I image many of you have seen the play or
the move Arsenic and Old Lace where
to lovely old ladies kill of some of their boarders who they deem would be much
better off dead and then give them wonderful funerals. It’s a comedy extraordinaire.
Now we have some lovely folk who tell us we
have unlimited fossil fuel that will take care of our need for a huge carbon
footprint, fossil fuel needs, for years to come. All we have to do is stuff
some fracking sand down some long drilled holes with some secret chemicals they
will not reveal and all our problems will be solved (aside from the effect of
the carbon footprint that is.)
I wonder what is in that secret formula.
Perhaps a little bit of arsenic and old lace? Well, I’m sure they will give us
a lovely funeral.
"Finite" is not in the typical American short term thought process. Europe is more worried about sustainable
ReplyDeleteenergy sources, but the health effect of wood vs coal seem a trade-off. Meanwhile, our area
is putting up wind turbines by the hundreds...
We have a bunch of rich people in my area, tending to be liberals, who are hellbent on a crusade to ban wind power from the area, using the most ridiculous arguments and completely frivolous lawsuits. It's really crazy.
ReplyDeleteIt also happened near Cape Code. There's some anti wind power fanatics there, who have included staunch liberals like the Kennedy's who have engaged in such ridiculous tactics in their crusade such as claiming that the sight of windmills in the distance from the vantage point of Native American lands actually violates tribal sovereignty.
And yes Rev. The chemical content should be revealed. A perfect thing to be Wikileaked!
The old 'not in MY backyard' conundrum. Admittedly these things are huge and perhaps spoil an otherwise pristine view. In our area,
Deletethe arrays are generally on barren ridgetops, land not otherwise used by the rancher...and the
lease arragnements can be attractive. With huge power producing dams besides the wind turbines, the inland Pacific NW
is a power exporter, mainly to the west coast
urban areas. (Many of us heat our homes with electric heat!)
The thing is, it's not even about the fanatic's back yards. It's about other property owner's back yards. These fanatics are dictating what others have in their back yards.
DeleteOne tactic I will mention they use here: there is a law against locating windmills a certain distance from heliports.... so the fanatics are now placing fake but nominally legal heliports in strategic locations in order to prevent the windmill from being placed there.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that diesel fuel and similar homologs are part of the mix: a high percentage of water and sand is the basic
ReplyDeletefracking formula. The actual ingredients can be released to
healthcare professionals, but not the general public. (Although the last link has a neat photo of a farm
wife setting her kitchen faucet ablaze)....
"The actual ingredients can be released to
ReplyDeletehealthcare professionals, but not the general public."
Which seems strange. Does it make sense to keep this private? If a healthcare professional puts it on his blog does this make him a criminal?
By the way, I checked into the abuse of the 'no windmills near heliports' law in Michigan. It has a mile radius, which means that if these anti-property-rights, anti-wind fanatics want, they can keep an average sized county wind-turbine-free by placing about 36 bogus helipads evenly spaced.
Ingredients are often considered proprietary: the secrecy intended to keep formulations from competitors. When I worked with ammunition primer formulas, we sometimes had phone calls looking for ingredients that claimed they were
ReplyDeletehealthcare or law enforcement. Such information was granted
to legitimate entities, but there was industrial 'espionage'
once in awhile and verification was required for suspicious
calls. Kind of interesting; we developed analyses to figure
out competitor formulations and I'm sure the competitors did
as well, so it was sort of specious game of 'spooks'.
I think I get the proprietary interests in safeguarding products and agree with them. The question remains is that have these products been studies for harmful effects, i.e. blazing faucets and there overall effect on the environment. I have seen no such studies and wonder if they exist. This seems a primary regulatory precaution that needs to take place before heavy investment in such an industry.
DeleteHugh: I'm not sure how to word this point, but I'm not sure if I agree with proprietary interests in products that end up so widely distributed, including in ground water. If they want them proprietary, keep them well contained. If they want to spew them everywhere, disclose all.
ReplyDeleteThe industry is forthcoming to an extent required by law. We note that a well known
ReplyDeletesupplier of well-drilling chemicals lists formulations in a fairly forthright manner. Ingredients are listed by function, and by clicking on the right, the material safety
data sheets (OSHA requirement) for the subject chemicals may be read. In addition, this company provides a chemical
breakout (below, on their site) of the specific chemicals, their use in other products and their overall hazard. While it would take a team of chemists, pharmacologists and
physicians to fully evaluate, there is some cause for concern. For example, some of these chemicals have shown a
significant lethal dose metric in mice, others have not been
studied for carcinogenicity; little is known of their behavior in long term groundwater, nor the half-life stability and breakdown products. Review and experimentation
on these 'brews' seems like a good potential grad student project!