Frack Off

American CO2 emissions are down 14% since 2008 and its emissions per capita are down to levels last seen in the 1960s.

Maybe you’re struggling with how much you ought to give a damn about this. I’m guessing that for the last decade or two you’ve tended to tune out whenever the subject came up. Well, it’s time to tune back in. If CO2 is the enemy, the tide has now turned. This is not the end of the struggle, or even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning!

To appreciate just how significant this is for your average climate change doom-monger, imagine how a devout Christian would feel to see Jesus returning on his cloud. And then add Mary, Joseph and all the saints.

Or, it’s Friday night and all the dopey sumo wannabes are waddling to the checkout at Walmart’s so as not to be late for the Springer show that night.   And wham, Elvis walks in. And it’s really him back from the alien abduction. And he’s looking great. And he gives an impromptu concert. Imagine the slack-jawed wonder that would greet the return of the King.

So after Bush rejected Kyoto, after decades of battling indifference, of battling big oil, of resisting consumerism, of mounting panic and despair at the inexorable rise in CO2,  after decades railing  against an indifferent world.  At last! CO2 emissions have not just been stabilized in the world’s largest economy, they are in freefall!

Wow, let’s crack open the herbal tea and maybe engage in some safe sex, but not too loud though ‘cos Mummy’s in the next room.

Of course, the weird thing is that, if anything, the tree huggers seem even more in need of their medication than usual. 

What they’ve discovered is that there is one thing worse than the impending global catastrophe of their warmist nightmares. And that is there being no impending global catastrophe.

All those petitions and the awareness building, all those international conferences, all those meetings of heads of state, all those targets and plans, Cap and Trade with its trillion dollar price tag, the vast bureaucratic system that just might slow down the growth in CO2 emissions by 2050 or 2100 if we all move into rabbit hutches and drive bubble cars.

All totally ineffective. All now totally pointless.

In the end the solution came from the mind of one smart man with an eye to turning a buck. George Mitchell discovered a way of accessing gas from shales (where most of it is) by combining the existing technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Just how much gas has been made available by this technology is truly astonishing. The Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania alone has reserves of 500 Trillion cubic feet (about 20 years US consumption).

As a result of this vast new supply, US gas prices have collapsed from $8 to $3 a unit since 2008.

The results are nothing short of a game changer. As Matt Ridley, the Rational Optimist, has it:

In America, shale gas now supports a million jobs, produces nearly $50 billion in tax revenue and halves the cost of energy for businesses and people. It has revived manufacturing industry, taken market share from coal, cut energy imports and promises to revolutionise transport, as buses and trucks shift to using cheaper, cleaner methane instead of petrol.

And best of all, from the point of view of the global warming Casandras, is that burning gas produces about half as much CO2 for each KW of electricity produced.

Also the 14% drop in CO2 emissions, so far, is no blip. There is enough shale gas in the ground to meet global demand for more than 200 years.

Most of the fall in US CO2 emissions has been the result of the shift from coal to gas in electricity generation. This is happening because generating juice from gas costs only around half as much as it does from coal. Since 2008 the use of coal has fallen by a quarter, so most of the reduction in emissions is still to come as uneconomic coal is almost entirely phased out over the next 20 or 30 years.

And that’s just America. China, number one in CO2 production as in many other fields, is responsible for almost a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions. The Chinese currently rely on heavily polluting coal fired stations because they pay four times as much as the Americans do for their gas. So enormous cuts in Chinese CO2 emissions are on the cards when the Middle Kingdom joins in this energy revolution.

Bong. Bong. Bong.  

Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for renewable energy.

Ten years ago the future energy supply situation looked bleak. Gas seemed likely to run out first and oil supplies would soon follow. The least bad scenario expected was severe economic problems caused by sharply increased energy costs which are, after all,  the basic input to all economic output.

The only people with a smile on their faces were the Greens who foresaw two particularly attractive possibilities.

First, rising energy prices would at last make renewable energy economic and even held out the distant prospect of carbon free economies to the most devout of believers.

Second, and even more emotionally satisfying, was the necessity for everybody to suffer. They could pretend that they thought it was regrettable, but there is a very strong pseudo-religious streak in tree-huggers which relished all the self-flagellation involved in saving the planet.

Now at a stroke their material and emotional vested interests are under dire threat and they are flailing around like the replicant, Pris, in Blade Runner after she gets ventilated by Harrison Ford.

So what's wrong with shale gas according to these panicked fear-mongers?

·        They use “chemicals” that pollute ground water!

Sorry, not all “chemicals” are bad and those used in fracking can be found under the kitchen sink in every house.

And there are as yet no verified cases of pollution of ground water after more than 25,000 fracks

·        Gas is escaping and flaring off in Roman candles across Pennsylvania.

Only in your dreams and fictional documentaries like “Gas Land”

·        People are getting sick from the drilling

No verified cases.

·        Fracking causes “earthquakes”!

Sorry, 2.3 on the Richter scale is no more an “earthquake” than you farting in the bath tub causes a tsunami.

·        People are making lots of money from it!

True, numerous verified instances. And your point is?

Shale gas is now a vast industry in America, and it will develop further there and expand across the world. No such industry takes place at no cost to the environment. Oil drilling causes spills, hydroelectric dams cause real earthquakes and disrupt fish migration, wind turbines kill thousands of “protected” birds etc….

But fracking is less environmentally intrusive than other energy producing industries and holds out the prospect of abundant, cheap, clean low carbon energy to power our economies for the foreseeable future.

This gas revolution is fantastic news and unstoppable.

On the other hand, the Frankenstein monster of renewable power is doomed. His miserable life will last only as long as we crank up the voltage in terms of the subsidies that our bankrupt governments pour into it. 

And in desperately fighting to strangle shale gas at birth, Big Green finds itself in an unholy alliance with Russia, Iran, Big Nuclear, Big Coal and the dictatorships of OPEC.

The road to hell is truly paved with good intentions.