Ignorance, Hypocrisy, and Fracking

No sooner was Rep. Alldyslexia Occasional-Cortex's infamous Green New Deal voted away (47 to 0) than the House Democrats came up with a new, somewhat watered-down version which, no doubt, they'll be trying to sell to the voters over the next few weeks at least.  The details haven't been published yet, but what little information has leaked out includes the wonderfully Green commitment to abolishing all use of "fossil fuels" -- including coal, petroleum, and natural gas.    Of course there's a commitment to ending the practice of "fracking".

Now I certainly would agree that we've got to stop burning coal and petroleum;  they're much too valuable to burn!  Coal and petroleum are much more useful in chemical reactions than for burning up and turning into air pollution.  Besides, once those fossil deposits are used up, there won't be any more of them.  Yes, it's possible to create, in a fashion, coal and petroleum -- by vacuum-baking wood into charcoal and squeezing oil out of jojoba nuts -- but we'll never make enough that way to make them economically viable as fuel.  Better to make internal-combustion engine fuel out of ethanol -- which can be made, by half a dozen different processes, from cellulose.  Also better to make diesel oil from algae, which a lot of companies along the west coast are doing right now.  In fact, the US Navy has established two fuel depositories -- one on the east coast and one on the west -- containing algae-sourced biodiesel fuel: enough to supply whole fleets of ships.  Yes, it is possible to replace coal and petroleum with "renewable" fuel.

For that matter, it's possible to replace standard Uranium and Plutonium-based nuclear power-plants with much safer and cheaper Thorium-salts reactors, which produce enough heat to boil water to make steam to turn generators, without ever getting close to being fissionable.  For some reason the Green Deal pushing Reps. don't mention any funding for research and development of Thorium reactors, although the govt. of India has already done so. 

But what particularly floors me is their inclusion of "natural gas" among the fuels they want banned.  "Natural gas" is nothing more than methane, which is produced by natural processes, such as the farts (more accurately, belches) from all those cows that AOC wants banned.  It's created in nature by microbes breaking down organic compounds -- particularly in swamps, which is where "swamp gas" comes from.  It's entirely a renewable fuel;  there are countless books on homesteading which tell how to build methane generators that process compost into methane and fertilizer.  So why is methane ranked among the Greens' devils? 

For one thing, because oil companies have recently made a habit of bringing up methane deposits deep in the ground by "fracking", and fracking -- by anybody's definition -- is seriously bad news.  It consists of pumping raw sewage deep into levels of fractured bedrock so as to force the methane to the surface.  This pollutes the water-table and causes earthquakes, as well as uncontrolled methane upwellings.  Fracking is an environmental disaster, and far be it from me to oppose putting an end to the wretched practice.  Especially when its so easy to create methane, and under far safer conditions.

For another thing, because methane is considered a "greenhouse gas" that traps the sun's heat near the earth and contributes to global warming -- ooops, excuse me: "climate change".  But there are also natural processes which have been breaking down methane for ages, particularly lightning, which strikes somewhere on earth at least 200 times per second -- and where lightning passes through methane, it quickly burns/oxydizes the gas into carbon dioxide and water.  Carbon dioxide is another natural compound which nature has dealt with likewise for ages, primarily through plants.  Plants -- all of them -- inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen.  Animals inhale the oxygen and produce carbon dioxide.  This exchange has been going on as long as there has been life on earth, and shows no signs of slowing down.  The solution to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to plant more plants, especially trees, which inhale a lot more of the stuff than smaller plants, and for much longer time.

So, to anyone who passed junior high school biology, the solution to global warming -- ooops, "climate change" -- is to plant a lot of trees, thereby reforesting the continent, and... encouraging lightning.  That is, if lightning needs to be encouraged.  We could also put up electric arc-generators near every swamp and cow-pasture a helluva lot cheaper than doing without cars, trains, or airplanes, especially if we get serious about developing Thorium nuclear generators. 

Now, anybody who has really bothered to study ecology, or biology, or simple chemistry, let alone "atmospheric sciences" would know this.  So are the "green wave" Democrats ignorant, or just hypocritical?  Why, after the firm defeat of the disastrous Green New Deal are they still pushing any incarnation of that mess? 

--Leslie <;)))><