Hi Texter,While on face value I question the motives and...

Hi Texter,

While on face value I question the motives and methodology employed by the university in a notoriously anti-CSG area, and am therefore taking the results with a grain of salt until the study is verified, I nevertheless gave you a TU as its clear your post is reasoned and in good faith. A very welcome change from the recent discourse on this thread.

“"“It makes no sense to develop a new fossil fuel industry at the end of the fossil fuel age, particularly when it is compromising food growing land and contaminating aquifers.”"”

I’ll preface this comment by declaring that I hold a rather deep and stubborn dislike for this woman. The final part of this sentence suggests that there is no ambiguity around potential damage to the environment, her rhetoric is very (and deliberately) misleading. Also, Milne was one of the principle architects behind the ETS, a scheme which explicitly supports the use of gas as a transitional fuel. She knows full well that renewable energy CANNOT (no ambiguity) sustain the baseload power that our society needs. While this is the case the use of coal or gas is a necessity unless we want to return to candles and rubbing sticks together.

So if the methane levels emitted in extraction are shown to be higher, all that will change are the economics of project development, ie. how the carbon tax will be applied. If they shown to be level with coal then we have a choice for the next 20 years at least: coal mining or CSG extraction. Ask yourself which is more damaging to the environment…

Also, you said “I mean unconventional, nothing against conventional. (tight sands and fracking is not conventional)”. Next year Metgasco will be drilling Rosella which should make you (and does make me) feel all warm and fuzzy.

WTE