Hydraulic Fracturing

In New Gas Wells, More Drilling Chemicals Remain Underground

A disconcerting fact is that the toxic water used for hydrofracking is not removed from the earth. Even more alarming, 85% of the fluid is left underground. It raises questions about drinking water, and why the Safe Water Drinking Act does not apply to hydrofracking. However, when this was determined, fracturing wasn't as common as it is now. Nowadays, 90% of the nation's wells depend on it. Congress has teamed up with EPA to do a study on how the fracking may affect the drinking water. Right now, the oversight of the chemicals is left to individual states. A woman who has been closely involved with this issue, Stephanie Meadows, said she didn't see the benefit of doing all this. However, when she was told that 30% can remain underground, she said, "I guess I didn't know that the statistic are that high."

When Congress voted again for this, they looked at EPA's 2004 report, which said fracturing "did not pose a threat to drinking water." However, that report has been criticized and deemed as incomplete. In that report, EPA said that 59 percent of the fracturing fluids stay in the ground. Another study said 30-70%. No matter what the actual number is, it's still not cool.

Natural Gas Drilling: What We Don't Know

The sound of natural gas drilling may be appealing to some because it can bring in money to poor areas. However, as the title implies, there are things we don't know about it. As the first article talks about, one of the main concerns with hydraulic fracturing is whether or not it can get into the drinking water supply. Some of the chemicals used in this process are known to cause cancer. According to ProPublica, there have been over one thousand reports of water contamination from this, and some seepage from aboveground spills. Procedures that can prevent these spills aren't usually done.

Questions

1. A con to drilling is definitely the potential contamination of the water supply.

2. The pro is that it brings in money.

My Questions

1. Is there any correlation between the groundwater contamination and the high cancer rate the United States has?

2. Why aren't there stricter regulations on the hydrofracking? Drinking water contamination is not cool in my book.

3. How long has this been going on for?

Cuba: Life After Oil

Cuba has already gone through the fears we have about running out of oil. The Soviet Union, their source, had stopped giving them any. However, on trips there, some reporters found out how they were dealing with this crisis. For instance, they use bio-pesticides instead of petroleum based ones, and they've replaced tractors with oxen.

Despite the fact that Cuba has always been a poor country, they have also always been exceptional in the field of medicine. With free health care to all, vaccines to prevent 13 childhood diseases are provided, and their infant mortality rate is even lower than the US's. Cuba even has an international medical school, but the students have to go to poor areas when they complete the program. Because everything is limited, Cubans lead healthier lives; eating a mostly low-fat vegetarian diet and biking or walking where they need to go.

Schooling is another important aspect in Cuban culture. Although they have fewer college attendees than the US does, they have 1 teacher per every 42 students, a statistic that is one of the highest in the world. TV is something that they mainly use for education, not recreation. There is a camp children can go to for free, where they learn many different trades that will help them determine what they want to do in life.

When the oil stopped coming from the Soviets, transportation was totally paralyzed. Today, however, there is public transportation (though very crowded), and some still have cars (less than one-tenth). There is one interesting way to get around, known as the "Camel," which is basically a huge truck that holds 300 people. Because there is so little oil, Cubans have learned to make do with what they have. They use old Chevies for taxis, where people will squeeze four in the front and four in the back.

The housing situation in Havana is very crowded. It's not uncommon to find multigenerational families living together, which contributes to the high divorce rate. When new houses are made, they make them out of materials like sand and stone. Cuba, however, does not have slums the way other third world countries do.

Questions

1. Because Cuba lost the oil imports from the Soviet Union, they had no choice but to make do with what they had. They created many different ways of transportation, as mentioned above. They also created stronger community bonds, which helps them even more.

2. Relocalization definitely has its pluses. For instance, shipping costs would be significantly lower because we'd be using resources closer to where we are. Also, less energy would be used for agriculture because huge machinery wouldn't be used, and people would be growing locally. However, some drawbacks are that people wouldn't have as much as they're used to now. You can go to Walmart and get anything you want. Relocalization would hinder this, and I think it would take people a while to get used to it.

My Questions

1. Do you think the United States could handle no oil coming in like Cuba did?

2. If that did happen here, it would mean we would have to rely on our neighbors. The United States is a very self absorbed country. Do you think we could pull together?

3. I love that Cuban doctors do it to help people and not for money, and I think Americans love the money aspect. Do you think if we were in a situation like Cuba, that attitude would change?

Eating Fossil Fuels

The End of the Oil Age

Civilizations used to rely on slave labor to run, but now we rely on hydrocarbons. We also greatly depend on oil. During the 1950s, a geologist called M. King Hubbert predicted that oil production would peak in the 70s. Though he was mocked for this, he was right. More recent predictions say we will begin our "irreversible decline" around this year, 2010. However, the USGS say that won't happen until 2020 at the earliest, but this is flawed. Even if it is 2010 or 2020, that's really scary because obviously 2010 is here, and 2020 isn't too far behind. Reading the last paragraph before the Natural Gas Cliff part was terrifying. It was a huge reality shock about what is going to happen to us when the oil runs out.

Natural gas is a main component to agriculture. However, it still takes quite a lot of energy to extract and it isn't easy.

The Collapse of Agriculture

We have exhausted the prime areas for agriculture, so biological diversity has "been diminished nearly to its breaking point." This brings up the question, can the earth even sustain us and our large population anymore? According to the text, the world's population is presumed to double by 2050. What the article says next is shocking. At that point, there won't be enough land per person to support them, which will lead to the US ceasing to export food, which will lead to starvation. To help this decrease, what we can do is stop wasting so much. For instance, using manure from the farm animals as fertilizer instead of waste.

The DPRK went through a disastrous time when their agriculture collapsed because they no longer got imports of oil form other countries. When this happened, it devastated the country. For a long time, homes didn't even have heating in the winter, even hospitals. Starvation was not uncommon; people would even eat bark and grass, and soldiers were "nothing more than skin and bones." Because of this severe malnutrition, disease spread quickly throughout the country. Also, because there is no fuel to boil water, water borne illnesses are prevalent. The only means of recovery the DPRK has been able to experience is from outside sources.

Vocab

espoused- adopt or support a cause or belief or a way of life

exosomatic- In human thermodynamics, exosomatic energy, as contrasted with endosomatic energy (bodily metabolism), is the useful energy throughput outside human bodies.

Questions

A. We have come to rely on fossil fuels like crazy, and as a result we are exhausting our resources. This also means we are running out of land to farm on, and our population is increasing rapidly every day. This is going to cause a major, major problem because we are going to get to the point where the earth can no longer sustain our huge population. When this happens, there is going to be mass starvation and many deaths. We couldn't be more vulnerable.

B. The US could definitely learn something from the agricultural collapse in North Korea. At that point, NK had heavily depended on oil. When they could no longer obtain it, everything fell apart. To make matters worse, during that crisis, they got struck with numerous natural disasters, which also wiped out their top soil. Starvation was also very real. The US needs to look at what happened there and realize that's exactly what will happen here when we run out of oil.

My Questions

1. How could the US survive if something like the agricultural collapse of the DPRK happened here?

2. Wiping out half of the population with some sort of disease in this day and age is unlikely, and I'm hoping to God some sort of genocide won't ever take place to do so. This being said, how can the earth sustain us if we double our population? Will that mean it's finally the end?

3. Are you as scared as I am about this now?

Joyride

Before automobiles, transportation was not an easy task. Yes, there were horses and streetcars, but they were not effective and the cons were greater than their pros. For instance, horses were often worked to death and their manure caused health problems, and streetcars were very slow and pretty costly to run. However, cars were considered "rich men's playthings," and roads were not well maintained. With Ford's invention of the Model T, and the use of the assembly line, cars were now affordable by the common man. General Motors Corporation tried to put streetcars out of business all over America.

Cars most certainly helped the economy, but trouble laid ahead, and it was happening on the farms. Farming was once a sort of culture, but it soon became industrialized, along with everything else. Ford had come out with a tractor, which aided the farmers immensely. However, because they had gotten rid of their horses, they now had to get artificial fertilizer and spread it, which took a lot of time and money.

Times began to get rough. Car manufacturers were making more cars than they could sell, and the economy was beginning to collapse. However bad the economy got, everyone still wanted a car. Then Robert Moses came around. He was, according to the text, an "evil genius." He bulldozed farms and estates into parking lots, not even considering any consequences. Moses also knew how to get his projects going by misleading state legislatures. FDR didn't care for him much, but his projects did provide jobs, and that's something people were desperate for during the Great Depression.

During the war, manufacturers were cranking out jeeps, tanks, airplanes, uniforms, helmets, parachutes, etc, and the good news was America produced their own petroleum. When the rest of the world's economy was crumbling, America was finally able to get back on its feet.

Because cars were something many people had, more and more traffic were on the roads, so the new idea was to build for lane expressways. "The chief political justification was that the new expressways would ease the evacuation of cities during a nuclear attack." This helped the economy in the 1960s boom. According to the text, however, this sent the cities to hell because it took away their taxpaying residents and the beltways became physical barriers.

As a result of all of this and new technology, America has become dependent on oil.

Questions

a. American culture was certainly changed by the car and tractor. People could now go wherever they wanted to go, it expanded everything.

b. After WWII, more people needed homes and so more energy was needed to provide them.

My Questions

1. "Why did America build a reality of terrible places from which people longed to escape?"

I thought this quote was very interesting because Kunstler has a good point. America was and is always trying to stay ahead of the game, and by doing this, we have created somewhere people want to go and live, until they get here and find out it's not all it's cracked up to be.

2. This isn't really a question, but I noticed that James Howard Kunstler was very biased in his writing. He was quick to berate what America has done, but he didn't really offer a lot of insight as to what can be done to fix it.

3. Number two brings up the question, well what can we do?

Jevon's Law and A Steady State Economy

A Steady State Economy

In his essay, Herman Daly suggests we try and make the switch from a growth economy to a steady-state economy. He feels we cannot grow anymore, and it is in fact hurting us. He discusses stopping aggregate growth because it is uneconomical, but we should start redistribution. If we stop aggregate growth, we will not need to advertise, saving billions of dollars. Daly says, "Adjustment requires either higher taxes, older retirement age, or reduced retirement pensions." Knowledge has an opportunity cost of zero, so that should be used for this new economic idea. Taxes should be put on things we don't want (depletion and pollution), rather than things we do. Some banking problems would be solved by only lending money that has actually been saved by someone. At the end of this article, he sums up how an SSE economy could be accomplished with 10 things.

Jevon's Law: Enforcing the Age of Energy Decline- Part 1

When Jevons published his paper, he was witnessing the beginning of the fossil fuel eruption. At this time, coal was the main source of fuel, and he was afraid they'd run out. He realized that it would become "too expensive to be profitable." Jevon's law states: "As the utility provided by an energy source increases or decreases in comparison to the amount of utility expended to obtain it, so does the overall usage and utility provided by that energy source, over time." We have become addicted to oil and fossil fuels, and it will ultimately lead to our demise.

xenophobe- one unduly fearful of what is foreign and especially of people of foreign origin

Questions

1. Jevons was not worried about running out of coal, rather he was worried that we would consume so much of it that it would result in the "exhaustion of economically viable sources of coal."

2.Economically, Daly's comparison between an airplane and a helicopter basically means that an airplane cannot do what a helicopter can and nor should it, just like a growth economy cannot do what a steady-state economy can.

My Questions

1. This isn't really a question, but after reading the Daly article, I'm still not exactly sure what he means.

2. Do you think a SSE could actually work?

3. Is there anything we can do about this oil overshoot as described in the Jevon's Law article?

Transportation and Information

Chapter 6

According to the text, the two key attributes to high-energy societies are an unprecedented degree of travel and the exchange of information. Technological leaps and bounds have been made in regards to transportation. Early societies went from having to have horses take them where they want to go, to having engines do that work for us today.

During the first half of the 19th century, many relied on ships to take them where they wanted to go. Steam engines were how they made their way across the seas, and soon that switched to steam turbines, which were more efficient.

Cars and bikes made their debuts several years later, bicycles appearing first. And "cars pollute so much because so little energy converted by internal combustion engines ends up doing the useful work of locomotion." One of the most interesting times in human history is when we learned how to fly. The invention of the airplane certainly changed everything; we could cross the ocean in a matter of hours, as opposed to the weeks it took ships. The use of gas turbines in airplanes aided the invention of rockets. Not only can we travel much more quickly over the water, but now we can travel into space. It's truly amazing.

With all of these inventions, some way of transporting fuel had to be created, thus pipelines; they span all over the world. And also with the new technology, some more efficient forms of communication were needed. The telephone was the answer. Instead of sending a letter and having the recipient getting it in several days, one could now just call them up and talk instantly. More recently, the spread of information has happened through television, computers and the internet via microchips.

Questions

1. Better transportation definitely makes an economy more efficient because you can get the supplies needed to the area much quicker, making the money come in faster.

2. Better communications could absolutely be used to reduce energy use. It would use energy to do this, but even the media could help with this one. If televisions told viewers to try and be more green, it might work. Although, they have been trying this, and I'm not sure how successful it is..

My Questions

1. The texts discusses how pollutant cars are because of basically how inefficient the engine is at converting energy. Is that still the case today?

2. What exactly is a tanker? I'm not really clear on it.

3. Do you personally think bikes are practical? For example, do you think we could go back to using them?

Fossil-Fueled Civilizations

Chapter 5

Growth is the key to modern high-energy societies.

According to the text, fossil fuel combustion is absolutely necessary for societies to function. We made our way from using water a an energy source, to coal, and to oil. The coal when burned, however, emits a lot of acid rain. When we moved on to using crude oils, we started to encounter more problems. While yes, oil makes everything easier and more efficient, it also destroys land. Natural gas soon followed, as did more land destruction. Extracting natural gases involves using pipes and iron and a whole mess of other things unfriendly to the earth. Steam engines and waterwheels were the first means of converting energy. However, they were inefficient because of the energy needed to do this was much more than the energy it got.

Steam turbines, on the other hand, seemed to be the best thing since sliced bread. They were smaller and more efficient. When water turbines rolled around, they accounted for nearly 1/5 of the world's electricity generation. As we progressed even further to electric motors and lights, they all gained more efficiency, but this was not without consequences. They require fossil fuels, and the burning of these totally screws the environment and the earth over. We have made leaps and bounds as a species, continuing on to electricity generating machines, blast furnaces, and airplanes, but should we be?

I realize this entry is a bit bias towards not using fossil fuels, but it frustrates me. The human race has undoubtedly made leaps and bounds technologically, but as a result we are destroying our planet, the only place we can live. How messed up is that?

Questions

1. Hydro turbines and nuclear reactors and fertilizers are in the chapter on fossil-fueled civilizations because they all rely on fossil fuels for energy to run.

2. After time, the thermal efficiency of power systems tend to decrease.

My Questions

1. How exactly did people discover fossil fuels generate a lot of energy?

2. The book says societies could not function without fossil fuels. What about Native Americans before we destroyed their land? I think they were doing a pretty good job.

3. What's the point of nuclear weapons?

On a side note,this was a lot of homework for just one night. Because I've never used excel before, it took me two and a half hours just to complete that one assignment. I even had to enter over 150 calculations in by hand before learning how to do chain calculations. Talk about awesome! I feel that if we had more than one day to complete all four assignments, (for instance, assign it on Tuesday and hand it in Thursday), the task would have been much more manageable.