Fracking Radiation

Where Does It Go?

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 ~ Hazardous waste requires proper disposal so the hazard doesn't do damage, but what happens when no one is paying attention to the waste?

The Marcellus shale has a lot of radioactive uranium and radium-226 in it. As a result, the large volume of wastewater created by fracking is highly radioactive.

[U.S. Geological Survey research geologist Mark] Engle co-authored a USGS report that found that millions of barrels of wastewater from unconventional (fracked) wells in Pennsylvania and vertical wells in New York were 3,609 times more radioactive than the federal limit for drinking water and 300 times more radioactive than a Nuclear Regulatory Commission limit for industrial discharges to water.

12 Predictions for 2013

Clarity Moving Beyond the Past

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 ~ The best part of 2013 is that there won't be a federal election. Consequently, some useful things will get done. There will still be way too much partisan malarkey for my tastes, but the electorate expects action on a host of things and the political dynamic will allow more progress than last year's gridlocked, posturing debacle.

This year's predictions:

My 2012 Predictions Revisited

About 3/4 Accurate

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 ~ So how good was my prognostication of the past year? Not bad, although I did make some creampuff predictions that boosted the grade. Using a scale of 1 (utterly wrong) to 10 (perfectly prescient):

Imagine

A Less Fracked World

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Welfare Incentives

Our Unmotivated Oil Industry

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 ~ Big Oil is getting worried about their subsidies going away as part of the action to address the so-called fiscal cliff. Horrors! They might lose their taxpayer-funded welfare! Said a letter signed by a phalanx of 14 lobbies:

Any attempts to target the oil and gas industry for punitive treatment should be avoided as higher taxes could put the economic growth we’ve created at risk.

Yes, I suppose it "could" in the same way buying a lottery ticket "could" make me rich. Fat chance. But whether it is merely possible or not isn't really how we should decide this. Let's focus instead on likely outcomes. If I buy a lottery ticket I will make myself poorer by the cost of that ticket. And the potential "treatment"—reducing or eliminating taxpayer handouts to an insanely wealthy industry—is hardly "punitive." It will simply help out (a tiny bit) on our fiscal problems.

Friends of Tax Reform...

...May Not Be Friends of Big Oil

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 ~ Both presidential candidates share a stated desire to lower tax rates and simplify the tax code by eliminating deductions and credits. (And also those hardy but elusive scapegoats, fraud, waste and abuse.) Not everyone is fond of this idea, especially Big Oil:

“Tax reform will be a complicated process,” said Comstock, API’s manager for tax policy. “I think our members are wary of how that process will take place.

Unfortunately, tax reform by simplification entails eliminating "loopholes"—but only yours, not mine. Big Oil doesn't receive much public esteem, and their essentially indefensible billions in annual subsidies are under growing scrutiny. Even powerful House Republican and pro-fossil pol Frank Upton is talking about eliminating all energy subsidies, including for oil and gas.

Who Sets Energy Policy?

Probably Not Anyone You Trust

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 ~ The Gallup poll of a few months back gauged the public's views on various institutions and industry sectors.

Those with the worst public image? The federal government was almost at the bottom, just above the oil and gas industry.

Those are precisely the two who are dictating our current energy policy. Little wonder we have permanent subsidies for fossil energy and such halting progress on transitioning to a clean and sustainable energy future.

Our Abundant Energy

Abundant Language

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 ~ Energy is important.

So no surprise much is written about it. But what is surprising is how powerful and deliberate the messaging about it is. That messaging is, in a word, abundant.

It seems no one can talk about drilling without phrasing it as the development of "our abundant oil and gas" resources. You hear it in the Senate, in the House, from the API, from the US Chamber of Commerce, from industry periodicals, from the Obama Administration.

Other words in the English language for relative plenitude are, well, abundant, but when it comes to our oil and gas resources "abundant" is the overwhelming word choice by politicians, lobbyists and journalists.

It's almost as if someone circulated a memo with the talking points and key messaging language!

So why don't we hear so much about our "abundant wind resources" or our "abundant solar resources"?

Buried Treasure?

Keep Fossil Fuels Buried

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 ~ We should leave our fossil fuels in the ground.

And not just because it would keep that carbon and its climate change impacts out of the atmosphere, but also because it would add to our energy security as a country.

Keeping more of our fossil fuel wealth in the ground would increase our energy security in two ways:

Primitive Energy

Advancing Society?

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 ~ How would you explain our society to a visiting alien?

Neil deGrasse Tyson is not Bill Nye or Carl Sagan, but he is at least as effective in making science accessible and understandable to the general public.

He's embarrassed by our addiction to fossil fuels. We should all be so, because it is an indication that our society is primitive.

Why? Consider the anthropological arc of humanity.

Energy Lies—XIII

"The Administration continues to prevent, delay and obstruct development of [oil and gas] and puts off jobs for another day"

 ~ This allegation, by Erik Milito of the API, and many others like it, are zombies of political mendacity. They just won't die!

We've been hearing this since the start of the Obama Administration. It both ignores the larger truth, and has been consistently wrong for three years.

What occasioned the latest surge of reflexive outrage? The announcement of the proposed management plan to develop oil and gas on Alaska's North Slope. That's right—a management plan. Not an unfettered free-for-all of fossil drilling frenzy certainly, but not a moratorium either. According to US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, "About 11.8 million acres would be available for leasing, including most land projected to contain oil reserves." According to Alaska Senator Murkowski, however, it is the "most restrictive management plan possible." Um, no. The most restrictive plan would be to, you know, actually "prevent, delay and obstruct" rather than what the Administration actually has done—open up the richest half of the entire National Petroleum Reserve.

Climate Change Math

Is Our Number Up?

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 ~ Bill McKibben has written the definitive piece on the three key numbers that summarize our impending, self-made, and slow-motion global catastrophe. Simply:

1. 2°C--The maximum rise in average global temperature we can sustain without cataclysmic consequences. We're already 0.8°C there, and may have another 0.8°C yet to be reflected but already baked into the global warming cake.
2. 565 Gigatons--The limit on the amount of atmospheric CO2 we can yet emit and stay under 2°C.
3. 2,795 Gigatons--The amount of carbon in the proven gas, oil and coal reserves of companies and countries. These reserves are what those entities intend to extract for humanity's collective burning.

The economics of the fossil fuel industry, their capitalization, and their shareholders' wealth depend on extracting and burning almost 5 times more CO2 than the absorbing ability of the Earth can sustain.

McKibben argues, convincingly, that we need to start thinking of the Fossil Industry in a different way:

The Job Creators—IV

By Industry

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 ~ Public transit just makes sense in so many ways.

Oh, and where is Big Oil which the API keeps telling us is such a wonderful job creator? The original study suggests combined oil and gas is 5.18 jobs per $1M investment, but that is, well, all gas. If oil were broken out in this chart, their number would be negative. The oil industry has been shedding jobs for years and pales as a job creator to the renewable energy industry.

Others of interest: roads and bridges repair (20), conservation (20), water infrastructure (20), school buildings (19), financial industry (7), nuclear industry (4). Study details here.

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Cross-posted to the Fare-Free Northwest blog.

Ready for a Grand Bargain

If Only There Were True Leadership

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 ~ Amazingly, perhaps the first glimmers of an awareness of a real way forward:

A majority of Americans from both political parties are ready for the "grand bargain"--an increase in taxes on old energy sources (oil, coal, and natural gas) in return for a reduction in income tax rates across the board. In short, they're ready for a new national climate and energy policy to emerge.

They're also ready to support new, cutting edge energy technologies. And they recognize that climate change is starting to affect extreme weather events--in fact, 82 percent said they were personally affected by a climate-related extreme weather event of one kind or another last year--and are ready to do something about it.

It's bipartisan too. Details and other surprising results.

People know this is what needs to be done, and something much like this is already working in British Columbia. All we need is real leadership, and less corruption from unlimited corporate money.

Useless Opinions

Energy Marketing

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 ~ Have you ever bought something that turned out to be useless? Perhaps you had a real need or a strong desire, and the thing you bought seemed to perfectly satisfy it. The magic of the marketing and its well-timed and well-targeted message got you to buy it. The need may have been real, and the thing purchased properly functioning, but the marketing created a poor match. What you bought didn't meet your actual need.

Our economy needs abundant and cheap energy. It also needs jobs. Big Oil and its sycophants in government and the media relentless argue that we should be doing more to "develop" our oil and gas resources in the US. That message is getting traction with the public as the price at the pump rises. But it is only a very slick piece of marketing designed to convince us that fulfilling their industry wishlist will solve our problems. Many are buying the political blather, but the results are destined to be disappointing at best, if not mostly useless.

16 Predictions for 2012

Continued Conflict

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 ~ 2012 is going to be rather similar to 2011 politically, but there will be some changes on the economic front.

It's an election year, and, although it seems like the election started a year ago (right after the last one ended), this cycle will see yet higher levels of obsession with the election by politicians, journalists, pundits, and, hence, everyone. So, in government, there will be even fewer policy accomplishments than in 2011 (is that even possible?) and science, reason, and critical thinking will be marginalized to the point of invisibility.

The election will change a number of the players, but regrettably will change none of the political dynamic. The dysfunction will continue, public anger and disgust will increase, and only economic downdrafts in Europe and Asia will prevent precipitous erosion in America's global competitiveness.

This year's predictions:

My 2011 Predictions Revisited

About 2/3 Accurate

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 ~ A year ago I took a stab at predictions for 2011. Seems like I've run out of time waiting for most of them to come to pass, so it's time for a report card, using a scale of 1 (utterly wrong) to 10 (perfectly prescient):

Sunny Days Ahead for Solar

Lower Costs, Better Technologies

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~ Solar power continues to grow more competitive against other forms of electricity generation. At the just completed German InterSolar trade show module prices are down to $1.40/W and, according to Lux Research, headed to a low point in the second half of this year of $1.20/W. IHS iSuppli research expects PV modules to break the $1.00/W threshold in early 2012. Overall systems are roughly twice the module cost, meaning commercial solar could cost only $2/W (or less) a year from now.

What would such costs for solar mean?

The Wingnut Wurlitzer

Same Old Song Not Even Worth a Dance

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~ Congressman Jay Inslee will announce a run for Governor in Washington, and, on cue, the usual suspects strike their tuneless and discordant notes.

One of the first with his kazoo is Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center with a vacuous bit of fluff astonishing for its intellectual laziness.

Myers starts by lifting one paragraph out of Inslee's book (Apollo's Fire, which he doesn't bother to cite):

Those ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ will constantly point out irrelevant facts about how expensive alternatives are compared to fossil fuels, how inconvenient they are, and how undeveloped they are. Those unfortunate victims of the tyranny of the present cannot envision the inevitable growth in efficiency, declining costs, and ever increasing accessibility of clean and renewable energy.”

Myers then claims to "understand" the point, and proceeds to write in a way that shows he doesn't get it at all. Like all good wingnuts with an ideological axe to grind he starts out with a broad, unreferenced fiction that he labels as "fact", claiming that "solar panels, and other green energy technologies, are extremely expensive, unusable and undeveloped." The facts, for anyone with a few minutes to spend looking, are that renewable energy technologies are increasingly used and well-developed. Furthermore, the expense continues to decline. Land-based wind power is now very close to the cost of coal generation, and solar modules are on the verge of breaking the $1 per watt threshold. Compare to nuclear at $10-12 per watt.

Pander Bear

NJ Governor Christie Withdraws from RGGI

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~ New Jersey's corpulent chief has pulled out of RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The original 10 northeastern states, now minus New Jersey, will carry on without the participation of the Garden State.

At a morning news conference, the governor asserted that New Jersey was succeeding in reducing its carbon dioxide emissions not because of the multistate program, known as RGGI (pronounced Reggie), but because it is relying more on natural gas and less on coal to fill its energy needs.

“RGGI does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses, with no discernible or measurable impact upon our environment,” Mr. Christie said.

A transition away from coal to (relatively) cleaner natural gas helps for now, but there is no guarantee that natural gas will remain at its current bargain basement prices. If the economy ever returns to a brisker growth pattern there will be pressure to provide more electricity by whatever means, including coal. The Governor is very unlikely to complain about emissions if he thinks economic growth depends on the power production that causes them.