(February 18, 2014 at 3:03 pm)EgoRaptor Wrote: Combine that with eugenics & you have the perfect catch-all solution.

Suddenly I'm okay with 51st trimester abortions...

(February 18, 2014 at 2:02 pm)TaraJo Wrote: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attyt...on-us.html

The title says it all. There was a fracking accident in Pennsylvania that resulted in an intense fire that lasted five days, posed a serious risk to rescue workers, shook the ground of Bobtown and likely killed one of their own workers. How do they make it right? Send the people of the town coupons for a free pizza.

Remind me again why we trust these people to regulate themselves?

TaraJo, you should be ashamed of yourself. You attempt to malign a magnificent corporate entity by attempting to make them seem so heartless, so non-compassionate that they would compensate the people of this town with merely free pizza. Chevron did MUCH more than that:

The coupons are ALSO good for 2 litres of fizzy drink. So there.

Boru

What do they expect, "Help! Help! I'm on fire. My house is burning dow - ooooh, pizza!"?

Sue their arses off!

OK, now for some responsible reporting of the incident:

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/south/...1402110126

http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/...ne-county/

Do you know which word you won't find in the reports? That's right, fracking. Care to know why? Fracking had nothing to do with the accident, other than it was a technology that allowed us to access the natural gas. Did you notice that the second link was from NPR; that bastion of corporate apologetics.

I am perplexed at the recent backlash against hydraulic fracturing. The technology is only over 70 years old and there are more than one million existing wells created by fracking. Even the large scale shale fracking has been around for over 30 years, but has now only become economically viable.

The reality is that someone lost his/her life in a dangerous job extracting the cleanest burning source of fossil fuel there is to allow people not to go to bed precisely when the sun goes down. Why does everyone complain about energy production, but has no problem consuming energy? Lights, stoves, heaters, air conditioning, gasoline pumps, freezers, refrigerators, transportation, communication, sanitation, healthcare delivery...the list goes on and on. Life in the 'first world' would immediately become an unimanageable hell hole if we turned the power off. Just look what happens if the power is off for a few hours.

I love when the conversation reaches this point and someone starts talking about solar and wind. Great, love it, but the reality is that it cannot keep up with demand and no it's not because we don't invest enough in it; it's because we consume too much. I love nuclear power, but the same people that ignorantly bitch about fracking are equally terrified of nuclear power.

There is inherent risk in every form of power production required to meet modern demand. Accidents like this happen, but rarely do people sit back and wonder why they don't happen more frequently. People want to disparage Exxon or BP or others as if to say these entities don't give a shit for the sake of a dollar...this is ignorant demagoguery. You can't have it both ways: claiming that energy companies only exist to satisfy their bottom line at the expense of people that have no problem consuming what they produce and simultaneously ignore how accidents like these give immediate and drastic impact to the bottom line.

Let's also try this. The internet is beautiful for fact checking. Exxon-Mobile's last quarterly net margin is reported around 7.5%; Coca-cola's last net margin was 18.7%. Why do I bring up net margin? Only to be able to state that 'people need to reevaluate their priorities'. When's the last time you were enraptured by a campaign against big soda?

(February 18, 2014 at 9:36 pm)Cato Wrote: OK, now for some responsible reporting of the incident:

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/south/...1402110126

http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/...ne-county/

Do you know which word you won't find in the reports? That's right, fracking. Care to know why? Fracking had nothing to do with the accident, other than it was a technology that allowed us to access the natural gas. Did you notice that the second link was from NPR; that bastion of corporate apologetics.

I am perplexed at the recent backlash against hydraulic fracturing. The technology is only over 70 years old and there are more than one million existing wells created by fracking. Even the large scale shale fracking has been around for over 30 years, but has now only become economically viable.

The reality is that someone lost his/her life in a dangerous job extracting the cleanest burning source of fossil fuel there is to allow people not to go to bed precisely when the sun goes down. Why does everyone complain about energy production, but has no problem consuming energy? Lights, stoves, heaters, air conditioning, gasoline pumps, freezers, refrigerators, transportation, communication, sanitation, healthcare delivery...the list goes on and on. Life in the 'first world' would immediately become an unimanageable hell hole if we turned the power off. Just look what happens if the power is off for a few hours.

I love when the conversation reaches this point and someone starts talking about solar and wind. Great, love it, but the reality is that it cannot keep up with demand and no it's not because we don't invest enough in it; it's because we consume too much. I love nuclear power, but the same people that ignorantly bitch about fracking are equally terrified of nuclear power.

There is inherent risk in every form of power production required to meet modern demand. Accidents like this happen, but rarely do people sit back and wonder why they don't happen more frequently. People want to disparage Exxon or BP or others as if to say these entities don't give a shit for the sake of a dollar...this is ignorant demagoguery. You can't have it both ways: claiming that energy companies only exist to satisfy their bottom line at the expense of people that have no problem consuming what they produce and simultaneously ignore how accidents like these give immediate and drastic impact to the bottom line.

Let's also try this. The internet is beautiful for fact checking. Exxon-Mobile's last quarterly net margin is reported around 7.5%; Coca-cola's last net margin was 18.7%. Why do I bring up net margin? Only to be able to state that 'people need to reevaluate their priorities'. When's the last time you were enraptured by a campaign against big soda?

Just more capitalist apologetics.

(February 18, 2014 at 8:42 pm)Beccs Wrote: What do they expect, "Help! Help! I'm on fire. My house is burning dow - ooooh, pizza!"?

Sue their arses off!

The people enjoying free pizza heard a loud noise, and if close enough felt some explosive concussion for less than a few seconds. A pizza induced olfactory explosive experience lasts much longer.

---

(February 18, 2014 at 9:42 pm)EgoRaptor Wrote: Just more capitalist apologetics.

Chernobyl.

Quote:Chernobyl.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for nuclear power, though.

(February 18, 2014 at 9:43 pm)Cato Wrote:

(February 18, 2014 at 8:42 pm)Beccs Wrote: What do they expect, "Help! Help! I'm on fire. My house is burning dow - ooooh, pizza!"?

Sue their arses off!

The people enjoying free pizza heard a loud noise, and if close enough felt some explosive concussion for less than a few seconds. A pizza induced olfactory explosive experience lasts much longer.

---

(February 18, 2014 at 9:42 pm)EgoRaptor Wrote: Just more capitalist apologetics.

Chernobyl.

You just shot your own argument in the foot, the Soviet Union was state-capitalist.

It seems tacky to bribe public opinion.

It would be more responsible to promise an inquiry and put forth transparency as a goal.

After all, explosions don't appear out of nowhere.

But I dream, don't I?

(February 18, 2014 at 9:36 pm)Cato Wrote: I love when the conversation reaches this point and someone starts talking about solar and wind. Great, love it, but the reality is that it cannot keep up with demand and no it's not because we don't invest enough in it; it's because we consume too much. I love nuclear power, but the same people that ignorantly bitch about fracking are equally terrified of nuclear power.

I think a large part of why solar and wind can't keep up with fossil fuels is because we haven't invested in research and development in either of those two at anywhere near the same rate we have with fossil fuels. Those, plus hydro-electric plus geothermal plus, yes, even nuclear, those have potential to be very useful if we would do further research on how to get the most out of them. Heck, even bio fuels have potential if we were more willing to shake our oil addiction, challenge the status quo and actually make some changes for the better. Unfortunately, oil companies are making a ton of money with things the way they are and they don't want to change things because they might make less money because of it. There are so many other energy options for us, so why aren't we pursuing them instead of sucking on Chevrons' teat?

Not to mention, their cheesy (pun kinda intended) method of recompence towards a town for putting them in pretty bad danger pisses me off. If there's a huge fire in the middle of my town and it's already killed one person and emergency crews have to spend days getting it under control, I don't want a pizza; I want someone to make sure this doesn't happen again. Yet, any regulations that would prevent these accidents are dismissed as communism.

As for fracking itself, I can't say I know enough about it to know whether it's good or bad, but even if it's bad, that's just the icing on the cake.