Comments on: Why we need to proceed cautiously before full-on embrace of shale gas

By: Jacqualine Granneman

Jacqualine Granneman — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 08:49:37 +0000

Nuclear electricity environmentally friendly ??? nuclear is filthy – the implemented nuclear waste has a half lifetime of hundreds to a huge number of years – it under no circumstances goes away or becomes much less unsafe to humans along with other life at the planet – when the nuclear plant has an accident and melts down there goes that portion of your world, possibly for superior – guess Chernobyl in Russia, three Mile Island in your US -( that was a near miss). The site in Russia is continue to toxic to this day. Not to mention they are a wonderful target for terrorists, if you are paranoid. Solar, wind, and so forth. is attainable in Canada, photo voltaic operates anyplace the sun hits, you may have wind, right ?? there are a great number of other approaches to create fresh energy.

By: mattbg

mattbg — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:48:28 +0000

I wouldn’t have any problem with these — including coal — if we showed any willingness to try and reorganize society and cut consumption and if these newer “findings” were being used to bridge the gap and pad the error margin.

But they’re not — the premise for extracting this stuff seems to be to allow things to keep running as they are for a bit longer into the future.

I have a difficult time with this because I am really tired of the lies and over-the-top rubbish put forth by environmentally-minded people while, at the same time, the “free market will save us all” approach has problems, too. Given a choice between the two, I have to side with the latter because at least these people are creative, progressive, and have an ability to get things done. A lot of the former are just age-old failed communists and anarchists who want to see things smashed and broken.

By: Milan

Milan — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:02:49 +0000

Some people argue that all this unconventional gas is actually going to help with climate change mitigation efforts, because people will burn it for electricity in place of coal. In response to this argument, it seems sensible to point out that what really matters are the total cumulative emissions of humanity – not the amount of greenhouse gases released in any particular year. If we burn this gas and then go on to burn that same coal later, we will be in a worse position than if we had never gained access to the gas. The one way in which these gas reserves could conceivably help with efforts to deal with climate change is if they displace coal in the short term, and then legislation finally comes through to push the national economies in question away from the use of coal forever.

Of course, accomplishing that will be an incredibly difficult feat, given the entrenched interests involved. As such, it seems far more sensible to protest any new extraction or use of coal and unconventional oil and gas, while simultaneously pushing for legislation that will finally put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, and that will treat the risks associated with climate change appropriately by, among other things, putting a moratorium on coal use.

By: Daily Sprout

Daily Sprout — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:58:09 +0000

[...] Path to Shale Gas Needs Caution: Tyler Hamilton looks at why we need to proceed cautiously before a full-on embrace of shale gas: unintended methane release. [...]