5 ms·

I think it the opposite, war started because we are running out of energy.

by bullen 4y ago

luckylion 4y ago
Who's running out of energy? The Russians certainly aren't. Ukraine? They've didn't have a lot energy to begin with. Europe? Germany has vast gas reserves it could tap with fracking, it just chooses not to.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
  >Germany has vast gas reserves it could tap with fracking, it just chooses not to. It's like saying France could easily end the war in Ukraine today, they just choose not to nuke Moscow.
  - hunterb123 4y ago
    It's not at all, that's a terrible emotional analogy that's 100% ridiculous. But since you're insinuating fracking is as bad as nuking a city... you do realize that emissions went down in the US while electricity generation rose due to nat. gas displacing coal thanks to fracking? Were you fine with Germany outsourcing their energy to Russia, even though the production of the energy was dirtier than what Germany could have made itself?
    - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
      Having worked around fracking rigs and gotten covered in fracking fluid during blowouts... and having read the MSDSs for fracking fluid... I'm not convinced the lower emissions were worth the cost in groundwater purity. And boy, do West Europeans care about their groundwater purity.
      - hunterb123 4y ago
        Generally you only frack where shale oil is, Germany you'd most likely use normal deep drilling. Shale oil deposits are usually found in harsh landscapes where not many people live. Fracking fluid is just 90% water, 9.5% is sand, 0.5% additives. Those additives are normal cleaning products like salts, antifreeze. Yeah you don't want to drink them but in small quantities they are fine to be in the middle of nowhere. You'd rather have more global emissions than some small amount of pool cleaner in a remote desolate landscape? Would you rather we burn our trash vs putting it in a landfill too? Because that's the same line of thinking.
        SuoDuanDao 4y ago
        It's clear that you care about the environment so I'm just going to say that, based on my firsthand experience as a roughneck who did fracking jobs, that it's probably the most greenwashed industry in the world and even if your opinion of it is based on direct reading of official hard numbers, those numbers are gamed at every handoff between field and office. Probably at every handoff between office and press release as well, though I was never in that loop.
        hunterb123 4y ago
        So in your mind coal produces the same amount of emissions as fracking just about. Not even that but every country and it's industries that have been transitioning from coal to nat. gas are fudging the numbers to pretend it's better? And you know that because you were a roughneck "who did fracking jobs", therefore you can see through these numbers. That's quite a story, but I'll go with the breakdown of energy production by source, and the tracked emissions of energy production trends.
        phil21 4y ago
        > Not even that but every country and it's industries that have been transitioning from coal to nat. gas are fudging the numbers to pretend it's better? It's quite clear the numbers are fudged for methane production at every level from the field to the PR office - I honestly didn't know that was a controversial statement. You don't get data added to a report on what you don't measure, to begin with. I'm mostly responding to you since I had similar arguments about 20 or so years ago when the transition to natural gas (and off of nuclear btw, not just coal!) was being discussed while being massively subsidized. I felt it was a foolish decision then, and still do now. Why? Society will not act unless there is an emergency. They will then focus on a single solitary solution. If you decide natural gas is going to be built while we build out our nuclear (or other) capacity, you'll find out that 30 years later you will have a whole lot of natural gas generation and be left with no nuclear industry whatsoever and very little capability to quickly restart it. Seems that prediction is playing out. So now we get to burn all the cheap natural gas before we finally get into a big enough of an emergency to perhaps find something somewhat sustainable long-term. We'll see what short-term solutions present themselves in the meantime, unfortunately I think those short term political solutions may lie in a mountaintop in eastern Kentucky. So to answer your overall question - yes, I can fully believe transitioning from coal to natural gas while we effectively ignored all other energy investments (at scale) was a stupid move in a long-term environmental lense. In 100 years I think it will be obvious that if fracking had not been invented it would have been better overall for the environment. Time will tell! I also am a natural pessimist :)
    - Tade0 4y ago
      That's not the whole story. The Netherlands refrains from developing its natural gas fields to their full extent and yet the damage caused by the resulting earthquakes is considerable and widespread - very much like a nuke, just over a much longer timespan: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61901033 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61901033 Russia on the other hand is largely uninhabited and its gas deposits don't require fracking - they only started testing the technology this year.
  - BjoernKW 4y ago
    How deciding against using an available energy source that might might help with alleviating short-term problems (nuclear power being an even more obvious and readily available option) could be considered even remotely similar to nuking a major city is beyond me.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      You don't just start a fracking operation "in the short term".
      - BjoernKW 4y ago
        The same applies to building new LNG terminals, drastically increasing the storage capabilities for renewable energy, and making the power grid sufficiently resilient to be able to entirely rely on renewable energy. Those measures take years to decades to materialise to a significant degree. Still, all those measures are currently being implemented, and rightfully so. In comparison, developing a new fracking site from a mere technical point of view takes less than a year. That's not to say we should do one or the other or prefer fracking over renewables. However, when the alternatives are to either continue to be at the mercy of a potentially hostile power or to use less environmentally friendly energy sources (such as coal or lignite) or to accept regular power outages as a consequence, simultaneously exploring all possible better avenues (including nuclear energy, which as mentioned is still readily available right now) is pretty much a no-brainer.
        adrianN 4y ago
        Unfortunately, both for fracking and renewables, technical problems are the least of your concern when you want to build anything in Germany.
- skrause 4y ago
  Fracking gas is about as bad to the climate as coal because so much methane leaks directly into the atmosphere: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/fracking-boom-tied-to-methane-spike-in-earths-atmosphere https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/frack... So Germany can just as well continue to dig up and burn lignite instead of starting fracking.
  - hunterb123 4y ago
    1. Methane disappears very quickly 2. It's very small amounts and it can be captured (and is in some instances) 3. The US reduced emissions while growing energy output thanks to nat. gas displacing coal. We don't have to take your word for it, we can see that nat. gas energy production is cleaner than coal, because we have actual data from our transition off of coal to nat. gas. The methane talking point is just that. It's not an actual issue, and you can see it's not from overall numbers. If you truly cared about emissions you'd want the current best solution that drives it down. That would mean displacing coal at all cost. The current best way to do that is nat. gas and fracking. Nuclear isn't built up as a baseline, renewables aren't ready for peak loads, and outsourcing it to someone else only shuffles it around. So... natural gas it is...
    - lm28469 4y ago
      We can also see that fracking is absolutely nasty thanks to the endless amount of studies done on it, but if we cherry pick one single metric, sure... Ditching a fossil fuel to another fossil fuel is just perpetuating the problem, it's not solving anything. It's like going from a meth addiction to a cocaine addition, sure cocaine isn't as bad, you'll still be absolutely fucked up in a decade though
      - hunterb123 4y ago
        > but if we cherry pick one single metric, sure... First off, I'd say total emissions by electricity generation is a great single metric to look at. Second, those studies you didn't even reference were most likely FUD. I've worked on companies who organized those through call centers to spread the misinformation about fracking. But instead of coming up with useless analogies about cocaine and falling back on studies you didn't even reference, please respond to each of my points instead of talking past me. Maybe start with the fact that there are no replacements ready for coal other than nat. gas. I'm all for building up nuclear energy and even battery banks. But currently nothing is available other than nat. gas to take the load that coal has produced. Soo... the best way to reduce emissions is to use nat. gas until a solution is built up and ready. (cough, nuclear, cough) Renewables will most likely never be able to handle the peak load, you need a baseline source, that's either fossil fuels or nuclear energy thanks to their densities. ---- edit ---- @lm28469: You're still not addressing any of my points. Dropping a study and calling it a day is not a conversation. At least pick out a point to defend from it... But here's the cool thing. We don't need to read through your biased studies! We know nat. gas is cleaner than coal and we can see it from reduction of emissions as we transition off of coal to nat. gas. If you want to displace nat. gas as well, support nuclear as the new baseline standard! Or come up with better battery tech! Until then, it's not ready and we need energy so we don't die... so nat. gas it is. Or coal worst case.
- practice9 4y ago
  > Ukraine? They've didn't have a lot energy to begin with They're in top 30 by energy production in the world, around 50% of the energy produced being nuclear. And there untapped gas reserves as well. Coal has been disrupted since Russia invaded the east in 2014 If I'm not mistaken, nuclear capacity was to be expanded considerably in 2022 - 2023, to sell more energy to EU (specifically Poland)
  - eldaisfish 4y ago
    Top 30 of most things doesn’t mean much since values tend to drop exponentially once you’re past the top ten or fifteen. Energy is usually used to refer to things like oil and gas, both items that Ukraine doesn’t have a lot of. Both Russia and Norway have more oil/gas than Ukraine.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > doesn’t mean much Compare a map of Ukraine’s gas deposits [1] with one of Russian-occupied territory [2]. > oil and gas, both items that Ukraine doesn’t have a lot of Ukraine has enough to rival, if not dethrone, Moscow [3]. It is accurate to say the Kremlin is burying Russians in large part to protect its energy profits. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-gas-potential-of-individual-regions-of-Ukraine_fig1_350850048/amp https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-gas-potential-of-ind... [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1585423690795286528/photo/1 https://mobile.twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/158542369079528... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_in_Ukraine#Proven_reserves https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_in_Ukraine#Prove...

I think it the opposite, war started because we are running out of energy.

by bullen 4y ago

I think it the opposite, war started because we are running out of energy.

Who's running out of energy? The Russians certainly aren't. Ukraine? They've didn't have a lot energy to begin with. Europe? Germany has vast gas reserves it could tap with fracking, it just chooses not to.

rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
>Germany has vast gas reserves it could tap with fracking, it just chooses not to. It's like saying France could easily end the war in Ukraine today, they just choose not to nuke Moscow.
- hunterb123 4y ago
  It's not at all, that's a terrible emotional analogy that's 100% ridiculous. But since you're insinuating fracking is as bad as nuking a city... you do realize that emissions went down in the US while electricity generation rose due to nat. gas displacing coal thanks to fracking? Were you fine with Germany outsourcing their energy to Russia, even though the production of the energy was dirtier than what Germany could have made itself?
  - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
    Having worked around fracking rigs and gotten covered in fracking fluid during blowouts... and having read the MSDSs for fracking fluid... I'm not convinced the lower emissions were worth the cost in groundwater purity. And boy, do West Europeans care about their groundwater purity.
    - hunterb123 4y ago
      Generally you only frack where shale oil is, Germany you'd most likely use normal deep drilling. Shale oil deposits are usually found in harsh landscapes where not many people live. Fracking fluid is just 90% water, 9.5% is sand, 0.5% additives. Those additives are normal cleaning products like salts, antifreeze. Yeah you don't want to drink them but in small quantities they are fine to be in the middle of nowhere. You'd rather have more global emissions than some small amount of pool cleaner in a remote desolate landscape? Would you rather we burn our trash vs putting it in a landfill too? Because that's the same line of thinking.
      - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
        It's clear that you care about the environment so I'm just going to say that, based on my firsthand experience as a roughneck who did fracking jobs, that it's probably the most greenwashed industry in the world and even if your opinion of it is based on direct reading of official hard numbers, those numbers are gamed at every handoff between field and office. Probably at every handoff between office and press release as well, though I was never in that loop.
        hunterb123 4y ago
        So in your mind coal produces the same amount of emissions as fracking just about. Not even that but every country and it's industries that have been transitioning from coal to nat. gas are fudging the numbers to pretend it's better? And you know that because you were a roughneck "who did fracking jobs", therefore you can see through these numbers. That's quite a story, but I'll go with the breakdown of energy production by source, and the tracked emissions of energy production trends.
        phil21 4y ago
        > Not even that but every country and it's industries that have been transitioning from coal to nat. gas are fudging the numbers to pretend it's better? It's quite clear the numbers are fudged for methane production at every level from the field to the PR office - I honestly didn't know that was a controversial statement. You don't get data added to a report on what you don't measure, to begin with. I'm mostly responding to you since I had similar arguments about 20 or so years ago when the transition to natural gas (and off of nuclear btw, not just coal!) was being discussed while being massively subsidized. I felt it was a foolish decision then, and still do now. Why? Society will not act unless there is an emergency. They will then focus on a single solitary solution. If you decide natural gas is going to be built while we build out our nuclear (or other) capacity, you'll find out that 30 years later you will have a whole lot of natural gas generation and be left with no nuclear industry whatsoever and very little capability to quickly restart it. Seems that prediction is playing out. So now we get to burn all the cheap natural gas before we finally get into a big enough of an emergency to perhaps find something somewhat sustainable long-term. We'll see what short-term solutions present themselves in the meantime, unfortunately I think those short term political solutions may lie in a mountaintop in eastern Kentucky. So to answer your overall question - yes, I can fully believe transitioning from coal to natural gas while we effectively ignored all other energy investments (at scale) was a stupid move in a long-term environmental lense. In 100 years I think it will be obvious that if fracking had not been invented it would have been better overall for the environment. Time will tell! I also am a natural pessimist :)
  - Tade0 4y ago
    That's not the whole story. The Netherlands refrains from developing its natural gas fields to their full extent and yet the damage caused by the resulting earthquakes is considerable and widespread - very much like a nuke, just over a much longer timespan: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61901033 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61901033 Russia on the other hand is largely uninhabited and its gas deposits don't require fracking - they only started testing the technology this year.
- BjoernKW 4y ago
  How deciding against using an available energy source that might might help with alleviating short-term problems (nuclear power being an even more obvious and readily available option) could be considered even remotely similar to nuking a major city is beyond me.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    You don't just start a fracking operation "in the short term".
    - BjoernKW 4y ago
      The same applies to building new LNG terminals, drastically increasing the storage capabilities for renewable energy, and making the power grid sufficiently resilient to be able to entirely rely on renewable energy. Those measures take years to decades to materialise to a significant degree. Still, all those measures are currently being implemented, and rightfully so. In comparison, developing a new fracking site from a mere technical point of view takes less than a year. That's not to say we should do one or the other or prefer fracking over renewables. However, when the alternatives are to either continue to be at the mercy of a potentially hostile power or to use less environmentally friendly energy sources (such as coal or lignite) or to accept regular power outages as a consequence, simultaneously exploring all possible better avenues (including nuclear energy, which as mentioned is still readily available right now) is pretty much a no-brainer.
      - adrianN 4y ago
        Unfortunately, both for fracking and renewables, technical problems are the least of your concern when you want to build anything in Germany.
skrause 4y ago
Fracking gas is about as bad to the climate as coal because so much methane leaks directly into the atmosphere: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/fracking-boom-tied-to-methane-spike-in-earths-atmosphere https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/frack... So Germany can just as well continue to dig up and burn lignite instead of starting fracking.
- hunterb123 4y ago
  1. Methane disappears very quickly 2. It's very small amounts and it can be captured (and is in some instances) 3. The US reduced emissions while growing energy output thanks to nat. gas displacing coal. We don't have to take your word for it, we can see that nat. gas energy production is cleaner than coal, because we have actual data from our transition off of coal to nat. gas. The methane talking point is just that. It's not an actual issue, and you can see it's not from overall numbers. If you truly cared about emissions you'd want the current best solution that drives it down. That would mean displacing coal at all cost. The current best way to do that is nat. gas and fracking. Nuclear isn't built up as a baseline, renewables aren't ready for peak loads, and outsourcing it to someone else only shuffles it around. So... natural gas it is...
  - lm28469 4y ago
    We can also see that fracking is absolutely nasty thanks to the endless amount of studies done on it, but if we cherry pick one single metric, sure... Ditching a fossil fuel to another fossil fuel is just perpetuating the problem, it's not solving anything. It's like going from a meth addiction to a cocaine addition, sure cocaine isn't as bad, you'll still be absolutely fucked up in a decade though
    - hunterb123 4y ago
      > but if we cherry pick one single metric, sure... First off, I'd say total emissions by electricity generation is a great single metric to look at. Second, those studies you didn't even reference were most likely FUD. I've worked on companies who organized those through call centers to spread the misinformation about fracking. But instead of coming up with useless analogies about cocaine and falling back on studies you didn't even reference, please respond to each of my points instead of talking past me. Maybe start with the fact that there are no replacements ready for coal other than nat. gas. I'm all for building up nuclear energy and even battery banks. But currently nothing is available other than nat. gas to take the load that coal has produced. Soo... the best way to reduce emissions is to use nat. gas until a solution is built up and ready. (cough, nuclear, cough) Renewables will most likely never be able to handle the peak load, you need a baseline source, that's either fossil fuels or nuclear energy thanks to their densities. ---- edit ---- @lm28469: You're still not addressing any of my points. Dropping a study and calling it a day is not a conversation. At least pick out a point to defend from it... But here's the cool thing. We don't need to read through your biased studies! We know nat. gas is cleaner than coal and we can see it from reduction of emissions as we transition off of coal to nat. gas. If you want to displace nat. gas as well, support nuclear as the new baseline standard! Or come up with better battery tech! Until then, it's not ready and we need energy so we don't die... so nat. gas it is. Or coal worst case.
practice9 4y ago
> Ukraine? They've didn't have a lot energy to begin with They're in top 30 by energy production in the world, around 50% of the energy produced being nuclear. And there untapped gas reserves as well. Coal has been disrupted since Russia invaded the east in 2014 If I'm not mistaken, nuclear capacity was to be expanded considerably in 2022 - 2023, to sell more energy to EU (specifically Poland)
- eldaisfish 4y ago
  Top 30 of most things doesn’t mean much since values tend to drop exponentially once you’re past the top ten or fifteen. Energy is usually used to refer to things like oil and gas, both items that Ukraine doesn’t have a lot of. Both Russia and Norway have more oil/gas than Ukraine.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > doesn’t mean much Compare a map of Ukraine’s gas deposits [1] with one of Russian-occupied territory [2]. > oil and gas, both items that Ukraine doesn’t have a lot of Ukraine has enough to rival, if not dethrone, Moscow [3]. It is accurate to say the Kremlin is burying Russians in large part to protect its energy profits. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-gas-potential-of-individual-regions-of-Ukraine_fig1_350850048/amp https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-gas-potential-of-ind... [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1585423690795286528/photo/1 https://mobile.twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/158542369079528... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_in_Ukraine#Proven_reserves https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_in_Ukraine#Prove...