Those about to frack . . . we salute you!

The UK Gets Ready to Frack

That means you Britain. This has been an unconscionable delay. 

"Earlier this week it was India that was making moves to catch up to the American shale bandwagon, but today it’s the UK. Three years ago the British Geological Survey doubled its estimates of the country’s shale gas reserves up to a sizable 1,300 trillion cubic feet (tcf), but since then staunch public dissent has prevented drillers from making any exploratory inroads into this resource. Now, an exploratory shale project has been given a thumbs up by planners ahead of a county council vote on the matter next week. The FT reports:

Third Energy wants to frack for shale gas at an existing well outside the village of Kirby Misperton to see if the rock below is suitable for large-scale exploitation. It could lead to hundreds of wells across the rolling hills of Ryedale and create an indigenous shale industry after years of delays. […]

The Conservative dominated council will be under huge pressure from government to give the go-ahead, while most local residents are opposed. […]
Third Energy said it was “pleased” with the recommendation. “We have addressed the wide range of questions, concerns and comments raised by North Yorkshire county council, statutory consulters and others,” said Rasik Valand, chief executive…“Third Energy has been drilling wells and producing gas safely and discreetly from this site in Kirby Misperton for over 20 years and we will continue to maintain the same standards in the future.'"

In Britain, the damage done by the wind farm industry has been insurmountable. 

Wind farms will create more carbon dioxide, say scientists

"The finding, which threatens the entire rationale of the onshore wind farm industry, will be made by Scottish government-funded researchers who devised the standard method used by developers to calculate “carbon payback time” for wind farms on peat soils.

Wind farms are typically built on upland sites, where peat soil is common. In Scotland alone, two thirds of all planned onshore wind development is on peatland. England and Wales also have large numbers of current or proposed peatland wind farms.
But peat is also a massive store of carbon, described as Europe’s equivalent of the tropical rainforest. Peat bogs contain and absorb carbon in the same way as trees and plants — but in much higher quantities.

British peatland stores at least 3.2 billion tons of carbon, making it by far the country’s most important carbon sink and among the most important in the world.

Wind farms, and the miles of new roads and tracks needed to service them, damage or destroy the peat and cause significant loss of carbon to the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change."

If carbon were the real enemy, the environmentalists would scream bloody murder about siting these wind farms, but they do not? I wonder why? Because they are not on about carbon, but about controlling the hoi polloi, er, you! These are true believers who what Socialism, and only use the environment as a McGuffin.

Wind farms cause the release of massive amounts of carbon, through siting, infrastructural build out, construction, and maintenance. Carbon which commonly is unrecoverable by the difference between the energy produced by the wind farm, and the amount which would be released by a comparable natural gas fired facility. Not only that but the wind farm's electrical output is so inconsistent that it must always have a hot standby power source ready to stand in for lack of wind. This is usually natural gas. When this carbon source is added into the mix, it causes the carbon payback time to extend past the life of the generator. Meaning, the carbon payback time is infinite, or the wind farm is a net carbon polluter when compared to the best alternatives.

Fracking is the green energy alternative.

 US imposes shale greenhouse gas curbs . . . 

If one believes global warming is a potential catastrophe which warrants immediate attention, then alternative energy sources are not the answer, the answer is to increasingly move to nuclear power, and natural gas, and to increasingly move away from the alternatives, coal, and oil.

It may be that sometime in the future, the alternatives will become viable, but they are not today. They are not a rational adjunct to the current electricity grid. 

Britain, in order to immediately reduce its carbon footprint should smartly move to fracking natural gas. This will also weaken the oil/natural gas tyrannies around the world, and more quickly bring on the End of History.