"President Obama isn’t just not fixing climate change—he’s making it worse." Bill McKibben

[cali]

A Big Fracking Lie

If you want to know just how bad an idea it is for America to ship “fracked” natural gas to overseas markets, travel the 65 miles from the White House to a place called Cove Point in southern Maryland.

Right here, Dominion wants build a utility-scale power plant (130 megawatts) just to power the enormous “liquefaction” process for the fracked gas. The company will then build an industrial-scale compressor, a massive refrigeration system and an adjacent, surreal six-story-tall “sound wall” to protect humans and wildlife from the thunderous noise. The facility as a whole would chill the gas—extracted from fracking wells as far away as New York—to 260 degrees below zero so it can be poured onto huge tankers (with Coast Guard escort due to terrorism risks) and then shipped more than 6,000 miles to India and Japan.

Sound good yet? There’s more: The Cove Point plant in Maryland is just one of more than 20 such “liquefaction” plants now proposed—but not yet built—for coastal areas nationwide. They are intended, as an emerging facet of U.S. energy policy, to double down on the highly controversial hydraulic fracturing drilling boom across the country. But like the Keystone XL pipeline for tar sands oil and the proposed export of dirty-burning coal through new terminals in the Pacific Northwest, this liquefied gas plan is bad in almost every way.

Simply put, this gas needs to stay in the ground. If it’s dug up and exported, it will directly harm just about everyone in the U.S. economy while simultaneously making global warming worse. How much worse? Imagine adding the equivalent of more than 100 coal plants to U.S. pollution output or putting 78 million more cars on our roads. Yes, supporters say, but this gas would be replacing a lot of coal use overseas. And they’d be right. The only problem is we’d be replacing that coal with aggregate “life-cycle” emissions from gas that are almost certainly worse than coal, creating new net damage for the global atmosphere (more on this later).

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/fracking-natural-gas-exports-climate-change-102452.html#ixzz2ru13wYkQ

[pscot]

1. Truth

[villager]

2. The corporate owners of this administration would not have it otherwise.

n/t

[ProSense]

3. This is hyperbole, and

The only problem is we’d be replacing that coal with aggregate “life-cycle” emissions from gas that are almost certainly worse than coal, creating new net damage for the global atmosphere (more on this later).

...good grief. Fracking is a problem. Moving to alternative energy sources is going to at first require some trade off. Claiming that gas is more damaging than coals, seem to be an attempt to dismiss the administration's record of cracking down on coal, which is horrible for the environment.

I mean would McKibben really advocate moving to more coal than gas because it's less "damaging"?

This is the problem with a lot of the opposition to policies. Hyperbole becomes the method instead of solutions.

[cali]

5. uh, bill mckibben or pro? who to trust on climate change. gee that was easy.

you'd defend any policy of Obama's no matter what it was.

[LordGlenconner]

14. "you'd defend any policy of Obama's no matter what it was. "

Look in the mirror.

Your posts are no different. Just from the opposing point of view.

[Wilms]

6. This is

hyperbole

LOL!

Here's Bill's contact info. http://www.billmckibben.com/contact.html

Send him a few links.

[truebrit71]

12. ROFLMAO!!!

"send him a few links"

[ProSense]

18. I have to contact him to have an opinion?

Who knew?

[snooper2]

4. I would rather us refine and ship natural gas and oil than countries with zero environmental concern

This sounds REALLY FUCKING HORRIBLE right, in our back yard horrible!




until you watch something like say, this (latest in VICE series on Syria)

Ground Zero Syria (Part 11): The Illegal Oil Wells of Deir ez-Zor

Published on Jan 29, 2014

[stg81]

7. If McKibben wants action on this issue he needs to

get Democrats elected to the House

[cali]

9. uh, McKibben has done more on this issue than practically any other American

particularly on the issues of divestment and educating people.

Why do you think it's up to him to get dems elected to the House?

[Maedhros]

13. Whatever happened to the responsibility of rank-and-file Democrats

to hold their elected officials accountable for bad policy?

[berni_mccoy]

8. He needs to check his facts.

While Natural Gas is a fossil fuel, it is less impactful than coal. For Climate Change, it produces less than half the carbon of coal. See http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/affect/natural-gas.html

Air Emissions
At the power plant, the burning of natural gas produces nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide, but in lower quantities than burning coal or oil. Methane, a primary component of natural gas and a greenhouse gas, can also be emitted into the air when natural gas is not burned completely. Similarly, methane can be emitted as the result of leaks and losses during transportation. Emissions of sulfur dioxide and mercury compounds from burning natural gas are negligible.

The average emissions rates in the United States from natural gas-fired generation are: 1135 lbs/MWh of carbon dioxide, 0.1 lbs/MWh of sulfur dioxide, and 1.7 lbs/MWh of nitrogen oxides. Compared to the average air emissions from coal-fired generation, natural gas produces half as much carbon dioxide, less than a third as much nitrogen oxides, and one percent as much sulfur oxides at the power plant. In addition, the process of extraction, treatment, and transport of the natural gas to the power plant generates additional emissions.

[brett_jv]

10. He's clearly talking about the 'total life cycle' of what's involved here ...

By the time it's fracked, compressed and liquified, shipped off in the tanker all the way across the world, decompressed, put into (inevitably somewhat leaky) pipelines and then pushed through to their destination ... it turns out to be just as bad as coal that's mined nearby to where it's burned.

Really, though, there's lot of other reasons to dislike this entire process that's being proposed beside the carbon footprint involved. Not the least of which being our Nations future energy security. We need to keep this stuff here. It's our birthright if you ask me. We shouldn't be exporting ANY energy sources from off our shores, just to fill the coffers of private interests. World Peak Oil is HERE, NOW. So we're going to need this stuff in the future.

[berni_mccoy]

11. Yes, I read his article too...

But coal must be mined and transported as well, and is often sent through pipelines as slurry. All of this requires energy that is the result of burning other fossil fuels (most notably oil or petroleum by-products). Nowhere is it stated in his argument that drilling and transportation of NG is worse than Coal (and in fact, it's probably equivalent).

When you combine the fact that he notes Methane as a leakage by-product that is 85 times more effective than Carbon at trapping heat, yet he neglects to cover the fact that Coal burning emits Nitrous Oxides which are 350 times more effective than Carbon, then well, I suspect he is biasing his conclusion for a reason and not paying attention to the actual facts.

Again, it's hyperbole for political reasons.

[brett_jv]

16. Okay, well that much better explains your viewpoint, thanks :)

It came off differently in your initial post, wherein you seemed to only be interested in the 'point of consumption' numbers.

But perhaps it's the transportation 5000 miles away via diesel-fueled tanker (which he does mention) that tips the 'greenhouse gas balance' towards it being nearly as bad as 'more local' coal would be ... I wouldn't personally know, but it seems conceivable.

Regardless of how the 'climate change impact' actually works out, like I say, this is a crappy idea for all sorts of other reasons as well

This scenario though perfectly illustrates just how far off-base the wingnuts are when it comes to Obama's attitude about energy production ... I see them online all the friggin' time accusing him of trying 'stop progress' when it comes to carbon-based energy production in this country, when the truth is the absolute opposite.

It also fairly well illustrates the stupidity of the 'drill baby drill' paradigm. Without nationalization of our energy production, the only people that actually benefit from all this drilling/fracking ... are the corporations that do it. The LAST thing these companies want to do is give the American People some kind of discount, just because their products came from under the US Soil. The second they have a surplus of anything, the wanna put it on the world market and sell it to the highest bidder ... And our government only makes them pay a pittance for the mineral rights/leases and taxes on these products.

The 'Drill Baby Drill' chant ... is for morons.

[blackspade]

15. Unfortunately true.

[brett_jv]

17. What I don't get is ... what is the evidence for the accusation that BHO is FOR all this?

Has he signed off on the permits or ... what? How does McKibben know Obama likes this idea?

If you're going to drag him into it, you ought to offer some semblance of proof ...