The entire concept of fracking is that you drill into a fissure, then blast it full of a dangerous chemical slurry so that it eventually forces natural gas out of the fissure. Then when all the natural gas is gone, they pack up and leave with their money. The chemical slurry stays in the ground forever, leaching into water tables, public waterways, potentially contaminating soil used for live stock and agriculture.
We literally have a visible ball of unlimited fusion energy in the fucking sky, and natural tides that can power tidal generators, but no, let’s just poison the shit out of everyone for a slightly better profit margin…
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we havnt tapped into geothermal like scifi does, we have the other ones though.
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Geothermal very often uses fracking, too. Difference might only be a bit higher depth it’s used in.
Except that nuclear is not economically viable.
I didn’t mention nuclear
You didnt but the person you replied to
Huh? France seems to be doing OK.
I should mention, that building new nuclear reactors is not financially a viable option.
Yea, better burn the world down instead.
You know that renewable Energy exists? In the time we would need to replace follils with nuclear we can insted build renewables and Storage capacitys and we would be way cheaper.
It is if you consider the cost of the redundancy required for renewable energy to serve as base load once you cut oil, gass and coal out of the supply.
Nuclear can cover this base load until we develop better storage systems for large scale use.
If we had just built nuclear with the modern architecture developed in the 70’s onwards we’d be able to move away from fossile fuel FAAR more easily today, without any mjor disasters from the reactor technology from the 50’s.
If we had just moved ahead with solar heat and hot water, or even solar panels, back when President Carter was trying to encourage it, we would already be moved away from fossil fuels
My interest in renewables, in ecology, in recycling, was all from growing up with that. But how did we let fossil fuel companies take over the conversation, guide our choices down the road to their profits at our cost?
A single one maybe not, if we standardize and scale it might work. If solar and batteries keep getting cheaper, it might not be worth it, but the current problem is that new reactors are their own unique snowflakes, making it more expensive.
Give it the same subsidies Big Oil has then… and i’d rather have clean energy than “economically viable” dirty energy.
Then why did it take until 1859 for human population to start trending up and reach 8 billion?
I’ll help you: oil. The ancient Romans had geothermal, wind, tide, solar, and hydro as well.
They had the exact same energy we do now. The difference is we have power, they didn’t.
I’ll help you again. You can’t fertilize crops with electricity, or make plastic.
Let me help you.
LOL. You can NOT be serious.
How will you FEED all these people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
" and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers"
You can NOT sustain our present human population with sunshine and puppies. Vaccines or not.
You seriously misunderstand just about everything.
Ah, chemical fertilizer must be made with crude oil and natural gas! And we must have started using those in the mid 1800s!
No, wait. Both of those are wrong.
You can NOT sustain our present human population with sunshine and puppies.
You know what else you can’t sustain a human population with? A planet with no fresh water and a toxic atmosphere.
The ancient romans also didn’t have solar panels, and actually hydro and wind were totally used in these little things called watermills and windmills. I wouldn’t be surprised if they figured out geothermal heating, too. The difference is that you can simply light oil on fire and that’s easy when you otherwise have a lower level of technology and aren’t ready for better, more advanced ways of generating power.
You’re none too bright, huh?
Yes, please describe how that solar panel came into being. Try it without the fossil fuel foundation of every single item we use. Everything from the rubber tires of the delivery trucks to the food the workers eat.
You are blind to what’s around you. If you think we’re going to support 8 billion people living a Western lifestyle without fossil fuels, I’m afraid it’s not me who isn’t bright.
How do you support our present industrial civilization with windmills and watermills? We already had these, why did we give them up?
You’re completely oblivious.
“better, more advanced ways of generating power.”
But we don’t. We don’t “generate” power. We harvest energy. And once our little geological energy reserve is drawn down, how do you plan on keeping our present arrangements going?
You haven’t explained how you plan to make fertilizers, concrete, plastics, with electricity? And you don’t simply “light oil on fire”… Where did the iron come from to make engines? Coal, oh yeah.
You also think we’ll just spin copper wire and rare earth magnets from sunshine…
Please go back to AI vibe coding.
You understand that without those wind and water mills that oil couldn’t have become a thing, right? Like I said, oil was a great way to bridge the gap because it is relatively easy to use but it shouldn’t be our end-goal. Having oil for producing things made of it is certainly important but we’d have a lot more to go around for those purposes if we stopped using it for inefficient things like so many personal vehicles, wasteful plastic packaging, and a myriad other things that we just don’t need it for. It’s done its time, it’s time we scaled back and moved on.
We didn’t give up water or wind mills, either. Canada has so many hydro-electric dams that we literally call home electricity “hydro” and wind farms are only getting bigger and better.
We don’t need oil to make concrete. It’s portland cement(limestone powder), water, and variously sized aggregates and it’s been around for a loooooong time in one form or another. The machinery used to create it does not need to run on fossil fuels. You may be thinking of asphalt, but even then maybe if we didn’t unnecessarily obliterate our roads with constant heavy vehicle traffic we’d be able to keep them for longer and not need to constantly pour resources into barely keeping them alive or refreshing them far too often.
For someone with such a raging erection for oil you’d think you’d be more concerned about reducing our dependency on it so that we don’t waste this precious, finite resource.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concrete
“The cement industry is one of the two largest producers of carbon dioxide (CO2), creating up to 5% of worldwide man-made emissions of this gas, of which 50% is from the chemical process and 40% from burning fuel.”
Another one who is blissfully unaware of how the world got to be the way it is.
Look, I’m done. There is no way to bridge the gap of understanding between us. Educate yourself. Please.
Stick to physics, chemistry, facts, and history. And keep the references to hard ons to zero.
Then get back to us.
50% is from the chemical process and 40% from burning fuel.”
So what I’m hearing is… If we switched to alternative energy transportation infrastructure, we could eliminate 40% of the CO2 released from the 2nd largest contributor? Seems like a good deal to me, we should do that ASAP.
So, CO2 production does not immediately mean oil is required for production of something. Literally further down that article is “mitigation” and it points out the chemical process has nothing to do fossil fuels, directly, but with the creation of alite. The other part of it, burning fuel, can be changed for other stuff.
Plastic requires oil because it is made of the stuff. Powering a car does not because it doesn’t actually matter where the power comes from. These are important differences. You can make concrete without fossil fuels.
You’re right, we can’t bridge this gap because you are so beyond stupid that your own source even tells you that you’re wrong. It’d be funny if it was fiction but somehow you’re a real person and that just makes it terrifying.
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The cheaper energy becomes, the more of a threat it is to literally all of the world’s heirarchies of power. The people at the top that benefit most from these heirarchies and who have the most control are also the most disincentivized from finding a solution that makes energy cheaper for all.
Solar is already a way cheaper way to make energy. Fossil fuels for electrical energy are only profitable due to large government handouts and steep tarries on Chinese electronics such as solar panels. Economic forces always win so renewables powering most of the grid is inevitable.
The real issue is that vehicles and aircraft need something with equivalent energy density and battery technology just isn’t that good yet and will take a long time to get that good.
The other thing is economically it’s cheaper to run a lot of ff powered devices at a higher rate than to invest in a replacement to run at a lower rate. The roi just isn’t goof enough. Eg Almost all new heating systems are heat pumps but the economic cost of replacing a gas heater with a heat pump just isn’t worth it.
I’ve been looking at that decision. My furnace is well beyond its expected life and I’d like to replace it before it dies so it’s not an emergency. I’ve looked at heat pumps and really want to make that choice. The incentives help with the initial cost, at least for a couple more months.
But then it comes down to gas is cheaper than electricity. If electricity is twice the cost per unit of energy, is it really sufficient for the heat pump to be twice as efficient? How can I rationalize the choice that is not only more expensive to install but more expensive to run?
And the answer is not sinking yet more money into also doing solar. My house is mostly shaded, and I’m not killing treees just to make this mess work together
Definitely part of the answer needs to be adjusting subsidies to bring the cost of electricity per unit of energy closer to the cost of gas, or maybe incorporating. The externalized costs would actually be sufficient
Well the whole point of a heat pump is that they have a COP (coefficient of performance) of about 2-4. Meaning that for every unit of energy u put in they have an effective heating/cooling capacity of 2-4 units of energy. They have an effective efficient of greater than 100% whereas a gas can only every reach a max of 100%.
At ideal conditions. As the temperature difference is greater, the efficiency goes down. So right when you need heat the most, gas is still at 90+% efficiency while heat pumps are closer to or under 200%.
Then you have to look at capacity. It can be expensive sizing for the greater temp differences when it usually isn’t. If you have a heat pump that can be 400% efficient, do you really want to pay for quadruple the capacity so that even when it’s at 100% efficiency it still puts out enough heat? No one can afford that
I’m an educator, and I’m forbidden from taking about fracking at work ( ° ͜ʖ °)
For the record, the current technology we have to capture renewable energy is not capable of supporting the civilization we have built compared to how efficient oil and natural gas are as energy-dense molecules. Only very recently has battery technology come far enough to make it worth it to move a semi-truck any reasonable distance, but cargo ships are still going to be difficult to replace and account for a huge amount of pollution, as well as commerce we depend on. So it’s not a “slightly better profit margin”, as it would range from a literal decimation of society to straight up impossible to cut out all fossil fuels today.
But we should have started a global, methodical transition over 40 years ago, and the free market control over government and media has systematically prevented that. And THAT is unacceptable.
I’ll agree with we should have started 40 years ago. We knew we should have and we did have sufficient technology to take other paths.
But I’ll disagree on whether we have the technology now. There was a recent post on Lemmy that in a sunny place like Las Vegas, you could replace 97% of energy generation with renewables and batteries. Cheaper. Not just that you can but that it’s cheaper. We have the technology.
The challenge is always to bring the cost down. We do have technology to create aviation fuel from green sources. We do have several options for fueling shipping that we know how to do. Even if we’re just making ammonia or hydrogen or green diesel, that is a huge step forward that we have the technology for. The problem is we don’t yet have a compelling economic case to (especially since climate change is externalized, not counted as a cost), nor anyone with the fortitude to make it so
cargo ships are still going to be difficult to replace
Nuclear.
I agree that would be more environmentally friendly, but now you also need to train and employ how many nuclear experts to keep thousands of ships running safely? And this tech has existed for a while. If this was cheaper to do, I expect they would have already done it.
It’s not cheaper because it’s not heavily subsidised lie oil. Had it been and SMRs would be further along the line and well within the realm of feasibility.
Yeah, to flip the switch now, all at once would be incredibly disruptive. But we knew this was going to happen over 40 years ago. Shit, all elected officials in the US had to do was follow the plan that Jimmy Carter laid out.
I also seriously question the numbers saying that tidal, solar, and wind power can’t provide enough to sustain the status quo. Yeah, powering a ship across the ocean can be hard… But you also have an essentially unlimited supply of wind and tidal power for a ship out on the ocean and quite a bit of solar power although it’s not as reliable.
I mean it may take a little bit longer for the overall journey but you could pause and just bob up and down in the ocean to recharge the batteries in a cargo ship or move the slower speed while you recharge. That’s not even exploring options like hybrid sail / battery powered ships
Right, but that visible ball isn’t reliable. You have no idea when it’s going to work or not.
If anyone cares, sunset is at 9:04 PM today.
It works all the fucking time. The sun doesn’t turn off. You attach batteries to the solar panels that way if there are clouds you can just use what’s in the batteries and if it’s a sunny day and you don’t need the extra energy you store it in the batteries until you do. And if it’s really cloudy in your area… Get a windmill.
That was the joke. We know precisely down to the second when the sun will be shining. We’ve been able to calculate that for over a century at this point.
“Oh, what about storms and clouds!?!”
Let me introduce those naysayers to the national energy grids. My house can get electricty from a producer thousands of miles away, so even if clouds are covering my whole state, we’re still getting power from sunny areas.
Terrible “externalities” for humanity are what enables “profit” for capital.
Don’t worry! Texas just passed a law allowing reclaimed fracking water to irrigate crops. That way everyone can get cancer!
Them girls look scared shitless at the end of that.
is this not common knowledge?
Kinda? I mean you would think so but they spend millions on propaganda.
It’s common sense, but obfuscated by those still spending millions to deny climate change while the world literally burns around us. Gaslighting is a hell of a propaganda technique.
Gaslighting is old-hat man.
Nowadays it’s kitchen-faucet-lighting.
also funding things like “curbing your carbon footprint companies”, so these pollutors dont need to lower thier emissions. seen them alot as a promotion in channels talking about nature, animals etc. the channel owners were cognizant enough to stop promoting it, once those companies have been called out as backed by OIL industry.
Yes, this is a problem much better solved on an institutional scale best served by government regulations, not by individuals doing their part. These companies you mention attempt to shift the burden of responsibility onto those with the least power to affect any real change. It’s diabolical.
I was talking to a coworker at my last job about how fracking introduces dangerous chemical into the water supply, and a random guy we never talk to came up and said “OH YOU’RE WRONG ABOUT FRACKING” like his job depended on it… we were not at all related to fracking
yea, but cancer = more medical bills. that’s just a bonus add-on to the oil profits
you see, it raises the GDP!!!
I have experienced earthquakes. In Kansas City, Missouri. One had an epicenter near Stillwater, Oklahoma.
That’s not supposed to happen.
The things you’re saying are supposed to be suppressed
I’m sorry, did anyone think fracking was safe?
Lots of people have tried to convince us it’s safe. Those are the people making money from fracking.
$it’s $completely $ fine$ everyone$ should $ frack.
Using fracking if you could have electric cars shows that it is all about spoiling ground water.
This is the preparation for selling water to everybody.
I can’t wait until we have to pay for breathable air.
Why do you think Musk wants to colonise Mars?
Hanlon’s razor
Why am I not fracking surprised.
Oh frack off…
You’re not my fracking mom you can’t tell me what to do! Stomps off…MOM SOMEONE IS IMPERSONATING YOU ONLINE.
It’s alright sweetie. A covert special ops has been dispatched to take them out.
Everyone not being paid to do it would tell you it’s a bad idea. They break rocks in the substrata with no idea of how it will go or what effects it might have. Awuafers have been poisoned with natural gas, water tables have been ruined and misdirected. When the well is no longer profitable, they “cap” it and move on to greener pastures, letting the remaining gas bleed off into the environment unchecked. There are dozens of problems with fracking, but gas go boom so…
Yes yes, but think of the shareholder profits. Thats what really matters here, not these childish fantasies about the horrible nature of frakking and the fact that it makes water flammable! /s
Is this “fracking”?
“Fracking (also known as hydraulic fracturing, fracing, hydrofracturing, or hydrofracking) is a well stimulation technique involving the fracturing of formations in bedrock by a pressurized liquid.”
Well since it says “fracking” then that means it is fracking
It’s either that… Or maybe they’re talking about getting freaky on Battlestar Gallactica? It’s hard to tell.
Thank you.
Wanted to fetch the description of the thing…
I just hope I got it right 😅
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Even longer than that.
But gas means money, so fuck anyone and everything else that might get in the way.
And earthquakes
Also literal fire for tap water
And Mongolian death worms.
Good luck finding land that is not near fracking sites. It’s been done basically everywhere, right?
yes and no. You would like to do it in relatively cheap and less populated area, and where cracks are a bit closer to surface (you do not want to drill a lot, as that would not be economically beneficial)
There isn’t gas or oil everywhere.
And still there’s politicians out there saying things like “I will not ban fracking. I did not as vice president. In fact, I cast the tie-breaking vote to open up more fracking leases”. Playing with people’s lives just to make a buck. Really shows they’re not beholden to the people but to the owning class.
Adding more data to a conclusion every reasonable person knows has been happening for far too long.
If someone “knew” before we had data, that’s not my definition of reasonable.
That is why they said “adding more data.” We already know tons of other bad shit about it, now we know an additional bad thing.
