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Exon Head Joins Anti-Fracking Suit?!?

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by hill, Feb 25, 2014.

  1. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    usbseawolf2000 and ftl like this.
  2. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    Now that's what I call a fracktard.
     
  3. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    There is more to the story. Most

    Exxon CEO joins lawsuit citing fracking concerns- MSN Money

    Water tower suit involving Exxon’s CEO prompts a fracking fracas | Business | Dal...

    Now that doesn't mean I like some of XTOs practices, but we should put the news incontext.

     
  4. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Even if it is just about building codes and heights, I still have no sympathy for them. Many people of lesser means have had part of their modest property seized for sidewalks and parking lots, or even their family home for 'economic development'.
     
  5. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    I think daily kos wanted to show hypocracy like the kenedies support for green energy until it came to cape wind, that really won't decrease their property value.

    The only story here is the rich want to keep govrnment from lowering their property value, which if it didn't have fracking involved it would have just been ofcoure, rich people have more control of government.

    On the fracking side, I am unabshadly pro fracking but it needs to be better regulated and people need to be compensated for the pollution, noise, etc. I am totally against mountain top removal to mine coal so that it can be competitive with natural gas, while leaving the pollution there by regulation allowing this.
     
  6. frodoz737

    frodoz737 Top Wrench

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    I don't know why this Exxon CEO would be so upset, fracking has the side benefit of free natural (?) gas with the over-site and regulation (cough cough) that big oil pays for.

     
  7. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Even the sued government entity says there aren't likely any fracking trucks that will be filling up at the water tower if built. There definitely was not any planned fracking by the land.

    It is simply that these rich folk don't want a huge eyesore water tower built by their land. Some scheming lawyer decided they would be more likely to win the lawsuit if he added fracking to the complaint. The leading fracking companies that cause the most problems are not even related to oil, its big nat gas. ;-) Oil just knows that natural gas is going to take over so exxon and chevron are investing.
     
  8. frodoz737

    frodoz737 Top Wrench

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    Austin, that was just a poke at the elitist rich for not wanting it in their backyard as you stated. However, over-site is still a problem with the other half of the rich coin...The Energy providers.
     
  9. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    I actually think we do need more fracking in this country, but fracking needs to be better regulated. I don't think this lawsuit has much to do with fracking at all after I glanced past the headlines, its really about rich people that don't want a big water tower by their expensive estates. I don't even know if they are right, but the exxon ceo should have read the lawsuit before signing on. The rich in this case were not likely worried about fracking at all, because as the government guy said, it wasn't going to happen near their land. And yes billionares have pacs that unduely influence the government.

    I do have a problem with Big Energy working with poor regulations. In the case of BP in its texas city refinerey and gulf oil spill, in both cases they broke at least 3 regulations, during the spill MMS gave them permission.
    BP's Dismal Safety Record - ABC News
    BP sold its texas city refinery to marathon, and there have been no more incidents.

    On the coal side, a koch company Freedom didn't inspect tanks for over 20 years, over 20 years. Three months before leak, review questioned Freedom tanks 
    - News -
    The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -
    These chemicals used to process coal polluted the elk river polluting water for hundreds of thousands of people. The solution was to declare bankrupcy.

    We do a poor job of regulating pollution as a country. Some regulations just result in useless costs, while other regulations are ignored. It is not even. Marathon and exxon are much better actors than BP and koch. Its a little crazy to go all in against fracking, while coal is causing so much pollution. We need to redo regulations against all of them.
     
  10. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    There is no amount of money that will compensate for the environmental damage caused by fracking.

    I rarely poke fun at people's screen names, but I don't understand how you can call yourself green and support fracking.
     
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  11. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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  12. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Its simple. If the US was not fracking we would be mining and burning more coal. Sometime it is the relative damage. Fracking can be done in an environmentally sound way. mountain top removal and shipping coal to china or buring it in 50 yo plants can not be done is a safe way.

    What is your alternative to fracking if you want to have the US use less coal? Environmentalist that simply say no fracking feed into those that claim they need to keep coal or the economy will colapse. England for awhile refused fracked natural gas, and ..... used more coal.
     
  13. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    When it comes to fracking or coal, I'm not sure it's possible to pick the lesser of two evils.

    There are better alternatives, and some countries are wise enough to pursue those opportunities. Germany with solar comes to mind, as does Scotland with its goal to source 100% of its energy from renewables by 2020. It can be done, and it is being done. The US and Canada used to world leaders in technology and environmental protection, and now we're dragging the rest of the world down.
     
  14. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    First I don't think coal is evil, but we are using very much too much of it, and mining and burning it in a bad fashion. There is a ballance between the environmental damage and the economic benefits. Now if we don't instantly call them evil we can look at a number of things.

    Air pollution, water pollution, ghg, loss of habitat, land pollution, cost of electricity, cost of heating are the measures. When burned in the likely plants and buildings, on all except cost of electricity is better off with fracked natural gas then with mined coal with today's technology in North America. Now I agree the pollution load of natural gas is higher than it needs to be, and we should work on that. Saying they are both equally bad, leaves us with more pollution, health problems, and loss of habitat. Its a knee jerk reaction to just say no to everything. Cheaper natural gas also allows easier and less expensive to the consumer addition of wind, geothermal, and solar to the grid.

    I used to work for a german company, and keep up well with what is going on in that country. If germany had a vast natural gas formation like the eagle ford, they would be fracking it, but with some more rules. Here is the picture of new power being added to germany.
    Germany Energy Changes and Coal Use | The Energy Collective
    [​IMG]
    You can bet that they would embrace fracking, and would be spending less for new ccgt plants, with more money to spend on feed in tarrifs for solar and wind, if they had the resources of the US. They do not, so coal has been the plan to replace the nuclear. You simply can't add solar fast enough to do that. Some environmentalsist seem to think solar can do everything now, but it is extremely expensive to even get to the 5% of solar electricity germany is doing. Rates are very high in the short term, and germany is exporting energy intensive businesses even as it builds coal plants. The US is repatriating energy intensive businsses because of the fracking boom, which are less polluting and more energy efficient, than the foreign plants these companies were running.

    Don't ever say if you are for A then you aren't green. Many of the german greens, are for more coal plants, because it allows them to shut down the nuclear plants. These plants are lower polluting and more efficient than the ones we have in the US. No one in germany wants the lights to go off because it needs to be all solar this year. It never needs to be 100% solar, but they are using coal as a bridge, until they can build more renewables.
     
  15. wjtracy

    wjtracy Senior Member

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    ^^^hard to jump in here we've gone from Water Tower law to Global Energy Policy.
    Suffice it to say I do think there are different definitions of green in different countries, and in the USA we have a certain dynamic that is obviously polarized. If I ever get a job defining energy policy (which I keep trying for) I would hire AG.
     
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  16. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    Local issues and global problems are often related, so it's not so big a jump from water tower laws to global energy policies as you may think.

    Call it semantics if you insist, but I think there's an important distinction to be made between 'less black' and truly green. Substituting one fossil fuel for another isn't enough.

    As for hiring AG, I'd do that too. I'd still ask for energy-use reductions and 100% renewables, but I'd much prefer employees who use their knowledge and expertise to tell the boss when he's wrong, instead of going along with what the boss thinks he wants.
     
  17. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Actually it is, but its our knee jerk media that tries to create sensationalism in place of understanding. There is no way it would be legal to frack where that tower is going to go in Texas. Water though is not restricted, so its all about an eyesore, versus a necessary government project, etc. Lousy lawers wanted to throw red meat on the "fracking" even though there are no plans to use this water for fracking, and definitely having a water tower there makes fracking less likely.

    You said my screen name was ironic because anyone supporting fracking could not be green in your honest opinion. Well look in the mirror. If you are driving a prius then you are buring fossil fuel. We typically call natural gas brown, and oil and coal black. We need to get rid of this stupid rhetoric of no fossil fuels, which leaves us burning the worst combination of fossil fuels as the older methods are grandfathered and already politicized. If you can reduce the pollution by 90% (mountain top removal coal in an old plant to fracked natural gas in direct burn building heating or a ccgt power plant built in the last 20 years), but you decide any pollution is too much. Well then you are just going to be stuck burning coal. The recent reduction of pollution in the US has a lot to do with fracking reducing cost of natural gas and displacing coal.

    ;) I feel like it is important to make the markets work and give people the choice of black, brown, or green energy. I happily burn natural gas in my hot water heater, furnace, and stove. It simply so efficient that it doesn't make sense to make these things electric. I would call this my brown energy use. My heaviest home power though is air conditioning plus other appliances, for these I buy renewable wind. I currently use black energy in my prius, and in planes and rental cars, but ... I often grab an electric car2go (charged with solar) for trips down town when parking will be a problem, and plan on replacing my prius with a plug in.

    I have also helped get many local businesses to run on wind or solar, and some of these local businesses are going global and building their other plants with renewables supplying electricity.

    But, many of these things only work if they work economically, and fracking to lower the cost of getting off coal can make transitioning to renewables much easier. So its not about having trouble telling people to use renewables, but I am not a hypocrit. I use oil and natural gas by choice. IMHO natural gas is part of the transition away from coal and oil.
     
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  18. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    Did I say I was as pure as the driven snow? Yes, I drive a Prius. But only once or twice a week, and no more than 50km total. And yes, my home is heated by natural gas, for most of the year. In Summer, we use neither heat nor air conditioning.

    As for green and 'less black', maybe we can compromise on brown.

    And as for things only working if they work 'economically', that is exactly the problem. In our evaluations, we are not counting all the costs.
     
  19. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Job offers for AG keep rolling in. Not from the media though, where such rational approaches won't sell sell sell.
    The good work is being done more calmly, rather behind the scenes, and I reckon by many here at PC.

    We just 'argue' about the details as a pastime diversion here. Can't be reasonable 24/7. It's bad for the spleen or something.
     
  20. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    I was not criticising your energy choices, on many of these environmental matters we agree. But I want to gradually clean up this nations energy, and to do that its a great argument that wind + natural gas is likely to be less expensive than the coal its replacing in the medium term (5-20 years). North America needs a great deal of grid improvement and changing attitudes before most of the country moves to plan for as much solar and wind as Texas or California. To get there we need to look at the decission makers.

    Our politicians in the US, and 24 hour news channels don't want to assign costs in any reasonable manner. Some of the most polluting plants in the US are backed by the federal or state governments. Mexico is just as bad. I don't know much about Canada, but I can't imagine environmental costs are considered at all in the oil sands.