A Change in the Wind

The Wall Street Journal is excited about the possibilities of fracking for California:

California has Saudi Arabia-scale oil resources, notably in its largely untapped Monterey shale field, which stretches northeast for more than 200 miles from Bakersfield in central California. New technologies, especially smart, horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing, aka "fracking," make that oil accessible, and cleanly. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the Monterey shale field alone holds 15.4 billion barrels of oil, rivaling America's total conventional reserves.

California collects about $15 billion in tax revenues for every billion barrels of state oil production, according to research conducted last year by the University of Wyoming's Timothy Considine and Edward Manderson. If that is accurate, then simply by opening up Monterey oil development—no incentives, grants or state funds required—tax receipts could total $250 billion over the coming two decades. Economists Robert Hahn and Peter Passell, at the American Enterprise and Milken Institutes respectively, point to another $30 billion to $80 billion in broad economic and social benefits that ripple through an economy for every billion barrels of oil production.

This might sound like over-the-top boosterism, but yes, the US Energy Information Administration has confirmed the vast reserves in the Monterey Shale formation, estimated to be 3/5ths the size of Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, which was for decades this nation's biggest producing oil field. 

But as so often has proved to be the case with the oil industry, the price of the potential economic good news will be paid by the environment. Or so the EPA warns. In a recent report on emissions from industrial sources, the agency revealed that the second biggest producer of greenhouse gas (equivalent) emissions is the oil and gas industry. (This I learned from Breanna Norton, of Food and Water Watch.) 

Which is true, but when I went to the EPA, I learned it's not the whole story. Here's a bar graph from the EPA, that shows how big power plants dominate emissions. Power plant emissions add up to nearly 60% of the total, about 10x as much as the total emissions from oil and natural gas extraction.

Hence the importance of cleaning up power plants, which is what the newly appointed head of the EPA, Gina McCarthy, is (from all accounts) set to do. If the EPA can reduce power plant emissions by ten percent, that savings could offset the existing contribution of refineries, for example.  

But meanwhile, in the words of Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) fracking continues to dominate exploration, and change the industry, for better or worse.

While the oil and natural gas sector includes a wide range of exploration and production activities, fracking has become the primary method companies use to extract natural gas. Traditional drilling for oil and gas has declined as reservoirs of easy-to-access oil and gas have been depleted. The top oil and natural gas sources also indicate the large contribution fracking activities are making to the industry sector’s greenhouse gas emissions. The data was not collected on individual wells but instead aggregated emissions from large production areas or basins. The highest emissions came from New Mexico’s San Juan Basin and Texas’ Permian Basin, where advances in horizontal drilling and fracking have led to a boom in shale gas and shale oil production. Emissions from onshore production (which includes fracking) were primarily methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

In recent years, scientists and environmentalists have emphasized the polluting nature of fracking, despite the repeated claims by industry about "clean natural gas." A Cornell University study showed that fracking produces more greenhouse gas emissions over time than traditional methods of oil drilling or coal mining, due to hauling in large quantities of water by truck and the methane released from fracking wells. Since the EPA greenhouse gas data does not include emissions from transportation, the total amount of emissions contributed by the oil and gas sector is likely underreported. Greenhouse gas emissions are not the only concern involved in fracking; the drilling method has been linked to a growing number of cases of water and land contamination.

It's not just about the climate, in other words, which explains why Food and Water Watch is tracking fracking. But the invaluable Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star, who has been reporting for the paper from Sacramento for decades, reveals in an op-ed the inside story: 

Environmentalists advocating strict regulation of fracking cited a Monterey Shale oil-drilling boom as a certain prospect, while oil industry representatives downplayed the speculation, noting that results from test wells so far have not been promising.

The oil reserves may exist, they said, but they may not be recoverable, at least not with current technology.

Both sides had self-interested reasons for taking those views.

Environmental advocates are alarmed that fracking has been taking place for so long in California without being subjected to any regulations beyond those that apply to all drilling operations. The Department of Conservation is just now circulating a “discussion draft” of fracking rules it may put in place, rules that environmentalists have criticized as too lenient.

The industry, which notes there has not been one reported instance of environmental damage caused by fracking in California, seems resigned that an age of regulation has arrived, but wants standards that are not overly intrusive or expensive with which to comply.

In other words, Herdt hints, a compromise could be in the offing for the state. 

There may yet be some way, however, to differentiate between requirements that will be placed on traditional operations at conventional California oil wells, which tap into underground reservoirs beneath a layer of impermeable cap rock, and regulations targeted at emerging oil development that will use different technologies in areas with different geologic features.

One such differentiation being discussed behind the scenes by some in Sacramento is a variation on an old and controversial idea — the establishment of an oil severance tax, but one that would apply only to new wells.

An oil severance tax, in California, such as is paid by oil companies in radical leftist states such as Alaska, Texas, and Louisiana? That would at least repay the state, if not the state's environment?

As the irresistible Wallace Shawn said in The Princess Bride: Inconceivable! 

"To walk across the country is to fall in love with mankind."

So argues Ken Ilgunas, the first walker quoted in a NYTimes news analysis about walking as a spiritual quest (by Kate Murphy). Story looks at a number of examples, the anthropology ("a limnal realm outside of and yet proximal to society"), the possible selfishness, walking for a cause, blogging, and concludes with a cliche. Not sure that was necessary.  

Still, I'm happy to see a free-lancer publish in the NYTimes (which will become rarer with the end of the Green blog, which helped me find more than one story out here in California, and published numerous free-lancers of its own). Interesting that this one didn't mention wilderness or "Wild."

Too far outside the ken of readers of the paper of record, even if "Wild" was a bestseller? 

Nice pics, though.

Here's the story: Walking the country as a spiritual quest.

Mulling it because I'm contemplating a similarly lengthy journey, along the spine of the west, the Sierra High Route, or the Pacific Crest Trail.

Which would be walking the land, I guess, and not the country.  

NOAA says it's not likely to change:

The World's Most Famous Man throws it down, bringing the scorn to the 2012 Academy Awards and Seth McFarlane:

in the thick of the “We Saw Your Boobs” song, which must have lasted five minutes all by itself, this line jumped out at me: “Jodie Foster in ‘The Accused’”. And I thought to myself “wait, isn’t her nudity in that movie part of a *rape scene*?” It threw a really sour note into what was supposed to be light-hearted. 

But the in-depth thing I want to talk about is the “reaction shots” to the song, pre-taped by game actresses who were playing along. The substance of these reaction shots highlights just what’s so awful about McFarlane singing this song: mortification from most of the actresses and a little fist-pump of triumph from Jennifer Lawrence when he says we haven’t seen hers.

The song, the reaction shots and Seth McFarlane’s general attitude are all based on a commonplace and awful trope: that sex is a contest, and that men win and women lose when sex or nudity happens. It’s an archaic, prudish, creepy concept that derives from twisted notions about female purity and women-as-property.

McFarlane thinks if he has seen a woman’s breasts, he has won and she has lost, and he is now entitled to gloat about it. Women whose breasts Seth McFarlane has seen are meant to feel humiliated and degraded by that fact, even though it’s expected of actresses to show their breasts to get work. Meet the expectations placed on you by your industry, talented actresses? Too bad you’ve now injured your own dignity such that Seth McFarlane can mock you about it in front of a billion people. Even if your character is naked *because she’s being raped* (see point 2 above), it still amounts to a victory for Seth McFarlane to have seen your breasts.

If you watch the poor quality clip (in all senses of the word) you will see McFarlane make a mocking reference to seeing Charlize Theron's breasts, and see her hide from the camera in shame -- or disgust. 

Can't resist a good picture of a threaened eagle:

Turns out that in late January at a huge wind farm near Mojave operated by a company called NextEra, just a month after operations began, an eagle was found dead.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife wasn't too happy about the project from the start, but Kern County approved it anyway. 

In August 2011, the Fish and Wildlife Service wrote: “The first full year of fatality monitoring [for the Pine Tree wind project] resulted in an estimated 1,595 fatalities per year, which — per megawatt (11.8 fatalities/megawatt) — is among the highest fatality rates being recorded in the nation . . . It’s reasonable to estimate that the proposed [North Sky River] project would have avian fatality rates equal to or greater than those observed at the adjacent Pine Tree wind facility.”When completed, North Sky River will have the capacity of 297 megawatts, one-tenth the output of the San Onofre nuclear power plant in Southern California.

Chris Clarke and Rewire report:

The North Sky River project, on 12,781 acres of private lands northwest of the town of Mojave, will top out at 297 megawatts of power when completed: roughly the same output as a mid-sized gas-fired plant, when the wind is blowing at the right speed. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has calculated that the neighboring Pine Tree wind facility, a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power project, caused 11.8 bird fatalities per megawatt in the first year of monitoring; if North Sky River turns out to be of comparable hazard, that's about 3,500 birds per year counting on NextEra's good-faith hazard mitigation. Here's hoping their risk reduction works.

To be honest, I can't pretend to know if thousands of bird deaths are justified by the need for green energy, but in my experience this is an enthralling conflict -- despite its brutality.

A drama, despite its lack of humans.

A few years back the science writer Chris Moody suggested we need to see scientists less as nerds and more as rock stars.

Yes, and by the same token, great science reporters too. 

In that vein, here's a lovely look at David Perlman, who has been reporting on science for the San Francisco Chronicle for longer than I have been alive. 

For more of the Los Angeles Times story by Maria L. La Ganga, go here. Here's Perlman:

Overheard him pitching a story to his editors from the AGU last December. They weren't any more welcoming to his version than my editors were welcoming to me. Life in the big city. 

At least when it comes to working outdoors. An interesting study published this month in Nature looks at how rising levels of heat and humidity will impact work in military and civilian sites, and draws a broad conclusion: 

  By   2100   under active mitigation (Fig. 1c), the high stress of present-day India
 (green   Fig. 1b)   expands   over   much  of  Eurasia   and  the   greater
 Caribbean region (green in Fig. 1c). Under the highest scenario
 considered, by 2100 (Fig. 1d) much of the tropics and mid-latitudes
 experience months of extreme heat stress, such that heat stress in
 Washington DC becomes higher than present-day New Orleans,
 New Orleans exceeds present-day Bahrain, and Bahrain reaches a
 WBGT of 31.5 ◦C. 

WGBT stands for Wet Bulb Global Temperature, a measure developed in the l950's by the Marine Corps to avoid heat stress injuries. Anything above 88 degrees F or 31 degrees C is considered hazardous, which means much less capacity for work out of doors for police, construction work, athletes, etc.  

Under two difference emissions scenarios, the study finds that labor loss due to heat stress doubles by 2050. Looking further into the future, later the ability to work out of doors falls dramatically, by 75% in warm months in places like Washington, D.C. 

Won't have as big an effect on white collar labor, due to air conditioning. A new social justice issue.