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BBC News - 13/12/12



Ministers are expected to allow a firm to resume a controversial method known as fracking to exploit what it says are huge shale gas reserves off Lancashire.

Cuadrilla had to stop test-drilling in 2011 after fracking caused two minor earthquakes near Blackpool.

The decision due later will be watched closely by the industry and opponents.

Meanwhile, government advisers say a dependence on gas could force household bills much higher than relying on renewable energy and nuclear power.

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Today, we get to cross the Rubicon.

Aurora wrote: Today, we get to cross the Rubicon.

Indeed. It's the sort of decision that leads us towards Hansen's nightmare:

“After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, I’ve come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and oil shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty.”

James Hansen p236 Storms of my Grandchildren.

Timely:

Gas 'will add more to energy bills than renewables' – government advisers

Prof Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester, said:"The CCC's latest report puts a well-placed boot in the popular view that low-carbon electricity is bad for the pockets of householders and UK Plc.

Good bloke, Kevin Anderson; one of the best. Here's his blog:
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/online-tools/p ... anderson-3

Go-ahead now given.

biffvernon wrote:

Aurora wrote: Today, we get to cross the Rubicon.

Indeed. It's the sort of decision that leads us towards Hansen's nightmare:

“After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, I’ve come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and oil shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty.”

James Hansen p236 Storms of my Grandchildren.

Fortunately, dead humans don't emit much CO2.

I think there is now a bettter-than-even chance that we're going to provoke the climate to switch to a new steady state. That means almost no permanent ice left on the surface within 200-300 years. To push it further than that would require even more industrial-scale human intervention, but that would require an industrial-scale human civilisation to still be in business. In reality, by the time the situation gets that bad there will already be very few humans left, compared to today.

We probably are indeed going to keep burning fossil fuels. We are also going to push the rest of the system to its limits wherever there is no easy alternative (as there was in the cases of CFCs and lead in petrol.) And that in turn means we are going to stretch the resources required to feed people - soil degradation, phosphorus depletion, pollution and depletion of groundwater required for agriculture, collapse of fisheries due to over-harvesting and other reasons...not to mention rapidly worsening climate chaos of the sort that is already impacting on food production.

In short, most of the human race is going to die of starvation, or associated wars and epidemics, long before we trigger a runaway greenhouse effect.

UndercoverElephant wrote:To push it further than that would require even more industrial-scale human intervention, but that would require an industrial-scale human civilisation to still be in business. In reality, by the time the situation gets that bad there will already be very few humans left, compared to today.

Indeed, that's the most likely outcome and the best hope for (non-human) life on Earth.

We know that life has survived (just) some big blips in greenhouse gas abundance and global warming in the geological past. It seems that these past events probably developed more slowly than what is happening now and our understanding of the whole climate system with its feedbacks is very poorly understood so to say that the Venus syndrome definitely can't happen is not right. Certainly Hansen's qualification that it happen IF we burn all the fossil carbon does seem extremely unlikely to come to pass.

How to deal with anti-fracking campaigners. Or maybe how anti-fracking campaigners can deal with attempts to deal with anti-fracking campaigners!
http://www.controlrisks.com/Oversized%2 ... epaper.pdf

Always good to know the enemy. That's a very interesting document. Share it widely.

biffvernon wrote:Always good to know the enemy. That's a very interesting document. Share it widely.

It's amazing how much useful stuff you can find by wasting time on Facebook .

Damian Carrington - The Guardian - 13/12/12

Shale gas may possibly offset the decline in the UK's North Sea supplies. But David Cameron and George Osborne's dreams of an energy revolution are a dangerous hallucination.

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Aurora wrote: Shale gas may possibly offset the decline in the UK's North Sea supplies.

Well, anything's possible, but no, the increase in gas from shale will be less than the decrease in North Sea Production. You probably didn't hear that here first.

Cartoon courtesy of The Independent - 14/12/12

I don't suppose it will be the whole country. They'll need a few nice bits left for their country houses, and for hunting and shooting.

On Radio 4 last night there was a discussion about this and some mention of how the US "may become a net exporter of oil and gas" due to fracking. Dreamers!