Or perhaps just wank about it inconclusively

Should greens ally with natural gas against coal? 16

I was fully prepared to hate this op-ed from T. Boone Pickens and Ted Turner, mainly because Pickens is kind of shady and I’m generally sick of rich old establishment white guys telling us how to transform our energy systems. However! It turned out to be pretty good—far better than what you normally see on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

The one sticking point for greens will be the heavy focus on natural gas, a vexed topic that’s more and more central to climate policy conversations.

The politics of natural gas are extremely interesting. In a nutshell, the interests of coal utilities and natural gas executives are at odds. To the extent carbon is penalized and coal is phased out, natural gas wins.

Coal has dominated the development of ACES so far, securing tons of free permits and handouts, while natural gas has stood by, quiescent. Ex-senator Tim Wirth addressed a group of natural gas utility execs recently and told them to get off their asses and start lobbying for a stronger climate bill. They seem to be moving in that direction, trying to rally behind some concerted Senate lobbying.

Here, the American Gas Association’s Roger Cooper puts a good face on natgas’s presence in ACES:

I have no idea how it’s going behind the scenes, but at the very least natural gas is a lot more sexy these days. It was the subject of a high-profile Senate hearing recently.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has done everything but carry T. Boone around on a perfumed litter to spread his natural gas evangelism. (Says Reid, “I’ve been converted. I now belong to the Pickens church.” Yeah, I puked in my mouth a little too.)

Randy Udall has argued passionately on behalf of natural gas as a bridge climate solution. So has Robert Kennedy Jr. So has John Podesta.

The question for enviros: Is the enemy of our enemy our friend? Is it worthwhile to ally with the natgas industry to reduce the influence of coal and strengthen the climate bill?

To answer these questions, we need to look at the substantive roles being envisioned for natural gas. Pickens and Turner propose two.

Power plants

First:

Adopting a “cash-for-clunkers” program in the utility sector can save money and reduce emissions right away by retiring the oldest, least efficient and most polluting power plants in exchange for modern gas-powered plants. New coal plants should be required to combine natural gas with the coal they burn, resulting in cleaner emissions, and every power plant should meet strict carbon-emissions standards.

It’s good that the oldest coal plants—built in the 1950s and ‘60s, grandfathered under the Clean Air Act, and responsible for a substantial chunk of total U.S. emissions—are back in the news. There was a great Washington Post piece on them (and how some might escape unscathed under ACES) this week. They also play a prominent role in Carl Pope’s account of the Clean Air Act’s original sin.

It’s true, as Sean Casten and Joe Romm have pointed out, that rapidly shifting the nation’s power dispatch from coal to gas would be the fastest way to reduce emissions in the short-term.  Emissions from the average gas plant have plunged lately as new combined-cycle plants, which emit less than half the CO2 of the average coal plant, come online. (Meanwhile, average coal plant emissions are rising.)

As an added benefit, natural gas plants can be built more quickly than coal or nuke plants, smaller, and closer to load, enabling them to capture and use their waste heat. Natural gas can also be co-fired—with coal to immediately reduce emissions from coal plants; with biomass, which (with sequestration) could produce carbon-neutral or even negative power; and perhaps most intriguingly, with solar thermal.

Natural gas really does seem like an important tool when it comes to short- and mid-term reductions in the electricity sector. Efficiency—getting more power from less fuel—should be the top and overwhelming priority, but natgas can certainly help at the margins.

Vehicles

The second proposal:

In the transportation sector, renewable energy and natural gas can also be deployed immediately. ... We can begin transitioning the nation’s fleet of 6.5 million 18-wheelers that run regular routes. It would take just 20 refueling stations along a single highway to get trucks from one coast to the other. Centrally fueled urban business and government fleets also can quickly move to natural gas.

This I’m not so sure about. It’s already a considerable walk-down from Pickens’ original plan; he has now embraced electricity for light-duty vehicles. But still it ignores that natural gas is vastly more energy efficient burned to make electricity than it is burned in internal combustion engines. And even if compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles produce lower emissions per unit of fuel than gasoline vehicles, there’s still an enormous energy penalty in gathering and compressing the fuel, which in the end yields a roughly equivalent environmental situation as gasoline. (Of course, Pickens doesn’t care about the environmental situation—he only cares where the fuel comes from—but the rest of us should care.)

I get that we’re not going to see electric buses or 16-wheelers any time soon, but all told, it seems ill-advised to build large new long-term infrastructure in the name of “transitioning.” Better a strategy focused on moving freight to rail while researching advanced biofuels for heavy-duty vehicles; for personal vehicles, there are better batteries and transit-oriented development.

Of course,  if U.S. policymakers took both the Turner/Pickens proposals to heart, it would represent a massive increase in demand for natural gas. Is there enough to satisfy that demand?

Supply

It’s been conventional wisdom in progressive energy circles for a while now that domestic supplies of natural gas have plateaued and that the bulk of future supplies will come from overseas. But some new developments cast that into question. Craig A. Severance notes that just a couple months ago ...

... the nonprofit Potential Gas Committee industry group, assisted by the Colorado School of Mines, released the results of its 2008 assessment, indicating a total increase of U.S. natural gas resources of 39% since its last assessment, for 2006. The report notes the new natural gas resource estimate is the “highest resource evaluation in the Committee’s 44-year history”—indicating the U.S.has far more resources of natural gas than previously considered.

That’s due   to new discoveries and new technology that makes it easier to get at unconventional sources like shale. Others say the cost-effectiveness of getting at shale is speculative at best, and no one yet knows how much it will cost. We should have a much better idea of what’s available in two or three years.

Of course if domestic supplies don’t pan out, we can always revert to foreign sources in the short-term. Severance points out that “liquid natural gas (LNG) imports are being sold at incredibly low prices. With a glut of LNG terminal and tanker capacity, foreign producers now have the LNG loaded and ready to sell, and often are merely trying to cover their marginal costs of operation.”

Ultimately, the signs seem to point to plentiful supply and, at least in the short-term, fairly low prices.

Still, what about the environmental consequences of embracing a fossil fuel?

Oh, right, the environment

Many long-time enviros want nothing to do with natural gas. There’s worry that natural gas drilling endangers water supplies, in part thanks to the so-called Halliburton Loophole in the Safe Water Drinking Act, which exempts a technique called hydraulic fracturing from the law’s provisions. It’s the subject of lawsuits in Pennsylvania and protests in Texas right now. New York City has demanded a ban on natural gas drilling near upstate reservoirs, for fear of drinking water contamination. Legislation has been introduced to bring fracturing under federal rules.

As Udall himself admits:

The gas industry has not been gentle on Western landscapes—but climate change could be worse. So pick your poison. To displace coal with gas, we’d need to complete 30,000 to 40,000 new wells a year for decades to come.

Vastly expanded natural gas drilling would no doubt create more ecological sacrifice zones populated by the poor and powerless. After sitting through sessions on mountaintop removal and New Orleans at a recent conference, I’ve lost my taste for that kind of “poison.”

And of course, insofar as the domestic motherload doesn’t pan out, we’ll end up importing vast quantities of LNG, with all the vexing environmental issues that raises.

Non-conclusion

This is a lot of words to read for no conclusion, I know, but I’m torn. In a perfect world, we’d be committed to reducing the use of all fossil fuels as rapidly as possible, through efficiency and rapid buildout of renewables. Alternatively, one can envision a U.S. policy whereby natural gas is extracted carefully and used judiciously to carry the U.S. on a slightly slower transition to clean energy.

But as we have surely learned by now, politics is not a precise instrument. Sleep with dogs, wake with fleas. Sometimes you’ve got the bull and sometimes the bull’s got you. Grab a tiger by the tail ... etc.  If enviros ally with the natural gas industry, it’s hard to know how much they’d ultimately be able to shape the result. Then again, it’s not like there are lots of other powerful allies in the fight against coal just waiting in the wings, and it sure would be nice to get a better climate bill in the Senate ...

‘Tis vexing.  What do y’all think?

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

Related Stories

Advertisement
Advertisement

  1. Earl Killian Posted 6:51 am
    21 Aug 2009

    I support a plan to shut down old coal plants by buying them out. In the short-term that would mean more NG electric power, but with renewable portfolio standards catching on (perhaps even at the Federal level), and with NG lower in the dispatch order than renewables, we have a chance to replace that NG with non-fossil energy. Also, if the Federal government were to get serious about energy efficiency, we might see US power generation drop, despite the increasing population. Normally that would reduce NG first, and coal second, so getting rid of coal first is a good idea. Of course, the Federal government has yet to takl about efficiency as seriously as some states, so this is merely potential at the moment.There is a push to electrify off-road diesel machinery. For example, the Port of LA is moving to electrify dredging and provide shore power to berthed ships (so they don't run their engines for electricity in port). The off-road emissions from diesel are significant, so this matters. Class 8 trucks are hard to electrify, but it we shut down coal plants, we will have a lot of spare rail capacity. Even diesel rail is much lower emissions than trucking, and of coure electric rail is much better (the US used to even have electric rail grossing the Rockies with trains braking on the way down helping to power trains going uphill). Thus one can substitute or reduce a lot of diesel without going to NG.

    Permalink

  2. ellen beswick Posted 8:58 am
    21 Aug 2009

    The coal lobby is one of the most powerful in Washington....witness the current House Climate bill which barely touches them. If you go up against coal interests you need all the allies you can get.

    Permalink

  3. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 10:19 am
    21 Aug 2009

    To date, humanity has made no progress on global warming. Natural gas would be a good interim step. Replace coal with natural gas now and then methodically replace natural gas with renewables.Although it's true that natural gas is little better than diesel in heavy transport like garbage trucks and buses when it comes to green house gases on a life cycle basis, when you account for local air pollution and soot spewed (which is a major contributor to global warming) by diesel and biodiesel, natural gas comes out way ahead. And if you replace the coal generated electircity used to process and compress natural gas with natural gas electricity, you get an even better life cycle outcome.Soot does not stay in the atmosphere for long so replacing diesel and biodiesel with natural gas for transport wold be another fast way to attack global warming.
    Also, there is the issue of capturing methane from waste, at feedlots and municipal waste treantment facilities, which is a renewable form of natural gas.And finally, you can use natural gas to appease the energy independence patriots and xenophobes. combined, Canadian, Mexican, and domestic reserves are quite large.       

    Permalink

    1. Sean Casten's avatar

      Sean Casten Posted 12:11 pm
      21 Aug 2009

      Biod,Note that natural gas compression is (usually) done with natural gas-fired compressors.  Yes, there are some electrics out there, but for the most part - and certainly throughout the high-pressure transmission network - compression is done with natural gas turbines driving gas compressors, using up a bit of the gas flowing through the pipe to compress the rest.What's not often appreciated is that these compressors tend to be quite inefficient, for the usual utility reasons: the costs of compression are a pass through on the tariff, so there is no incentive for conservation.  Ormat has done some nice projects (and a lot of nice regulatory legwork) to try and fix this by putting waste heat recovery power plants on the back of those compressor stations, and working to craft contracts and regulatory changes that allow the gas transmission companies to benefit from the resulting savings.  But it is far from settled.Bottom line is that you're right that the non-CO2 emissions are lower, but do keep in mind that the compressors themselves are rarely very efficient, so the CO2 impacts are bigger than one would otherwise expect.One final note: when you're talking about CNG vehicles, there is a need for really high-pressure compressors, by simple function of the fact that the pressure in the storage tank at the gas station has to be higher than the pressure in the tank on the vehicle in order for the gas to flow from one into the other.  Since the tanks on the vehicle are themselves very high pressure (1500 - 3000 psi, if memory serves), that imposes a huge parasitic load just at the station itself, above and beyond the gas distribution network.  As I recall, this load requires an energy input on the order of ~5% of the total energy in the fuel.

      Permalink

  4. dhmeiser Posted 10:24 am
    21 Aug 2009

    This is a definite maybe, as coal is one of the dirtiest fuels. but natural gas should only be considered a transnational source of energy, as it still emits greenhouse gasses. it is certainly cleaner than coal but in the long run we need to get away from carbon based fuels.gas still has environmental consequence, much less than coal, so in the short run Yes we should partner with Gas.Sun Tzu's The art of war states an enemy of my enemy is my friend!

    Permalink

  5. tboggia Posted 10:50 am
    21 Aug 2009

    There are tons of issues with LNG as well. It doesn't seem to be that much better than coal in terms of GHG emissions once you count in the energy needed to liquify and transport. 

    Permalink

  6. sunflower's avatar

    sunflower Posted 11:01 am
    21 Aug 2009

    Coal is also exported from the US. Burn less means more surplus coal for export. Tax coal to death or die.

    Permalink

  7. skitters Posted 12:30 pm
    21 Aug 2009

    Its a horrible idea.  Natural gas although it does burn cleaner than coal, is still the exact same problem,  releaseing carbon into the atmosphere while producing energy.  Also its an extremely volitile market.  In Ontario where I live, the wind and natural gas industry are hand in hand with wind farms and natural gas plants dominating our future energy infrastructure budgets and plans.  Peak loading renewables with natural gas doesn't solve anything ask Denmark.  Its sad that the renewables industry can't get with nuclear on this.  Two relativly clean forms of energy and they don't want to be in the same room with eachother.  We need an encompassing energy mix that doesn't invest to heavily in natural gas. 

    Permalink

  8. gullyfourmyle's avatar

    gullyfourmyle Posted 1:01 pm
    21 Aug 2009

    While I understand that Natural Gas looks like a great transitional step from coal to something cleaner, there are other factors to consider.Natural Gas emissions are more than Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas problems. Natural Gas is a major player in the CHEMICAL WINTER situation. The chemicals that go up a chimney as a result of burning natural gas are almost identical to those of second hand smoke and they cause the same problems and more in the environment.This is a partial list of  chemicals found in Natural Gas emissions:Benzo-a-PyreneBenzene TolueneCarbon MonoxideSoot FormaldehydeRadon GasRadon DaughtersPCBsDIOXINSFURANSDustRustOlefinsWaxesTarsOxidesSulfuric AcidMercaptansParticulatesOils  The emissions from Natural Gas from individual furnaces are low. But when they are considered in their entirety - the hundreds of millions all operating at once for most of our winters around the world, those emissions have to be considered a major cause of our climate problem, never mind the heat created.These are not all of the emissions either. Then once those chemicals combine in the atmosphere with other chemicals such as aviation fuel exhaust, ocean liner and freighter exhaust, industry exhaust all going non-stop every day we have a minestroni soup of the most lethal chemicals ever to exist on earth - and everything is inhaling, drinking and eating it. All of those chemicals are carcinogenic. None of them are food, not even the waxes. Some of the names for items listed like soot, oils, particulates and benzene are actually umbrella terms for thousands of chemicals that together are called that.Then there is the problem of installing the pipelines. Has anyone ever heard of installing a pipeline in an environmentally sensitive manner? I can assure you there is no such thing.Once pipelines have been installed, they have a "shelf life" or designed obsolescence. A couple of years ago I talked to a local Canadian Natural Gas official about what plans they have for when the pipes and valves in communities all start to fail at once as mass produced things always do. The response was that there is no plan. They have not begun to think about it.When Natural Gas pipelines leak, the potential for catastophic explosions is high. When explosions do occur, they can take out entire city blocks. That's just from one leak, not multiple leaks. At some point Natural Gas infrastructure is going to start failing just like sewer pipes do. Water leaks don't kill but Natural Gas can be pretty deadly. Imagine what will happen when entire communities start to go. Actually may already be starting to fail here.Admittedly, on new installation, that won't happen for decades. But there are plenty of existing communities served by Natural Gas and at some point the infrastructure is going to fail.That's probably why some Canadians are putting themselves in harms way blowing up gas pipelines: to prevent pipeline infestations.Coal is a bigger problem right now than Natural Gas will ever be. But Natural Gas can only be considered as a very temporary, exceptionally expensive bandaid treatment, not a happy solution. It's the sort of temporary solution that becomes permanent and nearly impossible to get rid of.Did you know that Natural Gas companies cannot be prosecuted if you die from inadvertently ingesting the product when you are using it as intended? Blocking installation of a Natural Gas pipeline is nearly impossible.The solution to climate change is going to have to an engineered solution that does not require burning anything. That means better insulation for every building requiring heat so that body heat cannot escape. Then there is Geothermal. The trouble is, existing buildings are difficult to design solutions for and sometimes there isn't space to do it. A complete rethink on exterior architecture that incoroporates cellular construction trapping air as a buffer between interior and exterior air masses. Something like Styrofoam. Instead of building up, we need to build down. There are lots of options but no magic fix.Tall buildings are also part of the climate change picture as are decapitating mountains for coal. Each of them changes wind patterns near the ground. Every surface change on the earth has an effect on the rest of the air mass. If you put a dye into water you can see how it moves and mixes. No area of the volume is uneffected. The same goes for the entire planet.

    Permalink

  9. MIKE CHIROPOLOS Posted 1:45 pm
    21 Aug 2009

    <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]> <style>
    st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
    </style>

    Permalink

  10. Josh Joswick Posted 2:44 pm
    21 Aug 2009

    Our La Plata County community in southwest Colorado has dealt with the impacts of natural gas development since the mid-1980's.  Proponents of this development point out that it has provided tax revenue to our various government entities and jobs to some of our residents.  This is true.  Now let's talk about the impacts. This development anything but benign.  Ask the people who have lost their homes because of drilling.  Read the Emissions Inventory Report that has recently been released that shows natural gas production and processing account for over 75% of the greenhouse gases emissions in our county.  If all anyone compares is the end products of burning natural gas vs the end products of coal, it is a tunnel-visioned comparison.  Like any natural resource, gas has cradle-to-grave impacts.  I would expect T. Boone Pickens, Roger Cooper and Ted Turner to ignore putting the gas life cycle analysis in the mix; Tim Wirth, Robert Kennedy, Randy Udall have no excuse for this exclusion, nor for advocating for how natural gas is now the preferred alternative and how the industry needs incentives, and how salvation is at hand if we can only muster the political will to make this happen.  Somewhere in this article was the phrase "ecological sacrifice zones being created";  when you live in one, it is hard to hear, "Take another one for the team."  It unfortunately is those who do not live in these zones who clamor the loudest for their development.  Three words for these people: Just stop it.  Stop taking the side of one of the most powerful industries on the planet and advocating its propaganda. Our fight against this industry has been ongoing for over twenty years. and we have lost more than we have won, but we are still standing.  The last thing we need is the sanctification of the benefits of natural gas.  Just stop it. 

    Permalink

  11. MaryS Posted 2:57 pm
    21 Aug 2009

    I am one of the millions of people who live above the Marcellus Shale, which underlies most of PA, southern NY, and parts of W. VA. and Ohio. I first heard of the Marcellus Shale gas rush a little over a year ago. Concerned about what the gas rush might mean for my own community, I began researching the issue. I was shocked and dismayed by what I learned. I will never again consider natural gas to be "clean."

    Here are some points to consider:

    --GAS INDUSTRY EXEMPTIONS: The gas industry has gotten exemptions not just to the Safe Drinking Water Act, but to a long list of federal environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

    --REAL CARBON FOOTPRINT: Methane, the primary component of natural gas, does produce less carbon dioxide than coal or oil when burned. But that is only part of the picture; things start to look a lot less rosy when you examine the natural gas extraction process.

    Methane itself is a greenhouse gas about 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Methane is accidentally and intentionally leaked and vented into the atmosphere during natural gas production and transportation.

    Extracting gas from unconventional sources (like coal bed methane and shale) is an extremely energy-intensive operation. The days of conventional gas sources are fading fast and the U.S. is becoming increasingly reliant on unconventional sources. Hydraulic fracturing in shale requires hundreds of diesel-burning tanker-truck trips for just ONE gas well, because the vast quantities of water needed to fracture the shale (millions of gallons per well) must be transported to the well site. Then, when contaminated water is returned from the gas well, more tankers must haul it away for disposal or treatment. (How to safely dispose of or treat this toxic wastewater is a huge problem, with no satisfactory answer at the moment.) It is estimated that in order to get appreciable amounts of gas from the Marcellus Shale, something on the order of 50,000 to 100,000 gas wells would be required.In some areas, large number of trees will be cut to make way for gas well pads, access roads, and pipelines.

    Before we can know what the real carbon footprint of natural gas is, the effects of methane leakage and venting, energy use in the extraction process, and tree loss would have to be carefully studied and quantified by some unbiased source (and the gas industry is not an unbiased source).

    --HOW MUCH GAS DO WE REALLY HAVE: The estimates of how much gas is in the ground are just that: estimates. Any estimates that come from the gas industry (which is where most of them come from) are likely to be overly optimistic, since the gas industry has an obvious interest in making its business outlook seem bright. On top of that, estimates are usually phrased as "X number of years of gas at current levels of usage". However, if we start converting power plants to natural gas and cars to natural gas and home heating to natural gas, we will also start using more gas per year, thereby reducing that number, "X." Russia and the Middle East have a lot more gas than the U.S. If we make a large-scale conversion to natural gas, guess where we'll end up having to turn, sooner or later, in order to get more natural gas to power the U.S.

    --NOT THE BEST USE OF LIMITED FINANCIAL & NATURAL RESOURCES: Modern gas extraction methods are costly. Large horizontal wells are typically needed, each well costs millions of dollars, and we will need thousands upon thousands of these wells. The infrastructure for large-scale conversion to natural gas will also be costly. Many, many resources would be endangered or consumed (e.g. water, steel for rigs and trucks, diesel fuel, etc.). And it will take decades to get large amounts of gas from shale. On top of that, shale gas drilling is likely to increase health costs. (A recent study showed that the amount of smog produced by drilling in the Ft. Worth area is roughly equivalent to that produced by all of the car and truck traffic in that region. An accompanying increase in asthma cases has already been observed.)


    --LOCAL HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS: The local environmental and public health problems caused by gas drilling are serious indeed. The main problem is that a high gas well density is required to extract appreciable amounts of gas from shale. A recent pro-drilling study in my own county was based upon the assumption that 3 to 6 wells would be drilled per square mile--this in a 700-square-mile county with 200,000 people. Even if the impact of one well were small, the cumulative impact of all of those wells would be devastating. And the local impact of one well is not small.

    I could go on for pages about the local effects, but I'll sum it all up by saying that the effects are horrible—serious water pollution, serious air pollution, 24/7 noise, huge increases in truck traffic, chemical spills, gas well fires, loss of green space, etc. Some of these negative effects--like health problems due to contaminated water--may take years to make themselves fully known. Because shales in the U.S. underlie some heavily populated regions, a lot of people are likely to feel these negative effects in their daily lives if we go all out on gas production. These wells are not all going to be in remote locations: they will be in suburban and even urban neighborhoods. (There are over 1000 gas wells in Ft. Worth, TX.)

    -------------------------------
    Natural gas extraction is poorly regulated. Natural gas contributes to global warming, is expensive to extract, causes terrible local environmental problems, and is in finite supply. Rather than using natural gas to "transition" to a new energy future, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to use a serious energy conservation program as the "bridge" to that future and commit our limited natural resources and investment capital to the serious and rapid development of renewable energy sources that can power the U.S. safely and indefinitely?


    For more information, see:

    http://www.un-naturalgas.org/

    Permalink

  12. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 8:29 pm
    21 Aug 2009

    Natural gas is clearly better than coal.For transportation, it is not  better than fossil fuels as far as GHG emissions are concerned on a lifecycle basis according to two studies done in Australia that I scrounged up with google searches. One was for light vehicles and one for heavy. It certainly pollutes a lot less and has much lower particulate matter emissions (soot).I could not find any studies that accounted for the global warming effect of soot in any diesel/natural gas life cycle comparisons.
    In any case, natural gas as a replacement for general transportation use is a dumb idea. It may have potential to displace diesel in heavy vehicles if someone can ferret out the global warming impact of the lower soot emissions. Learn something new every day.http://www.environment.gov.au/settlements/transport/publications/lifecycle.htmlhttp://www.environment.gov.au/settlements/transport/publications/lightvehicles.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/science/earth/16degrees.html"...Soot accounts for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, second only to carbon-dioxide (CO2), which accounts for 40 percent of the emissions blamed for global warming,..." 

    Permalink

    1. gullyfourmyle's avatar

      gullyfourmyle Posted 10:41 am
      22 Aug 2009

      Biodiversivist, I am not surprised you couldn't find any studies linking Natural Gas emissions to Global Warming, Climate Change or Chemical Winter. I have spent five years looking for them.The reason you can't find them is because they're not there. Intentionally. Governments around the world protect the Natural Gas industry like no other and sequester information that would portray the industry in a negative light or refuse to allow the studies that would show such damaging data to be done at all. The same thing to a lesser degree occurs with respect to aviation fuel. To the point where most of the public thinks that Natural Gas burns completely clean and there are no emissions at all and aviation fuel emissions are like inhaling the scent of a rose.If you were to talk to a Ministry of Health official here in Canada about the effects of Natural Gas emissions from normal home heating, you would not get a single syllable of information. I've tried it at the federal and provincial level.On that basis I'm in the process of having members of our government charged with Criminal Code offences. At present it doesn't look like I'll succeed. The Code allows for my actions to be successful and there is no reason why these people can't be charged with an impressive array of crimes. But there  are other undefined mechanisms in place to prevent such prosecutions from happening. Since I've now journeyed through the entire process of Canadian Law and taken the Criminal process as far as a private citizen can, I now know exactly how governments, especially Canadian governments go about committing major crimes with impunity. (The Natual Gas situation is very deep in it.)Having done that I'm writing a book about it titled 'A PERFECT SETUP - How Canadian Governments Abetted by our Police Forces Commit Major Crimes and Get Away With Them'.What I found was the process by which our governments and thus elected officials, civil servants, agents and sub-contractors can commit crimes entirely outside the Rule of Law. In Canada the Rule of Law states that no man or woman can commit an act outside the Rule of Law. Well, that is far from true and my research revealed exactly how it's done. So in my book I'm going to describe using real cases who did what to whom as well as what the consequences are for the victims.This process is operative in every country in the world and it exists in plain sight. The reason it's gone undectable for so long is because the mechanism can only be discovered and explored in a country where you know you are safe from bureaucratic retaliation and even then would only be discovered by someone who has followed the system down every rat hole until the ends of each and every rat hole was identified and confirmed in writing officially by a government official. I did that. It took four years full time. That is not to say I did nothing else all those years. It means I was actively either working on it or thinking about how to proceed to the next level and so on. In some cases, I had to develop new science my self in order to support my cases. So the work was quite varied. The points made by MARYS are all aspects, elements and consequences of the phenomenon known as CHEMICAL WINTER.All of the forcasts about Natural Gas usage and its ability to last for a given length of time based on current levels of use fail to take into account massive population growth globally.However there is no shortage of Natural Gas now or in the future. Natural Gas pricing is all based on fraud too. I explored gas pricing with a gas company executive and when you cut all the BS out of the equation, Natural Gas is wildly over-priced and kept that way by speculators.The problem everyone seems to overlook is this: the planet has vast lakes underground composed of various oils and gases. As a species, we are intent on extracting these thoroughly anti-life chemicals from where they are safely sequestered and coating the planet with them as fast as we can. Burning them merely transforms them, it doesn't make them disappear. So no matter how you slice it, burning any kind of gas, oil or coal is the imposition of a death sentence on nearly everything on the planet in slow motion.Nothing can inhale, eat, drink or otherwise ingest these chemicals and live in a healthy manner or have their genes survive intact.

      Permalink

  13. kenshin Posted 9:29 pm
    22 Aug 2009

    my instinct would tell me no.  i still feel that natural gas and oil are common lobbying buddies too close to be trusted, and natural gas would rather scuttle the whole bill than see it thru.  i'd hate to get one of their reps in a hearing, thinking he was our ally, only to slam the bill.  or, manipulate the availability of drills, see below.
    natural gas doesn't need our help to fight climate change as they stand.  coal plants are being replaced by natural gas, leading to coal's total energy production last year going down, while natural gas power production has gone up.i'm not a fan of natural gas, and besides, we'll be fighting to make sure that geo-thermal projects can get a hold of those drills.  oil and gas basically own all the drills that geothermal would also use to do their projects.  if they don't own them, they may own the patents to them instead.  can u imagine a geothermal company going to the gas companies and asking if they can lease their drills for a project--yeah, just for a few months, we're building a geothermal plant that will basically help to put your industry out of business...i'm sure the answer will be, oh sorry, we don't have any available for the near forseeable future.if we do use gas as an ally, the government needs to gain access to those drills, and keep them on hand solely for the purpose of geothermal plants and nothing else.it is nice to see oil and coal all in-fighting each other, and not as united together.   coal screams out that oil is foreign dependance, oil screams out against clean coal...now gas?  no, i don't believe it, i think this is a back-up plan that the oil industry has to get what they really want thru a trap door, as opposed to the backdoor.  

    Permalink

  14. kenshin Posted 9:30 pm
    22 Aug 2009

    my instinct would tell me no.  i still feel that natural gas and oil are common lobbying buddies too close to be trusted, and natural gas would rather scuttle the whole bill than see it thru.  i'd hate to get one of their reps in a hearing, thinking he was our ally, only to slam the bill.  or, manipulate the availability of drills, see below.
    natural gas doesn't need our help to fight climate change as they stand.  coal plants are being replaced by natural gas, leading to coal's total energy production last year going down, while natural gas power production has gone up.i'm not a fan of natural gas, and besides, we'll be fighting to make sure that geo-thermal projects can get a hold of those drills.  oil and gas basically own all the drills that geothermal would also use to do their projects.  if they don't own them, they may own the patents to them instead.  can u imagine a geothermal company going to the gas companies and asking if they can lease their drills for a project--yeah, just for a few months, we're building a geothermal plant that will basically help to put your industry out of business...i'm sure the answer will be, oh sorry, we don't have any available for the near forseeable future.if we do use gas as an ally, the government needs to gain access to those drills, and keep them on hand solely for the purpose of geothermal plants and nothing else.it is nice to see oil and coal all in-fighting each other, and not as united together.   coal screams out that oil is foreign dependance, oil screams out against clean coal...now gas?  no, i don't believe it, i think this is a back-up plan that the oil industry has to get what they really want thru a trap door, as opposed to the backdoor.  

    Permalink

Add a Comment

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.

Hello, Visitor!    Why not register?

Viewed
More
Commented
More
Advertisement