A high-risk energy boom sweeps across North America - Energy companies are rushing to develop unconventional sources of oil and gas trapped in carbon-rich shales and sands throughout the western United States and Canada. So far, government officials have shown little concern for the environmental consequences of this new fossil fuel development boom. At a time when the country should be embracing a renewable energy revolution, it is hurtling in the opposite direction, developing on a massive scale sources of energy that cause considerably more environmental harm than conventional oil and gas drilling.
A 2,500-mile route, from Grays Harbor in Washington State east across the top of the country to Detroit, has quickly become an essential supply line for the energy industry. With astonishing speed, U.S. oil companies, Canadian pipeline builders, and investors from all over the globe are spending huge sums in a race to open the next era of hydrocarbon development. As domestic U.S. pools of conventional oil and gas dwindle, energy companies are increasingly turning to “unconventional” fossil fuel reserves contained in the carbon rich-sands and deep shales of Canada, the Great Plains, and the Rocky Mountain West.
Even as one of the largest energy booms in history has erupted along a great arc of the continent, the consequences are prompting civic discontent, lawsuits, and political battles in state capitals. The boom is producing fresh scars on the land and new threats to scarce water supplies. Government studies show that exploiting unconventional fossil-fuel reserves generates as much as three times as many greenhouse gases per barrel than drilling for conventional oil and gas and uses three to five times more water. “It’s a pact with the devil."
In communities from Wyoming to Texas, thousands of trucks now rumble down rural roads, carrying the huge amounts of water — 2 million to 4 million gallons PER WELL — needed to free oil and natural gas from shales by blasting them with high-pressure fluids. In places such as North Dakota, which receives modest amounts of rainfall, local residents and conservationists worry that the energy boom will deplete aquifers. North Dakota has become the fourth-largest oil-producing state in the country, with an estimated 100 million barrels being pulled out of deep shales this year and 1,000 wells drilled in 2010.
One of the flashpoints is occurring in northern Idaho and eastern Montana, where oil companies want to use Highway 12 to dispatch the largest convoy of oversized trucks ever assembled to Alberta’s tar sands and elsewhere. The trucks, nearly as long as football fields and so wide they cover both lanes of the highway, haul refining and processing equipment that weighs hundreds of tons and is as tall as a mansion. Energy companies are now spending tens of millions of dollars to lease mineral rights in Wyoming and Colorado and are drilling exploratory wells .In all, the oil industry is spending nearly $100 billion annually in the U.S. to perpetuate the fossil fuel era. "It just almost boggles the mind."
Kahlil Gibran
LARGEST QUAKES -
5.1 WEST OF MACQUARIE ISLAND
5.0 KURIL ISLANDS
6.4 SOUTHWESTERN RYUKYU ISL., JAPAN
5.1 CUBA REGION
5.1 SOUTH ISLAND OF NEW ZEALAND
5.5 BABUYAN ISL REGION, PHILIPPINES
Yesterday -
10/3/10 -
5.1 SUNDA STRAIT, INDONESIA
5.3 SOUTH OF KERMADEC ISLANDS
5.0 CRETE, GREECE
5.2 BANDA SEA
5.0 VANUATU
5.1 NEAR WEST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
JAPAN - A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck Japan in the evening near the southwestern Ryukyu Islands. The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami advisory for the Miyakojima and Yaeyama areas. A tsunami of 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) was expected. The earthquake occurred at 10:28 p.m. local time (9:28 a.m. EDT) at the shallow depth of 22.3 miles. The epicenter of the quake was about 70 miles east of Ishigaki-jima, a city in the Ryukyu Islands and 200 miles southwest of Naha, Okinawa.
TROPICAL STORMS -
No current tropical cyclones.
AUSTRALIA - The weather bureau fears a cyclone will form off the Queensland coast by Christmas. The outlook shows a distinct La Nina weather pattern, which is expected to lead to an increase in cyclone activity in the Coral Sea. Up to six cyclones could form off Queensland in coming months. "We are expecting ... the potential cyclone season to start early.
Normally we only VERY RARELY get cyclones forming in December or even November, but there is every chance of an increased risk this year that we will see a tropical cyclone before about Christmas." At least one severe cyclone is also tipped to cross the Queensland coast. "I guess historically we've seen ... on average about three to four cyclones in a season and I guess averaging below one coastal crossing per year. Historically, with a similar ocean patterns we've had three similar years and all of those have seen either six or seven cyclones either in the Coral Sea and at least one severe coastal crossing."
SPACE WEATHER -
The icy nucleus of comet 103P/Hartley 2 measures no more than a couple of kilometers across. That tiny nugget, however, is surrounded by an vast atmosphere of gas more than 150,000 km in diameter -- about the same size as the planet Jupiter. And it's coming our way. At present, the comet is best seen through telescopes. The view will improve, perhaps even to naked-eye visibility, as the comet glides by Earth only 11 million miles away on Oct. 20th.
Two weeks after Comet Hartley has its close encounter with Earth, NASA will have a close encounter with the comet. The Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft is hurtling toward Comet Hartley now, and on Nov. 4th it will fly 435 miles from the comet's active icy nucleus. The encounter will mark only the fifth time in history that a spacecraft has been close enough to image a comet's core. Until then, amateur astronomers can monitor the comet as it glides through the constellation Cassiopeia in the evening sky. (photo)
