Private property

Behind its paywall, the FT is reporting a new survey that finds that an overwhelming majority of the public opposes plans to let unconventional gas companies frack below private property without permission.

The survey comes as a coalition of environmental groups including the RSPB, Friends of the Earth and the Wildlife Trusts writes to David Cameron to criticise the plans.

They argue that under-house drilling should only occur with the permission of homeowners. “The rush to change property rights will further erode public trust in the government’s approach to fracking,” they say.

A Downing Street official insisted that any company looking to exploit shale gas would still need a licence from landowners at ground level or controlling access to a site.

It may well be that shale gas companies would already be paying residents for access to sites, so in many cases there would be no objection to the drilling. But with the horizontal "laterals" extending so far beyond the well pad, it's possible to imagine adjacent landowners being affected too (if you can use the term "affected" when someone drills a small hole a mile below your property"). Would the shale gas companies simply pay them off in order to have an easy life? Or would they simply present them with a fait-accompli? It's hard to say. You can certainly understand that people might be angry if it was the latter.

I still think repeal of the Petroleum (Production) Act 1934, which nationalised onshore oil and gas assets, is the way forward. Then everyone who is "affected" has a stake.

Today does sensible

The Today programme looked at energy security today, with particular reference to Europe's relations with Russia. But in addition to this current preoccupation there was also some clear-eyed consideration of the effect of renewables on the grid and the relationship between environmental concerns and the need to keep the lights on.

It's twenty years too late, of course, but I suppose we should be grateful.

Audio below.

Energy security Today

Geosciences' green strategy

Two tweets by Professor Iain Stewart (of Climate Wars fame) caught my attention over the weekend.

The first concerned the Geological Association conference I mentioned in the previous post:

What are the strategies for getting the UK public to engage with shale gas?

The second concerned an article in the Canadian press:

Click to read more ...

Diary date: rock talk edition

The Geological Society has decided to join the throng of institutions keen to discover that magic ingredient that will get the public to hang on their every word. Yes, it's scientific communication time once again:

Geological issues are increasingly intruding on the everyday lives of people across the UK. Whether it be onshore exploration and extraction of oil and gas, subsurface injection of waters for geothermal power or deep storage of carbon and radioactive waste, many communities across the country are being confronted with controversial geo-engineering interventions under their backyard. Alongside the complex scientific and technical challenges, an additional problem is that, to most people, the geological subsurface is an unknown realm. That combination presents particular difficulties for professional geoscientists communicating what they do and what they know to the lay public. Developing public participation strategies that effectively engage with citizens, communities, and stakeholder groups, requires geoscientists to better appreciate what the public knows and what they have concerns about.

Click to read more ...

No objection

Further to the last post, I emailed Dart Energy's PR people to ask for some details about the hearing. In particular, according to Rob Edwards at the Herald:

Dart’s predicted radioactive discharges were highlighted in a submission to the public inquiry by Dr Ian Fairlie, a radiation expert hired by local objectors. He didn’t present his evidence because Dart objected to inaccuracies in his submission.

What precisely were the objections, I wondered. Well, the response was a bit of an eye opener. It seems that there were no objections lodged at all. The true story was given in the closing submission of Dart's QC to the inquiry:

Click to read more ...

Reversion to the disreputable

As I noted a few weeks ago, some of our environmentalist friends were on their best behaviour during the public inquiry into Dart Energy's proposed expansion of their coalbed methane operations in Airth, Scotland, with Friends of the Earth's evidence including none of the wild claims that they have made as part of their campaign of scaremongering.

With the hearings for the inquiry now over, normal service seems to have been resumed, with the Herald's Rob Edwards (who else?) reporting the latest batch of more or less bonkers scaremongering.

Evidence submitted to the inquiry by Dart says that “predicted annual discharges” of untreated water from the development could contain up to 1.7 billion becquerels of radioactivity. The radioactivity comes from uranium and thorium deposits deep underground, and is flushed out by mining operations.

Click to read more ...

It's a knock out - Josh 274

Apparently one single post by Judith Curry needs thirty alarmist posts to rebut it, so says Victor Venema. Yes, her arguments are that good and alarmism is that weak!

Click to read more ...

Who do you trust?

One of the organisations that I keep coming across during my internet researches is the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, apparently the UK's largest grant-awarding charity.

If you take a look at their database of grants awarded to environmental projects you find, among all the gifts to good causes, lots and lots of gifts to truly bad causes:

• Sandbag
• 10:10
• Climate Outreach Information Network
• Greenpeace
• Friends of the Earth
• People and Planet
• The Climate Group
• E3G

Click to read more ...

Overstatement

Environmentalists have always been somewhat prone to overstatement, but in recent days they have excelled themselves in their pronouncements on the fracking front.

Take their response to the announcement that West Sussex County Council has given Cuadrilla permission to perform flow testing at its site at Balcombe:

The decision to allow temporary exploratory drilling in Balcombe by the county council is an ‘announcement of war’ according to villagers fighting proposals.

In front of a large crowd at Horsham’s County Hall North, West Sussex County Council’s Planning Committee approved Cuadrilla’s proposal for flow testing at the Lower Stumble Exploration Site off London Road.

Click to read more ...

Beng on the money

The GWPF has made a new appointment to its Academic Advisory Council. Alongside luminaries like Dick Lindzen we will now also see Lennart Bengtsson, former head of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting and director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.

A very eminent guy, in other words.

This is a big deal in my opinion, and will make it increasingly hard for critics to try to brush GWPF aside.

Marcel Crok has been quick off the mark and has published a short interview with Bengtsson, looking at why he decided to sign up with GWPF and his position on scepticism.

I know some of the scientists in GWPF and they have made fine contributions to science. I also respect individuals that speak their mind as they consider scientific truth (to that extent we can determine it) more important than to be politically correct. I believe it is important to express different views in an area that is potentially so important and complex and still insufficiently known as climate change.

Lawson's standpoint

Nigel Lawson has a long article in Standpoint magazine, covering the whole gamut of the climate debate, from accusations of denial to climate sensitivity to the language used by the Met Office. Older readers may remember that Lawson was once the editor of the Spectator and his journalistic flair is on prominent display:

The unusual persistence of heavy rainfall over the UK during February, which led to considerable flooding, is believed by the scientists to have been caused by the wayward behaviour of the jetstream; and there is no credible scientific theory that links this behaviour to the fact that the earth's surface is some 0.8ºC warmer than it was 150 years ago.

Click to read more ...

Lord Stern FRS

Updated on May 1, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Congratulations to Lord Stern, who has been elected a fellow of the Royal Society. According to the press release, this is:

...in recognition of his work challenging the world view on the economics of climate change and his distinguished career in mathematical economics with involvement in industry and in government.

I hear on the grapevine that the bigwigs at the Royal Society were a bit miffed by the suggestion in Nullius in Verba that the society was a political advocacy operation. The elevation of Stern - whose report on climate economics was criticised by the entirely non-sceptic economist William Nordhaus as "political in nature" and having "advocacy as its purpose" - is doing little to assuage my doubts.

Click to read more ...