Fracking Idiots and Politicians
Continuing from last week, those Netherlands farmers are now saying to the world that farm-produced manure alone isn't enough fertilizer to keep up their usual crop production. They're appealing to their government to let them (let them?!) use a little synthetic fertilizer this year, but there's no guarantee that the government will relent.
I've found a solution, one that California dairy farmers in growing numbers are using already. It's a double-barreled treatment for livestock manure, that makes money as well as fertilizer -- and with a little imagination it could be expanded considerably.
First there's the anaerobic treatment, called Biogas Digestion. It consists of putting the raw manure in a tank, or an expandable plastic container, with an escape-valve connected to an empty gas-cannister. Toss in a handful of live topsoil, then add water to the brim so as to crowd out the air. Stir thoroughly, then let sit for a few days. When the container swells (or the fitted lid rises), you'll know the bacteria in the mix are generating methane. Drain the methane into the gas-cannister and sell. Methane can be burned as stove gas, or for heating, or to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity. Keep at it until the whole load is processed into "digestate" and won't make any more methane. Use some of the methane to boil and distill the water out of the digestate.
The second stage is the aerobic treatment, called Composting. Mix the digestate thoroughly with chopped vegetable trash -- sawdust to dead leaves or chopped straw -- set it out in the air on topsoil, wet completely and let stand. Turn over and water the pile every day for two weeks, or until it becomes cool and scentless. Then use it for fertilizer.
This two-part system provides a second product -- methane/biogas -- for the farmer to sell, and improves the natural fertilizer. Those Netherlands farmers could benefit greatly using this system. More to the point, the farmers could make deals with their local townships to process the towns' sewage. The sewage from a single town can fertilize at least ten farms near it. This would benefit everybody; the towns would get their sewage processed cheaply, the farmers would get their high-quality organic fertililzer, both sides could sell the methane and split the profits.
The question is whether their idiot politicians will let them do it, because the system produces methane -- which is Eeeevil, a "greenhouse gas", according to the ecologically-passionate and ignorant.
Meanwhile, the energy companies merrily practice a dangerous form of deep-level mining -- Fracking -- precisely in order to bring up ancient supplies of methane, precisely so they can burn it to boil water to make steam to turn generators that produce electricity. National governments think this is perfectly acceptable because of "energy", you know.
The way it's done is dangerous from the start. First the company detects a pocket of methane buried deep in the bedrock. Then it sets off explosions so as to break up the bedrock and allow the methane to filter up through the broken rock to the surface, where it can be captured. To make sure the methane rises, the company pumps water into the deep gas-pocket to force the gas to the surface. Where do the companies get the cheap water to pump into the bedrock? They use raw sewage from the nearest town or city!
Never mind that shattering the bedrock makes the land above it unstable, causing local earthquakes. Never mind that the sewage contaminates the water in the natural water-table, so it can't be used for drinking-water. Consider that when the bedrock is broken up, there's no telling just where the methane will rise to the surface -- where it can not only get into the atmosphere but catches fire readily. This makes the process exceedingly dangerous to anyone living near a Fracking site. Nonetheless, politicians find this risk acceptable. Apparently ages-old methane, pumped up from deep in the bedrock, is Good -- but newly-generated methane, created on the surface and contained from the start, is Eeeeevil. Right.
The real difference between the two kinds of methane has nothing to do with its composition. It's about who produces the methane: big (rich) corporations or common (middle-class) farmers. This shows how much politicians really care about the environment, and who they really serve and protect. Perhaps they're just thinking ahead, to the system of "energy credits" which the financial industry (sic) plans to use internationally to replace gold-based money. They don't seem to have considered that all the money in the world won't do you any good if you can't eat.
--Leslie <;)))><
