Best Energy Picks - May 25, 2024
Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.
This week’s best energy picks:
EVs Don't Equate with Environmentalism! — The Rockefeller Family and Leftist Friends Take Another Run at Oil and Ga s— Leaping Lizards! Lithium Lode Found in Pennsylvania Frackwater? — Yet Another Damascus Citizens Fiasco! — and much more.
EVs Don't Equate with Environmentalism!
The obsession with getting ridding of internal combustion engines is exposing the fact much of supposed environmentalism is anything but.
A bombshell study gained attention earlier this year for its shocking findings on EV tire particulates. The research, authored by U.K. consulting firm Emission Analytics, found that EV brakes and tires released 1,850 times more particulate matter than tailpipes on conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. The efficiency of ICE exhaust pipes has improved dramatically over the past few decades, to the point that most pollution produced by modern cars comes from tire wear.
As EVs are about 30% heavier than conventional cars, they drive and brake with more force, leading to more frequent tire replacements. The EV battery is the main (and essential) component responsible for the extra weight. While an average EV battery weighs about 1,000 lbs, larger models such as the Tesla Model Y and the Ford F-150 Lightning can weigh closer to 2,000 lbs. The Emission Analytics study showed that adding 1,000 lbs to a mid-sized conventional sedan resulted in 20% additional tire wear and attendant particulate emissions. EVs also produce more torque than ICE cars due to their faster acceleration rates, exerting further stress on tires.
Tire particulates contain hundreds of pollutants. As Nick Molden, Emission Anlaytics’ President and CEO recently told the New York Post, “tires are made up of a lot of nasty chemicals.”
Most concerning are the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) derived from petroleum-based synthetic rubber, such as benzene, toluene, and xylene. VOCs are responsible for ground-level smog that can cause and aggravate lung diseases such as asthma. These chemicals are also particularly dangerous when released in the form of ultrafine particles (measuring <23 nm) through tire exhaust, because they can enter human organs through the bloodstream. Benzene has notably been linked to certain forms of leukemia.
Hat Tip: K.L.
The Rockefeller Family and Leftist Friends Take Another Run at Oil and Gas
There are no limits to the evil the left wishes on the oil and gas industry as this DeSmog blog excerpt illustrates:
In a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland today, Senate Budget Chair Sheldon Whitehouse and House Oversight and Accountability Ranking Member Jamie Raskin wrote that they believe that “there is adequate evidence that fossil fuel industry companies and trade associations may have violated one or more federal statutes and that, accordingly, further investigation is warranted.”
The referral comes after the committees released a joint report at the end of April that unveiled thousands of “new documents exposing the fossil fuel industry’s role in spreading climate disinformation and preventing action on climate change.” The documents, revealing oil giants’ internal strategies to greenwash their climate records and downplay the harms of “natural” gas while further investing in fossil fuel production, came out of a House Oversight Committee investigation into ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, the American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that began in 2021.
At a hearing on May 1, former DOJ attorney Sharon Eubanks, who led the Justice Department’s case against Big Tobacco, testified that “Just as the Department of Justice investigated the tobacco industry and ultimately filed a civil racketeering complaint against the industry, given the similarities of the fraudulent acts, and the government’s successful case against tobacco, there is adequate foundation for building a case… We should not waste any more time wringing our hands about what can be done.”
Whitehouse and Raskin announced the referral at a press conference today, where Whitehouse called on the Justice Department to “commence a proper inquiry into whether charges should be brought and what charges should be brought” against Big Oil and made the comparison to civil racketeering charges the department brought against the tobacco industry.
Read all our pieces on Sharon Eubanks here. Whitehouse and Raskin, of course, are leftist extremists. DeSmog has been described, accurately in my view, as a smear machine and here is some background on it.
Hat Tip: R.N.
Leaping Lizards! Lithium Lode Found in Pennsylvania Frackwater?
Irony is the most wonderful thing!
The global, government-coerced transition into "green energy" has geologists scouring the Earth for new sources of lithium -- the element that's required for batteries, like those used in electric vehicles.
Now, in a cosmic practical joke on environmentalists, researchers say they've found a lithium mother lode -- in Pennsylvania fracking wastewater.
It turns out that the Marcellus Shale -- a long swath of sedimentary rock in the northeastern United States that holds huge amounts of frackable gas -- holds huge quantities of lithium too. Justin Mackey and other researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pennsylvania were pleasantly surprise when they studied the contents of wastewater dredged up in the fracking process at 515 sites in the Keystone State, reports Science Alert.
Long before the frackers showed up, deep groundwater has been dissolving the lithium in the Marcellus Shale for eons. "It's been dissolving rocks for hundreds of millions of years—essentially, the water has been mining the subsurface," Mackey told the University of Pittsburgh's Brandie Jefferson.
When they analyzed the wastewater data, they were stunned by the volume of lithium. The shale "has the capacity to provide significant lithium yields for the foreseeable future" he says. Their detailed findings were published in Scientific Reports.
It's unclear if other fracking hotspots have abundant lithium too. However, even using conservative estimates of how much can be recovered from the wastewater suggests that Pennsylvania alone could cover more than 30% of America's 2024 demand.
Call it karma, if you wish, a schadenfreude tease, or whatever you please, but it’s beautiful!
Hat Tip: D.S./E.S.
Yet Another Damascus Citizens Fiasco!
Damascus Citizens for Sustainability (DCS) is a completely phony fractivist group that purports to represent Damascus, Pennsylvania citizens in the township where I grew up and own land. It is mostly Manhattanites who hang out in Damascus and have worked hard to ensure no locals are able to develop their natural gas resources. How we managed to attract these people and Josh Fox, too, is an invasion story. It's also a story of how such phony groups exercise influence on behalf the gentry class through grants from NGOs such as the Heinz Endowments. And, it's this nonsense from the DCS website (republished by the gullible David Hess at the PA Environment Digest Blog):
On May 20, the Damascus Citizens for Sustainability alerted the public the PA Department of Environmental Protection has designated 84 municipalities in Pennsylvania and one county in New York as “disposal facilities” for wastewater from conventional oil and gas drilling because well owners indiscriminately dump their waste on public roads.
Although road dumping oil and gas wastewater is illegal-- but not banned-- conventional well owners continue to do it wherever they want to. Read more here.
The list of Pennsylvania and New York communities comes from DEP’s database of "Oil and Gas Current Waste Facilities Listing" based on disposal reports filed by conventional oil and gas well owners…
DEP reported in March 86% of conventional oil and gas well owners do not fulfill their reporting requirements to say how much waste they generate and what happens to it.
That means DEP has no idea where waste from 33,505 conventional wells goes, about 32% of active conventional wells. Read more here.
DEP reports 3.5 million gallons of conventional oil and gas wastewater have been illegally dumped on public roads since DEP declared a "moratorium" on road dumping six years ago. Read more here.
"Even if your zip code is not on the list, dumping could be happening near you. Also remember that liquids move and you could be at risk. We want to hear from you if your area is being dumped on," said Arrindell.
Put aside the hype and anecdotal whining that always comes from DCS and other gentry-class-funded shills, and think about this for a minute. Ask yourself the following:
Where is the specific damage and why aren't these people pointing to concrete examples of it?
What is the actual risk compared to other known risks, such driving on the roads in question? Or, living next to an industrial facility as compared to a disposal site?
Why are people demanding zero risk (and net zero life impact) when we take reasonable risks every day all day long?
Why isn't spraying brine water on roads good for reducing dust, which can be a real health issue?
Why does the report DCS cites only consist of speculation about the potential harms of chlorides that are already regularly sprayed on roads for deicing and dust control purposes?
What exactly is the difference between being illegal and being banned?
What a bunch of wackos!
Hat Tip: A.S.
And, Briefly:
Battery Fire in Otay Mesa Smoldering for Sixth Day, from S.H.
The Hoodwinked King, from A.C.
DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud, from S.H.
Electric Cars A Trojan Horse for the Destruction of Driving, from T.Z.
The Energy Realities Podcast - The Biofuels Scams, from S.H.
Media Blame Climate for Insurance Rates, Data Shows Otherwise, from R.N.
US Power Grid May Become Unreliable This Summer, from D.S
#Energy #NaturalGas #BestPicks #Climate #GreenEnergy #Money #Power #Electricity #Solar #GlobalWarming #Wind
Thanks for highlighting these articles, and thanks for mentioning the fun story of "The Hoodwinked King". alchristie.substack.com/p/the-hoodwinked-king
If the amount of Lithium produced by frac water has a concentration high enough to make the extraction of it feasible, then if I were the oneidas or the senecas, I would be looking into putting wells on "checkerboarded" land since they don't have to comply with the questionably run Cuomonian/Hocholian NYSDEC while understandably thumbing their nose at RFK Jr . and his notorious ilk. 🤔🤣