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EARTHblog » Alan Septoff
Profile of shale gas shows benefits, reveals the problems.
energyNOW!, a news service focusing on energy, has put out a good, balanced piece titled "The Promise and Problems of Shale Gas".
One of the key quotes from Professor Tony Ingraffea indicates why drilling is simply not safe:
"The studies haven't been done to allow a potential landowner who wants to lease his land to answer the following question: am I hurting my family's health or my neighbor's health by doing this? They don't know how to answer that question. They can't answer that question."
Tagged with: fracking, hydraulic fracturing, pennsylvania
Gold statistics that might frustrate mining-impacted communities
The World Gold Council keeps a set of gold statistics. Among them, how much gold every country in the word keeps in its reserve banks.
According to the WGC (actually originally sourced from the IMF), the largest holder of gold is the U.S. with 8,100 metric tons of gold. The world, collectively, holds more than 30,000 metric tons.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. production of gold in 2010 was 230 metric tons and global production was 2,500 metric tons.
In other words, there is enough gold sitting in just U.S. banks to replaced the annual mined supply for 3 years. And enough in the world to replace mined gold for more than 10 years.
I wonder what the communities fighting for to protect their communities from unwanted gold mining in Rosia Montana (Romania) or the Wassa district (Ghana) or Yanachocha/Cajamarca (Peru) think of this?
Tagged with: dirty gold, usgs, statistics, world gold council
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