Misplaced passion

I am a passionate person. I am happy to share my passions with others, which is why I write here.

However, passion is a dangerous emotion. The passionate have to take care they they use the force of their passion constructively. It is all too easy to be destructive.

I have long felt infinitely sad for those in the animal rights movement who have expressed their passion by violence. People work with animals to try to find ways of alleviating human suffering. If you don't like them working with animals, then you should strive to find another way of curing human ills. That is the constructive use of your passion. The destructive use is to attack those who work with animals, because ultimately you are hindering their attempts to relieve human suffering.

One of my many passions is a belief in an open society, one in which we should be free to express our beliefs without fear or favour. Thus I have a hatred of propaganda. I like the definition "Propaganda is -- a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual)" [Richard Alan Nelson, A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States (1996) pp. 232-233]

When I saw the video Gasland, I soon realized it was a good example of propaganda. Finding out that it really did give a one-sided message which in many places was anything but factual took a little time. Fortunately my quest was aided by others who had reached the same conclusion. An epiphany came when I found a You-Tube of Gasland's producer, Josh Fox, admitting that he had known that the "flaming water" was a long-standing phenomenon that had nothing to do with fracking. Since then I have been passionate about revealing the propaganda for what it was.

The debate has generally been fruitful. My opponents have been courteous, knowledgeable in their own way, happy to share their concerns, and willing to consider that their concerns could be addressed. The debate has therefore come down to ways of ensuring that fixes could be achieved. Once the concerns had been reliably addressed, exploration via 'fracking' was reasonable.

I, for my part, have had to stress that no fix is perfect. Murphy's Law is alive and well. But one of the beauties of engineering is that it does get better and better - we do learn from our mistakes. So the risk of the fixes failing is likely to diminish with time. As one concern is addressed, another will be found to take its place. Ultimately the de minimis rule will kick in, and all will accept the tiny chance of failure that remains.

But there is O'Toole's rider to Murphy's Law - he said "Murphy is an optimist!" I said that the debate has generally been fruitful. There are exceptions to this rule, point blank refusal even to discuss concerns, outright rejection of the possibility of another view.

The latest example of this has been an invitation to a musician to play to a group of us. Negotiations proceeded slowly, but finally we agreed a significant fee. Then, with a week to go, came a surprising email "Since my last email I have read some of your blogs. I do not wish to be associated with you or your crew. I am vehemently against Fracking. I will also not support the pursuit of profit without regard for its humanitarian and environmental impact."

I was not previously aware that 'my crew' would be deemed to share my passions - in fact, I am certain that they share a few, and equally certain that they hold contrary views about many others. I don't mind vehemence - some of those with whom I have debated have been quite vehement, and it expresses passion well.

However, passion can blind, and surely it has in this case. One of my passions happens to be music, and that is one which I share with the musician - and with many of 'my crew'. The musician has allowed one of his passions to get in the way of another. That is as good an example of the destructiveness of passion as I know.

Shakespeare, how now your Romeo and Juliet?

Gaslands and fracking

The film Gaslands has had a huge influence on public opinion about fracking in the Karoo. Do we want our water bursting into flames, like they showed in the film?

I have long said that I doubted the veracity of the tale. If it were commonly associated with fracking, then someone would have reported it long ago. Fracking has been around since the 1940's and over one million holes have been fracked.

Indeed, the truth is now out - the phenomenon was first reported in 1936. http://www.noteviljustwrong.com/General/gasland-director-hides-full-facts.html

A 1976 study by the Colorado Division of Water found that this area was plagued with gas in the water problems back then. And it was naturally occurring. As the report stated there were "troublesome amounts of methane" in the water decades before fracking began. It seems that in geographical areas gas has always been in the water.

But Josh Fox knew this and chose not to put it in Gasland. I asked him about this omission at a recent screening at Northwestern University in Chicago. He said he had not included these facts that questioned his alarmism because "they were not relevant." He also dropped the bombshell that I had not been aware of that there were media reports of people lighting their water as far back as 1936. Again this was not included in Gasland because it was not relevant.

The video confession was pulled for copyright reasons, but still exists on http://vimeo.com/24628804

I haven't heard any reports that the nomination for an Oscar has been withdrawn - or of any apologies from our local activists for having misled everyone.

What the frac?

There are calls for a moratorium on exploring for shale gas in the Karoo.

Does the rent-a-mob have a clue what they are talking about? Do they know the depth of the shale, and have they worked out what that means? Do they understand that not much deeper, the rocks start to glow? Are they not worried that 'fracking' might bring all that lava to the surface?

Seriously, though, at the depths we are talking about, the problem is not the damage done by fracking, but how to keep the cracks open while the gas comes out. As soon as possible, at the pressures 1000 or more metres down there, the cracks close up and the miniscule risk of the water from the upper aquifers getting contaminated goes for ever (and anyway, the mechanism for water to move up and down in the upper layers of the Earth's crust is not obvious).

The other thing about this bunch of do-gooders is that they preach 'sustainable development' of the Karoo. That requires some additional source of wealth. All that I have seen is regrowth of the villages by city dwellers anxious to get away from it all. This is hardly sustainable. New wealth to sustain development would flow if gas were discovered in large quantities.

How sad that the producers of that cheap trick called "Gaslands" failed to get the message across in the USA, which has just increased its gas reserves by 500 million tcf due to shale gas. This has probably saved the US economy. The Gaslanders have come here in the hopes of more bounty than they could get at home - and some of us have fallen for it. The wealth that shale gas in the Karoo could create is almost immeasurable - and the anti-fracking mob think it is worth throwing away. Does 'fascist pigs' fit the bill? It does if you are struggling to make ends meet in a distant dorpie.