Energy DoubleTalk

In the atrocious headline sweepstakes, AP on Yahoo wins today’s award with “Gas could be the cavalry in global warming fight.”

The article’s author, alleged ‘AP Energy Writer Mark Williams’, ignores all the simple chemistry and energy science of fossil fuels to feed the hype machine being run by Exxon’s purchase of XTO Energy for the alleged retrieval of vast natural gas supplies in shale deposits in the United States.

…The devil in the details is written off into always rosy “future improvements”. This is very similar to the talk which surrounded ‘clean coal’ last year and how all the bad carbon dioxide from it would just be pumped back into the ground and sequestered.

Magic! Global warming solved! Energy independence guaranteed!

The icing on this not very tasty mess is furnished by Daniel Yergin. It is such a bad assessment one wonders whether Yergin actually said it — or was quoted out of context by the news service.

“The question now is how does this change the energy discussion in the U.S. and by how much?” Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize winner and chairman of an energy consultancy, told the AP reporter. “This is domestic energy … it’s low carbon, it’s low cost and it’s abundant. When you add it up, it’s revolutionary.”

No real scientist not on the salary of a fossil fuel energy producer or consultancy would say such a thing. Especially after adding up the numbers.

Dick Destiny