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The Shale Boom Won't Stop Climate Change; It Could Make It Worse
Lasrick writes Energy expert H-Holger Rogner walks through the realities of the shale-gas boom, the 'game-changer' that has brought about a drop in energy prices and greatly reduced carbon emissions. But despite the positive impact on carbon emissions, Rogner points out that the cheap gas brought about by fracking shale may already be affecting investments into renewable energy, nuclear energy, and energy efficiency by offering more attractive investment opportunities: 'At today's prices of $4 to $5 per million British thermal units, gas-fired electricity holds a definite competitive advantage over new nuclear construction and unsubsidized renewables.' But natural gas is still a fossil fuel that emits carbon dioxide. 'A much higher share of natural gas in the energy mix would eventually raise emissions again, especially if gas not only displaces coal but also non-fossil energy sources. Moreover, methane, the chief component of natural gas, is itself a heat-trapping greenhouse gas with 25 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide. If total methane leakage—from drilling through end use—is greater than about 4 percent, that could negate any climate benefits of switching from coal and oil to gas.'
The funny thing about Sandy, is that the Capitol Weather Gang correctly predicted it about a week in advance, based on a very similar storm in 1878. We didn't quite as many SUVs nor coal plants back then.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
What really killed nuclear power wasn't "The China Syndrome" or Greenpeace - it was that the price of fossil fuels didn't continue to increase as expected. That's unfortunate, as while I like inexpensive energy I also believe that we should make ALL of our electricity with nukes (or hydro) and save fossil fuels for applications where nothing else will do (e.g. aircraft). And here's a litmus test: if you're serious about global warming, you've pretty much got to be pro-nuke. No other technology - not solar, not wind, not whatever green scheme you dream up - can produce electricity on a large scale. Wanna save the planet? Push for nukes and plug-in electric cars.
The Salon article is wrong although the fault may be that of the interviewee. Bob Reiss asked Hansen what the view from his office would look like if his worst-case scenario from the paper he'd published not long before the interview were to come to pass.
That would have been the Scenario A from the 1988 "Global Climate Change as Forecast by GISS 3D Model" - http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs...
That scenario as described in the paper, assumes a CO2 doubling by 2030 but states that Scenario B's assumption of said doubling by 2060 is more likely.
Reiss details the conversation in a couple of his books but only named 2001's The Coming Storm when he corrected what he'd told to Salon, who never updated the online article.
Either way, there's still quite some time before Hansen's prediction can be definitively shown to have been wrong
Pain is merely failure leaving the body