Josh Fox, the filmmaker behind Gasland and Gasland II is the guest on Andrew Sullivan’s Ask Me Anything series this week. Yesterday, he discussed how he got involved in this fight. Today, he has a great answer to the question of whether natural gas is a necessary evil.
Josh Fox. Articulate.
Nearly 75% of Americans and 68% of Canadians indicated they “support” or “somewhat support” the project, which would carry heavy crude from the Alberta oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast for refining, according to the poll conducted by Ottawa-based Nanos Research.
The poll also asked participants—1,007 Americans and 1,013 Canadians—which was more important: reducing greenhouse-gas emissions or having North America free from oil imports? Both a majority of Americans and Canadians, 63% and 55%, respectively, suggested reducing reliance on oil imports trumped environmental policy.
“Energy security, particularly in the U.S., is driving views on energy issues,” said Nik Nanos, president of Nanos Research.
Environmentalists argue that development of the Alberta oil sands for the crude that Keystone would carry will increase emissions of greenhouse gases.
The Nanos poll contacted Americans between March 28 and April 7, and Canadians between April 6 and April 9.
The Obama administration is, for a second time, reviewing TransCanada’s application to build Keystone after rejecting the project in 2012. Keystone faces stiff opposition in the U.S. from environmental groups and key Democratic policy makers.
Nanos Research conducted the poll and they’re pretty legit. Via WSJ.
For background, check out my Keystone XL Pipeline and Oil tags.
Death rate per watts, Nuclear, Oil, Coal. Classic chart exposes cognitive dissonance, and persistent self-denial…
Do you have an opinion about nuclear power? About the relative safety of one form of power over another? How did you come to this opinion?
Here are the stats. For every person killed by nuclear power generation, 4,000 die due to coal, adjusted for the same amount of power produced.
Vivid is not the same as true. It’s far easier to amplify sudden and horrible outcomes than it is to talk about the slow, grinding reality of day to day strife. That’s just human nature. Not included in this chart are deaths due to global political instability involving oil fields, deaths from coastal flooding and deaths due to environmental impacts yet unmeasured, all of which skew it even more if you think about it.
This chart unsettles a lot of people, because there must be something wrong with it. Further proof of how easy it is to fear the unknown and accept what we’ve got.
Via Seth Godin
Update: Nuclear waste is not an issue.
Update II: The reblog comments are incredible. Not one acknowledged or seems to have read the post. Nor, it seems, has a single reader clicked through to read the original post. Only one commenter, that I could tell, attempted to discuss the underlying facts. Instead, there were mostly “But” type replies that repeat the very myths this chart aims to debunk. What an incredible experience from my point of view, and a major lesson learned…
McKibben - Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, p. 27. (via writingcapital)
It doesn’t just stop with oil, though. Here are 24 other things you might be mindlessly spending your money on.
(via kiplinger)
(via kiplinger)
Oil magnate T. Boone Pickens: “Biggest deterrent to U.S. energy plan is Koch Industries. They do not want America to have an energy plan.”
Climate change will not be stopped.
U.S. wind generation increased 27% in 2011
“Generation from wind turbines in the United States increased 27% in 2011 compared to 2010, continuing a trend of rapid growth. During the past five years capacity additions of wind turbines were the main driver of the growth in wind power output. As the amount of wind generation increases, electric power system operators have faced challenges with integrating increasing amounts of this intermittent generation source into their systems.
Federal production tax credits and grants for electricity from certain renewable sources as well as State-level renewable portfolio standards have encouraged both capacity additions and increased generation from wind and other renewable sources.
Although increasing, electricity from wind contributed to less than 3% of total generation in 2011. Wind energy is the largest source of non-hydroelectric renewable electricity in the United States, contributing 61% of the nearly 200 gigawatthours of non-hydroelectric renewable generation in 2011. EIA recently released preliminary data through December 2011 on generation, fuel consumption, and other statistics for the electric power industry in the Electric Power Monthly and Electricity Monthly Update.”
More at EIA.GOV
“The Last Mountain” documentary looks good. Wonder what happened afterwards?
“Confessions of a Chevy Volt Owner.” A surprising, frank interview with an owner of a Volt after one year of driving.
The interview is short and surprising. Have a look.
UPDATE: Life Cycle Analysis suggests that electric vehicles produce the same emissions as a small car. Savings begin after about 80,000 miles. See here.
UPDATE II: See this short paper by German researchers comparing hybrid vehicle technologies. Concludes that EVs have built-in pollution problems at the supply chain side, which offset any savings on the consumer side. Couldn’t find a specific LCA on the Volt, though. Electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid energy efficiency and life cycle emissions (PDF).
The oil drilling industry is struggling to fill jobs. They’re scrambling to hire young folks and pay a decent wage.
“As demand for oil and gas rises, demand for more oil field workers rises too. Hard workers, regardless of background, are needed to fill these positions, especially offshore, but they need proper training. Entrepreneurs have capitalized on this void and have opened roughneck training schools. Instead of four years at a university, short training courses can prepare inexperienced laborers for a good-paying entry level drilling rig job.
One such school is the Maritime Drilling Schools based in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, which provides a 20-day training course. The entry-level training course provides individuals with skills and safety training needed to function safely and efficiently in the field.
Maritime Drilling’s 20-day training course breaks down each part of the drilling process and explains what it does and why it is necessary. The school has a drilling rig on site where students get hands-on training in rig operations as well as safety.
As most roughneck jobs today are found on offshore drilling rigs and platforms, training schools also teach offshore skills as well as land. Roughnecks can expect to align, tighten, unscrew and add pipe, along with position casing, tubing and pump rods. Other duties include cleaning, maintaining and repairing drilling equipment.
Maritime Drilling Schools also teaches the following:
When students complete the 4-week program, they typically have no trouble finding work.
“Right now, as fast as guys are being trained, they are going right to work,” MacDonald said. “We have drilling contractors who come to us regularly looking for hands. As an institution, we don’t guarantee work to students, but we do assist them.”
Recently trained students are finding work as roustabouts all over the globe, but specifically in Alberta, British Columbia, North Dakota (Bakken), Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and offshore worldwide.
Drillers start off as roustabouts until they gain enough hands-on experience to move up to a roughneck or floorhand position, then to driller and rig supervisor. Of course, pay increases as well.
“While it certainly assists an individual to have a solid educational background coming into our program, all drillers start at the bottom. A driller is not going to walk in off the street. Drillers have to build their knowledge and experience and know how things operate and what’s going on around the rig.”
According to MacDonald, his students start as roustabouts with a salary between $80,000 to $100,000 in Canada, and $75,000 to $95,000 in the US, depending on where and for who they are working. Some even get a living allowance.
The pay is very generous; however the labor is physically demanding, the work schedule is taxing and the work environment is potentially dangerous to those not properly trained.
Although schedules vary from one company to another, as well as one rig to the next, a common shift is 12 hours on and 12 hours off for two or three weeks at a time and then off the rig for two weeks.”
Read the rest at RigZone
Really cool visualization tool of global development by individual country. I played around and compared Kenya, Congo, and Uganda to Greece and Germany. Education attainment and co2 emissions are, as expected, really low in Africa, but really high in Germany and medium for Greece. Don’t forget the use the scroll bar at the bottom to compare growth over time.
Comparing Human Development of Countries through Star Plot Shapes
Worldshapin lets users study the interdependence of various factors such as health, carbon footprint, workplace equality, living standard, population and education across the world. Therefore, the project visualizes data taken from the Human Development Report 2011, and plots it on a stylized smoothed star plot. In effect, the world, continents and countries are represented as unique shapes based on how low or high they fare on 6 indicators.
(via sunfoundation)
A NOAA satellite image off Nigeria’s coastline shows the new Shell oil spill covering a 356-square-mile patch of ocean.
“Nigeria Oil Spill Raises Concerns About New Drilling Technology
By Deepwater Horizon mega-disaster benchmarks, it’s not so big — but it might be in the Exxon Valdez ballpark, and underscores the risks of a new deepwater oil-gathering technique that’s coming soon to the Gulf of Mexico.
“The significance here is the technology they’re using,” said John Amos of the environmental watchdog group Skytruth. “It’s a whole new source of potentially major oil spills.”
The spill occurred Dec. 20 at Shell’s Bonga deepwater facility, prompting an immediate temporary closure of the oil field. Shell estimated that up to 40,000 barrels of oil — about 7 million gallons, compared to 11 million gallons for the Exxon Valdez — leaked.
Unlike the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which involved the blowout of a wellhead 5,000 feet deep, the Bonga spill occurred at the surface during transfer of crude oil between ships. It was relatively easy to fix, which at first glance might seem reassuring.
“It is important to stress that this was not a well control incident of any sort,” said Shell Nigeria chairman Mutiu Sunmonu in a statement. But Amos says the spill is still troubling.
Oil in the Bonga deepwater field is collected by a method known as floating production storage and offloading, or FPSO, in which crude oil is piped to floating, mobile tanks, usually converted supertankers, rather than fixed platforms. Shuttle tankers collect oil from the FPSO and carry it to market.”
Read more at Wired
“Peter Idabor of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency told The Associated Press on Thursday that oil from the spill in Shell’s Bonga field has spread to roughly 100 nautical miles. Idabor said he expects oil to begin washing ashore on Nigeria’s southern coast later Thursday.”
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday for the first time that fracking — a controversial method of improving the productivity of oil and gas wells — may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution.
The draft finding could have significant implications while states try to determine how to regulate the process. Environmentalists characterized the report as a significant development though it met immediate criticism from the oil and gas industry and a U.S. senator.
The practice is called hydraulic fracturing and involves pumping pressurized water, sand and chemicals underground to open fissures and improve the flow of oil or gas to the surface.
The EPA’s found that compounds likely associated with fracking chemicals had been detected in the groundwater beneath Pavillion, a small community in central Wyoming where residents say their well water reeks of chemicals. Health officials last year advised them not to drink their water after the EPA found low levels hydrocarbons in their wells.
The EPA announcement could add to the controversy over fracking, which has played a large role in opening up many gas reserves, including the Marcellus Shale in the eastern U.S. in recent years.
The industry has long contended that fracking is safe, but environmentalists and some residents who live near drilling sites say it has poisoned groundwater.
The EPA said its announcement is the first step in a process of opening up its findings for review by the public and other scientists.
“EPA’s highest priority remains ensuring that Pavillion residents have access to safe drinking water,” said Jim Martin, EPA regional administrator in Denver. “We look forward to having these findings in the draft report informed by a transparent and public review process.”
Source: USA TODAY
Note, Senator Inhofe (who gets 80% of his campaign donations from coal, oil, and gas) goes ballistic.
I want to punch climate change in the face.
A blog about the interactions between the built environment, people, and nature.
I'm a climate change consultant specializing in climate adaptation, environmental law, and urban planning based in the U.S. In addition to traveling and hiking, I research, publish, and lecture on how cities can adapt to climate change.
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