11 Responses to “Shale Gas Debate Heating Up”

1. harrywr2 says:

   April 12, 2011 at 6:00 pm

   Anyone who exeperincing ‘whiplash” based on EIA Assessments should look at this sentence in the EIA ‘future projections’
    
   <i>After peaking in 2010, the average U.S. minemouth coal price declines gradually as higher cost coal from mines in Appalachia, particularly Central Appalachia, is displaced with lower cost coal from other U.S. coal basins</i>
    
   We are 4 months in 2011 and I can’t find the ‘2010 peak’ on the chart.
   http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/coalnews/images/weekly2/weekly2.jpg
   Yet another great year for EIA…predicting declining coal prices since 1979. They were correct for 20 of those years. 😉
    

2. Simon Hopkinson says:

   April 12, 2011 at 7:02 pm

   Things to know about the Cornell study.

3. Ed Forbes says:

   April 12, 2011 at 7:17 pm

   O’No!!…cheep and pleniful energy….”it’s worse than we thought!!!! “

4. Eli Rabett says:

   April 12, 2011 at 7:32 pm

   Since Eli heard this somewhere else, it probably is in the press release
   ————————————–
   Cornell ecologist Robert Howarth, a lead author of the study, says in a university release that methane ( a potent global warming gas) leakage from a controversial drilling method (known as fracking) offsets the lesser carbon emissions that makes makes natural gas more attractive in comparison other fossil fuels:
   ————————————-
   WTF do you think natural gas is Keith?

5. Eli Rabett says:

   April 12, 2011 at 7:37 pm

   Oh yeah, leakage from pipes is also significant, but also methane is only for five or ten years as it is degraded to CO2 in the atmosphere
   http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/02/passing-gas.html
    
    

6. Jack Hughes says:

   April 12, 2011 at 8:01 pm

   Looks like a collision between irrational exuberance and irrational pessimism 🙂

7. kdk33 says:

   April 12, 2011 at 8:48 pm

   It’s like you’re at the football game, 1 minute left and the home team is down by 2, and their on defense, and it’s 3rd and 5.  Home team pulls 9 guys into the box figurin’ if we stop ’em here, we’ll get the ball and…  the visitors run a quick trap that pops the fullback loose on gut wrenching (for the home team) 65 yard touchdown.

   That’s shale gas.

8. Marlowe Johnson says:

   April 12, 2011 at 11:06 pm

   Rabett I think the carrots may be fermenting a bit in the patch you’re grazing in….
    
   of course natural gas is mostly methane.  NG produces about half the GHGs as coal on a kwhr basis, but the kicker of this study that deserves attention is the net lifecycle implications, in this case wrt to shale gas….GHG policy folks like me pay attention to things like LCAs; otherwise it’s all a game of whack-a-mole….
    
   as a vet of the ethanol debates and dealing with the fallout of Searchinger and Fargione’s work on ILUC GHG penalties (use google), I would suggest that your blase attitude in this case is off the mark…
    
   natural gas ain’t no renewable but a 50% improvement over coal (not to mention no BC, or mercury emissions) is nothing to sneeze at.  the cornell study basically throws a wrench on the GHG angle for the argument to promote NG…
    
    

9. Eli Rabett says:

   April 13, 2011 at 8:26 am

   Of course you have to read  Joe Romm on this.  Plenty of information there in the article Keith should have written
    
   http://climateprogress.org/2011/04/12/shal-gas-bridge-fuel/
    

10. Brandon Shollenberger says:

    April 13, 2011 at 2:04 pm

    @5, Eli Rabett, thanks for the link to that post on your blog.  I have been curious about the long-term effects of methane emissions (as in, the effects caused by it breaking down) for a while now, and your post helped.
     
    I did have a couple questions which I posted over there if you have the time to answer them.

11. Gaythia says:

    April 13, 2011 at 4:39 pm

    And the Methane has to get to the atmosphere  (or the pipelines) first:
    Pennsylvania:
    They Are Afraid Their Houses Will Blow Up
    http://www.alternet.org/water/150527/%22they_are_afraid_their_house_could_blow_up%22%3A_meet_the_families_whose_lives_have_been_ruined_by_gas_drilling_%5Bphotos_by_award-winning_photographer_nina_berman%5D/