Fracking

[Stargazer]

It looks as though there are rumblings underground daily of what might become actual earthquakes

[steg]

Oh aye, it’s a frack free zone up here in scottyland

[spathiphyllum]

Fracking and Scotland has always been a odd one but it is not banned.. they just don't want to do it.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/09/scottish-government-tells-court-no-ban-fracking/

[steg]

Aye that’s why I didnae say it was banned

[spathiphyllum]

How would you feel steg if they decided to start fracking Scotland on quite a grand scale?

[DTCwordfan]

For information - the Richter scale - note 1 and 2.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_scale

The largest associated with the Lancashire fracking 2.3

The largest earthquake in the wider Lancashire NorthWest area - April 2009 Ulverston 3.7, Blackpool in the Irish Sea May 2011 3.3 and Kirkby Stephen 4.1 in August 1970 (and I remember that one shaking my childhood house near Windermere) and Longtown 4.7 in Dec 1979/ The biggest in the UK in the last 50 years was 5.4 in Gwynned in 1984

So let's get this in perspective, tremors from fracking are minimal in terms of potential damage. Coal mining has triggered more intense ones. So, no fracking, we are happy being dependent long-term on Russian and Qatari gas imports for our cookers, hearing and tricity gen - me thinks not.

[steg]

I think it would be a bad day

[spathiphyllum]

I agree steg a very upsetting day also.

DTC, Why are the coal mines shut?

[DTCwordfan]

not because of earthquakes. Economics essentially and left wing unions that shot themselves well and truly in the foot and encouraged renewables. Emissions as well and NG is a much (understatement) cleaner burning fuel.

What drives fracking has been the increasing price of Natural Gas and Oil.....

[mushroom25]

//DTC, Why are the coal mines shut? //

blimey DTC that's fighting talk. best you start your own thread on that as it will polarise the participants and derail the thread into a positive/negative critique of a certain former prime minister.

[spathiphyllum]

Just something to think about...

The risks fracking imposes on our environment makes it something i be careful with in my personal opinion, which is shared by many.

Renewable energy is the way forward. What do we do after we've got all of this gas we apparently have but have not needed until now?

[DTCwordfan]

straight question/straight answer.....I saw my first presentation on global warming back in 1989 - and a lot of it came out of MT's think tank on renewables and headed up by Chris Patten - a lot of their rationale and the numbers then was to find methods to counter being held to ransom by Scargill et al.

[spathiphyllum]

Imagine if the knowledge / effort was put into renewable energy's back then... Shame hindsight is exactly that..

[DTCwordfan]

it was, sapht, you are forgetting one thing, the learning curve (and hence cost curve) of new technologies - and now these (wind and solar) are taking bite...and its about cost competitiveness versus other fuels. And when I say cost competitivenss, I also mean technology breakthroughs are needed - wit, bio-ethanol fuels from waste crops, diesels from algae and hydrogen (the storage thereof on board - and just this week an example where it's economic for rural German trains but not yet for a car). Furthermore, most energy depts in Government want a diverse base of supply to ride through market blips etc. Fracking is one of these - with oil northwards of $60/bbl (allowing for crude specs/quality), it starts to payout.

[spathiphyllum]

Which is why they are fracking mad..

[Togo]

Renewable energy. Haha it is worshipped by easily impressed as if it is some sort of perpetual motion machine that requires no impetus or power source to make. Neither scientific nor pragmatic any of them.

[spathiphyllum]

Such machines are illegal especially for home use

[DTCwordfan]

so what's wrong with large scale wind or solar, togo....though I accept that as M.of Energy, I wouldn't want to be totally dependent on them. Hydrogen is the future when they find a way to hold it in storage without it leaking through the container..lead really the only way at the moment but then one pays with cost (and weight) and the environment....the wild card there that is needed perhaps lies with nano-silica technology. After all, it took 50 years for the gasoline engine to make its breakthrough in the 1930s - the wildcards being Henry Ford finding a way to make cars cheaply and the oil cos how to safely and economically separate or crack out gasoline from the distilled crude barrel. Fracking's breakthrough was how to accurately go for horizontal drilling - back in the 90s....

[mushroom25]

//Hydrogen is the future when they find a way to hold it in storage without it leaking through the container..//

I would venture that there needs first to be a way of isolating pure hydrogen without using insane amounts of power.....

[DTCwordfan]

true mushroom - perhaps the other side of the hydrocarbon chain says he tongue in cheek - the irony being it's one of the easiest/cheapest ways, currently.

[spathiphyllum]

Cost and ease should come 2nd and 3rd to environmental consequences