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Fracking

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So, both the BBC and ITV have used respectively pictures of Ashness Bridge, Falcon Crag, Skiddaw and Buttermere, Haystacks on their websites under the headline banners, "MPs back plans to allow fracking below national parks" and "MPs back fracking under national parks ".
Now it seems to me, since these rocks are 450 million years old, they are already quite seriously fracked, in fact they are so fracked and cleaved that they are mined and quarried for slate. The chance of getting gas out of them is about the same as on the Moon. Quite useful for rooves though.
Even in the local gardens round here, where the rocks are only 300 million years old, they are so fracked that water drains vertically uninterrupted for hundreds of feet.
In fact those areas pictured on the websites are totally peripheral and completely unrelated to the fracking debate, which really is centred around the Bowland Shale of Lancashire and the Kimmeridge Clay of Yerkshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire and further south, particularly under the stockbroker belt of Surrey and the Weald.
When we have this level of facile and emotive journalism in the UK, is it any surprise that the chance of a debate on the subject of the announcement is about zero?!!
The Caledonian Orogeny was a pretty good fracking mechanism and the chance of any National Park fracking where the pictures were taken is zero. Ignorant journalists could be redirected to the BGS website where they will get proper information.
1
 3leggeddog 16 Dec 2015
In reply to Dave Cumberland:

Yup, ignorance and a nasty sounding name. Down with that sort of thing.

If the process had been branded "eco mining" there would have been a lot less opposition.
2
 Timmd 16 Dec 2015
In reply to 3leggeddog:
> Yup, ignorance and a nasty sounding name. Down with that sort of thing.

> If the process had been branded "eco mining" there would have been a lot less opposition.


Until people worked out it was greenwash, when seen in the context of how much more the government has been invested in fossil fuels compared to renewable energy? This stymies it's development, and people comment on how effective renewable energy is/n't. If we don't invest enough in it's development how can we expect anything else, expect it to improve?

We're surrounded by tides, and there's technology in the form of 'pods' which can be lowered into even environmentally sensitives waters, which protrude out of the water a little bit so they're not a hazard, and they can be raised up again to be maintained, and they reliably produce energy which doesn't fluctuate like wind power can.

That our country can be surrounded by tides and not exploit it as an energy source (if only to increase it's usefulness) is one of the stupider things our governments keep doing
Post edited at 21:43
 malk 16 Dec 2015
In reply to Dave Cumberland:

so are you for or against and why?
In reply to malk:
> so are you for or against and why?
My point was that no one is going to frac the Lake District (which is already fracked).
In fact so far as fracking elsewhere in high potential areas is concerned, there are not enough horizontal drilling rigs, fracking units, or planning permissions available in the UK that are likely to make a blind bit of difference to the supply or price of gas so the whole question is academic.
 Ridge 16 Dec 2015
In reply to Timmd:

> We're surrounded by tides, and there's technology in the form of 'pods' which can be lowered into even environmentally sensitives waters, which protrude out of the water a little bit so they're not a hazard, and they can be raised up again to be maintained, and they reliably produce energy which doesn't fluctuate like wind power can.

> That our country can be surrounded by tides and not exploit it as an energy source (if only to increase it's usefulness) is one of the stupider things our governments keep doing

Genuine question, to which I don't know the answer. Is it a lack of investment, or is it a problem due to a very aggressive environment and laying cables from the pods or other devices to the grid?
 wintertree 16 Dec 2015
In reply to Timmd:

> That our country can be surrounded by tides and not exploit it as an energy source (if only to increase it's usefulness) is one of the stupider things our governments keep doing

That's some definition of "stupider". It would be easier and more economical to exploit the large stockpile at Sellafield for energy than to do what you suggest. Sea water is highly corrosive. Things built in the sea need to be very over engineered compared to land structures and are maintenance intensive. Significant extraction of energy from the tides is going to mess with the tidal environments dramatically. For a sense of scale look at the plans for the Severn barrage... That's just 20% of our current electricity needs or 5% of our energy needs.

Also, tidal power fluctuates a lot. Predictably, but sill a lot. We still do not have the magic load balancing this would need.
Post edited at 23:52
 Jim Fraser 17 Dec 2015
In reply to Dave Cumberland:

When the lights eventually go out in the SE of England then none of this green tree-hugger stuff is going to matter. At that stage, any politician who doesn't want nuclear power or to import cheap rubbish Chinese coal to burn will be history.
1
 gd303uk 17 Dec 2015
In reply to Jim Fraser:

Norway gets around 98% off its energy from renewables and uses hydroelectric, geothermal and wind.

http://www.altenergy.org/renewables/wholly-renewable.html

 Jon Stewart 17 Dec 2015
In reply to Jim Fraser:

> When the lights eventually go out in the SE of England then none of this green tree-hugger stuff is going to matter.

What tree-hugger stuff? The OP was about the inaccurate portrayal of the fracking issue in the media.
1
 Oldsign 17 Dec 2015
In reply to Jim Fraser:

I think you'll find that they're laying a cable so we can buy Iceland's "tree-hugger" energy. Shame when we could invest in our own. Lots of money for Iceland though
In reply to Dave Cumberland:

I agree with all you say here, except the last sentence re BGS. The BGS has been over-hyping the shale gas potential of the Bowland Shale. I think there is a high probability that their assessments are way optimistic.
 jimtitt 17 Dec 2015
In reply to gd303uk:

> Norway gets around 98% off its energy from renewables and uses hydroelectric, geothermal and wind.


Norway gets about 50% of it´s energy from hydropower, the rest of the stuff they pour into their cars and all that comes from an oil well like everywhere else. And then they sell about 75% of their renewable quota from their hydropower as renewable credits to other countries, only ca 25% of their electrical power is considered "renewable" since they sell it´s clean virtues to allow other people to burn nastier stuff.
 jkarran 17 Dec 2015
In reply to wintertree:
> Also, tidal power fluctuates a lot. Predictably, but sill a lot. We still do not have the magic load balancing this would need.

There's no magic in building lagoons/barrages/turbines in different locations to exploit tides that are out of phase with each other, the UK is well suited to this approach (from a technical if not political perspective).
jk
Post edited at 12:34
In reply to jimtitt:

It's easy to run a country with only 5 million people - that's why Scotland can not fail as an independent country.
DC
1
 drunken monkey 17 Dec 2015
In reply to Dave Cumberland:

Yet we're too wee, too poor, and too stupid for that to happen.

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