For the past few weeks the Times and Sunday Times have been talking up shale gas saying that the UK has enough gas to heat Britain's homes for 1,500 years. This is on the basis of the British Geological Survey publishing new estimates of shale gas resources - which BGS hasn't done yet, so who knows where the papers are getting their infomation?
The Sunday Times quotes the Times as saying that "Britain could have enough shale gas to heat every home for 1,500 years, according to new estimates that suggest reserves are 200 times greater than previously thought".
BGS said some time ago that the next estimates were likely to go up, but not by that much.
Well, the previous BGS estimate for onshore shale gas reserves was 5.3 trillion cubic feet (tcf), which at a national gas consumption rate of 3.5 tcf per annum would give us a 1.5 year national supply. If the BGS has revised its estimate by a factor of 200 that gives us 5.3 x 200 / 3.5 = 303 year national supply, not 1,500 years. Presumably the Times has separated out dometic heating from total gas consumption for effect.
Does this approach sound familiar? Get some figures that can't be traced and might be wrong and then multipy them by five. Let's wait and see what the BGS has got to say about it rather than rely on speculation and smoke and mirrors in the Times and the Sunday Times.
Oops, too late the CarbonBrief already debunked the story last week when it appeared in the Times - http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/02/why-the-times-doesnt-believe-we-have-fifteen-centuries-of-shale-gas. It also seems that the Sunday Times reporter has got his resources and reserves mixed up, just like JRM. So who was the Sunday Times reporter anyway? - Dominic Lawson no less, son of Nigel Lawson - creator of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (read on if you are not familiar with it). Enough said. I wonder what Nigella's estimate is?
In the same Sunday Times issue Dominic Lawson reviews Al Gore's new book, The Future, and says that Gore might be right about the power of corporate lobbying on the media, but says that Gore doesn't give any real examples of how the oil and gas industries manipulate the media. Interesting. If Dominic's dad, Nigel, were to reveal who the Global Warming Policy Foundation donors are then we might have a better idea of who is, or isn't, manipulating the media and government policy here in the UK.
The Sunday Times quotes the Times as saying that "Britain could have enough shale gas to heat every home for 1,500 years, according to new estimates that suggest reserves are 200 times greater than previously thought".
BGS said some time ago that the next estimates were likely to go up, but not by that much.
Well, the previous BGS estimate for onshore shale gas reserves was 5.3 trillion cubic feet (tcf), which at a national gas consumption rate of 3.5 tcf per annum would give us a 1.5 year national supply. If the BGS has revised its estimate by a factor of 200 that gives us 5.3 x 200 / 3.5 = 303 year national supply, not 1,500 years. Presumably the Times has separated out dometic heating from total gas consumption for effect.
Does this approach sound familiar? Get some figures that can't be traced and might be wrong and then multipy them by five. Let's wait and see what the BGS has got to say about it rather than rely on speculation and smoke and mirrors in the Times and the Sunday Times.
Oops, too late the CarbonBrief already debunked the story last week when it appeared in the Times - http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/02/why-the-times-doesnt-believe-we-have-fifteen-centuries-of-shale-gas. It also seems that the Sunday Times reporter has got his resources and reserves mixed up, just like JRM. So who was the Sunday Times reporter anyway? - Dominic Lawson no less, son of Nigel Lawson - creator of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (read on if you are not familiar with it). Enough said. I wonder what Nigella's estimate is?
In the same Sunday Times issue Dominic Lawson reviews Al Gore's new book, The Future, and says that Gore might be right about the power of corporate lobbying on the media, but says that Gore doesn't give any real examples of how the oil and gas industries manipulate the media. Interesting. If Dominic's dad, Nigel, were to reveal who the Global Warming Policy Foundation donors are then we might have a better idea of who is, or isn't, manipulating the media and government policy here in the UK.
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