January 2012 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

Fracking and It's Consequences
by stormcrow60＠xmission.com 03 Jan '12

03 Jan '12

Hi Folks, After my initial response to this thread, I laid low, not wanting to contribute to the fact that some are leaving this list. But, I have to respond to Don's statements. Don, I don't know where you get your information, but to say natural gas has no pollutants is absurd. Natural gas is primarily made of methane, which, as a global warming pollutant, is 20x worse than carbon dioxide. There are several reasons, based on fact that make the effort to "frack" unjustifiable. One, vast amounts of water need to be used. We can not afford to waste our most precious resource on this planet for dirty fuels. Two, having methane, as opposed to fracking fluid in your drinking water is not anymore desirable. Would you drink it? Three, just because "fracking fluid" has not leaked into water tables now, does not mean it will not happen in the future. How many times have we heard the oil companies say oil spills can not happen and they would bear all the cleanup responsibilities? False and false. Besides, I would dispute the thought that fracking fluids have not contaminated water tables. Four, fracking has been proven to cause earthquakes, although they are small. But whats happens in the future? Five, huge federal subsidies are needed to make any fracking projects economically viable, as all fossil fuel is subsidized. If Americans really paid the true cost of producing fossil fuels, we would be paying $5/liter. Six, if these subsidies were put into green technology, we would not need to "frack". Seven, saying the Sierra Club is impartial is true. But, not having billions of dollars at stake, I tend to believe they are being more open and honest regarding their stance on fracking than the fossil fuel industry. Eight, obviously, fossil fuel industries are not impartial either. To quote a line in a TOOL song.... They "Lie, cheat and steal." We can go on and on as to why fracking is not a good energy policy. I am sure I will never convince you of my beliefs in the realm of fracking, the environment and political philosophies, but there is no way I could let your last statements go without a response. My Three Cents, Jon The situation I mentioned is just reinjection of water from one producing formation into another depleted formation. A very routine process. However, I need to respond to some of the things you may have heard about fracking. 1. The technology is not new and is well understood. The first fracs were done in the late 40's and early 50's. During the 1980's several thousand fracs were performed and during the 1990's and up to the present day several hundred thousand wells have been fracked. 2. During this whole period there is not one documented case of frac fluid getting into a water aquifer. Some of the reasons for this are that the formations fracked are almost always deeper than 5,000 feet, well below most fresh water aquifers, and government agencies require that the fresh water zones, which are typically 1500 feet or shallower, be sealed off by cementing surface casing through them. Frac fluids are not flammable and some fracs consist only of fresh water and sand. Others contain cross-linked gels and other chemicals. 3. There are cases of methane getting into drinking water. This can be caused by not having proper integrity in the surface casing and a leak developing in the production casing and gas leaking into the aquifer but this has nothing to do with the frac. Another common cause of methane in drinking water is caused by culinary water wells that are drilled in areas of shallow coals. After producing gas free water for a period the coals "dewater" and produce methane which gets into the water supply. This is a very common occurrence particularly in areas like Wyoming, Utah, Pennsylvania and West Virginia which have shallow coals associated with fresh water aquifers. 4. The frac basically enhances the producibility of gas from the existing gas reservoir. 5. Much of the hysteria about fracking has been promoted by organizations like the Sierra Club which opposes the drilling of ANY new wells ANYWHERE in the U. S. They can hardly be objective. 6. Natural gas contains no pollutants and is far preferable to coal or oil from any environmental viewpoint. It also has the smallest production footprint. The United States has sufficient natural gas resources to become energy independent and I believe it is the height of folly not to develop them. Don Quoting utah-astronomy-request(a)mailman.xmission.com: > Send Utah-Astronomy mailing list submissions to > utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > utah-astronomy-request(a)mailman.xmission.com > > You can reach the person managing the list at > utah-astronomy-owner(a)mailman.xmission.com > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Utah-Astronomy digest..." >

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Consequences of Fracking
by stormcrow60＠xmission.com 03 Jan '12

03 Jan '12

Hi Folks, After my initial response to this thread, I laid low, not wanting to contribute to the fact that some are leaving this list. But, I have to respond to Don's statements. Don, I don't know where you get your information, but to say natural gas has no pollutants is absurd. Natural gas is primarily made of methane, which, as a global warming pollutant, is 20x worse than carbon dioxide. There are several reasons, based on fact that make the effort to "frack" unjustifiable. One, vast amounts of water need to be used. We can not afford to waste our most precious resource on this planet for dirty fuels. Two, having methane, as opposed to fracking fluid in your drinking water is not anymore desirable. Would you drink it? Three, just because "fracking fluid" has not leaked into water tables now, does not mean it will not happen in the future. How many times have we heard the oil companies say oil spills can not happen and they would bear all the cleanup responsibilities? False and false. Besides, I would dispute the thought that fracking fluids have not contaminated water tables. Four, fracking has been proven to cause earthquakes, although they are small. But whats happens in the future? Five, huge federal subsidies are needed to make any fracking projects economically viable, as all fossil fuel is subsidized. If Americans really paid the true cost of producing fossil fuels, we would be paying $5/liter. Six, if these subsidies were put into green technology, we would not need to "frack". Seven, saying the Sierra Club is impartial is true. But, not having billions of dollars at stake, I tend to believe they are being more open and honest regarding their stance on fracking than the fossil fuel industry. Eight, obviously, fossil fuel industries are not impartial either. To quote a line in a TOOL song.... They "Lie, cheat and steal." We can go on and on as to why fracking is not a good energy policy. I am sure I will never convince you of my beliefs in the realm of fracking, the environment and political philosophies, but there is no way I could let your last statements go without a response. My Three Cents, Jon The situation I mentioned is just reinjection of water from one producing formation into another depleted formation. A very routine process. However, I need to respond to some of the things you may have heard about fracking. 1. The technology is not new and is well understood. The first fracs were done in the late 40's and early 50's. During the 1980's several thousand fracs were performed and during the 1990's and up to the present day several hundred thousand wells have been fracked. 2. During this whole period there is not one documented case of frac fluid getting into a water aquifer. Some of the reasons for this are that the formations fracked are almost always deeper than 5,000 feet, well below most fresh water aquifers, and government agencies require that the fresh water zones, which are typically 1500 feet or shallower, be sealed off by cementing surface casing through them. Frac fluids are not flammable and some fracs consist only of fresh water and sand. Others contain cross-linked gels and other chemicals. 3. There are cases of methane getting into drinking water. This can be caused by not having proper integrity in the surface casing and a leak developing in the production casing and gas leaking into the aquifer but this has nothing to do with the frac. Another common cause of methane in drinking water is caused by culinary water wells that are drilled in areas of shallow coals. After producing gas free water for a period the coals "dewater" and produce methane which gets into the water supply. This is a very common occurrence particularly in areas like Wyoming, Utah, Pennsylvania and West Virginia which have shallow coals associated with fresh water aquifers. 4. The frac basically enhances the producibility of gas from the existing gas reservoir. 5. Much of the hysteria about fracking has been promoted by organizations like the Sierra Club which opposes the drilling of ANY new wells ANYWHERE in the U. S. They can hardly be objective. 6. Natural gas contains no pollutants and is far preferable to coal or oil from any environmental viewpoint. It also has the smallest production footprint. The United States has sufficient natural gas resources to become energy independent and I believe it is the height of folly not to develop them. Don Quoting utah-astronomy-request(a)mailman.xmission.com: > Send Utah-Astronomy mailing list submissions to > utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > utah-astronomy-request(a)mailman.xmission.com > > You can reach the person managing the list at > utah-astronomy-owner(a)mailman.xmission.com > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Utah-Astronomy digest..." >

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Alton Mine and what not...
by stormcrow60＠xmission.com 03 Jan '12

03 Jan '12

Hi Folks, After my initial response to this thread, I laid low, not wanting to contribute to the fact that some are leaving this list. But, I have to respond to Don's statements. Don, I don't know where you get your information, but to say natural gas has no pollutants is absurd. Natural gas is primarily made of methane, which, as a global warming pollutant, is 20x worse than carbon dioxide. There are several reasons, based on fact that make the effort to "frack" unjustifiable. One, vast amounts of water need to be used. We can not afford to waste our most precious resource on this planet for dirty fuels. Two, having methane, as opposed to fracking fluid in your drinking water is not anymore desirable. Would you drink it? Three, just because "fracking fluid" has not leaked into water tables now, does not mean it will not happen in the future. How many times have we heard the oil companies say oil spills can not happen and they would bear all the cleanup responsibilities? False and false. Besides, I would dispute the thought that fracking fluids have not contaminated water tables. Four, fracking has been proven to cause earthquakes, although they are small. But whats happens in the future? Five, huge federal subsidies are needed to make any fracking projects economically viable, as all fossil fuel is subsidized. If Americans really paid the true cost of producing fossil fuels, we would be paying $5/liter. Six, if these subsidies were put into green technology, we would not need to "frack". Seven, saying the Sierra Club is impartial is true. But, not having billions of dollars at stake, I tend to believe they are being more open and honest regarding their stance on fracking than the fossil fuel industry. Eight, obviously, fossil fuel industries are not impartial either. To quote a line in a TOOL song.... They "Lie, cheat and steal." We can go on and on as to why fracking is not a good energy policy. I am sure I will never convince you of my beliefs in the realm of fracking, the environment and political philosophies, but there is no way I could let your last statements go without a response. My Three Cents, Jon The situation I mentioned is just reinjection of water from one producing formation into another depleted formation. A very routine process. However, I need to respond to some of the things you may have heard about fracking. 1. The technology is not new and is well understood. The first fracs were done in the late 40's and early 50's. During the 1980's several thousand fracs were performed and during the 1990's and up to the present day several hundred thousand wells have been fracked. 2. During this whole period there is not one documented case of frac fluid getting into a water aquifer. Some of the reasons for this are that the formations fracked are almost always deeper than 5,000 feet, well below most fresh water aquifers, and government agencies require that the fresh water zones, which are typically 1500 feet or shallower, be sealed off by cementing surface casing through them. Frac fluids are not flammable and some fracs consist only of fresh water and sand. Others contain cross-linked gels and other chemicals. 3. There are cases of methane getting into drinking water. This can be caused by not having proper integrity in the surface casing and a leak developing in the production casing and gas leaking into the aquifer but this has nothing to do with the frac. Another common cause of methane in drinking water is caused by culinary water wells that are drilled in areas of shallow coals. After producing gas free water for a period the coals "dewater" and produce methane which gets into the water supply. This is a very common occurrence particularly in areas like Wyoming, Utah, Pennsylvania and West Virginia which have shallow coals associated with fresh water aquifers. 4. The frac basically enhances the producibility of gas from the existing gas reservoir. 5. Much of the hysteria about fracking has been promoted by organizations like the Sierra Club which opposes the drilling of ANY new wells ANYWHERE in the U. S. They can hardly be objective. 6. Natural gas contains no pollutants and is far preferable to coal or oil from any environmental viewpoint. It also has the smallest production footprint. The United States has sufficient natural gas resources to become energy independent and I believe it is the height of folly not to develop them. Don Quoting utah-astronomy-request(a)mailman.xmission.com: > Send Utah-Astronomy mailing list submissions to > utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > utah-astronomy-request(a)mailman.xmission.com > > You can reach the person managing the list at > utah-astronomy-owner(a)mailman.xmission.com > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Utah-Astronomy digest..." >

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Consequences of Fracking
by stormcrow60＠xmission.com 03 Jan '12

03 Jan '12

Hi Folks, After my initial response to this thread, I laid low, not wanting to contribute to the fact that some are leaving this list. But, I have to respond to Don's statements. Don, I don't know where you get your information, but to say natural gas has no pollutants is absurd. Natural gas is primarily made of methane, which, as a global warming pollutant, is 20x worse than carbon dioxide. There are several reasons, based on fact that make the effort to "frack" unjustifiable. One, vast amounts of water need to be used. We can not afford to waste our most precious resource on this planet for dirty fuels. Two, having methane, as opposed to fracking fluid in your drinking water is not anymore desirable. Would you drink it? Three, just because "fracking fluid" has not leaked into water tables now, does not mean it will not happen in the future. How many times have we heard the oil companies say oil spills can not happen and they would bear all the cleanup responsibilities? False and false. Besides, I would dispute the thought that fracking fluids have not contaminated water tables. Four, fracking has been proven to cause earthquakes, although they are small. But whats happens in the future? Five, huge federal subsidies are needed to make any fracking projects economically viable, as all fossil fuel is subsidized. If Americans really paid the true cost of producing fossil fuels, we would be paying $5/liter. Six, if these subsidies were put into green technology, we would not need to "frack". Seven, saying the Sierra Club is impartial is true. But, not having billions of dollars at stake, I tend to believe they are being more open and honest regarding their stance on fracking than the fossil fuel industry. Eight, obviously, fossil fuel industries are not impartial either. To quote a line in a TOOL song.... They "Lie, cheat and steal." We can go on and on as to why fracking is not a good energy policy. I am sure I will never convince you of my beliefs in the realm of fracking, the environment and political philosophies, but there is no way I could let your last statements go without a response. My Three Cents, Jon The situation I mentioned is just reinjection of water from one producing formation into another depleted formation. A very routine process. However, I need to respond to some of the things you may have heard about fracking. 1. The technology is not new and is well understood. The first fracs were done in the late 40's and early 50's. During the 1980's several thousand fracs were performed and during the 1990's and up to the present day several hundred thousand wells have been fracked. 2. During this whole period there is not one documented case of frac fluid getting into a water aquifer. Some of the reasons for this are that the formations fracked are almost always deeper than 5,000 feet, well below most fresh water aquifers, and government agencies require that the fresh water zones, which are typically 1500 feet or shallower, be sealed off by cementing surface casing through them. Frac fluids are not flammable and some fracs consist only of fresh water and sand. Others contain cross-linked gels and other chemicals. 3. There are cases of methane getting into drinking water. This can be caused by not having proper integrity in the surface casing and a leak developing in the production casing and gas leaking into the aquifer but this has nothing to do with the frac. Another common cause of methane in drinking water is caused by culinary water wells that are drilled in areas of shallow coals. After producing gas free water for a period the coals "dewater" and produce methane which gets into the water supply. This is a very common occurrence particularly in areas like Wyoming, Utah, Pennsylvania and West Virginia which have shallow coals associated with fresh water aquifers. 4. The frac basically enhances the producibility of gas from the existing gas reservoir. 5. Much of the hysteria about fracking has been promoted by organizations like the Sierra Club which opposes the drilling of ANY new wells ANYWHERE in the U. S. They can hardly be objective. 6. Natural gas contains no pollutants and is far preferable to coal or oil from any environmental viewpoint. It also has the smallest production footprint. The United States has sufficient natural gas resources to become energy independent and I believe it is the height of folly not to develop them. Don Quoting utah-astronomy-request(a)mailman.xmission.com: > Send Utah-Astronomy mailing list submissions to > utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > utah-astronomy-request(a)mailman.xmission.com > > You can reach the person managing the list at > utah-astronomy-owner(a)mailman.xmission.com > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Utah-Astronomy digest..." >

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'Happy 2012' (or 'Soon We Can Stop Talking About Mayans')
by David Bennett 03 Jan '12

03 Jan '12

http://xkcd.com/998/ Happy New Year!

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Astronomy memorabilia
by Chuck Hards 03 Jan '12

03 Jan '12

What astro memorabilia do you have? What's the oddest thing in your collection? I have several, probably the most off-the-wall is Tom Cave's breakfast-cereal box. No lie. I also have Harlow Shapley's autograph. What's tucked-away on your shelf or closet?

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Have a look / OT pix
by Patrick Wiggins 02 Jan '12

02 Jan '12

Hi all, SLAS's webmeister Ken Warner has been working hard to get the SLAS website updated for the new year. I think it's all set but I'd appreciate it if some of the non-SLAS members on the list could look it over and see if anything needs fixing. Comments from SLAS members are welcome too but I'm especially interested in hearing from those with "fresh eyes" who may not have visited the site before. http://slas.us/ And for your viewing enjoyment from last evening's flight: :) Anyone heard about these things floating about over the West Desert? http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/BLIMPS.JPG And speaking of the West Desert, a while back folks here were able to tell me the dots I see on the ground around here are ant hills. Any ideas what these features are? I spotted them north of I-80 and just east of where the salt ends (dirt road in the image for scale). http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/PATTERNS.JPG Great night tonight. I hope I'm not the only one taking advantage. Hmmm, I wonder if Ms. French is. <g> patrick

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Club growth
by D P Pierce 01 Jan '12

01 Jan '12

Ron, I want to second Brent's comments. I believe the first purpose of any group is fun. If the the club is no longer fun membership drops. That's why we dropped out of the Utah Rock Art Research Association. It became too elitist. Another problem in retaining married male members is lack of family support. If the wife has no interest she is only going to tolerate hubbie being gone so much. Ron, you remember going to Cathedral Gorge SP for Las Vegas Astronomical Society's star parties in Septembers. Remember how many wives and children were there? LVAS realized a long time ago they needed to have star parties where there were a lot of activities the family could do in the day time. The wives became friends and so did the children, At Cathedral Gorge most of the wives would gather at night in one of the rented motor homes (many wifves don't want to camp in a tent) and play cards and do some drinking. They would have similar get togethers when their husbands wanted to go out to some remote locations. The wives would stay in LV and get together. I remember one year we got there a few days early but so had several others . Some children came by and were disappointed to find out we had no children that could join their children's astronomy club which they had made up that week. To join you had to be able to name one constellation. LVAS turned there club into a family club, Memberships are family memberships with both husband and wife having a vote in elections. They also have another SP at Cathedral Gorge in May. The SP had modified the campground to make it more astronomer friendly! They have other group gatherings elsewhere but always with daytime activities for family members. I have a lot of fond memories of the many times we went there. Ron, I also have fond memories of Monte Christo. Deloy Pierce

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] club growth
by Jay Eads 01 Jan '12

01 Jan '12

Hi Ron, I think the outreach events attract people into the club and into observing for the first time. Some things that I think would help is to give someone who is new to the club the option of having a packet of say 3 or 4 different objects to share and a short handout that they can use for information about that object such as distance, type of object, brightness, etc the stuff that they might be asked about, to help them be more comfortable. Then have two or three people designated for answering more complex questions that the newbie can refer a guest to if the guest asks a more in depth question. It would be nice if the newbie then followed up also and learned that information of course. The other reason besides loss of interest in a new hobby and life getting in the way, is just that, life gets in the way. I know with my schedule I have had to make some decisions and I cannot attend the club meetings on Tuesday because of class. I need my higher ed in order to accomplish my career goals. That means I miss those. It also means that in terms of time, during the new moon time you won't see me at an outreach event or public star party, because I'm off somewhere doing my personal observing. I am committed to that and the program I have for not just completing the H400 (just need some Virgo galaxies) and the H400 II but the entire 2500 NGC catalog. During the summer as schedule and the family calendar works, I try to do one outreach event per month in June, July, August and September. That will be easier now that I am off in the summers starting this May. Then during the period from first quarter to waning gibbous I do my lunar and double star observing from the backyard. I am looking to start in February or March (depends on the weather) to do one night of outreach next to the Herriman Public Library as I have that set up now. For me, that is an extremely busy schedule when you combine the fact that I am now exercising to lose weight (doctor's orders), I'm a husband, a father of a 18 and 19 year old now, and I have some other responsibilities that I do not mention or the fact that I have my own homework and work preparation, or processing the sketches I create at the telescope, my observations and transferring them from my digital recorder to iTunes and the computer and preparing my observing list for that month. Now we'll mention the blog I try to keep up. Whew! I think if I showed a newbie that schedule above they would run for the hills! Sometimes we invite them to too much I think in our own excitement for the hobby. I do that from time to time. I'm starting to get to the point to where I'll share what I am doing and if others want to join in, great, if not, great. Another challenge I think we face in Utah is that for many people, they have families and in many ways this is not a family activity, it is an individual activity though sometimes family is in attendance. That makes it hard, hard on the observer or person running their scope as they worry what their kids are doing. It is hard on the spouse because they have to track the kids and keep them together and its hard on the kids, because they are just that, kids. Anyway, I just think there are logistical problems for people in the hobby with young families/kids at home. For them it just might be easier to stay at home, and take the scope out after the kids go to bed in the backyard with their updated version of Turn Left at Orion written for dobs. It is easy for me to leave my almost 19 and 18 year old at home. Heck, by new moon I want to get away for the night from them! Joking of course but it becomes easier as the kids become teenagers. I think this is one reason that many people drop out. I think that is why SLAS has the turn out at Wheeler Farm that it does. Close to home, and easy to be home by 11:00p.m. if your in the Salt Lake Valley. Last reason, is that I don't think that Neapolitan is for everyone. Some want to do outreach, some want to go visually observing at a dark site, some want to do imaging, some want to just learn some want . . . That is the problem. They may only want to do one thing related to the hobby. The club cannot be all things to everyone. Its up for the person to determine what they want out of the hobby and then to either go create it if it isn't there, or find out where to go or whom to go to in order to find out how to do whatever it is they want done. Not sure if that is what you are looking for but its just some random thoughts and their free so feel free to ignore and discard them! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

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SPOC air tour
by Patrick Wiggins 31 Dec '11

31 Dec '11

One of SLAS's newest members, Josh Emery, and daughter Kira got a tour of SPOC today from the air. Josh, BTW, sat in back while Kira sat in the copilot's seat and did most of the flying. http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/kirajosh.jpg First time in a small plane for both of them. Welcome to SLAS Josh and Kira! patrick

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