To be angry fracking ban has been lifted despite Tory manifesto promise?

[carefullycourageous]

I am so annoyed the ban on fracking has been lifted with no real discussion, even though the Tories promised in their manifesto they wouldn't allow it unless it was proven safe. No proof has been published.

Experts say it will not help us with our energy bills, just result in pollution and more profits for energy companies.

for Liz Truss!

YABU: I'm fine with fracking, who needs clean water anyway?
YANBU: I'm annoyed the ban has been reversed

several “experts” here banging on about fission when they clearly mean fusion 🤔

@brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I replied fission too - I always get the two muddled and I used to actually have to talk about one not the other at work. I learnt which one but it is really NOT my area and I have promptly forgotten which word.

I am the kind of person who mixes up names and calls people at work famous people's names if they have the same first name

Fossil fuels doesn't that include detergents?

Just found the list of some products made from petroleum 😲 wow.

innovativewealth.com/inflation-monitor/what-products-made-from-petroleum-outside-of-gasoline/

It was a disgraceful thing to do, but she was bought and paid for by Jacob Rees-Mogg and that was the deal. Mogg is a disaster capitalist, and will no doubt be in lining his pockets off this in some way, he has been desperate for it for years. Truss also stopped the ban on pesticides that kill bees in her first few days. It feels like the rats are looting and burning the sinking ship.

You can get electricity from fossil fuels or from other sources for example nuclear or renewables. We are not going to lose the benefits of electricity by using non-fossil fuel electricity

Nuclear is great as a baseload and I’m totally supportive. But renewables do not have the capacity to power a modern civilisation unless you are using hydro. Natural gas always has to support any major installation of solar or wind, they are too unreliable.

Heating - it is possible to get heating from fossil fuel sources or from non-fossil fuel sources. No one is trying to make you live without heating

People are already worried about this winter because of politically induced scarcity of fossil fuels. I suspect we will start digging up coal again before we let people freeze but I think we can all agree it’s not ideal.

It is a bit like when people made the transition from horse-drawn vehicles to internal combustion engine - the wheels still turned. And next we move to electric engines - the wheels will turn

The thing is, no one had to ban horses and carriages to promote ICEs; yet places like California want to ban ICEs in order to get ppl to buy EVs. If EVs were truly better, people would buy them without incentives.

No one wants to take you back to the dark ages. Embrace progress, backs the positives we have already gained, move forwards

Im sorry if I don’t believe you. Or you have embraced the distortions around renewable energy and this will lead to disaster.

I'm angry and upset too. There are plans for a fracking site less than half a mile from our home. It will significantly devalue our house if it goes ahead. We have worked so hard to get our first home 😞

You sound like a conspiracy theorist @BerriesOnTop but my honest view is you're in a dwindling minority group. China is going to push forward with renewables, the world will adopt them, fossil fuels are on their way out. Obviously the industry is not going to disappear that quickly, but times change. Anyway, good luck this winter! Fracking won't help any of us there.

Oh that's really shit.

Do you have a Tory MP? If so you need to lobby like mad.

What a fucking disaster Truss is, we really need a change now.

@carefullycourageous we do, yes. As a village we are doing everything we can. The opposition here is strong. Gove threw out the test site plans not all that long ago and there was a lot of relief. Now it seems none of that mattered and we are back to fighting. There's a lot of fear here.

I understand the fear.

You may not want to tell me the constituency but roughly speaking is there any opposition party with a chance? If not you might do better with an anti-fracking independent or a green.

I would start becoming political and actively trying to unseat the Tory. This often focuses minds.

They went back on a manifesto promise. As Truss the Twat would say herself: That. Is. A. Disgrace.

I thought Truss's u-turn on fracking had a bit of a caveat?

“It is vital that we take steps to increase our domestic energy supply,” she told parliament. “We will end the moratorium on extracting our huge reserves of shale which could get gas flowing as soon as six months where there is local support for it.”

I very much doubt there will be any local support & as gas is priced internationally, it'll make no difference to the price.
Nuclear takes decades as does new NS gas... as for her claim of 6 months? she is as full of shit as her former boss.

Sooner or later, she is going to have to tax oil companies, her 2 year price freeze is totally unaffordable & whilst help is needed, it has to be targeted, there are also far too many demands on public spending and debt repayment because of inflation.. then, she has to pay for all these promised tax cuts.. or will that be another u-turn?

the £'s decline shows what investors think of her economic plans.

the £'s decline shows what investors think of her economic plans yes this has been worrying to watch

@carefullycourageous our MP says he is opposed to fracking and that there is "no support for it here" (which is true), but like most tories, I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. We are involved as much as we feasibly can be. We write to him, sign all the petitions, have lots of anti fracking posters/banners around the village and join in with anti-fracking meetings etc where we can. I'm self-employed and am taking on extra work to try and cover rising costs so am really busy at the moment. My partner has a good job but is also very busy with work. We feel powerless. We will fight it with all we have, as will the whole village, but the constant worry and effort of it all is exhausting. Perhaps I'm just finding adult life exhausting! But this just adds to the mental strain I suppose.

Your "this. Is. A. Disgrace." line made me chuckle. Truss is on another planet entirely. We didn't expect anything useful from another Tory though, it's an absolute circus. I can't even watch PMQs because all the shouting and talking over each other annoys me just as much as the nonsense the Tories come out with. I used to work in schools and honestly, some of the more rowdy classes had more manners than those in parliament. They need a teacher in there to remind them to put their listening ears on and to not talk when others are talking!

I will be fine this winter as I don’t live in Europe anymore ✌️

But it’s funny you look to China as some sort of beacon of change. I lived most of my life in China and can tell you that they love to make cheap and polluting (for them, not you) solar panels to sell to gullible Westerners but they are also doubling down on building coal plants right now because they understand how industry is powered and know renewables are not up to the challenge. So your perceptions on Chinese energy policy are rather false: foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/06/china-energy-nationalism-coal/

I have survived many winters in China breathing in coal-induced smog so this brings me no joy btw. But I have seen with my own eyes the tremendous gains in living standards among the average Chinese, largely thanks to fossil fuel-backed industrialisation (and a great export market).

A comfortable Westerner can never understand.

Honestly @BerriesOnTop you're making no sense. I don't hold China up as a beacon, I'm just pointing out the direction of travel is set.

Have a good winter anyway, and step away from the conspiracy theories!

@BerriesOnTop

China might well have made great advances in material wealth by burning fossil fuels as we all have but now we have to pay that cost in climate change, which means doing things differently.

The original OP is about the UK trying to get gas from Fracking, something it never actually did in the first place.

Truss's speech was all about her "hitting ground" and looking like she is doing something.

I agree with BerriesOnTop.

I grew up in a country which did not have reliable energy and had very limited infrastructure. It makes you much more appreciative of what the "industrial age" as Berries puts it has given us.

There is some kind of idea that "the environment/Mother Earth/our natural world <3" is this calm, peaceful, benevolent provider of goodness, and our presence as humans is causing it to be vengeful and punish us with floods and fires...

Sorry but no. The environment is by nature chaotic and uncaring. Floods and fire and famine have existed for far longer than humans have been around. If you live in literally mud huts like people in my home country you don't have a hope of surviving them. If you have access to technology to build better infrastructure, you do. And that infrastructure requires a reliable base load.

Yes this tells us a lot. YANBU OP.

Other countries are investing in the low carbon cleaner power industries of the future that are already delivering high quality jobs to their populations, whilst the UK tries to prop up an Industry in decline.

If you have access to technology to build better infrastructure, you do. And that infrastructure requires a reliable base load.

But fracking in the UK won’t even deliver reliable baseload. Truss is dreaming. And the tories have had over a decade in power and the whole of the UK’s infrastructure is creaking. The financial markets see the reality.

as @Discovereads and others have commented and rightly shared… What people fail to understand is that fracking takes colossal amounts of fresh water. This water then becomes toxic and needs to be dumped somewhere. Fracking is a toxic and terrible solution. It will also make the ground under your home unstable and your home unsellable- so the OP isn’t ‘green virtue signalling’ lots of us protested hard and long to stop it because it is extremely polluting and dangerous. We should be looking at sustainable investment not poisoning our childrens water supply @sst1234

It’s not fiction. The radon isn’t “put into the ground”, it’s already there within the shale. This is simple geology mate. Also more simple geology, the northwest U.K. shale bedrock is the same shale bedrock found in western PA and eastern Ohio as both were originally part of the same mountain range of the continent Pangea. It’s the same rock, formed at the same time with the same concentrations of decaying uranium in them.

Carboniferous shale not only has natural gas in it but radon gas. The process of fracking releases radon gas as well as natural gas. Radon is radioactive and the #1 cause of lung cancer in non smokers. Here are two of many studies.

“According to a new study published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the level of Radon in Pennsylvania houses is increasing in areas where hydraulic fracturing is used to produce natural gas from the Marcellus tight shale formation. The peer-reviewed research article, titled Predictors of Indoor Radon Concentrations in Pennsylvania, 1989-2013,...”

Radon is the number one cause of lung cancer among non-smokers. It is a radioactive gas which comes from the natural decay of uranium in soil, rock and water and gets into air we breathe. It typically moves up through the ground to the air above and into homes through cracks and other holes in the foundation. Radon from soil gas is the main cause of problems. Sometimes radon enters the home through well water. In a small number of homes, the building material can give off radon too.

The research studied levels of radon in 866,735 buildings from 1989-2013. In the study the researchers found that 42.2% (median of 8.4pCi/L) of the Radon readings were higher than the EPA action level. The research also showed an upward trend from 2004-2012 in all studied counties and higher levels of radon in counties with drilled wells. The upward trend beginning time is around the same time that fracking industry began drilling in the state. Between 2005 and 2013, 7469 unconventional natural gas wells were drilled in Pennsylvania.

EPA recommends 4 pCi/L (148 Bq/m3) as the action level at which people should fix their houses. Elevated levels of radon can be reduced to 4 pCi/L more than 95 percent of the time. The following table shows the lifetime Health risk of living with Radon for smokers, nonsmokers and the general population. From the table we can see that an increase in Radon level from 4 to 8 pCi/L will increase the lifetime risk of lung cancer for the general population from 2.3 to 4.5%.”
www.nrdc.org/experts/bemnet-alemayehu/radon-and-fracking-new-study

“A new study at The University of Toledo connects the proximity of fracking to higher household concentrations of radon gas, the second leading cause of lung cancer in the U.S.

Measuring and geocoding data from 118,421 homes across all 88 counties in Ohio between 2007 and 2014, scientists found that closer distance to the 1,162 fracking wells is linked to higher indoor radon concentrations.

"The shorter the distance a home is from a fracking well, the higher the radon concentration. The larger the distance, the lower the radon concentration," Dr. Ashok Kumar, Distinguished University Professor and chair of the UToledo Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said.

The study also found the average radon concentrations among all tested homes across the state are higher than safe levels outlined by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization standards. The average is 5.76 pCi/l, while the EPA threshold is 4.0 pCi/l. The postal code 43557 in the city of Stryker has the highest radon concentration at 141.85 pCi/l for this data set.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190618083347.htm

@cormorant5
radio-active water pollution is fiction

Again, on top of extra radon gas that people are breathing in due ti fracking, the waste water itself is also radioactive.

Understanding why fracking wastewater contains radioactive waste
”RESEARCHERS at Dartmouth College, US, have released a study explaining the transfer of radium to wastewater during hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas extraction. An understanding of the mechanisms involved could lead to the development of strategies to mitigate wastewater production.”

”During hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, fluid is pumped underground at high pressure to break apart rock and create fractures which oil and natural gas can flow through. A common practice is to use “slick water”, which is a combination of water, a proppant – typically sand – and a mixture of chemicals. After the hydraulic pressure has been dropped the proppant holds the fractures open. Friction reducers, usually a polyacrylamide, are a critical component added to increase fluid flow. Other chemicals, such as biocides, surfactants, and scale inhibitors can also be added.

Once the pressure has been dropped slick-water returns to the surface as wastewater which is salty and highly toxic. It contains toxins such as barium (Ba) and radioactive radium (Ra). As Ra decays it releases a cascade of other elements, such as radon, that collectively generate high radioactivity.”
www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/understanding-why-fracking-wastewater-contains-radioactive-waste/

She knows this but her & the tory parties right wing base is pro fossil fuels and anti "green"
I genuinely wonder if she knows what the Green levy is used for.

Its a great pity the Govt wont invest in energy efficiency, renewable tech and hydrogen in the amounts required..

If she knows the approach is wrong but is responding to an ignorant minority voter base representing economic mismanagement and Luddite attitudes to green tech for short term electoral gain, this doesn’t reflect well on her or the party.

More likely is that she’s funnelling cash to the fossil fuel industry due to corruption and looking after her own narrow interests. Why else turn down a fossil fuel windfall tax and load the debt onto taxpayers, when the fossil fuel extractors have said they are ok with it?