Fracking follow-up

Arguing over whether people actually read stuff before commenting on it (they don’t) is so last week, and thus it’s time to add a couple more thoughts from my fracking post, which was ever so trendy (like Lewis Pugh was last week).

Firstly, there were a couple (literally two) objections to my use of the term “bunnyhugger” to describe those of a green persuasion. Now, I rebuffed these objections by questioning exactly what could be insulting about saying someone cuddles rabbits. But apparently, it’s a derogatory term. Aside from the fact that perhaps I wished to be derogatory, I would point out that “bunnyhugger” is merely a derivative of “treehugger”, which is a common term by which environmentalists refer to each other. See environmental website treehugger.com, for example.

Putting this neatly in perspective: I have called people worse.

Secondly, I found another good (fairly well balanced) article about natural gas and fracking. Since these sort of articles seem to be few and far between, I thought I would share it. It’s from MIT and weighs up the needs, the pros and the cons of natural gas and shale gas extraction.
Give it a read – at least until you get to the first bit where it says natural gas is good, then you can stop and throw rocks at me.

Thirdly, we may all be saved from fossil fuels forever anyway, thanks to the all new, all singing, all dancing (disclaimer: it neither sings, nor dances) artificial photosynthetic leaf:

The artificial leaf uses nickel and cobalt as catalysts to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen by facilitating oxygen-oxygen bonding.
Oxygen and hydrogen molecules are then sent to a fuel cell that can produce electricity. If the device is placed in a one-gallon bucket of water in bright sunlight, it can reportedly produce enough electricity to power a house in a developing nation.

The one immediate flaw I can see in their plan is that many people in developing countries don’t have buckets.

Oh, or water.

Finally, a word of caution from Dilbert on green technologies:

And did you know it’s illegal to have wind turbine in your back garden in Cape Town?
It must be true, because I heard it on Cape Talk last night.