Wednesday 4 November 2015

Fracking?


As far as I can make out, there are two distinct groups of people who are in favour of Fracking today: the poor who would very much like to see the cost of basic power come down to a reasonable level (and not just set at the maximum the industry thinks it can extract without people freezing to death like the OAPs who cannot afford it), and the less poor who would like to increase their wealth by investing in it.

I fall somewhere in between the two, mainly because I don't know whose arguments to accept - one way or the other.

The Chairman of Bath City Council recently said that he is duty bound to be set against Fracking, simply because of the city's famous hot springs. I have a friend who is a geologist for the oil industry, and he is all for it, but why would he not be - especially since he lives high up in the Spanish mountains?

Nobody really understands the mechanics of Bath's hot springs, which have been gushing out of the ground at a constant and high temperature for thousands of years, but the little we do know makes the possibility of them drying up due to underground water-course changes a very real and scary possibility. It would be the end of Bath as a spa resort, at the very least.

It is thought that the source of the spring is about 30 miles away, high up in the Mendip Hills, but we know that other water-courses find their way into the main baths, because every now and then, dead leaves turn up in the mix, despite what John Wood the Elder said.

Nobody is 100% sure how the water is heated, but the generally accepted theory is that it gains a high temperature by being forced through narrow apertures at extremely high pressure, rather than relying solely on volcanic activity miles below the city. We know that it is slightly radioactive - which may explain its healing properties - but the lower areas of Bath have high levels of ambient radon gas, so it may just be contaminated by that. I had a friend who lived in an unventilated basement flat here, and she died of cancer caused by radon gas.

The little I know about the mechanics of Fracking is that it involves splitting deep, underground rock with chemically saturated water at inconceivably high, artificial pressures, to release the natural gas which is trapped down there, and I know that this procedure has caused many small and not so small earthquakes in the past.

I think I am with Bath City Council on this issue, especially since we do not have gas central heating in our compact but adorable city apartment.

28 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. In the case of Fracking, everyone's back yard is extended to about 50 miles in any direction.

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  2. People (mostly poor land owners) are making money, but very little as compared to the energy moguls. We will lose much more than we gain with fracking. It is the new, big industry here in Pennysylvania and greed, as usual, trumps common sense. Fires, earthquakes, poisoning the groundwater mean little when compared to the very rich getting richer.

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    1. I agree - the promise of benefits to the community from North Sea oil and gas were never seen by the residents of Aberdeen, apart from a few bar owners and prostitutes.

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  3. Fracking is insane; the earth does not need all that contamination forced through it to extract another cubic inch of gas; there are other ways to make electricity. My own state, next to Arlene's Pennsylvania, is also suffering from fracking, which has contaminated drinking water and caused earthquakes. No piece of earth, from Bath's baths to a farmer's well, should be destroyed by men.

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    1. I also agree. We are only just beginning to de-contaminate the aquifers from over-use of nitrate fertilisers, not this comes along.

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  4. Radon gas is a big worry. I often wonder if cancer is completely natural.

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    1. Everything is natural, from tobacco to petro-chemical plastics and drugs.

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  5. It is the new evil in the energy business. The lobbyists for the energy companies have gotten laws passed in the US to keep the public from knowing what chemicals are used in the process and in the tons of wastewater pumped back into the earth. In Oklahoma, where earthquakes were nearly unknown, we now have thousands due to fracking and insurance companies won't pay for damages to property due to quakes. It's all just big business for the rich. Geologists think old fault lines from the dinosaur era will become active once again from fracking, but since our state depends on oil and gas for income, they won't say no to the conglomerates.

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    1. All our drilling technology comes from the U.S. All Cuba's comes from Canada, but I don't know if it's the same operators.

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    2. Actually, this may change very soon.

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  6. I think we need to know a lot more before we decide to go down that road. We should be investing in safe, alternative energy solutions. To me fracking sounds like craziness that we will all live -- or our descendants will live to regret.

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    1. Who cares about grandchildren just so long as you can take care of your own?

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  7. To be quite honest I really have not come down on one side or the other. I suppose it would be different if they were about to do it in one of our fields!

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    1. The trouble is that they can drill under one of your fields at a right-angle from miles away, and you would have no say in the matter at all. Crown mineral rights are a lot deeper than your topsoil.

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  8. Invention is caused by need, and the world certainly has need of a new non-polluting power source. I'm sure that something will come along soon to make fracking unnecessary.

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    1. I think that technology already exists, but is constantly thwarted by the people who stand to lose billions from fossil fuels.

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    2. Plenty of 'hot air' about; maybe that's the solution.

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  9. A French friend of mine works as geologist for the Industry often in Scotland - for Fracking-exploration - I wonder if he would like that at the Cote d'Azur too... I am against Fracking, following Cro's argument. And to think that you might lose Bath's bath - awful to imagine.

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  10. I'm glad to see Bath City Counsel against the motion, but sadly the frackers will just set up their equipment outside the city limits, in the Mendip Hills say, and that will be that.There's no stopping Big Energy.

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    1. Well. let's hope for a David and Goliath situation. There is huge opposition almost everywhere, but that may not be enough to stop international investors.

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  11. Gaaa! I hope this doesn't happen. At some homes in Alberta, where the tar sands are located, if you light a match under the kitchen tap, you can get a little fire from the gases in the water. Greeeeat.

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    1. Sounds great for making tea. The cliffs on the Dorset coast here, sometimes spontaneously ignite. Nodding Donkeys can be seen in the fields above.

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