Sometimes it's awesome to be wrong.
It was a huge breath of fresh air when Earth and Mineral Sciences Dean Bill Easterling assured us that, no, probable Marcellus Shale 'fracking' and excavation won't actually "rape the earth" or poison our drinking water. Prior to this incident, I really did view this as a black-and-white issue, and I firmly believed that any work on the Shale would be a serious threat to the environment. So it's nice to be wrong sometimes.
But I certainly won't take that sitting down!
There's one point that I didn't have time to raise at the end of class but that has been bugging me all week:
Why spend money, time, and brainpower on an ultimately unsustainable, finite resource?
(Get ready for some interdisciplinary, idealist-college-student logic...)
It's the classic economic example wherein it "take spending money in order to earn money." In this case, the stakes are, of course, extremely high in that investing in finding a brand-new technology to essentially fuel our entire nation is a huge, huge risk. But the gains that we stand to make are unprecedented.
If we take the same quantity of taxpayer dollars and scientific research and completely reboot the current system to a model along the lines of hydroelectric or solar power (two ultimately infinite resources that can be reused again and again without damaging the source), we can quit our nasty fossil fuels habit and create a new, lasting industry.
But, as my STAT 200 class has taught me, "people tend to like a sure value for a gain." So we'd rather have (according to EGEE 102) our 60 years of natural gas (at the current rate of consumption) than switch our money, manpower, and science to the proliferation of renewable energy?
Of course, there are two damning points to my argument (and surely many more): (1) we need to maintain our current infrastructure somehow in order to have the resources and manpower to reach a new energy conclusion, and (2) Much energy research is funded by the fossil fuel industry, and this will stay that way until green energy actually starts cutting a major profit.
This problem is too big for one small Liberal Arts major, but even after learning the reassuring facts about Marcellus Shale, I still can't help but wonder why we aren't taking charge of the converse of that STAT statement: "people tend to take a risk with a loss."
So why, when faced with the undeniable proof that we are losing the fossil fuel game, are we not taking a risk?
It was a huge breath of fresh air when Earth and Mineral Sciences Dean Bill Easterling assured us that, no, probable Marcellus Shale 'fracking' and excavation won't actually "rape the earth" or poison our drinking water. Prior to this incident, I really did view this as a black-and-white issue, and I firmly believed that any work on the Shale would be a serious threat to the environment. So it's nice to be wrong sometimes.
But I certainly won't take that sitting down!
There's one point that I didn't have time to raise at the end of class but that has been bugging me all week:
Why spend money, time, and brainpower on an ultimately unsustainable, finite resource?
(Get ready for some interdisciplinary, idealist-college-student logic...)
It's the classic economic example wherein it "take spending money in order to earn money." In this case, the stakes are, of course, extremely high in that investing in finding a brand-new technology to essentially fuel our entire nation is a huge, huge risk. But the gains that we stand to make are unprecedented.
If we take the same quantity of taxpayer dollars and scientific research and completely reboot the current system to a model along the lines of hydroelectric or solar power (two ultimately infinite resources that can be reused again and again without damaging the source), we can quit our nasty fossil fuels habit and create a new, lasting industry.
But, as my STAT 200 class has taught me, "people tend to like a sure value for a gain." So we'd rather have (according to EGEE 102) our 60 years of natural gas (at the current rate of consumption) than switch our money, manpower, and science to the proliferation of renewable energy?
Of course, there are two damning points to my argument (and surely many more): (1) we need to maintain our current infrastructure somehow in order to have the resources and manpower to reach a new energy conclusion, and (2) Much energy research is funded by the fossil fuel industry, and this will stay that way until green energy actually starts cutting a major profit.
This problem is too big for one small Liberal Arts major, but even after learning the reassuring facts about Marcellus Shale, I still can't help but wonder why we aren't taking charge of the converse of that STAT statement: "people tend to take a risk with a loss."
So why, when faced with the undeniable proof that we are losing the fossil fuel game, are we not taking a risk?
