Luddite Protests Against Fracking Endanger Environment & West

[jbg]

Predictably, when a new technology is developed that promises to solve a lot of problems, some people get in the way. During the Industrial Revolution, so-called "Luddites" sought to block industrialization by placing shoes in factory equipment. Hardly a way to advance progress or help the masses.

Nowadays "Ludditism" has spread to a new sphere, fracking. Fracking is a technology that promises to deliver natural gas and perhaps oil in large amounts. The good news is that the natural gas is located in the heart of the Northeast, an area highly dependent on oil imports.

Oil imports and dirtier energy technologies have been a Pandora's box of environmental and foreign policy nightmares for a long time. Here are some of the issues:

1. Oil travels on tankers. We all know from the Exxon Valdez how that can turn out;
   
2. Oil comes largely from countries that are politically unstable at best and despotic at worst;
   
3. Importing oil from those countries distorts Western foreign policy and forces Western countries to support some of the most disgusting tyrannies in history;
   
4. Offshore drilling has its own problems. Remember the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the Santa Barbara disaster of 1969;
   
5. Coal mining is devastating to local environments;
   
6. Burning of coal leads to an acid rain problem that has significant effects on Canada as well as upstate New York; and
   
7. Plenty of other hazards I am not listing.
   

This article (link to article, excerpts below) highlights some of the emotional rather than factual attacks.

January 11, 2013

Yoko Ono Takes Fight Against Gas Drilling to Albany

By DANNY HAKIM

ALBANY — For months they have been descending on Albany: farmers, environmentalists, latter-day hippies and placard-bearing parents.

But on Friday, the forces against hydraulic fracturing, a method for drilling for

natural gas

, brought to Albany a face and a voice familiar to the world:

Yoko Ono

.

Ms. Ono — along with her son, Sean Lennon, who came with her — has a personal connection to the issue. She and her husband, John Lennon, bought a farm in the Catskills, and she and Sean want to prevent the drilling, also known as fracking, near that property, and everywhere else.

**********************************

“Fracking kills, and it doesn’t just kill us,” Ms. Ono said. “It kills the land, nature and, eventually, the whole world.”

One wonders what Yoko Ono's qualifications are in this regard. Is she a scientist? Also, she clearly has a stake in the matter, and it is not to aid the poor people struggling with high energy costs.

One also wonders, in reading this drivel, whether Yoko Ono realizes that oil-producing countries, with some exceptions, are among the most brutal countries in the world. Would she want to live under Saudi rule, with its attitude towards women and gays? Or under Iranian rule? Do those people kill?

Is she in favor of Iran's petro-funded nuclear bomb? Might that "eventually (kill) the whole world?"

Don't these environmentalists realize that natural gas is far cleaner-burning than coal or oil? There is a real disconnect with reality in these protests.

[jbg]

An earlier thread focused on "Gasland, the Movie" (link). Time for a new thread, two (2) years later.

[The_Squid]

You wouldn't think it was so good if you could light your tap water on fire.

http://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-flammable-drinking-water-to-fracking

[jbg]

You wouldn't think it was so good if you could light your tap water on fire.

http://www.propublic...ter-to-fracking

That's contrary to what New York State's scientists have found. And the NYS report is being "sat on" since the Governor of New York opposes fracking or fears the wrath of Yoko and people like her.

[WIP]

If, having Yoko Ono show up to support a cause means that the cause is illegitimate, jbg better hope that Yoko doesn't show up supporting Israeli expansion at any AIPAC-sponsored rallies!

Aside from the frequently mentioned objections to fracking - fracking companies have had special legislation written giving them a waiver from having to release publicly the results on groundwater testing, or inform the public of what they are putting in fracking fluids that they pump underground with large quantities of water.....endless lines of water trucks clogging and damaging rural roads - we are learning that fracking releases huge amounts of methane (the most damaging greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere.....40 to 60% more methane than conventional natural gas wells:

Fracking Would Emit Large Quantities of Greenhouse Gases

Robert Howarth, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, and Anthony Ingraffea, a civil and environmental engineer, reported that fracked wells leak 40 to 60 percent more methane than conventional natural gas wells. When water with its chemical load is forced down a well to break the shale, it flows back up and is stored in large ponds or tanks. But volumes of methane also flow back up the well at the same time and are released into the atmosphere before they can be captured for use. This giant belch of "fugitive methane" can be

seen in infrared videos

taken at well sites.

At this point, it's worth noting that natural gas is not as 'clean' as originally believed because it's only been a few years that scientists have been doing the infrared monitoring of natural gas wells AND PIPLINES! The worst pipelines for methane release, not surprisingly, is the Trans-Siberia Pipeline in Russia, because of its extraordinary length, and substandard, poorly welded construction.

So, natural gas....whether from large deposits usually located over oil, or these small gas pockets that are being exploited now through shaking up porous rocks like shales, is still a huge emitter of carbon, and a major contributor to global warming....whether the gas lobby will admit it or not!

[WIP]

Predictably, when a new technology is developed that promises to solve a lot of problems, some people get in the way. During the Industrial Revolution, so-called "Luddites" sought to block industrialization by placing shoes in factory equipment. Hardly a way to advance progress or help the masses.

I can't let the continued smearing of Luddites go without comment either. Looking at how industrialism progressed through the Industrial Revolution to modern times - where we see the rollback of reforms added during the brief period of the rise of unionism, the truth is that Nathan Ludd was absolutely right in his declaration that the new looms and the factories employing unskilled workers to operate them, would turn people into nothing better than machines themselves and strip from them their freedoms to work and do sell their wares on their own terms. Prior to the textile factories, weavers, tailors, knitters and cobblers were usually self-employed after learning the trade through some informal apprenticeship, and they were payed based on the quality of their work, and could work as much or as little as needed.

All that changed when vast numbers of unskilled men, women, boys and girls started filling the textile mills, working long hours at machines that set the pace of work for them.....which after globalization and union-busting on an international scale is exactly what the situation is in the nations like Bangladesh, where most of our clothing is being made today! The profits go mostly to the top of the food chain, and the people who actually do the labour-intensive work make fractions of a fraction of the value of their work. It is exploitation of people that is just as bad, if not worse than at the start of the Industrial Era that Dickens raised alarm about in his novels.

But, today, unlike 19th century England, a modern Charles Dickens would have to journey half way around the world to see the debasement of humanity. Dickens only had to go for a walk into the East End of London to see evil created through unbridled capitalism and exploitation of new technology. And this is where globalization adds to the evil....by removing it further from the view of the purchasers of the products!

[jbg]

If, having Yoko Ono show up to support a cause means that the cause is illegitimate, jbg better hope that Yoko doesn't show up supporting Israeli expansion at any AIPAC-sponsored rallies!

Is Yoko pro-Israel? If she is that's at least one thing good about her. Otherwise I find her a dreary bore.

Aside from the frequently mentioned objections to fracking - fracking companies have had special legislation written giving them a waiver from having to release publicly the results on groundwater testing, or inform the public of what they are putting in fracking fluids that they pump underground with large quantities of water.....endless lines of water trucks clogging and damaging rural roads - we are learning that fracking releases huge amounts of methane (the most damaging greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere.....40 to 60% more methane than conventional natural gas wells:

Fracking Would Emit Large Quantities of Greenhouse Gases

Show me the legislation and in what jurisdiction it has passed.

At this point, it's worth noting that natural gas is not as 'clean' as originally believed because it's only been a few years that scientists have been doing the infrared monitoring of natural gas wells AND PIPLINES! The worst pipelines for methane release, not surprisingly, is the Trans-Siberia Pipeline in Russia, because of its extraordinary length, and substandard, poorly welded construction.

So, natural gas....whether from large deposits usually located over oil, or these small gas pockets that are being exploited now through shaking up porous rocks like shales, is still a huge emitter of carbon, and a major contributor to global warming....whether the gas lobby will admit it or not!

What is a "pipline?" Also, how does natural gas' cleanliness stake up against: 1) coal; 2) oil and 3) nuclear? I suspect some oppose all fuel use.

I can't let the continued smearing of Luddites go without comment either. Looking at how industrialism progressed through the Industrial Revolution to modern times - where we see the rollback of reforms added during the brief period of the rise of unionism, the truth is that Nathan Ludd was absolutely right in his declaration that the new looms and the factories employing unskilled workers to operate them, would turn people into nothing better than machines themselves and strip from them their freedoms to work and do sell their wares on their own terms. Prior to the textile factories, weavers, tailors, knitters and cobblers were usually self-employed after learning the trade through some informal apprenticeship, and they were payed based on the quality of their work, and could work as much or as little as needed.

Wasn't life pretty grim for the lower classes before the Industrial Revolution as well?

All that changed when vast numbers of unskilled men, women, boys and girls started filling the textile mills, working long hours at machines that set the pace of work for them.....which after globalization and union-busting on an international scale is exactly what the situation is in the nations like Bangladesh, where most of our clothing is being made today! The profits go mostly to the top of the food chain, and the people who actually do the labour-intensive work make fractions of a fraction of the value of their work. It is exploitation of people that is just as bad, if not worse than at the start of the Industrial Era that Dickens raised alarm about in his novels.

But, today, unlike 19th century England, a modern Charles Dickens would have to journey half way around the world to see the debasement of humanity. Dickens only had to go for a walk into the East End of London to see evil created through unbridled capitalism and exploitation of new technology. And this is where globalization adds to the evil....by removing it further from the view of the purchasers of the products!

What eventually changed was that industrialists such as Henry Ford passed along some of the benefits to the workers in the form of higher wages and the public in the form of lower prices. Do you think life in 18th Century London was a picnic for the majority of the people?