emissions than coal, you have to mitigate against increased methane release. There is no question on carbon dioxide production - natural gas is pretty clearly the best choice in that regard if you have to burn a fossil fuel . Someone else can maybe comment on the extent to which containment of natural gas is or is not problematic - I would think it is not routinely allowed to leak all over the place (unlike gasoline, and as for coal, if you have ever lived on the east coast in certain places, you know what it does for air quality...)

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Permalink Reply by sesport on November 17, 2010 at 0:38

Thanks, guys. One of my thoughts on this piece, when thinking about the "no better than ... may in fact be worse than...," is that this MAY be used by the other guys (coughcoalcough) to argue for their stronghold in our energy debates. I would hope that those making important decisions would look also for reliability & validity of the data, wait for peer review & replication of the study.

And, I'm sure if I continue to think long & hard enough about it, other ways to use this as a hinderance will come to mind.

Thanks for the sentiments, GoshDarn. I'm hopeful that many, many culinary artists will use ng as their choice, and voice their support of it, in preparing their holiday fares. lol

80)

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Permalink Reply by essay on November 17, 2010 at 1:03

well that's it boys, pack it in. the natural gas industry's greehouse footprint is like, enormous. potentially up to twice as "dirty" compared to diesel!

oh wait, cornell? huh.

http://shaleshock.org/2010/11/gasland-screening-tuesday-at-cornell/

/quote Protecting our communities and environment from exploitative gas drilling of the Marcellus Shale

Gasland Screening Tuesday at Cornell
By Clover56, on November 8th, 2010
November 9, 2010
7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

"Come see *GASLAND*
Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Documentary at 2010 Sundance Film Festival!
When: *Tuesday* *November 9th* at *7:00pm*
**Where: *Lewis Auditorium** in Goldwin Smith Hall!*
Q&A session afterward if questions and concerns arise! Open to the public and free of charge!

“The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudia Arabia of natural gas” just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part
expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.” – http://gaslandthemovie.com/

Hosted by KyotoNOW!
contact alg224@cornell.edu" /quote

yeah. i bet this "science proclamation" from cornell is every bit as good as the CO2 edict from the u.n. and it's cohorts, might even rival the riveting truthiness of the gasland docudrama they love so much. i reckon the banjo gives it just the right genuine grassroots-like feel.

p.s. this belongs in the political forum. pretty good complement to the 60 minutes thread though.

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Permalink Reply by sesport on November 17, 2010 at 10:47

essay - How in the world do you come to the conclusion that a topic about a reported conclusion about a scientific study is a political one? Personally, I think the rest of these guys have done an excellent job of sticking to the point.

Indeed, NOW who would be attempting to hijack ... yet again?

lol, 80)

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Permalink Reply by essay on November 18, 2010 at 4:15

i know you're not kidding and see nothing political in what they're doing. right?

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Permalink Reply by sesport on November 18, 2010 at 12:33

sigh ... Does everything have to be a discussion about political conspiracies to you?

Can't we just have a discussion about the scholarly merits of these various articles?

geeezzzz, Even 5 yr. olds can focus their discussions on whether or not, and how well, something works.

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Permalink Reply by essay on November 18, 2010 at 13:53

the scholarly merits suck. multiple people have told you so. even a 5 year old can understand that.

people like this doctor do not like fossil fuels and if you stop or slow fracking you stop or slow the drilling, it seems fairly self evident.

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Permalink Reply by sesport on November 19, 2010 at 0:54

So, you want to show me which APA style citation one would use for that analysis?

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Permalink Reply by essay on November 19, 2010 at 7:35

what, you don't have an apa manual? your school should probably have one in the library.

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Permalink Reply by sesport on November 20, 2010 at 3:38

Oink, oink oink. Oink oink oink oinkoinkoink oinkoink.

80)

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Permalink Reply by Robert Duke on November 19, 2010 at 6:32

Well, I guess I would say that the scholarly merits are somewhere between "open to question" and "highly suspect"; I would not want to dismiss the possibility that this guy has some data out of hand, but I couldn't find it, and as best as I could tell, his recent science-by-press-release stuff (widely used in hot areas, always at least open to question) is likely to be bandwagon-jumping. Nonetheless, IF there was a legitimate way to come up with figures showing that NG has a bigger footprint than coal, that would be bad for shale gas interests (I don't think there is, but here I defer to the guys like Les and Skip who know a heck of a lot more about the O&G business than I do). I DO think it is almost impossible to extricate the topic of shale gas from politics and the potential impact of bad science, science with limit merit wielded as a weapon to sway public opinion and merit. So I thought it was great that sesport brought the topic up, and that the variety of other folks that contributed said what they said. However, I think it would be a lot more productive if we cut each other a little slack on our views and try to keep the discussion civilized. I don't want to make any enemies here myself, but I do think this is worth saying.

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