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It is ironic that the "drill baby drill" attitudes of conservatives led to fracking, thus cheap natural gas displacing coal, which drastically lowered greenhous

It is ironic that the "drill baby drill" attitudes of conservatives led to fracking, thus cheap natural gas displacing coal, which drastically lowered greenhouse gas emissions.

Daniel_Newby 14y ago
There is not even a molecule of irony. They were saying to drill because energy is prosperity and coal is dirty.
- jcampbell1 14y ago
  The irony is that policies promoted by people who don't care about CO2 emissions and dimiss climate change have led to a significant decrease in CO2 emissions as an unintended consequence.
  - smashing 14y ago
    The word "irony" is frequently misused and doesn't mean "unintended consequences" or "rain on your wedding day". Irony would mean that those who supported drilling were actively trying to increase CO2 emissions and failed. That was not the intention of the Oil Lobby.
    - jcampbell1 14y ago
      Drill in this context means to lift carbon baed fuels stored deep underground and bring it to the surface where it will be converted to energy and then go into the atmosphere. Irony requires a reversal of expectations. The logical expected consequence of drilling is increased greenhouse gas emissions. What in fact happened was the reverse. This is textbook irony.
      - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
        Natural gas is a hydrogen based fuel.
        amalcon 14y ago
        Natural gas is made up of hydrocarbons, mostly methane, so it's both hydrogen-based and carbon-based.
      - alexqgb 14y ago
        "Drill", in this context, also means "for oil". Specifically, "in Alaska". Even more specifically, "in ANWR". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_National_Wildlife_Refuge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_National_Wildlife_Refuge Because ANWR would supply petroleum (a fuel mostly used for transportation and scarcely ever used for generating electricity), it has virtually nothing to do with the market for coal (which is used almost entirely for generating electricity), or disruptions to that market caused by a growing reliance on natural gas (which is also frequently used for heating, but remains uncommon in the transportation market). And because transportation networks and electrical grids have so little overlap in terms of power supplies, policy choices made about Alaskan petroleum have little direct connection with policy choices related to fracking for natural gas. So no, there is no irony in any of this. The word is simply inapplicable.
    - thornofmight 14y ago
      If there's one thing I've learned from my years of internet use, it's never use the word "irony."
  - _delirium 14y ago
    It sounds more like randomness than anything else. If your goal is to increase U.S. energy production without any interest in cleanliness of the energy, sometimes this may result in the energy getting cleaner anyway, and sometimes it won't. In this case, the main controlling factor seems to be a mixture of what's in the ground, and logistics. We've found significant new exploitable natural-gas sources, but since exporting it is hard (U.S. LNG export capacity is very limited), it's mostly not traded on a world market, so there's now a domestic glut of gas that's so cheap it's even cheaper than coal to burn.
- astrodust 14y ago
  Energy is prosperity, but the problem with using non-renewable energy is your prosperity will run out.
wes-exp 14y ago
Natural gas has lower GHG emissions during energy production, but this doesn't account for GHG emissions during its extraction. With total life-cycle taken into account, this kind of GHG "reduction" isn't so clear cut. Natural gas is mostly methane. Methane is a potent GHG, far stronger than CO2. During fracking and so on, lots of natural gas (methane) escapes to the atmosphere. It is a gas, after all. A proper accounting would add in this other set of emissions. So yeah, saying that natural gas usage "drastically lowered GHG emissions" is kind of suspect. Maybe it is better on balance vs. coal, but that is not saying a lot.
justsee 14y ago
You're repeating an assertion by the industry that fracking, and natural gas is "greener" and helps lower greenhouse gas emissions. It's (unsurprisingly) false, or at least challenged by independent science. A study was released late last year by the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) [1] which found that a switch to natural gas would increase warming over the next few decades, as outlined in NCAR's report [2]. It acknowledges something the shale gas industry studiously avoids in calculating figures for its green credentials pitches: fugitive emissions. A significant amount of methane leakage occurs in the fracking process and piping of gases. When you add in the input-intensive activity of multiple well constructions, fracking, pipeline construction, and fugitive emissions the 'green' story of shale gas doesn't add up. There was a piece recently on another atmospheric scientist coming to the same conclusion. She uncovered significant underestimation of fugitive emissions of methane (speculating that it is at least double the official figures) and concluded that they are also underestimating release of other chemicals. [3] [1] http://www.springerlink.com/content/b430681263425q64/?MUD=MP http://www.springerlink.com/content/b430681263425q64/?MUD=MP [2] https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/5292/switching-coal-natural-gas-would-do-little-global-climate-study-indicates https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/5292/switching-coal-nat... [3] http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/151545578/frackings-methane-trail-a-detective-story http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/151545578/frackings-methane-tr...

It is ironic that the "drill baby drill" attitudes of conservatives led to fracking, thus cheap natural gas displacing coal, which drastically lowered greenhouse gas emissions.

Daniel_Newby 14y ago

There is not even a molecule of irony. They were saying to drill because energy is prosperity and coal is dirty.

jcampbell1 14y ago
The irony is that policies promoted by people who don't care about CO2 emissions and dimiss climate change have led to a significant decrease in CO2 emissions as an unintended consequence.
- smashing 14y ago
  The word "irony" is frequently misused and doesn't mean "unintended consequences" or "rain on your wedding day". Irony would mean that those who supported drilling were actively trying to increase CO2 emissions and failed. That was not the intention of the Oil Lobby.
  - jcampbell1 14y ago
    Drill in this context means to lift carbon baed fuels stored deep underground and bring it to the surface where it will be converted to energy and then go into the atmosphere. Irony requires a reversal of expectations. The logical expected consequence of drilling is increased greenhouse gas emissions. What in fact happened was the reverse. This is textbook irony.
    - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
      Natural gas is a hydrogen based fuel.
      - amalcon 14y ago
        Natural gas is made up of hydrocarbons, mostly methane, so it's both hydrogen-based and carbon-based.
    - alexqgb 14y ago
      "Drill", in this context, also means "for oil". Specifically, "in Alaska". Even more specifically, "in ANWR". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_National_Wildlife_Refuge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_National_Wildlife_Refuge Because ANWR would supply petroleum (a fuel mostly used for transportation and scarcely ever used for generating electricity), it has virtually nothing to do with the market for coal (which is used almost entirely for generating electricity), or disruptions to that market caused by a growing reliance on natural gas (which is also frequently used for heating, but remains uncommon in the transportation market). And because transportation networks and electrical grids have so little overlap in terms of power supplies, policy choices made about Alaskan petroleum have little direct connection with policy choices related to fracking for natural gas. So no, there is no irony in any of this. The word is simply inapplicable.
  - thornofmight 14y ago
    If there's one thing I've learned from my years of internet use, it's never use the word "irony."
- _delirium 14y ago
  It sounds more like randomness than anything else. If your goal is to increase U.S. energy production without any interest in cleanliness of the energy, sometimes this may result in the energy getting cleaner anyway, and sometimes it won't. In this case, the main controlling factor seems to be a mixture of what's in the ground, and logistics. We've found significant new exploitable natural-gas sources, but since exporting it is hard (U.S. LNG export capacity is very limited), it's mostly not traded on a world market, so there's now a domestic glut of gas that's so cheap it's even cheaper than coal to burn.
astrodust 14y ago
Energy is prosperity, but the problem with using non-renewable energy is your prosperity will run out.

wes-exp 14y ago

Natural gas has lower GHG emissions during energy production, but this doesn't account for GHG emissions during its extraction. With total life-cycle taken into account, this kind of GHG "reduction" isn't so clear cut. Natural gas is mostly methane. Methane is a potent GHG, far stronger than CO2. During fracking and so on, lots of natural gas (methane) escapes to the atmosphere. It is a gas, after all. A proper accounting would add in this other set of emissions. So yeah, saying that natural gas usage "drastically lowered GHG emissions" is kind of suspect. Maybe it is better on balance vs. coal, but that is not saying a lot.

justsee 14y ago

You're repeating an assertion by the industry that fracking, and natural gas is "greener" and helps lower greenhouse gas emissions. It's (unsurprisingly) false, or at least challenged by independent science. A study was released late last year by the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) [1] which found that a switch to natural gas would increase warming over the next few decades, as outlined in NCAR's report [2]. It acknowledges something the shale gas industry studiously avoids in calculating figures for its green credentials pitches: fugitive emissions. A significant amount of methane leakage occurs in the fracking process and piping of gases. When you add in the input-intensive activity of multiple well constructions, fracking, pipeline construction, and fugitive emissions the 'green' story of shale gas doesn't add up. There was a piece recently on another atmospheric scientist coming to the same conclusion. She uncovered significant underestimation of fugitive emissions of methane (speculating that it is at least double the official figures) and concluded that they are also underestimating release of other chemicals. [3] [1] http://www.springerlink.com/content/b430681263425q64/?MUD=MP http://www.springerlink.com/content/b430681263425q64/?MUD=MP [2] https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/5292/switching-coal-natural-gas-would-do-little-global-climate-study-indicates https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/5292/switching-coal-nat... [3] http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/151545578/frackings-methane-trail-a-detective-story http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/151545578/frackings-methane-tr...