We’re Kicking Some Fracking Butt Here

[Valin]

Power Line:

Steven Hayward

1/24/13

 

Not sure whether we have added to the chorus about the new documentary Fracknation that debuted this week, from the dynamic Irish film duo Philem McAleer and Ann McElhinney and co-director Magdalena Segieda. (We did have a brief squib featuring McElhinney in my highlight reel from CPAC last February.) It’s the perfect antidote to Matt Damon’s Promised Land, which, shall we say, isn’t exactly setting the box office on fire like gas-infused tap water.

 

Meanwhile, sit down for this: at the current Sundance Film Festival–Robert Redford’s baby–there is debuting a new documentary about environmentalists who have changed their mind and are now pro-nuclear power. Does Redford, who signs direct-mail letters for the anti-nuke NRDC, know about this? The film is called Pandora’s Promise, and here’s what one early critic at Sundance has to say about it:

 

When was the last time you saw a documentary that fundamentally changed the way you think? It’s no secret that just about every political and socially-minded documentary shown at Sundance is preaching to the liberal-left choir. The issue may be dairy farming, human rights abuses in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the marketing of AIDS drugs, or Occupy Wall Street (to list the topics of four festival docs this year), but the point of view is almost always conventionally “progressive” and orthodox. So when Robert Stone, who may be the most under-celebrated great documentary filmmaker in America (watch Oswald’s Ghost if you want to touch the elusive truth of the JFK assassination), arrived at Sundance this year with Pandora’s Promise, a look at the myths and realities of nuclear power, he was walking into the lion’s den. For this isn’t a movie that preaches to the choir. It’s a movie that says: “Stop thinking what you’ve been thinking, because if you don’t, you’re going to collude in wrecking the world.” Pandora’s Promise is built around what should be the real liberal agenda: looking at an issue not with orthodoxy, but with open eyes.

 

In Pandora’s Promise, Stone interviews a major swath of environmentalists, scientists, and energy planners, all of whom spent years being anti-nuclear power — and then, as they began to look at the evidence, changed their minds. The film begins with a deep examination of the psychology of the anti-nuclear view: how it took hold and became dogma. It goes all the way back to 1945, of course, and the horror of the atomic bomb. From that moment, really, the very word nuclear was tainted. It meant something that was going to kill you, in the form of lethal radiation that you can’t see. By the time of the “No Nukes” protests of the ’70s, to be “anti-nuclear” was to conflate nuclear weapons and nuclear power into a single category of scientific evil, a point of view whipped up, over the years, into a doctrinaire frenzy of righteous fear and loathing by anti-nuclear activists like Dr. Helen Caldicott and reinforced by movies like The China Syndrome and even, in its benign satirical way, The Simpsons.

(Snip)

[HalJordan]

One of the wisest thoughts on this subject that I've ever heard came from a Filipino mess cook on my submarine. He said "If Thomas Edison's experiments with electricity had killed thousands of people, we would be as scared of electricity today as we're scared of nuclear power."

[pollyannaish]

Brilliant @HalJordan.

 

Welcome to TRR. Good to have you here.

[Geee]

Fracking’s rise in U.S. inspires the world

 

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/24/frackings-rise-in-us-inspires-the-world/

Fracking is going global.

The U.S. energy industry clearly still leads the way on the revolutionary drilling method that has upended global energy markets, but the rest of the world is beginning to catch up as nations seek to replicate American success in oil and natural gas development.

Taking the lead in Europe, Poland plans to begin producing shale gas using hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, as soon as next year, the country’s treasury minister said recently. More than 100 exploration concessions to more than two dozen companies have been awarded, and the Polish State Geological Institute estimates that the country’s shale gas deposits may secure domestic production for at least 25 years. Britain has lifted a moratorium on fracking that was imposed after a previous operation was blamed for sparking an earth tremor.

Argentina, the largest producer of natural gas in South America, is eyeing the practice on a significant scale to better exploit its supply.

Fracking uses water, sand and chemicals to break underground shale formations and release fuel. The technique has been key to economic revivals in localities across the U.S. and has helped domestic oil and gas production skyrocket. International competitors now want in on the action.

[Valin]

One of the wisest thoughts on this subject that I've ever heard came from a Filipino mess cook on my submarine. He said "If Thomas Edison's experiments with electricity had killed thousands of people, we would be as scared of electricity today as we're scared of nuclear power."

 

Last week I watched a You Tube on the Space Race, and a though occurred to me....there was a time not that long ago when we were not afraid. That doing something big might mean people were going to get hurt or die....but we went ahead anyway.

[Valin]

Aussies Strike Black Gold

1/24/13

 

Move over, America, there’s a new shale oil giant in town. An Australian drilling company found a huge shale oil deposit potentially containing enough oil to match the reserves of Saudi Arabia. Australia News brings us the story:

 

(Snip)

 

It’s not clear yet how much oil is recoverable, but even at the low end the field would include as much shale oil as America’s Bakken formation, which has helped transform U.S. energy production and the global energy landscape. If higher estimates prove more accurate, Australia could join the U.S. as one of the world’s top oil producers.

 

There are plenty of obstacles for Australia to overcome on its way to extracting this shale oil. The U.S. has led the shale energy revolution because of its access to capital and its geological and technological advantages—advantages that Australia doesn’t quite have. And the water-intensive hydraulic fracturing process needed to access the shale will pose problems for arid Oz.

 

(Snip)

 

Bad News For Saudi Arabia & Iran. Good News For China & Japan.

[pollyannaish]

Hmmm. It seems to me that there was a huge Dem president that said "there is nothing to fear but fear itself"

 

Interesting that is exactly what the dem party espouses now.

[Valin]

Hmmm. It seems to me that there was a huge Dem president that said "there is nothing to fear but fear itself"

 

Interesting that is exactly what the dem party espouses now.

 

It's the wuzzifacation of America.

 

[Valin]

[Geee]

Vera Scroggins bio says she studied English Language and Literature. She doesn't have command of either

[Valin]

Vera Scroggins bio says she studied English Language and Literature. She doesn't have command of either

 

If you can't debate someone...call them names. SOP for some people.

[Valin]

The shifting geopolitics of the shale gas boom

Erika Johnsen

January 26, 2013

 

Many from within the environmental lobby and “green” community seem to have already made up their minds to remain dead-set in their opposition to the practice of hydraulic fracturing, which is just plain weird — because the attitude amounts to cutting your nose off merely to get really spiteful with your face. Regardless of the wealth, jobs, and economic growth for which hydrofracking is single-handedly responsible (such mundane material don’t tend to sway the real eco-radicals), the natural gas boom has also been a major player in 2012 marking the United States’ lowest carbon emissions in two solid decades.

 

And if that doesn’t do it for you, there is an entirely other reason to get behind the natural gas boom: The stuff is everywhere (just this week, Australia figured out that they have a shale source probably larger than Canada’s oil sands), and allowing for further exports and supporting global development has the potential to redraw the geopolitical map and break up some of the influence currently afforded to Russia and the Middle East for their own robust energy production operations.

 

(Snip)

 

Economic benefits, environmental benefits, and the potential to put a damper on Russia and the Middle East’s bullying chokeholds on regional energy markets? What exactly isn’t to like here?

 

 

(Its the year 2033 and a civil war breaks out in Saudi Arabia....across the industrial world the cry goes up....gee that's to bad.)