natural gas
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Shale gas ‘profits’ are based on accounting trickery
When you add up all the costs — monetary costs, not even environmental — of fracking for shale gas, it turns out the entire business is horribly unprofitable, reports energy analyst Chris Nelder at SmartPlanet. So why are companies engaged in an unprofitable business if it's also a fairly unneighborly way to pollute the local […]
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Critical List: A small fracking victory; fracking still sucks
In New York, government officials are extending the public comment period on fracking rules. In Pennsylvania, a judge gave Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. permission to stop supplying fresh water to families whose well water was tainted by fracking operations. And the Chesapeake Bay Foundation used infrared video to document emissions pouring out of natural […]
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Critical List: Turkeys to be pardoned; Bill O’Reilly can totally get solar if he wants it
President Obama will pardon two 19-week, 45-pound turkeys from Minnesota today. Their names are Liberty and Peace. It is possible to have Thanksgiving without turkey or turkey-shaped soy loaf. Here are a few ideas for what to serve instead. We're sacrificing holiday time to commercialism for no reason. Longer Black Friday sales don't increase stores’ […]
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NYT Mag: Country folk understand fracking better than city folk
The New York Times has a long article in this weekend's magazine about hydraulic fracturing in southwestern Pennsylvania. It tries to capture the culture of the place and to show the tensions for people who have an economic interest in drilling but are at risk of suffering health impacts. But it also manages to glance […]
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‘Waterless fracking’ is a new way to make fracking less nasty
The "natural gas revolution" has been kind of a disappointment. Yes, natural gas could help get us off of coal, and fast. But it has its own substantial environmental impacts, most of them stemming from the process of extracting it from the ground. Now, though, a new "waterless" fracking method holds out the promise of […]
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Wind electricity to be fully competitive with natural gas by 2016
Photo: Vlasta JuricekCross-posted from Climate Progress. The best wind farms in the world are already competitive with coal, gas, and nuclear plants. But over the next five years, continued performance improvements and cost reductions will bring the average onshore wind plant in line with cheap natural gas, even without a price on carbon, according to […]
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Oil and gas reps suggest using counterinsurgency tactics on fracking opponents
It's obvious that the natural gas industry has no love for opponents of fracking in places like Pennsylvania. But recordings from an industry meeting reveal that the industry's animosity goes a little deeper than mere irritation — they think of opponents as an "insurgency" that should be handled with techniques developed to fight terrorism in […]
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Fracking causing earthquakes in England and Oklahoma
Natural gas fracking caused an earthquake in England. And a spate of quakes in Oklahoma. And while the idea that fracking for natural gas causes earthquakes has been floating around, these quakes offer stronger proof that fracking seriously messes with the environment. And while these quakes, peaking in intensity around the high 2s on the […]
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Learning from history: Why natural gas prices will rise
Here’s the standard story about the U.S. power grid: It gets baseload supply from hydro, nuclear, and coal (in that order), using natural gas (and the occasional oil plant) as a swing producer to meet peak demands. Renewables play on the margin, but are neither big nor reliable enough to matter from a grid planning […]