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Excerpted from

Dubious Path to a Green Future

Originally published on 6/28/10

Many energy experts contend natural gas is the ideal fuel as the world makes the transition to renewable energy. But since much of that gas will come from underground shale, potentially at high environmental cost, it would be far better to skip the natural gas phase and move straight to massive deployment of solar and wind power.

by Daniel B. Botkin

For several years, many voices, including Texas energy baron T. Boone Pickens, have been touting natural gas as the best energy source to form a bridge between the current fossil-fuel economy and a renewable energy future. Proponents contend that not only is natural gas a cleaner-burning fuel than coal, producing lower greenhouse gas emissions, but that reserves of natural gas are far greater than previously believed because of vast reserves trapped throughout the U.S — and around the world — in huge underground formations of shale.

. . . . .

But what is the reality behind the optimistic claims for shale gas? The U.S. Geological Survey lists natural gas “reserves” — the amount believed to be in the ground — in four categories: readily available with current technologies, which accounts for only 1 percent of the known natural gas in U.S. territorial limits; technically recoverable (5 percent); marginal targets for accelerated technology (6 percent); and unknown but probable (84 percent). Shale gas shares the fourth category with coal gas and methyl hydrates. The latter are a kind of water ice with methane embedded in it and occur only where it is very cold, in Arctic permafrost and below 3,000 feet in the oceans.

In researching how best to make the transition to the green energy future, one of the first calculations I made was to find out how long the natural gas in each of the four categories would last if we obtained it independently — that is, only from U.S. territory. I was shocked by the result: Just using our 2006 rates of use of natural gas consumption — not including any major transition to fueling our cars and trucks — the “readily available” gas within the United States would be exhausted in just one year. That, plus what is called “technically recoverable” gas, would be gone in less than a decade. What is termed “unknown but probable” would last about a century.

This means that any significant increase in our consumption of natural gas will have to come from the “unknown but probable” reserves, much of which will be from formations of shale, a sedimentary rock formed from muds in which bacteria released methane. Most of this gas is so deep underground or otherwise not very accessible that nobody is really sure that we can get at a lot of it, or of how high an environmental price we must pay to retrieve it.

Read entire piece at e360.yale.edu

See also

Analyst: Shale gas may be next bubble to burst

Eric Fox:  What could go wrong with shale plays

Must-read:  How neutral is the potential gas committee?

Remember this when you hear those slick commercials touting decades worth of natural gas from tight shales

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From the desk of T. Boone Pickens

Army:

What a couple of weeks it’s been and I have lots to report and something very important to ask.

There’s a new Natural Gas Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives which is headed by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) and Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK). The more than 40 bi-partisan members of the caucus held a major hearing on Capitol Hill. The Natural Gas Caucus talked about how the development of America’s natural gas resources will help set America on a path to energy independence and create millions of new jobs. It was a great event and an important message to get out there.

But here’s the really important part.

We’ve got just under 100 cosponsors of the NAT GAS Act (H.R. 1835) in the House—and that’s great—but I think we can educate more Members of Congress, build on that support and do a lot more.

Click here to email your Member of Congress and ask them to become a cosponsor of the NAT GAS Act.

I think we can get at least another 20+ cosponsors in the coming weeks so I’m calling on every member of the Army to reach out to their Member of Congress right now so that we can get to at least 120 sponsors by November 20th. I’m calling it 120 by 11-20.

I’m going to be working the phones and I need you to as well. Army, we can get this done and show Congress that it’s time to end our dependence on foreign oil.

Click here to email your Member of Congress and ask them to become a cosponsor of the NAT GAS Act.

Stay tuned because we’re going to post regular updates about our progress and highlight those members who are working to get us off foreign oil.

Let’s keep the pressure on!

– Boone

P.S. We recently ran an ad in the news publications which cover Capitol Hill. Click here to view the short video we did about this really unique ad. It’s getting people’s attention.

Oh, T Boone-Doggle:
Ruined lives and ruined land
What do you not understand?

To T Boone-Doggle’s “Army”: Y’know, the thing about an army is that it’s composed of foot soldiers who do what they’re told; they’re generally not told the real reason for what they’re doing, and they’re expendable.   Do you know what it is he’s not telling you?  What he really has you fighting for?  We do:  through that legislation he’s shilling, T Boone-Doggle wants to force the US taxpayer to foot the massive bill for a nationwide natural gas delivery infrastructure (think natural gas filling stations on every corner) and the demand for the resource that will result.  If you keep listening to his schtick,  and he succeeds,  and he doesn’t die first of decrepitude, your labors will make him rich, AGAIN – at your expense, mine, and this country’s, in every way.

That’s why he’s called T Boone-Doggle.   Don’t fall for it anymore.

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Why the softball approach to T Boone Pickens?  He used you. And you’ve got to keep abreast with your viewers, many of whom already know the following:

A) His only agenda is his own profit – but he’s pretty damn slick at making it look otherwise, isn’t he?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70HFEHB6dag

B) The “Energy Plan” is his ticket to increasing demand for a dirty fuel that ruins lives everywhere it’s extracted, and in fact will NOT be used for energy independence.  A great deal of it is slated for export.  I’m talking about natural gas, or as we like to call it, UN-natural shale gas.   The process of hydraulic fracturing, which pollutes vast amounts of precious water across the nation and leaves dead zones and sick  people in its wake, is used to get natural gas out of tight shales.   We need clean water, clean air, healthy cropland and healthy people much more than we need a few years’ worth of a dirty hydrocarbon fuel.

Want to know more?  Visit:
http://www.un-naturalgas.org
http://un-naturalgas.org/weblog/?cat=107

http://otegony.com/t-boone-pickens
http://www.journeyoftheforsaken.com/fracpage.htm
http://www.journeyoftheforsaken.com/whatyouneedtoknow.htm
http://www.journeyoftheforsaken.com/consortiumofthefraced.htm
http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/home.php
http://www.earthworksaction.org/oil_and_gas.cfm

THIS is the story you should be telling.  Women across the country will thank you.

As will I.
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2) Add or substitute your own URL or your favorite URLS (can you imagine, 50 URLs a day?*)

3) Go to the e-mail page for The View:
http://abc.go.com/daytime/theview/ask

4) Paste your e-mail into the window and send it.

It would be great if we could get a hundred e-mails in to them in the next couple of weeks – enough for them to notice, anyway – a counter-offensive to industry efforts to increase demand for un-natural shale gas.  The marketplace rules:  less demand, less pressure on us and our homes, water, air, politicians, regulating agencies…

*With apologies to Arlo:

"And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a
study in black and white of my fingerprints.  And the only reason I'm
singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar
situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a
situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into
the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, WE DON'T WANT YOUR
STINKIN' UN-NATURAL SHALE GAS."  And walk out.  You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him.  And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
organization.  And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said
fifty people a day walking in singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out.  And friends, they may think it's a movement.

"And that's what it is , the Anti-Shale-Gas Anti-Massacre Movement, and
all you got to do to join is ... put your URL on the end and e-mail it."

So, ya gotta wonder:  what’s he really up to with pushing “The Energy Plan”?  – otherwise known as The Pickens Plan, and which, by the way, includes more and more and more not-so-very-much- “cleaner-burning”  un-natural shale gas.

Are you still feeling OK?  Then consider how Pickens titled the link to the video below on his site (take our word for it; don’t go there, go here instead: http://txsharon.blogspot.com/2009/03/take-action-tboone-pickens-gets-free.html):  “Boone Campaigns For Women.”  (Pickens, you’re smarmy and pathetic.)  When in fact, he’s campaigning for his own interests and trying to sell it TO and THROUGH women, not FOR them.

And how come some higher-up tells Barbara Walters to “be nice to him”? Ahem.   And what on earth got into Whoopi?  Blech.

OK, you look chartreuse enough; you don’t have to drink the frack water.  Yet.

Here’s the link to The View’s e-mail URL:

Let them know that any energy plan that T Boone Pickens is shilling is a pig in a poke.  We don’t want his un-natural shale gas.  And we’re not buying his wind-power-as-an-excuse-for-water-theft either.