Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts

1 October 2016

'Oil companies should pay for damage done by fracking'

The Blog


Considering the "firm link" between hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and earthquakes established by scientists, the oil companies responsible ought to pay for the damage.


Garrison Center director Thomas Knapp made this argument in a recent Medium post also found at the Garrison Center website.

Knapp asks "What’s the difference between a drunk driver who totals your car with his reckless, intoxicated driving, and an oil company that damages your house’s foundation with its reckless, earthquake-inducing fracking?" He writes that journalists have unfortunately "prostituted themselves out to the fracking industry, attempting to justify that kind of privilege and favoritism in the name of cheap energy and economic growth".

Hydraulic fracturing, a method of shale oil extraction, is subsidized by some governments as a type of alternative to conventional petroleum and natural gas. As well as causing earthquakes, scientists believe fracking is responsible for poisoning ground water and increasing cancer.

Fracking stands in contrast with cleaner renewable energy such as solar and future "bright green" energy industries that may arise with emerging technologies.

Link: Crony Capitalism and Political Privilege: Earthshaking. Literally.


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22 March 2016

Synthetic biology: here be dragons?

The Blog


Talking of the possibilities of synthetic biology (synbio), one blog post at Beliefnet speculates that dragons could exist someday, created and bred by scientists.


While many fans of Jurassic Park may be disappointed to know that dinosaur DNA is lost forever, weathered away by time, fans of high fantasy need not be so disappointed. The mythical serpents known as dragons are make-believe animals. Ironically, this would give geneticists and synthetic biologists free reign to write their genetic material almost from scratch, where they would simply lack enough information to create a dinosaur.

As the Beliefnet blog notes, "Dragons were invented by people in the first place. Inventing them again, in the great tapestry of their very DNA, is just an extension of what fantasy writers have already been doing for years and George R. R. Martin tries to accomplish using ink these days."

Of course, while it makes its point clear, this post is only semi-serious. It acknowledges that the the real benefit of synthetic biology will rest in the creation of renewable fuel sources and new unlimited varieties of oil, rather than these mythical serpents so cherished by fantasy readers.


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19 February 2016

Enernet would bring "liberation"

The Blog


While continuing to bet on synthetic biology as the eventual solution to energy inequality and crises, a Beliefnet post nevertheless embraces another vision called enernet.


Enernet is the idea of providing energy to everyone for free via a type of global power supply network constructed similarly to the internet. It would adhere to a similar philosophy to the internet too, making it almost a human right that everyone can be connected to this network of sharing and mutual survival.

The post is a partial review of a Lifeboat Foundation essay series. It suspects energy firms and powerful states would prefer to keep control of global energy supplies in the hands of a small few government and industrial elites, somehow, and the enernet might be no exception to this. Although such injustice would certainly be the result of some futuristic schemes to build a small number of giant thermonuclear fusion reactors like the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) to replace fossil fuel supplies, the post sees the enernet as something different.

To cut a long story short, because the enernet would be connected to widely distributed and decentralized sources of fuel, it should not result in political or strategic imbalances, inequalities and lopsided international relations of the kind currently seen. The post reports that the enernet sounds like a fair and balanced solution to the energy needs of disparate individuals, communities and isolated states across the world. The prediction given is that, if feasible, it would bring a form of technological "liberation" to the world's impoverished and voiceless populations similar to the internet.

A complete theory of techno-liberation to follow up from the development of the internet is explained in Catalyst, the main source of inspiration for this blog.


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26 January 2016

Govt, media ignore suffering in Yemen

The Blog


Government and media in Britain are too focused on the Syrian Civil War to notice the greater scale of the suffering in Yemen.


In fact, as Steve Topple writes in an opinion piece at Common Space, the UK has even taken sides in the Yemen conflict, supporting the Saudi-led forces who imposed mass killings and starvation in the country after pro-Saudi President Hadi was driven from power.

 The violence and displacement reported in Yemen, in what reports are available amid the pro-Saudi media blackout, is "a humanitarian disaster of even more catastrophic proportions " than anything seen in Syria. Topple writes that the war in Yemen is driven by Saudi Arabia's decline, as is found in recent events such as the lifting of anti-Iran sanctions, projected depletion of Saudi Arabia's oil fields in future years.

Noting that sectarianism suits Saudi Arabia and is part of its strategy, Topple criticizes the UK government's role in supporting the Saudi regime. "We, as a nation, need to take a long, hard look at our current government, its seemingly morally-bankrupt foreign policy and its preference for the pound over human life", he wrote.

The loss of the sanctions against Iran diminishes Saudi Arabia's position as a leading global oil supplier, and with this might reduce its political influence on other powers including the US.

In Syria, much like Yemen, all the violence is driven and funded by Western-backed forces who refuse to tolerate the government and are using terror against the general population to force their way to power.


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