'Atlas Shrugged' en schaliegas

Een opvallende parallel.

In een recente column vergelijkt James Delingpole (die de term Climategate heeft gemunt) de huidige controverse over schaliegas in het Verenigd Koninkrijk met de strijd rond het Rearden metaal, dat in het boek 'Atlas Shrugged' van Ayn Rand een centrale rol speelt.

Delingpole:

For my summer holidays I have been mostly reading Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand has her faults but, boy, was she prescient. 

One of the things she foresaw was the current nonsensical, dishonest, canting campaign against shale gas. In Atlas Shrugged it takes the form of Rearden Metal, the miracle technology which is going to transform the US economy if only the progressives will let it. But of course, Rand’s fictional progressives don’t want Rearden Metal to succeed any more than their modern, real-life equivalents want shale gas to succeed. Why not? For the same rag-bag of made-up, disingenuous reasons which progressives have used to justify their war on progress since time immemorial: it’s unfair, it uses up scarce resources, it might be dangerous.

Rand doesn’t actually use the phrase “the precautionary principle.” But this is exactly what she is describing in the book when various vested interests – the corporatists in bed with big government, the politicised junk-scientists at the Institute of Science (aka, in our world, the National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society), the unions – try to close down the nascent technology using the flimsiest of excuses. 

Vervolgens haalt James Delingpole een passage uit het boek aan, waarna hij opmerkt: 

You may have noticed something similar going on with the anti-shale gas campaign. All those "experts" – many from the oil or renewables industries, no doubt with a string of degrees from universities all over the country – who've worked so effectively to delay shale gas exploitation in Britain with their ingenious excuses: our shale plays aren't the same as America's [true: the Bowland shale, for example, is significantly deeper]; our denser population makes it harder to extract without disruption or environmental damage [what? And wind turbines aren't guilty of doing the same, only with far less obvious benefit?]; that the cost of gas won't significantly drop [yeah, that's really persuasive that one. We've got trillions of cubic feet of gas on our doorstep but when we drill for it and vastly increase available supply it won't have any effect on price??].

Then, of course, there are those five big lies about shale gas so brilliantly nailed by Matt Ridley. The one about polluted aquifers, the one about methane, the one about excess water use, the one about the "hundreds of chemicals" the BBC tells us are pumped into the ground, the one about "earthquakes": none of them is credible – yet you hear them being spouted by "experts" and green campaigners and concerned citizens all the time.

Lees verder hier.

Onder de titel, 'Let’s Shatter These Five Myths About Fracking', weerlegt Matt Ridley in een recente bijdrage in 'The Times' de bezwaren tegen schaliegas.

Matt Ridley:

Shale gas does not cause earthquakes, pollute water or use toxic chemicals. Wind turbines do far more damage.

It was the US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who once said: “You are entitled to your opinions, but not to your own facts.” In the debate over shale gas — I refuse to call it the fracking debate, as fracking has been happening in this country for decades — the opponents do seem to be astonishingly cavalier with the facts. Here are five things they keep saying that are simply false. First, that shale gas production has polluted aquifers in America. Second, that it releases more methane than other forms of gas production. Third, that it uses a worryingly large amount of water. Fourth, that it uses hundreds of toxic chemicals. Fifth, that it causes damaging earthquakes. None is true.

En vervolgens maakt hij korte metten met al deze argumenten.

Lees verder hier.

Voor mijn eerdere DDS-bijdragen, zie hier.