Moving to CO, concerned the state allows fracking.... (Boulder, Estes Park: transporting, live in)

[KaaBoom]

Originally Posted by delta07

Absolutely couldn't have said this better myself! As a "leftist" I would love to have energy independence at home. Clean, sustainable energy that doesn't pollute our environment and harm our children, the future of this country. But it's hard to get this when big gas and big oil have some of the most well paid lobbyists out there..

Unfortunately the problem is that, wind and solar is pretty much free. So there is not really very much money to be made from it. And if there is no money to be made, that means that the right-wing is not interested in it.

They will continue to stonewall it while they frack out the last drops of oil and gas. Because a lot of rich people have a lot of money riding on it.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by KaaBoom

You are the one that needs to do some research. Because you are sadly lacking even basic knowledge on the subject. You should start your research with the models for "Peak Oil" created by M. King Hubbert in 1956. Which have proven to be pretty damn accurate.



Peak oil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peak oil has already been proven false as discoveries now outpace the amount taken out of the ground in the USA.

We were told back in the late 1970's we would nearly be out of oil and instead the USA now has hundreds of years or more in the ground.

[CosmicWizard]

wanneroo wrote: and big gas guzzling cars means more people and stuff in one trip.

I know what you mean. That certainly can be the case, but usually it is not. I was once part of a group that had a fleet of 10 year old Cadillacs. Whenever we went anywhere there were usually 4 or more people in the car. But that was 30 years ago and even then it was an abberration from the norm. Today the reality is just about always..... one person in a BIG gas guzzling car.

[jazzlover]

Originally Posted by wanneroo

Peak oil has already been proven false as discoveries now outpace the amount taken out of the ground in the USA.

We were told back in the late 1970's we would nearly be out of oil and instead the USA now has hundreds of years or more in the ground.

And we are still importing around 60% or more of our crude oil needs. If we had to produce that domestically, our domestic reserves would be depleted in less than 50 years. Peak oil is very real and the oil companies know that it is. That is why they are busier buying oil reserves on Wall Street than they are in the oil patch, and it is why the oil companies have little interest in investing in new oil refineries. Those refineries take decades to recover their construction costs and the oil companies know that there are not decades of oil reserves left to feed the refineries. So, their game is to run their existing refineries at whatever production rate they will sustain and maximize the profit on their remaining reserves. Americans hate the oil companies for doing things that way, but, from a business standpoint, it makes perfect sense for the oil companies to behave that way. Get away from the "spin doctors" that are filling Americans with the folly that oil reserves aren't in decline just as King Hubbert predicted and you will hear people right in the oil industry who know that Peak Oil is real. In fact, they know it much better than does the brainwashed public, and the oil companies are running their businesses accordingly, no matter what "happy face" they put out in their advertising and public pronouncements.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by KaaBoom

Unfortunately the problem is that, wind and solar is pretty much free. So there is not really very much money to be made from it. And if there is no money to be made, that means that the right-wing is not interested in it.

They will continue to stonewall it while they frack out the last drops of oil and gas. Because a lot of rich people have a lot of money riding on it.

Wind and solar is NOT free. You can not grab it out of the air with your hand and turn your TV on with it.

It takes a lot of expensive technology using a lot of mined rare earths and minerals. And then once those items are produced, they have to be installed and constantly maintained. Solar panels for instance constantly get blasted by sand, dirt, dust and have to be cleaned. Wind turbines require constant maintenance.

Spain pushed a lot of solar technology but it is one of the reasons Spain is bankrupt. Denmark pushed a big wind program and instead their coal plants have to run more because of the constant drops in wind. Barry obama used his Porkulus bill to flood "green" companies which all ended up with dubious financials.

Wind and solar will never in our lifetimes provide power for all because the sun doesn't shine all the time and the wind doesn't always blow.

Nobody is stonewalling the growth of either technology. They have their place in the mix, but this belief that wind and solar is "free" is both factually incorrect and a total fantasy which plays into all these utopian statist fairy tales. Wind and solar is no more free than mining something out of the ground.

There is no last drops of oil and gas. The oil sands of Alberta have enough oil to supply the entire world for 500 years using only 30% of their reserves. I've got 150 years alone of natural gas and oil right under my house in PA. We've got huge reserves all over the USA, many not even tapped into yet, not to mention off shore. We also have massive amounts of methane on the sea floor which they are working on learning how to recover effectively.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by CosmicWizard

wanneroo wrote: and big gas guzzling cars means more people and stuff in one trip.

I know what you mean. I was once part of a group that had a fleet of 10 year old Cadillacs. Whenever we went anywhere there were usually 4 or more people in the car. But that was 30 years ago and even then it was an abberration from the norm. Today the reality is just about always..... one person in a BIG gas guzzling car.

That seems to be the hang up.

The utopian statists know that to put their soviet style dreams of utopia into place you have to remove freedom of movement and individual freedom from the equation. It's why barry obama and his goons rammed the CAFE standards up to such high levels and why they continue to attack any sort of fuel for a car.

In order to get away with it, they have to create mass hysteria with apocalyptic doom with fantasies like "peak oil" and "global warming" and people just buy into it like lemmings.

They've been telling us all that nonsense for decades. You can go back and dig up old National Geographic magazines from the 1970's and 80's or other similar magazines and you'll find the same hysteria there is now and that by year 2000, we would be toast. Yet here we are in 2012, oil has far from run out, production is going up, the world's climate has not imploded, we are not a ball of ice, nor has the ice melted and flooded the earth.

[Gunluvver2]

Originally Posted by Where'sHome?

Good Morning!
Hubby and I will probably be moving to the Boulder/Denver area. My due diligence to researching schools, areas, etc., has turned up fracking incidents in the area, as well as the multitude of permits that have been issued for drill sites and that number is, quite frankly, shocking.

I see the drill sites, and the inordinate amount of homes for sale in some of these areas...Erie for example.

How bad is fracking in CO and just how much is affecting the groundwater?

Looking forward to hearing from you.....

************************************************** ***************************
You should be more concerned about the air quality from the millions of people concentrated in the front range. Do you have any idea how much Carbon Dioxide all those Human Beings pollute the air with just by breathing?
GL2

[lalahartma]

No comments on the fact that there were no EPA cases due to no regulations?

"the world's climate has not imploded, we are not a ball of ice, nor has the ice melted and flooded the earth." I think we are seeing this happen now!
http://grist.org/news/wildfires-in-u...e-gets-hotter/

[delta07]

Originally Posted by wanneroo

He sounds smart to me. Recycling consumes more energy and costs than making new cups and cans(yes it does!, hey I thought that was green?) and big gas guzzling cars means more people and stuff in one trip.

If he's an oil engineer he might know what he's talking about.

You're right, recycling does consume energy. But it still makes sense! In this throw away society our landfills are filling up at an astonishing rate. Much of that garbage, the recyclable materials, does not break down on it's own. We really need to consume less, but not sure that's going to happen. I don't have tv, but I was blown away at the number of ads for one time use products. Most of those products contain petroleum of some sort. To me, it makes absolutely no sense to recycle what we can, even if it does require a bit more energy to do so. One day, hopefully, that energy will be clean.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by lalahartma

No comments on the fact that there were no EPA cases due to no regulations?

"the world's climate has not imploded, we are not a ball of ice, nor has the ice melted and flooded the earth." I think we are seeing this happen now!
Wildfires in U.S. getting much bigger as temperature gets hotter | Grist

The 1970's was not the beginning of time as some seem to think it is. Colorado has had wildfire seasons or a succession of seasons where nearly the whole state burned. The state had bad fires back in the late 1800's.

If you research temperature records you will find the 1970's was a cool decade and the end of a 30-40 cycle that began in the late 1930's, early 1940's. The 1920's and 1930's were very hot and dry for Colorado overall.

I always find it hilarious when the lefties put out these statistical graphs with a start date of the 1970's as though the earth was a perfectly set temperature and completely calm beforehand.

If there are bigger forest fires in recent times it's because of this:

Wildfire History - Colorado State Forest Service - Colorado State University

For much of the 20th century, wildfire policy in the United States was all fires out by 10 A.M. This policy was instituted in 1935 and evolved out of "The Big Blowup," a firestorm that swept the Northern Rockies in the summer of 1910.
Policymaking is a reflection of the public's perceived need for change. For much of the 20th century, wildfire policy in the United States was "all fires out by 10 A.M." This policy was instituted in 1935 and evolved out of "The Big Blowup," a firestorm that swept the Northern Rockies in the summer of 1910. During this catastrophic event, 5 million acres burned and 78 firefighters were killed.


As we have often discussed on this forum, if fires are getting bigger it's because they never let them burn out naturally. The forests need fire to regenerate and the government isn't letting them do that.