James Lovelock, Father of Gaia Theory, Endorses Natural Gas Fracking

[Valin]

RedState:

 

Steve Maley

6/16/12

 

James Lovelock, now 92 years of age, is the father of Gaia theory, the idea that Mother Earth is a sort of sentient, self-regulating organism. So it was noteworthy a few weeks back when he walked back some of his predictions of our planet’s impending doom from Global Warming.

 

In an interview with the Guardian, Lovelock embraces fracking for natural gas, scorns renewables and castigates the Germans for shutting down their nukes in favor of lignite, a low-grade coal, for electricity generation. (H/T wattsupwiththat.com.)

 

First, fracking:

 

Gas is almost a give-away in the US at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it: the amount of CO2 produced by burning gas in a good turbine gives you 60% efficiency. In a coal-fired power station, it is 30% per unit of fuel. So you get a two-to-one gain there straight away. The next two-to-one gain you get is that methane has only got half its energy in the carbon, the other half is in the hydrogen, so there’s a four-to-one gain in CO2 output from the same amount of electricity by burning methane. Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane.

 

 

(Snip)

[Evad]

Yeah...probably bought some "fracking" stock.

[NCTexan]

This is fracking unbelievable news!

 

BTW, the NC state congress just approved a fracking bill... much to the displeasure of the Libs.