OT Shale gas.

[harryagain]

Not a lot of it after all they say. As I suspected. But how do they know this?

[Andy Burns]

frackschool ...

[Tim W]

Nobody knows 100% how much there is and certainly they don't know what the cost of extraction will be and therefore how much will be economical now and later.

What we do know is that fracking will do nothing to create the low-carbon economy that we are surely going to need, and that if you leave it in the ground the price of oil in the long term and is only going to go up and the cost of extraction come down. So deciding to just plunder the whole lot now for a quick buck is always going to be wrong, wrong, wrong.

Tim w

[Tim Streater]

Except that, as a guy pointed out on the R4 Today prog this morning, the Yanks have drilled 1,000,000 wells for fracking, so you might imagine they could give us a clue. In the Pennsylvania area they are extracting three times as much gas as the whole of the UK uses.

Not at all obvious we are going to need it, since no one has shown conclusively that CO2 is causing such warming as there is.

[Brian Gaff]

Maybe seismically? Brian

[Tim W]

Yes so we have an idea but there are still uncertainties, especially as to future costs. Exactly

Well that wasn't what I said but I might do since 99% of scientists who know about these things agree that CO2 causes warming and only a few oddballs deny it.

But let's consider for a moment the possibility that maybe CO2 hasn't and doesn't cause warming or maybe that we can't be sure. Does that make it alright to carry on burning up all the fossil fuels on the planet, just because it might not be so clear cut as some people make out? No, it is still totally iresponsible and we still need a low carbon economy.

Tim W

[Tim Streater]

[Chris Hogg]

I read recently that since the US has started using shale gas, it's CO2 emissions have dropped to the extent that it now conforms to the Kyoto Agreement, even though it didn't sign up to it at the time. (see for example, possibly any of the articles here

)

[Tim w]

ffs

[Nightjar]

On 12/11/2014 16:41, Tim W wrote: ...

Can you substantiate that figure? The IPCC goes to great lengths to disguise the percentage of their contributors who agree with them, which suggests they don't have the universal support they claim.

[Bill Wright]

You made that 99% figure up.

Bill

[Tim w]

Totally. It's a turn of phrase not a scientific claim.

[Tim w]

Do you remember even the gist of the argument - how using fossil fuels has reduced CO2 emissions?

Tim W

[Capitol]

I think you meant "since 99% of scientists >> who don't know about these things agree that CO2 causes warming"

There is a considerable difference between "may" and "does" which has not been proven.

[Dave Liquorice]

Probably because they are now burning gas instead of coal. Per unit of energy gas produces less CO2 than coal and a CCGT plant is thermally more efficient than anything but the very best coal fired stations.

[290jkl]

No one who matters is denying that CO2 and other greenhouse gases cause warming. What is in dispute is whether there are also other effect that mean that we don?t in practice see enough warming to justify spending trillions on reducing the amount of CO2 we are adding to the atmosphere or even that warming is undesirable either.

Yes, particularly when what produces the CO2 is so vital for viable economys.

Corse the other approach is to replace all the things that produce CO2 with nukes but there are plenty who hate the idea of that approach.

It is very far from clear that we do in fact need a low carbon economy.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I will actually argue that cheap fossil energy is on the way out.

However the answer is nuclear, not windmills.

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 12/11/14 18:35, "Nightjar

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its better than et best coal period.

Die to using the combustion gases at a far higher temperature than you can achieve with steam plant alone..

[Dave Liquorice]

Depends how long you want the fossil fuels to last. They are most definately finite. OK so is the sun(*) but on a some what longer time scale.

(*)The sun is the prime source of all but a tiny amount of energy on the surface of the planet. We haven't yet seriously started thinking about deep geothermal systems to utilse the heat of the earths core.