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Post by Infinite Ego on Oct 3, 2012 15:34:40 GMT -5
I do a lot of hiking from Spring through Fall and today I ran into a gas company geologist searching for limestone in my favorite forest. This place is the premiere spot in central NY (like a miniature Adirondacks) Limestone and fracking en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturingHe's yammering along and my brain starts to overload and the phrase "Hulk Smash!" enters my mind. I gave him a map and explained how to most quickly exit the forest  |
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Post by chromedinette on Oct 4, 2012 6:07:32 GMT -5
Southwestern Pa also seems to be fracking central. I live in the actual city of Pittsburgh, so it hasn't come that near me, yet.
The surrounding counties are full of wells, though. I have friends and family in the two counties between where I am and WV, and they are not crazy about the drilling.
Anytime I have to go out to some far flung town for work, I am shocked by the amount of heavy truck traffic on roads that were clearly never meant for it. This, combined with the fact that our current Governor and State House seem to have little interest in taxing drilling, points to some infrastructure problems in the next decade, to say nothing of what the environmental effects might be. There have already been cases of peoples water wells being destroyed, though the gas companies are fighting tooth and nail to deny any claims.
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Post by chromedinette on Oct 4, 2012 6:11:57 GMT -5
Also, there is a Pittsburgh City Councilman proposing drilling in the city. The council actually passed a drilling ban not too long ago, but the baby mayor(look up Luke Ravenstahl) wouldn't sign it.
Pittsburgh has a ton of green space in the city. A lot of it is parks and cemeteries, but some of it is private property. I can not imagine what it would be like if the drillers were actually let in here. When a gas well is first drilled, it has to go through some sort of burn-off procedure whre a flame shoots out of the well for some period of time. It is very loud and bright. I may set get to see what HL Mencken called "hell with the lid off."
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Post by brucestevens on Oct 4, 2012 13:36:29 GMT -5
Fracking is a big topic in NC. I am not a geologist, but it seems blasting high pressure water and chemicals towards the water table is not a great plan. There was an interesting This American Life about this: www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/440/game-changerWhen Romney talked about "drilling on public land" last night it made me shudder. I, for one, do not want an oil well in my park. Bruce |
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Post by davidmgt on Oct 4, 2012 19:17:27 GMT -5
South Texas as well - They have already made several messes, however given the general mess that is ths US/Mexico border the shenanigans have gone largely unnoticed.
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Post by Infinite Ego on Oct 4, 2012 21:18:31 GMT -5
South Texas as well - They have already made several messes, however given the general mess that is ths US/Mexico border the shenanigans have gone largely unnoticed. Unnoticed because empire just doesn't give two shits what happens to the masses at this point. |
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Post by aliensporebomb on Oct 4, 2012 22:48:41 GMT -5
South Texas as well - They have already made several messes, however given the general mess that is ths US/Mexico border the shenanigans have gone largely unnoticed. Unnoticed because empire just doesn't give two shits what happens to the masses at this point. Basically that's it. I foresee the eventual "Oh, we didn't see this was really bad for people and the wildlife and the forest, we were just trying to create jobs". UGH! |
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Post by Infinite Ego on Oct 5, 2012 7:15:40 GMT -5
In the next twenty years we're looking at a mass internment of millions out in the middle of nowhere. The state will use climate change / rising water levels to round up millions of down and outers / marginal types and transfer them to containment camps. Think about it: the climate has obviously gone haywire and the state is apathetic at best ... doing nothing. Why? It is a golden opportunity. This is not a wild-eyed paranoid conspiracy theory. It is simply a fact that less than half the population has a job and most who work make so little that the tax base is crumbling while state expenses keep going up (e.g., a trillion per year for the DoD).... Wars were used in the past to ground up young men by the hundreds of thousands but since Vietnam wars just don't accomplish the goal of wiping out surplus males (the reason they keep sending guys back over for multiple tours in contrast to earlier eras where you did one and were done). The prison population has exploded since 1980 and we currently have nearly 8 million people ensnared in the criminal justice system (including 2 million behind bars). That's what is called a concentration camp system. The population is now standing at 320 million and growing so the state will have to find a solution to getting rid of surplus population that goes beyond the DoD and prison. College used to function as a cooling out buffer between high school and employment but that is failing to accomplish its goal the way it did in the postwar period. Options: (A) social democratic revolution but the rich take the hit (B) we keep going the way we're going and millions will be living like Palestinian refugees in the west and midwest This scenario could happen fast. Scientists are amazed at how fast the polar ice cap is melting off (much faster than models had predicted) and we have seen total climate reversals in history that took only 10 years to complete. The transition from the last Ice Age to the current Holocene took about a decade.  |
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Post by chrissh on Oct 5, 2012 8:21:14 GMT -5
PA has its mining history, and enough living generations still romanticize those hardships as noble sacrifice, encultured serf mentality. I fear the repercussions of fracking are of no concern to them. Pittsburgh spent so long reinventing itself so nicely, be a shame for it to crumble under soot and catacombs again. It's not necessarily paranoid rambling unless you're grasping at straws to blame Jewish media, bizarre telecommunications devices and the Illuminati for your personal irritations. Anyway, from years ago: www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/deadkennedys/kinkysexmakestheworldgoround.html |
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Post by aliensporebomb on Oct 5, 2012 9:09:29 GMT -5
Well, the whole privatization of the prison system (among other things) in this country has somehow turned incarcerating people as a profit center which is disturbing and twisted but that's how it seems to be going.
There was a chart going around on facebook that showed that raising a kid and sending him to college profited people less than raising a kid and sending them to a jail somewhere.
Ridiculous but I can see it happening.
And I can see 320 million angry people at some point rising up. You piss on people too long and they get angry about it.
But we're running out of dinosaur juice and they will get it any way they can because nobody wants to invest too much in doing anything other than burning fossil fuels because THINKING anything other than the short term way would be hard.
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Post by Infinite Ego on Oct 5, 2012 9:20:44 GMT -5
The US has a long history of taming the angered rabble and turning their anger against their own interests. Millions will gladly exchange material well-being for symbolic and emotional compensation. Look at all the support to destroy public jobs, hatred against teachers, etc. The 1% have drained nearly 45 trillion dollars out of America but we want to beat down Big Bird and unions.
You live in a fascist nation.
Read Sheldon Wolin's Democracy Inc. for all you need to know.
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Post by Infinite Ego on Oct 5, 2012 13:37:00 GMT -5
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Post by jahloon on Oct 7, 2012 16:47:59 GMT -5
I'm here in the North West of England, no earthquakes or geographic activity, no fault plates to worry about etc. Fracking in the North sea has given us two quakes this year, and I can tell you, ornaments moved on my mantelpiece.
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Post by Infinite Ego on Oct 7, 2012 18:06:30 GMT -5
I saw another geologist at the same park today
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Post by chrissh on Oct 7, 2012 23:32:08 GMT -5
I saw another geologist at the same park today Don't you just hate that? Sometime I'll tell you about how I almost became a little something that rhymes with schmeco-schmerrorist as a kid. |
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