Many environmentally related posts appearing at Daily Kos each week don’t attract the attention they deserve. To help get more eyeballs, Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue) appears twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The most recent Wednesday Spotlight can be seen here. So far, more than 19,725 environmentally oriented diaries have been rescued for inclusion in this weekly collection since 2006. Inclusion of a diary in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it.
The Frackonomics Con Job about to be Exposed-by gjohnsit: “The numbers for the fracking industry have never really added up, but according to yesterday’s Bloomberg article the amount of lies and deception is a bubble waiting to burst. They’re running a great risk of litigation when they don’t end up producing anything like that,’ said John Lee, a University of Houston petroleum engineering professor who helped write the SEC rules and has taught reserves evaluation to a generation of engineers. If I were an ambulance-chasing lawyer, I’d get into this.’ The discrepancy at issue here is the difference between what the frackers are telling their investors and what they can actually deliver. […] More and more wells are being drilled. More capital/debt is being used to get at that oil and gas. But production has stalled because the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. Unlike traditional oil drilling, shale oil taps out very quickly. That is simple geology.”
3 billion gallons of oil industry wastewater has been injected illegally into California aquifers-by Walter Einenkel: “From the Center for Biological Diversity comes some troubling news: Almost 3 billion gallons of oil industry wastewater have been illegally dumped into central California aquifers that supply drinking water and farming irrigation, according to state documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity. The wastewater, which should have been treated using methods such as can be found here https://www.veoliawatertech.com/en/expertise/applications/zero-liquid-discharge-solutions, entered the aquifers through at least nine injection disposal wells used by the oil industry to dispose of waste contaminated with fracking fluids and other pollutants. High levels of arsenic, thallium and nitrates were also found in water-supply wells around waste-disposal locations. These, of course, have yet to be tested to find out the true nature of their relationship to the waste-management facilities nearby.”
The Daily Bucket successful catch, or not?-by OceanDiver: “October 5, 2014, Salish Sea, PNW. Had an unexpected sighting of a golden giant-a Steller SeaLion-and even more unexpected, his encounter with a fish! […] out of the corner of my eye I saw motion and a flash of white. I swung around-luckily now the sun was behind me!-and pushed a button, the camera taking a series of photos in quick succession while I watched the live action with my other eye. In an instant, the fish had disappeared and the SeaLion had dived. Had he succeeded in capturing that slimy wiggling creature? or was this one of many unsuccessful fishing attempts? Along with persistence and luck, having a decent tool makes it possible to learn all kinds of things about wildlife never possible otherwise.”
You can find more rescued green diaries below the sustainable squiggle.
