Is Fracking Environmentally Friendly? Article from The Guardian

Is shale gas the future for the UK?

Shale gas has dominated the news in the past few days as on Wednesday a company (Cuadrilla Resources) announced they have discovered a potential reserve of 200 trillion cubic feet of gas in shale rock under Lancashire. This is more than 10 times the known north sea gas reserves. To extract this gas a shaft is drilled deep into the rock and a high pressure mixture of liquid chemicals is pumped down to break up the rock, a process known as fracking.

In America shale gas exploration and extraction is well established and there has been fierce opposition over environmental concerns. The gas and chemicals used to fracture the rock have the potential to pollute groundwater. Shale gas is energy intensive to extract although natural gas itself is considered a better alternative than other fossil fuels for use in power stations.

There are concerns that over regulation of shale gas exploration and the possible impact of the scale of extraction.

This article presents a balanced argument over the environmental impacts.

 

Top 5 Eco-Friendly Careers

If you are in the process of job hunting or just a bit restless in your current career, would you consider a green career? How about green car manufacturing, renewable energy installation, climatology, hydrology or forestry?

For more information or (like me) to find out what on earth a hydrologist does go here.

Have you moved house during the time you have been using imeasure?

If you have data from your current home and a previous address in imeasure you can now separate these and get energy analysis for both, comparing your old and new usage.

Assuming you have both new and old meters set up under the same building; Go to the Buildings tab and click Add new building. Enter the details of your old home as best you can (Local weather station is important here!)

Once set up, go the “Meters” tab. To move a meter from one building to another in your account simple click ‘edit’ for that meter and then select the correct building from the drop down box. Don’t forget to click update!

Return to the “Buildings” tab and click on either of the buildings to view results.

 

And finally…

Giraffes, butterflies, a whale and an elephant, amongst others, and certainly not together. If stunning photography is your thing check this out.