Hey, that looks like important news, since there's never--OMG, did you see the BREAKING NEWS highlighted at the top of the page?!?
LIVE CHAT: Talk sports with columnists Cedric Golden and Kirk Bohls at 11 a.m.
Compare to Farmington, where they proudly display the oil and gas wells in city parks.
I think people are underestimating how important the Marcellus Shale will be. Giving Western NY and PA an economy that looks like West Texas will be interesting.
1: Trust me, every news broadcast in Pittsburgh last night led with the Steelers releasing their placekicker (top of the hour).
I think people are underestimating how important the Marcellus Shale will be.
People in the energy industry sure aren't. This is (correctly) being treated as a huge, game-changing development.
I have a gas well in my basement, but I don't tell anybody.
3: Not quite as profitable, but it certainly has been infusing cash and jobs into some areas where they have been scarce.
Right, I mean, people outside the energy industry. But the shale leads me to be even more pessimistic about the long term chances for climate change reform in the US. NY State, for example, needs to adopt the California standards right now, before every politician west of the Tappan Zee bridge becomes entirely beholden to the natural gas industry.
I don't remember hearing anything about bringing jobs to any area. All the buzz is about how much people should sell their drilling rights for.
There was a big screening of "Gasland" in Pittsburgh a week ago.
Also, people keep saying "frack" in a non-euphemistic way, which is at least interesting.
Anyway, the gas people have been doing public relations very poorly. I didn't think it was possible to screw-up enough to make Doug Shields appear steadfast and wise, but I was wrong.
What does Marcellus Shale look like?
11: That totally cracks me up. "Frack" conveys nerd-speak-for-fuck so strongly to me that all discussions of natural gas drilling now sound ridiculous.
13: It was in the briefcase, but nobody ever gets to see what it actually looks like.
"Nerd speak for fuck"? In what context? Why "frack" and not other similar syllables?
Cryptic ned just lost all his fracking nerd cred.
16: I once read it went back to Battlestar Galactica and I refuse to check to see if that is right.
Oh hey look we've found the one nerd who did not watch Battlestar Galactica.
So Pittsburgh won't have Frick and Frack.
Of course not, Frack is in the eastern part of the state.
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Annals of US exceptionalism: How is it that this year is almost over, and it took seeing the commemorative label on a Jarritos bottle to clue me in to the fact that it is Mexico's bicentennial? (And, upon reading Wikipedia, I now realize that it's the centennial of the Revolution as well.) Christ, I feel like an asshole.
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No more masturbating to Bo Diddley.
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23: You're a bit late on that one, Josh.
Bo Diddley played a concert for my middle school when I was there. He was local.
23: I thought he'd been dead a couple of years. What happened?
Burning natural gas for power emits half or less the CO2 per watt than does burning coal.
Using that gas for power will keep a huge volume of coal underground for decades while (hopefully) clean coal power becomes economical.
Switching to natural gas now is actually one of the best paths to speedy reduction in US CO2 production. Carbon taxes would be great, but are not politically viable in the US. People here won't stop using dryers, and are only gradually switching to smaller homes because credit is harder to get.
I'm not dead.
22 - Because the War of Mexican Independence lasted for ten years and the Mexican Empire collapsed within 24 months? The current form of the Mexican government dates to 1917 and the aftermath of the 1910 Mexican Revolution.
People here won't stop using dryers
I've only got a limited amount of time in which I get to keep my hair. Then I'll stop.
34: But Wikipedia says that Calderon says that it's the Anus of the Fatherland! Or something like that, my Spanish isn't so good.
You will only lose the hair on top of your head, so the impact on power consumption will be anyway nugatory.
Burning natural gas for power emits half or less the CO2 per watt than does burning coal. Using that gas for power will keep a huge volume of coal underground for decades while (hopefully) clean coal power becomes economical.
Also, extracting natural gas by fracking leads to a poisoned water supply.
Stupid weather forecasters can't even settle on a range for the overnight low.
Actually, the other low-hanging fruit for CO2 impact is cement production, both because burning limestone releases a lot of CO2 and also because cement is a potential carbon sink.
If there is innovation in this, I would bet that it will come from China, not here.
39. Necessarily, or just in the hands of the underfunded cowboys now doing it? It's a local cost and a global benefit.
It's a local cost and a global benefit.
Oh, that's alright then. We'll stick the local cost on those people near the shale.
This is what I get for blindly passing on stuff from one of my more active FB friends. And not having breakfast.
We celebrate Independence Day on July 4 even though the Articles of Confederation fell apart. I'm just saying that 1810 isn't really a year that has much bearing on the contemporary Mexican state, so you shouldn't be ZOMG NORTEAMERICANO PRIVILEGE. Instead, you should feel totes superbad for not having read my undergraduate term paper about the Conference of Aquascalientes, which marked the final dissolution of Villa's alliance with Carranza and Obregon! Surely Jarritos will be calling me any minute.
I used to think that "Poncho Villa" was Mexican for an XXXL-sized shirt.
Are there problems with treated water or just with well water?
16-19: I wanted to correct y'all for spelling frak wrong and then I did actually read wiki and realized it's frack for the original series. The things you learn on the internet.
also because cement is a potential carbon sink.
Really? I totally misunderstood "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."
44 - My understanding was that flyash was a good green material not because it was a carbon sink but because making Portland cement is really CO2-intensive. Am I wrong?
What does Marcellus Shale look like?
Middling stats overall, but his field goal percentage is a lot higher than Jeff Reed's.
3:Giving Western NY and PA an economy landscape that looks like West Texas will be interesting.
Joni may not have been current on the literature.
There's an unconventional way to make cement as a byproduct of cleanish-carbon
coal-fired power. Doing this is a double win, because as you say the standard way of making cement is CO2-wasteful, you're eliminating a problem as well as finding a place to put the CO2. It's more expensive than the current way of making cement, politically still a pilot-plant fantasy, but more realistic than asking for 1-car garages or limiting plasma screen TVs to the size of a small car.
Look, people aren't going to accept any real discomfort to conserve; piecemeal painless measures to slow the rate at which people burn coal matter quite a bit. That means unpleasant compromise, and this is obviously the best place for a lecture.
but more realistic than asking for 1-car garages or limiting plasma screen TVs to the size of a small car.
I have a one car garage and only a 30 inch TV, but I'm exceptionally picky about my cement's carbon content.
Cement article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/31/cement-carbon-emissions
Not a direct byproduct of cleaner coal-fired power plants-- I had read about a coupled pilot plant. That's good because each step can be taken independently.
53: THAT WAS BIG YELLOW TAXI BY JONI MITCHELL, A SONG IN WHICH JONI COMPLAINS THEY 'PAVED PARADISE TO PUT UP A PARKING LOT', A MEASURE WHICH ACTUALLY WOULD HAVE ALLEVIATED TRAFFIC CONGESTION ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF PARADISE, SOMETHING WHICH JONI SINGULARLY FAILS TO POINT OUT, PERHAPS BECAUSE IT DOESN'T QUITE FIT IN WITH HER BLINKERED VIEW OF THE WORLD. NEVERTHELESS, NICE SONG.
As several people have pointed out, the most likely short-term effect of shale fracking on energy prices is to encourage switching from coal to gas for electricity generation, which would save a huge amount of carbon emissions. The wild card is the local environmental effects of the fracking process, which is so new that no one really knows how bad it is for water supplies and other local conditions. The gas industry downplays the risk, of course, but it's quite possible they're either mistaken or (if they have more information than other people but are concealing it) lying. If it does turn out that the local effects are so strong that it gets banned or very tightly restricted everywhere, the expected decrease in gas prices won't happen and we'll be back where we started a couple years ago, with cheap coal and expensive gas.
People here won't stop using dryers
I have to say, one thing that kind of bugs me about Germany is the green/frugal tendency to hang clothes rather than use a dryer. For some things that's fine, but it seems to make bath towels almost painfully stiff and spiky. I feel very ugly-American to be so annoyed by it, but, well, there you go.
We have a washer but no dryer and it has worked out swell so far. A little fabric softener in with the wash helps the stiffness/spikiness issue, which anyhow tends to go away pretty quickly.
I kind of dig the spiky towel thing. We bought one of these a couple years back and it's been great.
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00176080
While I was growing up in Geneva we had the worst of both worlds: an electric dryer that consisted of a big, badly insulated metal closet with rickety rods on which you would hang your laundry and then allow it to be blasted with hot air for two hours. Even worse energy efficiency than a tumble drier, and even more stiffness, roughness, and wrinkles than normal line drying. Perhaps as a result, I still far prefer using a drier.
For those of you who live in apartments and insist on being green, I recommend a contraption with adjustable height rods on strings that you place above your bathtub. Doesn't take up space and the higher humidity in the bathroom helps limit the extent to which your laundry turns into cardboard loofah.
64: we have one of these. Works good.
I always line dry (indoors) my nice clothes, but the rest goes in the dryer.
Maybe I should try to find a better job, so my nice clothes could be dry cleaned.
Maybe I should try to find a better job, so my nice clothes could be dry cleaned.
I'm sure I've said it before, but man oh man having a uniform that is bought and dry cleaned on your employers dime is the greatest thing ever.
I'm not a fan of the stiff and spiky bath towels, either, and my housemate has increasingly been line-drying (indoors) towels even as he uses the electric dryer for his jeans. Fabric softener is an option, though it seems a person might be called upon to actually separate the laundry before making use of it, which is so not going to happen.
Hm. Still, I'm less concerned about the cardboard loofah [it's actually not that bad] bath towels than I am about the groundwater contamination seemingly resulting from the fracking process.
I wonder if the chemicals in fabric softener are worse for the environment than whatever electricity it takes to run a dryer.
We obviously all need bathrooms larger than the size of a closet in which to hang our laundry to dry, per teraz's 65.last.
I don't do laundry constantly myself; I think I'd worry about it more if I were doing laundry every two days or something.
line-drying (indoors)
If it's your kind of thing I will recommend this drying rack as quite good despite (or correlated with) the overly earnest website.
The even have advice for getting soft air-dried towels:
To get nice soft air dried towels simply follow these steps. Use a fabric softener or a water softener during your washing process. Shake towels vigorously prior to hanging. Then do not hang in direct sun shine where the towels will "bake." If you have a choice, wash towels on days when there is a breeze. If you wash on a breezeless day, then when you walk by your towels give them a little pat as you go by to keep them from stiffening up. If you happen to end up with stiff towels, shaking them again them prior to folding will help.
That one seems to have less space than the one Tweety linked in 66. It shows the option of hanging your shirts on hangers and then hanging those from the rack, but that would stretch otu the shoulders of my knit shirts too much.
If you have a choice, wash towels on days when there is a breeze.
Ob fun weather fact. If there is sufficient breeze plus low humidity, drying towels and clothes will freeze even if it is a few degrees above freezing.
That one seems to have less space than the one Tweety linked in 66.
I believe that is true.
I don't claim that it is "the best drying rack" but it is well designed, well built, and I am perhaps too amused by the fact that it rotates.
If nothing else I'll suggest to my housemate that he put the towels on the drying rack (old-fashioned wooden kind) rather than hanging them on the line in the basement. It's not completely clear to me why a drying rack reduces stiffness over a line.
Time in the oven will dry clothes right quick.
Actually, I quite like the sort of stiffness you get with hotel towels. It's invigorating!
Halfway through the thread, and this is why I like Unfogged. When it gets going it reads like mildly twisted screwball comedy.
I have nothing of value to contribute, still too busy / strapped for time. But I am very fond of you all.
I use only hairshirts dried by the hot breath of sinners with halitosis.
this is the type of rack I had in mind. Yours for just 47zl (sixteen dollars), VAT included.
Actually, I quite like the sort of stiffness you get with hotel towels.
Laydeez.
82: this is the type of rack I had in mind
That was not the type of rack I had in mind.
I think those go for more than 47zl. But you could still install one of them in the bathroom as a dual purpose appliance.
this is the type of rack I had in mind.
I would need dozens of those and a bathroom the size of my entire basement to do without the dryer. Don't you people with kids go nuts with all the damn laundry?
When it gets going it reads like mildly twisted screwball comedy.
The Brooklyn Hillbillies, in which Unfogged strikes natural gas in the Mineshaft's back yard. Hilarity ensues.
Don't you people with kids go nuts with all the damn laundry?
Yes.
86, 88: The laundry has little to do with it.
It's 55's thread, the rest of us just comment in it. 56 is droll as well.
