Natural Gas Drilling

Natural gas deposits under the Earth have a huge supply of energy that we have yet to get. Natural Gas under New York State and other areas has been debated on whether drilling it get the gas is worth it or not. All of this gas could mean tons and tons of money and resources for the state of New York. This could overall boosts the United States economy. It produces more jobs and can be sold at a high expense due to its declining availability elsewhere. While many people would like to drill many people debate saying it is unsafe and can have many problems. They say the water used in the drilling could become polluted and run back into peoples drinking water. I still believe drilling should be done. It could greatly help our economy and save our dependence on OPEC countries.

1.) People do not want us to drill due to the fact that there is a chance that we may pollute our drinking water and pollute the surrounding environment. If this happens people and even animals may become extremely sick.

2.) People want us to drill because of the huge amount of money and energy that is located underground. People do not have an exact idea of how much gas is exactly underground, so there may be a lot more than predicted which could greatly help the economy.

With todays technology you think we would be able to make sure no contamination would be possible. Are anti drilling groups just saying this as an excuse or are we really not sure how to make sure we don't pollute?

Are their more anti drilling groups or pro drilling groups? Why can't people just go to the government and say hey we have a lot of natural gas that could be towards your benefit. I feel as if drilling will never occur without something like this happening,

The last article we read spoke about peak oil. Where the energy given off by oil is surpassed by the amount of energy we are using it for. While America may not exactly be in peak oil stage yet, Cuba is one country that has passed that stage a long time ago. Cuba does not have much oil on their land so they had to have it imported. They use to import it from the Soviet Union but once they had collapsed they had very little oil to work with. They needed to make a change or they would be in big trouble. Since the 1990's Cuba has changed their ways of living and is living a life that does not consume so much oil. Although Cuba is one of the poorest countries they have a very good reputation for medicine and healthcare. All of their doctors make house visits with lessens the amount of sources used to go to the hospital. But on a side note more people go to the hospital. So the doctor would move around more to visit all of the patients. I do not think this makes much sense but its working for them I guess. Cuba also has a good education system in which they attend school for 12 years and learn skills such as car repair, farming and other self reliant skills. Most of Cuba's homes are much smaller than the ones located in the United States meaning it needs less energy to fuel the homes. So this all around leads to a lot less energy than the United States.

Cuba has learned to live successfully with very little oil. This is something we need to do since the time will come when we have no oil at all.

Answer these questions.

1.) Cuba handled the collapse of the Soviet Union very well. They made sure everyone was able to use less oil by educating them on certain skills. They also upgraded their public transportation to save oil and share a ride. The "camel" can hold up to three hundred people at one time, meaning very efficient public transportation. Since smaller houses are used in Cuba they need less energy to fuel all of the houses. Overall the Cubans took the collapse of the Soviet Union as a way to reform.

2.) I feel as if re localization is an effective way of reducing energy use. It makes sure money stays in the community and more local business is established. While this is good, it also prevents markets from outside the community. Which is not good for global markets between the United States and other countries.

Answers

1.) If Cuba can make the big change why can we not begin to even consider a change? Could we use ideas from Cuba's reform?

2.) How exactly would a government enforce regulations on oil? I foresee a big crime ring in the future if oil has to be used sparingly. I cannot see us without oil at all.

Week 3 #2

The first article talks about the first major of oil as a valuable resource. It then goes to talk about oil production in a bell curves. Where it will rise level off and then go back down. This means at some point in time we will use more energy than we have left in the oil. So the energy of oil will then peak. People claimed that oil had peaked in the United States during the 1970's. But then meetings during the 1990's discussed and were confident that oil would peak during 2010. While to this day this seems pretty accurate, new oil fields and reserves were never accounted for. This could mean more time for us to find new alternatives, but if not now, eventually we will have a peak.

The next article is about agriculture in the United States. The article begins to say about how much our soil and water are all beginning to lose their quality over the years. Growth is only possible due to genetic splicing of plants, which allow less nutrients to be needed for full growth. While this does make it cheaper and we are able to produce more food it still may not be enough. Many fossil fuels are used in someways to produce food. With fossil fuels declining, the price of food will slowly rise. With many families not able to afford food for everyone in their family, when the prices rise, even more will be in the same situation. We must make major changes in our agricultural system; we must start using more renewable resources and we must make our agriculture more efficient. If these steps are not taken and we continue with our ways we will be in hole that may be too deep to climb out of.

Answer the questions

1.) Fossil fuels power basically all of the major farm equipment used in agriculture. The loss of fossil fuels would result in the loss of our machinery in farming. While we could use manual labor, we would not be as fast nor as efficient. If we lose fossil fuels our agricultural system would most likely collapse.

2.) North Korea's agricultural system was one based on oil as well. When oil shortages were had in North Korea their agriculture system was hurt bad leaving food shortages all over the country. We have the same system in the United States and we should begin to prepare in case oil does run out. This way we will not have food shortages. We need to start working this out now.

Questions

1.) I dont understand why people make a big deal about the poor soil? While poor soil is not good we are using ways to make it efficient and create more food with less nutrients.

2.) Did oil production peak this year like estimated? Or do you think we still have more time.

Cars

To us in todays era cars are completely common. Just about everyone has one rich or poor. In the past it use to be only available to the upper class. Soon after affordable streetcars were made by the man Henry Ford. These Model T's were cheaper than other cars at the time because he found a way to make them on an assembly line, lowering the price of the already low price. Once these cars began to sell rapidly it left public transit with little usage. Soon the government was giving away loans and grants towards highways because they saw the rising popularity of passenger cars. Many farms became mechanized, witch ultimately lead to the failure of most farms. The Great Depression made it a hard time to build roads or highways since of the enormous cost and the state of the economy. After World War 2 America was able to rebuild and make things new such as roads, highways and water systems. This all lead to an overall stronger economy which helped the passenger car succeed even more. Now that more roads and highways were being created it allowed for more efficient travel by the people. Now one could not only get around the city, but could also leave the city and go out to a farm. All of this is all based of oil. Without oil none of this could have ever happened. Cars would not be a possibility, the modern convenience we have today would not exist. Oil has greatly shaped and effected our lives today.

Answer the following questions.

1.) How did the car/tractor shape Americas culture and Americans lifestyle?

Cars allowed the person to move faster and easier from point a to point b. After major roads and highways were set up people were traveling not only around the city but out of the city into the suburbs. Now not only people but items being shipped could arrive faster which helped boost our economy. With the invention of the tractor most common private farms were put out of business and bought by bigger industrial farms. The industrialization of farming was a good thing, but most of the small private farms could not afford it.

2.) How did energy contribute to the post WWII housing boom and suburban development?

Since cars were now on the rise we needed road to travel on. To help make these roads we needed workers. These people were hired and helped to make roads which in effect boosted our economy putting more jobs and more money out there. When these roads were completed people were able to drive out of the city into the suburbs, where people began to build houses. This is known as the rise in Suburbia.

Questions to answer.

1.) Henry Fords Model T was a cheap production car affordable to everyone. Did he make any other cars that were more high class?

2.) Cars break down over time and with so many new cars in the economy this was bound to happen. Were private mechanics around during the era of cars or were they only serviceable by the dealer? If mechanics were around this would lead to a plethora of jobs everywhere, if the people understand how it actually worked. With no insurance at this time the payment would need to be straight cash. Did this have any boost in the economy?

3.) Most public transportation was controlled by the government. Did the government do anything to stop progression on the new cars, or did they sit back and watch the public transportation slowly fail?

In 1865 William Jevons began to see that people would begin to use more and more natural resources. He eventually concluded that the increased efficiency would eventually lead to having no more of a particular natural resource. As innovations became more and more common more natural resources would be used, such as coal. Since coal began to become very popular in many machines that were available to the normal everyday people, the demand for coal got greater, maybe even too great. He sees this as a huge threat to the economy as one day no more coal will be available. Which today is still happening, the shortage of oil lead to increase gas prices which was in affect of our economy beginning to fail.

Basically this reading is saying that our economy always needs to move forward. If do we not make forward progression our economy will crash and fail. If we wanted an economy that would hover in one place like a helicopter, we would need to greatly change many things about our economy, which could takes years.

Questions

1.) Jevons was more worried about having the economy fail due to the growing popularity of coal. Since many innovations were beginning to use coal he figured that the price of coal was going to rise. If most inventions and innovations were starting to use coal and the price was going to continue to rise, the price to obtain coal would be almost impossible. This would leave the economy in shambles as most of its utilities and inventions ran on coal. Not only would the normal everyday consumers find it hard to afford, the government and the country would eventually run out of money to but it.

2.) A plane is designed for forward motion whereas a helicopter is able to hover in one spot or move in any direction it would like to. The comparison between a plane and a helicopter basically means our economy cannot hover in one position. It is like a plane and must constantly move forward. If the plane tries to hover it will crash. Since our economy is always moving forward with some incline and declining motion we cannot make our economy a helicopter. In order to convert a plane into a helicopter it must first land and our economy is a never ending forward motion.

Is our economy going to completely crash?

If people since 1865 have seen this coming why have we not paid bigger attention towards depleting these natural resources?

Chapter 6 Transportation

Chapter six was mainly about the advancements made in the area of transportation and information. If you think about how we move around in the world today; cars, planes and ships; functioning as a society in the present time would be almost impossible. Going from one place to another would take much longer and transporting goods such as fossil fuels could be impossible. Basically all our forms of transportation require some sort of fossil fuel. So without our fossil fuels our transportation would not exist. Now with transportation today we can get from point A to point B very fast as well as transporting goods such as crude oil. Trains were the first form of transportation that really made transporting items more fast and efficient. Other forms of transport that helped were boats, cars and eventually planes. All of these helped make the country run more efficiently. Without fossil fuels our country would be horribly inefficient and many forms of transportation would not exist.

The chapter also talked about the advances in communication. We use to communicate by telegraph in the past to computers and cell phones today. In the past no one was really connected with each other; messages from across the country could take days to actually get there. Today we can instantly send a message to someone across the country and almost instantly get a message back. Just like our transportation our communication has gotten much more efficient, making our country as a whole more effective and more efficient.

Embourgeoisement- the acquisition or adoption of middle-class values and manners

Questions

1.) Better transportation for a country means getting from point A to point B faster. The faster ones transportation is the faster we are able to transport items around the country. Making it much more efficient. If one state runs out of a particular product we can get it from across the country in only a couple of hours. This will mean we will always be able to have what we need when we need it.

2.) Instead of using fossil fuels to travel somewheres to deliver a message a simple text from a cellphone can be used to deliver it instantly. This goes for everyone everywhere which drastically decreases the amount of energy used if we did not have such advanced methods of communication.

Many countries make biking a necessity to travel. If were so concerned why have we not put any regulations like that?

Many companies are now beginning to come out with electric cars. If eventually everyone uses electric cars, how much energy would we be using to charge the car? Would it eventually equal the same amount of energy used by driving a regular car?

Energies Chapter 5

Chapter five talks mainly about how we slowly began to transform all of our innovations and inventions towards fossil fuel use. The electricity we have today, the cars we have today, pretty much everything we have today is derived from fossil fuels. The whole chapter is mainly about things that are created by fossil fuels that are helped to create fossil fuels. We have grown accustomed to using the fossil fuels all of the time. If we run out of fossil fuels to use we will all be in big trouble.

Questions

1.) Turbines and nuclear reactors are mentioned within the chapter because they all rely on fossil fuels to run and produce more power. Without fossil fuels we would not have any of these power making plants.

2.) Over time the thermal efficiency of power systems decrease.

Pretty much everything we use is derived from fossil fuels, yet it does not seem like much is being done to expand our own reserves?

Acid Rain

More than half of China's energy comes from burning coal in coal plants. This causes a lot of nitrogen and sulfur to enter the air. All of these pollutants have recently caused a big acid rain problem in China. This acid rain has severely hurt some of China's forest. Not only was the forest being destroyed, many rivers and streams were beginning to show low pH levels, which if the drop in pH continues it could eventually harm everything in the rivers ecosystem. China knows that this is happening but with the need for energy they see no way for them to stop it. They need to burn coal since more than half of their energy comes from coal. It seems as if China is stuck in-between a rock and a hard place.

The New York article talks about rivers in the Adirondack Mountains that were showing signs of the effects from acid rain. This article was much harder to read than the China one. Many technical terms and abbreviations were used making it hard to comprehend all together. Basically it was the same as the article about China. Streams were tested showing low pH levels. They believe this is happening due to the effects of burning coal. The pollutants emitted by the coal eventually led to acid rain.

Questions

1.) The main contributors to acid rain are sulfur and nitrogen that are a result of burning fossil fuels. The nitrogen and sulfur are sent into the atmosphere being absorbed by the moisture. This eventually falls back down to Earth as acid rain.

2.) The lowest pH listed was 4.4.

3.) The major impacts of acid rain all deal with the environment it falls on. The trees, plants and animals can all be harmed or even killed by the acid rain.

4.) The main focus of acid rain research is to see how the plants are damaged by the rain.

5.) Regulations and strict monitoring of coal plants has been used to help improve the problem. But being realistic unless we find a way to make our fossil fuels burn cleaner a real solution will never occur.

Many people in the Adirondack live off well water, does the acid rain have any effects on the water used by the humans?

Since testing has been happening since 1982 is it possible for the animals and the ecosystem as a whole to gain a tolerance for the lower pH levels?

Since so much concern is being had with acid rain why are we not doing more to prevent it?

Vocabulary

Base- Cation- Positively charged ion.

Clean Coal

The article begins by stating how coal is used to power many power plants. Coal is then called the best of fuels and the worst of fuels. It is the best of fuels due to its high abundance and it is relatively inexpensive. It is the worst of fuel due to the high amount of carbon dioxide that it releases into the atmosphere. While America is currently emits the highest amount of CO2 in the world, China is rapidly approaching America and is expecting to bypass America by 2020. The article then goes on to talk about a way to burn the coal while piping all of the CO2 into the earth which would stop most of it from entering the atmosphere. It begins to talk about different power plants that are currently operating on coal. It shows exactly how they work, what they produce and how they deal with the waste product. Then it goes on to talk about states that are trying to get more of these plants established. People are still looking at the pros and the cons of such plants. People are the worried that we are going to be hurting the Earths surface rather than its atmosphere.

I believe the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) coal plant is a perfect solution to help make coal a more environmentally friendly resource. This would help reduce the CO2 emissions emitted from the coal which in turn would help reduce the effects of global warming around the world. One thing that concerns me is piping all of the CO2 into the earth. I feel that some sort of negative effect could eventually come out of this. I feel until we are able to find an alternative fuel source we must rely on what we have in abundance. By using these coal plants we can remain independent, make the best of what we have and still be environmentally friendly.

- If people see the new coal plants as such a savior towards the environment and positive in every way why do we not have much more of these types of plants around the country?

Water Resources and Natural Gas Production from the Marcellus Shale

This reading talks all about the Marcellus Shale. To everyday people the Marcellus Shale may not be a big deal, but to gas companies, scientists and many others, this area seems to be a gold mine of natural gas. To get to all this gas scientists must fracture the rock using water which is called a "hydrofrac". But then to receive the gas they must also remove the water which would then be contaminated and dirty. Citizens worry about where the dirty water would be disposed of worried for their health and the health of their land. Many states are cautious about releasing permits to drill due to the safety and concern of the environment and its people.

While many people continue to want to drill many people think its safer not to. This is an ongoing battle between the two groups.