Posted on 04/29/2013 6:55:36 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Most unwelcome news for the one-track-minded, fossil-fuels-must-die green lobby — and from their usually zealous allies at the EPA, no less — but pretty sweet news for anyone who actually cares about the environment and isn’t especially interested in scaremongering everybody into a big crunchy panic resulting in still more big government dictates that endorse economic slowdown as the solution to environmental problems.
One of the organized environmental movement’s biggest arguments against natural gas is that the release of methane, natural gas’s main component, into the air during the production and delivery process is an even more dangerous and potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Therefore, these so-called environmentalists claim that on natural gas production’s net evaluation, it is probably way worse for the planet and climate change than its advocates will admit.
Which is why natural-gas opponents aren’t going to be pleased with the EPA’s new report that includes a dramatic downward revision in their estimate of how much heat-trapping methane is released during gas production. Bazinga, via the AP:
The new EPA data is “kind of an earthquake” in the debate over drilling, said Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental group based in Oakland, Calif. “This is great news for anybody concerned about the climate and strong proof that existing technologies can be deployed to reduce methane leaks.”
The scope of the EPA’s revision was vast. In a mid-April report on greenhouse emissions, the agency now says that tighter pollution controls instituted by the industry resulted in an average annual decrease of 41.6 million metric tons of methane emissions from 1990 through 2010, or more than 850 million metric tons overall. That’s about a 20 percent reduction from previous estimates. …
The EPA revisions came even though natural gas production has grown by nearly 40 percent since 1990. The industry has boomed in recent years, thanks to a stunning expansion of drilling in previously untapped areas because of the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which injects sand, water and chemicals to break apart rock and free the gas inside.
Experts on both sides of the debate say the leaks can be controlled by fixes such as better gaskets, maintenance and monitoring. …
Yes, the EPA is exceedingly fond of attributing any environmental improvements as the direct results of their policies and regulations, but let’s be real here and not overlook the overarching role of the free market in inspiring increased efficiency, innovation, and improved technology. In this case, producers are already plenty incentivized to keep trying to prevent leakages, since methane leaked into the atmosphere means waste and lost profits — and as the AP mentions, industry experts think that there’s ample and imminent room for still further innovation and improvement.
Of course, that’s not enough for the self-anointed defenders of the atmospheric realm:
One leading environmentalist argued the EPA revisions don’t change the bigger picture.
“We need a dramatic shift off carbon-based fuel: coal, oil and also gas,” Bill McKibbern, the founder of 350.org, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Natural gas provides at best a kind of fad diet, where a dangerously overweight patient loses a few pounds and then their weight stabilizes; instead, we need at this point a crash diet, difficult to do” but needed to limit the damage from climate change.
Firstly, I would merely point out that seems like a poor analogy, since I’m pretty sure everybody knows that crash diets are not included in the makings of a long-term solution for weight loss; and secondly, good grief, these greens just don’t know how to take yes for an answer. Natural gas is the main factor responsible for our lately reduced carbon emissions, and yet their suggestions for a realistic energy policy seem to amount to “Solar, wind, and algae power OR BUST!” Not super helpful, guys.
Oh for crying out loud!
There is nothing more organic than petroleum. The green weenies should be reveling in the fact that the substance is the end product of natural global bio-processing.
Instead of fossil fuels, they should be called “compost fuels”.
AMEN!
They are the Watermelon Party:
Green on the outside, red on the inside.
Saw this on Facebook about being “Green”, and while I’m in my early 40’s, I remember when this was so; which means it wasn’t that long ago!
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”
The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”
She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.
But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.
We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint. But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?
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