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Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

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Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#41

Post by DisjointedHunt »

hutzlibu wrote: post #38
DisjointedHunt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Edit]: You’re a coward if you downvote to suppress an opinion without having the decency to engage in debate. Jesus. . You actually think carbon released from burning wood is exempt from the whole “making the planet unlivable” effect? Repeat that to yourself while you watch the skies turn red. That’s a ridiculous statement to make.

"[Edit]: You’re a coward if you downvote to suppress an opinion without having the decency to engage in debate." The other explanation would be, that your arguments and discussion style are not the best and not worth engaging with.

Enjoy the internet points counter go to zero then while you and the hive mind declare that one kind of fire produces different carbon than the other based on the political affiliation of the cause.

Maybe that's the uncomfortable debate? Idk, what do i know man? I'm just a guy with questions for idiotic sounding arguments without a citation.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#42

Post by whatever1 »

gradys wrote: post #37
whatever1 wrote: post #34

I like how we are hiking the fuel prices for the peasants to reduce CO2 emmissions while we give free passes to billionaires to extract and burn fossils for tourism purposes.

Are we doing that? Was some new gas tax passed in the US?

Last time I checked in Europe 80% of the gas price was taxes.

Last time that I checked in the US up to 30% of the fuel price was paid for RINS, aka renewable energy certificates.

So yes we do pay for sustainability. Unlike the billionaire explorers.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#43

Post by oceanplexian »

speedybird wrote: post #18
groby_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big deal is that the well is seemingly exempt from the regulation all other wells go through. It doesn't matter what Musk does with the methane, what matters is that he's at best exploiting loopholes and at worst operating extrajudicially. Also, SpaceX "powering the human colonization of Mars" is a pretty huge sip of the Kool Aid there. Given the founder's track record, it's about as believable as "fully self-dri…

> "he's at best exploiting loopholes and at worst operating extrajudicially. [...] But, more importantly, it's irrelevant to the problem at hand, sidestepping the regulation process" Again, the EPA exists, so where are they in this? What loophole is SpaceX using to skirt around the EPA?

IMHO SpaceX should get an exemption for national security purposes (For the same reason the US Military doesn’t need to abide by the EPA). Access to space is in the national interest. I don’t think something that has an immeasurable impact on the climate is anywhere close to being more important.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#44

Post by gameswithgo »

brabel wrote: post #6
ed wrote: post #4

Additional context > Musk’s SpaceX aims to use a site in South Texas to launch rockets to carry people and cargo to the moon and Mars. To do that, the company intends to drill gas wells to make its own fuel and electricity, according a Federal Aviation Administration document seen by Bloomberg. > The SpaceX site in Texas will be supplied by at least five nearby gas wells, along with two gas-fired power plants, accord…

If anyone had any doubt about whether Elon really had the environment in mind when he founded Tesla, I think now you've got your answer. In fact, most people driving electric cars likely wouldn't think twice about building a fracked well if they knew they could make millions from that... if they really cared about the environment, they wouldn't even drive around.

This sort of ridiculous cynicism doesn’t help that cause.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#45

Post by bleh123 »

speedybird wrote: post #33
DisjointedHunt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Edit]: You’re a coward if you downvote to suppress an opinion without having the decency to engage in debate. Jesus. . You actually think carbon released from burning wood is exempt from the whole “making the planet unlivable” effect? Repeat that to yourself while you watch the skies turn red. That’s a ridiculous statement to make.

If you think wildfire smoke makes a region unlivable, then consider that before deciding where to live. Wildfires are a natural part of the ecological cycle in some parts of the world. You can fault California for botching their forest management by suppressing fires and consequently causing larger fires later on, but either way you will have to cope with the smoke. (Also, the sky turning red is actually somewhat pre…

So . . what is the statement you're making?

That those forest fires that could have been avoided are "natural" and that i shouldn't care about the negligent pollution of air or the planet since i should just "move away" ?

I'm having a hard time squaring any of this with the outrage you've displayed in your other comments about a well being drilled.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#46

Post by Qworg »

stefan_ wrote: post #3

The context here seems to be that SpaceX is in fact building an old boring fracked well gas plant in federally protected land, but because they cursorily mention rockets and call it a "methane processing thingamajig" instead of what it plain is, the FAA who has no experience doing environmental review but is involved because rockets is all too happy to just nod it through.

The EPA doesn't have a dog in this fight - the feds don't have much of a role at all, unless it is on federal lands of a particular class that would trigger special protections (ie National Park).

Piping gas across state lines can involve the feds, or if they impign on a wetland or waterway. There's no interstate commerce to trigger any substantial federal involvement that I can see.

Texas was an inspired choice - California would have been a knife fight regulatorily.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#47

Post by ahmedalsudani »

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #25
ahmedalsudani wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filed under non sequitur.

There are four paragraphs in the comment. If you have the patience to read through to at least the third , you’d see the comparison. It’s amazing to see the standard of debate in a thread on HN slip so bad that people don’t have conversations anymore, but walk in with the “know it all” mentality to downvote .

For the record I'm not against using fossil fuels for any purpose.

No matter how many paragraphs you turn it into, the forest fires in California have nothing to do with fracking gas. Don't turn a discussion of a private company's behaviour into a culture war.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#48

Post by criley2 »

speedybird wrote: post #36
dpierce9 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is from 2016: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/blog/eagle-ford-shale... It suggests the FAA’s role is consideration of launch failure and safety on the proposed plant. FERC also evaluated the proposal. FERC doesn’t really do environmental reviews. Here is a document from April which at the time said EPA had no comment on the draft environmental impact statement as part of an interagency process: https://ww…

This makes sense. If the EPA is slacking and rubber-stamping things, that warrants investigation and criticism. But I'm not buying the angle that the FAA should be expected to enforce the EPA's rules. That's what the EPA is for.

The EPA was utterly gutted over the past 4 years. The sad part is that it takes much longer to rebuild than it does to tear down. The EPA being unable or unwilling to enforce environmental protections is by design.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#49

Post by 8note »

oceanplexian wrote: post #43
speedybird wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "he's at best exploiting loopholes and at worst operating extrajudicially. [...] But, more importantly, it's irrelevant to the problem at hand, sidestepping the regulation process" Again, the EPA exists, so where are they in this? What loophole is SpaceX using to skirt around the EPA?

IMHO SpaceX should get an exemption for national security purposes (For the same reason the US Military doesn’t need to abide by the EPA). Access to space is in the national interest. I don’t think something that has an immeasurable impact on the climate is anywhere close to being more important.

The EPA is also a national security concern. No need to defend space that you've already turned into a toxic wasteland

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#50

Post by ceejayoz »

_3u10 wrote: post #39

Isn’t capturing and then flaring methane the environmentally responsible thing to do?

That'll depend on where the methane is captured from.

A landfill, or reclaimed from cow shit? Sure.

An underground well, where it could've been left alone? Not necessarily.

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