The Energize West Virginia with Natural Gas town hall meeting at the Morgantown Ramada Inn Tuesday evening, July 10th, must have been amusing to anyone aware of plays with words. The world consists of an exterior reality, which we try to duplicate with words to communicate with others.
The dissonance between the shale gas industry and the people who experience shale gas drilling is preposterous. That is to say absurd, ridiculous, ludicrous, unbelievable. The industry is top down, like an army, or some churches, with “reality” emanating from the head. The people who experience shale drilling are diverse, disconnected from one another, seeing only what is in their area, and mad as “hades” at their losses.
When one draws back and looks at the matter, it is clear what is going on. Our (the world’s) reliance on a single source of energy, hydrocarbons, is reaching a limit. Where the bulk of our energy comes from can be written in two equations understandable to a high school chemistry student. Any kind of mining always takes the easy stuff first. By now the easy hydrocarbon stuff is gone. To get hydrocarbons, more and more difficult deposits must be exploited.
Voiceless people all over the world have been trounced on for oil, now it is time for the home folks. Listen here rural folks, you’re now it! If you hear people talking about the damage they sustain, there is no doubt about their pain. Diminished health, diminished values of property, diminished enjoyment of life, diminished prospects for their children.
Probably most people are still more or less indifferent, it is not their ox in the ditch. As long as they can enjoy plenty of food, security, air conditioning, amusement, it really doesn’t mean too much one way or the other. It only comes home to those who are affected.
When the long, hot summer is over and the crops don’t come in, we’ll hear a different story. Each hot week without significant rain makes global warming converts. When you can’t grow corn, many people are hurt. We live within a delicate shell on a planet too small for all its many people.
Next winter, even if it is warm, will be interesting, too. Maybe someone will come up with a way to eat the extra hydrocarbons.
S. Tom Bond, Farmer, Citizen, Lewis County, WV
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Some say, electric ranges are very convenient to use compared to gas ranges for cooking, baking, and general kitchen usage.
I got rid of the old methane stove, its smell and noise and got me a new electric stove, no smell, no whooshing sound of flames. Next up is solar on the roof for the electricity. And then solar for the hot water. Still trying to figure out how to convert the gas forced hot air furnace to something not dependent on fossil fuel. Don’t have enough yards in the backyard for geothermal, nor the $30,000.
CORN FOR FUEL OR FOR FOOD: Numbers released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) show the size of the current corn harvest and how much of it is projected to be used for ethanol. As in recent years, roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn (nearly 5 billion bushels) is projected to be used to make fuel, despite drought conditions across much of the Corn Belt causing a significant reduction in the total size of the crop. Many argue that diverting such a huge percentage of the corn crop to make ethanol contributes to food price volatility and food shortages around the world.
See: http://ecowatch.org/2012/food-or-fuel/
The official prediction (National Climate Prediction Center) at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/ is calling for a long, hot summer. Crop prediction is far from accurate. Using corn for fuel is foolish. It is more of of a dilutant since it has only 2/3 the energy of gasoline, and screws up many engines, too.