Gasland
 

I'm watching Gasland, a documentary about Natural Gas and Water.

Pretty disturbing.

Is that the one where the water faucets spew out fire?

Yep. It brings up the question of how to balance environmental and personal damage with our demand for energy.

The thing that bothers me most about this type of extraction is the chemicals. Although it is only about 2% of what is pumped in to the ground we do not know how much and what type of chemicals are being pumped. The gas industry has the EPA hoodwinked into believing that the chemical make up is a trade secret, like the special sauce on the big mac.

I would pay 3x what I pay for natural gas not to have this type of mining going on in our country until they come up with a standard chemical recipe that is deemed save to the environment.

I watched it too months ago and it's a similar to clean coal. First, they destroy the well water of the homes located in the neighborhood. The gas companies state this only happend in a few cases but it's a lie. All you have to do is look up on the net all the cases of fracking destruction to give you an idea.

I watched this documentary a few months ago. It's quite disturbing, yes. Especially since there are such a small opinion against it and even if it grows it appears not to help. Big ruthless companies are hard to fight.

I recently watched a lecture about how the dairy and meat industries abuse animals in really nasty cruel ways. The speaker wanted people to become vegans or at least vegetarians. He said the only way to stop this senseless abuse was for everybody to stop buying their products. He showed many alternatives to the meat products most people love. They were made with vegetable ingredients and spices to mimic meat products.

He said that perhaps before seeing his videos and listening to his lecture people might have had an excuse for eating animal products. He said now that they knew the truth it was up to them to decide what they wanted to do in order to stop supporting those industries.

With the oil and gas industries is it any different? Instead of being cruel to animals the companies are being cruel to the environment that supports humans. Could there every be enough people opposing fracking who would quit buying petroleum and natural gas to have a significant effect? I don't think so.

Most of the people who communicate on this board are exceptional people who really see how the world is and are making personal changes. I bet all of us have had very little effect on our neighbors who drive cars all the time. We have some effect but not enough to cause the world to change quickly. Changes for the better are happening all of the time but not fast enough.

I wish I were wealthy and could distribute DVDs to every household about the solutions to issues that interest me. Something like that might speed things along. My conspiratorial mind believes that once I started that project that my DVDs would be intercepted by powerful people bribing postmasters to just throw them away.

If my DVDs showed people alternative solutions to using gasoline and natural gas would people choose them? We already know that most people wouldn't accept them, not without some major interruption in the supply line.

Yes, you are right. Education is the biggest challenge. And it will be fought by oil and gas producers, and it will be fought by the bulk of the consumers because it makes them uncomfortable and requires them to change their ways. And it's possible that until they see the true enormity of the cost of their lifestyle, that they will completely fail to comprehend why it's better to stop investing in the automobile.

This story does point to the notion that the easy fossil fuel is long gone and now we are stuck with product that is damaging for our health.

It's all great that none of us drive cars (much), but isn't natural gas used mostly for thing household heating? And fertilizer?

Of course, I say this while I hear the whirr of the gas furnace. It's nice to be warm, but it's also nice to have a clean water supply.

This reminds me of quite a few other "safe" practices over the years, DDT comes to mind...

Aaron :)

I don't know a lot about this, but my understanding is that natural gas can replace oil for many uses including materials, plastics, automobile fuel, chemicals, and other uses. I believe the problem with natural gas is that it takes more energy to refine it into other products, relative to petroleum. So even though the natural gas itself is quite cheap, it hasn't been economically practical to use it as a petroleum replacement in the past. With oil becoming scarcer and more expensive, many people look to natural gas as a magic bullet fuel.

Thanks. I just put it in my Netflix at the top of my queue.

I am so tired about the natural gas commercials on every networks I watch. They say it's the most clean fuel but fail to explain how clean it is. It's really brain-washing.

It is a very good documentary, I wish it was something everyone would see. Here in El Paso country they are trying to start fracking and right now there are a bunch of us fighting it. It was refreshing when I tried to RSVP to a discussion that had both environmental activists and people from the gas companies that they said they had an overwhelming response and would put me on the waiting list. Very glad to see that many concerned.

My local power company scrapped plans to build a coal-fueled power station, and is building one for natural gas instead. I guess this is a step in the right direction, as Natural gas really is a lot cleaner than coal.

The perfect fuel doesn't yet exist, so what are we to do?

The perfect fuel will never exist. A perfect fuel that would be inexpensive and renewable will consequently change the power structure that the wealthy derive (directly or indirectly) from our fossil fuel consumer "developed world".

Couldn't you say that whatever fuels your bicycle is the perfect fuel?

Not if it's cheeseburgers, according to LCF members. ;)

I will qualify... "The perfect fuel is oatmeal." :)

[note to self: One thing I've learned recently... You can convince a sizable slice of the population to ditch their cars, turn down the thermostat, be mindful of wasting electricity... but when it comes to their meat... you are treading on sacred ground.]

That's me! I really have no desire to give up meat. I do have meatless days, and I've learned to use meat more for a seasoning than a main course. But I still want a cheeseburger from time to time, and I can't see that changing,

I've recently gone from meat twice or 3 times a week to about once a month. It's an easy transition when discover a good cookbook. The Indians seem to have figured this all out... if you like Indian food, it's pretty easy actually.

My meat eating has fallen off a lot in the past few years. I used to be a steak a day guy.

I don't deny myself any, but just don't seem to want it as often. I think I've had meat three times this year. One pulled-pork sandwich with a friend at a restaurant, some fried chicken strips at an awards ceremony, and a pack of sliced ham for new years.

I really enjoy how much easier it is to clean up after veggies and pasta and I'm learning to cook them to my bizarre tastes. Collard green smoothies anyone?

I still like cheese though.

We have cut back on meat here too. Partially because the sawbones wanted me on a low cholesterol diet and my DD was here for a couple of weeks and is a vegetarian. Best trick I learned from her was Kale Chips, we use other seasoning rather than the seasoned salt. My MIL is on a sodium restricted diet. Veggie scraps go in the composter for the garden. Meat scraps aren't a problem...the hound eats those, she would eat the whole steak if she could. :D Plenty of great cook books out there.

Aaron :)

I've been cooking a big pot of beans every week since last fall. There are so many varieties of beans that I never get tired of them. I often add vegetables like greens, zucchini, tomatoes, etc. I do sometimes season them with a little meat, such as sauxage, bacon, ham hocks or whatever. I take them to work in my backpack and zap them for my meal. Right this minute I'm eating black beans cooked with kale and seasoned with a little leftover pulled pork.

While I have no comment on the movie since I haven't watched it I am in an area where there there is a huge frack sand boom going on. It's making people into multi-millionaires overnight. Interestingly a lot of the sand is located in an Amish community. The sand mining company has been irritated at the fact that the Amish won't sell out no matter what the price. One of the Amish was offered 15 million dollars for his 260 acre farm, plus a portion of the profit, and still be able to live on the farm if he wished. He turned it down. I guess there is a lot of sand out in the county land, it would be sad to see the forest ripped up and turned into an ugly sand pit. My friend which didn't really have an opinion on frack sand mining did a paper for it for his class. He found what the various companies plans for restoration were. Not surprisingly restoration plans were very poor and would leave the land basically worthless afterwards. His opinion after his research was that he was definitely more against than for the mining.

I'll admit I love to drive, I love to fix up old cars, but it's obvious that our current thirst for energy is not compatible with the planet. It's also obvious that any sort of real effort to get away from fossil fuels at a whole will crash the economy and bring down our standard of living. There is nothing that can replace it.

Is this really true? I'm kind of suspicious about this because I hear everyone saying it... so I suspect it's a little like the "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. Everyone believes it because no one has the imagination to see otherwise.

While we are saying this, several countries (like China...) are quietly going about figuring out an economy that is post fossil fuel. Why couldn't we survive a transportation system that has single occupants motoring 3-ton hulks? Why couldn't we create an agriculture that was much less dependent on fossil fuel fertilizers? Would the economy tank doing this?

Several thinkers have compared a move to free our transportation and agriculture from Big Oil to the paradigm shift we saw during the second world war. Everyone saw what had to be done and tightened their belts and got working. Why couldn't this happen again?