PEAX Equipment

Climate Change

I prefer the term Climate Warming.
Over the past 50 years, the highest rate of climate warming in North America has occurred in Alaska and northwest Canada (Clegg and Hu 2010)
Climate warming is evident in Alaska.
This warming has led to record-setting changes including maximum sea-ice retreat and amplified arctic warming (Melillo, Richmond, and Yohe 2014).
As sea ice has declined in arctic Alaska, autumn monthly temperatures have risen by up to 7°C over the past 3 decades (Wendler, Moore, and Galloway 2014).
Alaska recently experienced the warmest winter in 90 years (Walsh et al. 2017)
Most glaciers in Alaska are receding.
Permafrost is thawing, releasing ancient carbon via methane and CO2.
The unfrozen season in Fairbanks has nearly doubled in the past century (Wendler and Suhlski 2009).
The summer climate regime of interior Alaska is now the warmest in the past 200 years (Barber et al. 2004).
The extent of sea ice is now the lowest on since the first satellite records.
The frequency, extent, and severity of wildfire has increased this past decade.

The short term effect of climate warming has been improved moose browse via wildfires
and an extended waterfowl season, especially in interior Alaska.
In the 1990, my waterfowl season effectively ended by the end of September due to marsh freeze-up.
Now we typically can hunt until mid October when the marshes freeze.

Moose hunting has become more difficult due to prolonged seasons of swarming mosquitoes making it difficult to hear while calling, and in lower elevations, an urgency to get meat out of the field so it does not spoil. In the 1990s, you could stay in the field for weeks without worrying as every night was below freezing.

The long term effect may be a decreased moose population similar to what has happened in the Great Lakes
and northeast US. Most caribou rely on lichen for winter forage so extensive wildfires reduce that.
Long term there is likely to be elk and mule deer migrating from the Yukon into east interior Alaska.
 
California doing it's part to save the glaciers.


Nearly 30,000 acres of photovoltaic solar farms are planned for the region in the coming years, and the 4,000 megawatts they could produce will have to be weighed against additional ecosystem loss.

Just in case you were wondering you could produce the same energy from 2 gas well pads with 8 acres of surface impact.

Carbon neutral future?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
this is bait for wind right?

You know me I just hate everything, but equally.

I knew you hated glaciers wllm.😉

Just a stick in the mud about public lands an wildlife. Solar in these type situations is far far worse than just about anything else. I mean hell the Berkeley pit is only like what 500 acres.... 30,000 is like all the public land in the bridgers south of brackett creek.

Well... there's a chick pox epidemic going around... guess we need to shoot the kids 🤦‍♂️
 
You know me I just hate everything, but equally.

Dang, new there was a reason I liked you!!!


Just a stick in the mud about public lands an wildlife. Solar in these type situations is far far worse than just about anything else. I mean hell the Berkeley pit is only like what 500 acres.... 30,000 is like all the public land in the bridgers south of brackett creek.

Well... there's a chick pox epidemic going around... guess we need to shoot the kids 🤦‍♂️
Linear thinking. I love it!

Everyone thinks there is a way to have your cake and eat it too. Wind power, electric trucks, vegan diet. Whatever. We can't have 8 billion people living on this planet and soon to be even more and expect that to be "sustainable" in any sense of the word. All of these solutions will only delay the inevitable.
 
Just in case you were wondering you could produce the same energy from 2 gas well pads with 8 acres of surface impact.
Not disputing a valid point but to play a little devils advocate

Carbon neutral future?
]

Not disputing a valid point but to play a little devils advocate.
How many miles of road is estimated in the 8 acres of impact also what size corridor do we factor in for road impact? The impact to wildlife is always wider than the shoulder's of the road. For example I find that the impact of a road on mule deer is from ridge top to ridge top. Ymmv.
I know this isn't always the case but I have never seen a solar farm where there is a large impact to wildlife. We can be very careful about local. Even with a directional well we have to put them where the O/G is. No?
 
Not disputing a valid point but to play a little devils advocate.
How many miles of road is estimated in the 8 acres of impact also what size corridor do we factor in for road impact? The impact to wildlife is always wider than the shoulder's of the road. For example I find that the impact of a road on mule deer is from ridge top to ridge top. Ymmv.
I know this isn't always the case but I have never seen a solar farm where there is a large impact to wildlife. We can be very careful about local. Even with a directional well we have to put them where the O/G is. No?

Not only roads but the power station itself as solar panels are sourcing + generating. So a more apt comparison is the full plant (although typically located near a city), plus pads, a pad is going to decline fairly rapidly so to power a 4000MW plant you will have to continue to drill, although pads will be reclaimed over time, plus there are the pipeline right-of-ways to get the gas to the plants so yes it's way more complicated.

Solar on homes and build is a great idea, but they don't have a great ROR so large scale project are more attractive which are what destroy habitat. Aside from pure surface impact you also have to consider the fact that OG dev is compatible with multi-use... solar is not so in effect those 30,000 acres of public lands are going to become private, solar farms don't have a term so it could be forever, so it's essentially land transfer, which is why Bishop et al. love these projects. Further who bears the cost of removing the panels if they degrade beyond use. There is a 20k to 50k plugging liability associated with every OG well, essentially a requirement to clean up your mess. I'm not aware of similar language with regard to solar or wind but perhaps it exists.

I'm not in anyway extolling OG over solar, just noting as BrentD stated.

Everyone thinks there is a way to have your cake and eat it too. Wind power, electric trucks, vegan diet. Whatever. We can't have 8 billion people living on this planet and soon to be even more and expect that to be "sustainable" in any sense of the word. All of these solutions will only delay the inevitable.
 
It's already happening. The gender confusion techniques are in play to socially control the population. The endocrine disrupters in our foods and tap water is controlling the population from a chemical standpoint.

Call it what you want, but it is just overpopulation. Its just hard to put a positive spin on forced sterilization.
 
For how long?

Depends on the basin as different wells produce different ratios of gas v liquids.

1579280143697.png

So assuming a 1.5 mile lateral, (Mcf)
1579280272402.png
Here is the estimated production of a pad, assuming first sale of Jan 1 of year 1.
Gassy is going to be appalachia, west side of SCOOP/STACK, haynesville,etc. Oily is going to be Bakken, part of the Permian, east side of SCOOP/STACK.

Assumption being that it takes ~90,000,000 (Mcf) to power a gas plant of 4000 mW for a year.

So the first year 2 pads, year two your first 2 pads decline so you need 3 pads, year 3 4 pads, etc. At year 30 you reclaim a pad, plug the well, re-seed, ext. Though it's amazing what pads look like at year 30, often they are so over grown it's can be tough to locate them, especially if they are hooked into a line and don't have a tank battery. Usually the batteries are removed or reduced after peak volumes anyway.

What I don't know is the decline rate of solar panels in terms of efficiency and whether you need to expand or replace, I would assume expand is cheaper than replacement.

I would love to see the dept of interior require a full comparative energy study, which goes into all this detail, and then recommends various types for different areas.
 
And gay fish. It shrinks your balls





 
What I don't know is the decline rate of solar panels in terms of efficiency and whether you need to expand or replace, I would assume expand is cheaper than replacement.

I would love to see the dept of interior require a full comparative energy study, which goes into all this detail, and then recommends various types for different areas.
Good info as always.

I would disagree with this last bit. I think with solar, it would be much easier to simply replace panels as newer for efficient ones become available. Theoretically they are located in the best places. Infrastructure, including transmission mains and sub stations can again be upgraded or maintained over time.

While I agree with the idea that as of right now O&G has a smaller footprint, it's still a finite resource and thus will diminish over time. The sun isn't going to burn out anytime soon.
 
Good info as always.

I would disagree with this last bit. I think with solar, it would be much easier to simply replace panels as newer for efficient ones become available. Theoretically they are located in the best places. Infrastructure, including transmission mains and sub stations can again be upgraded or maintained over time.

While I agree with the idea that as of right now O&G has a smaller footprint, it's still a finite resource and thus will diminish over time. The sun isn't going to burn out anytime soon.

Yeah I honestly don't know... I'm just going off of how disposable our society has become. If at year 4 the entire field is 25% less efficient what happens, how do they identify which of the 30,000 acres of panels are sucking the most. Given how tight those rows may look way tighter than the width of a truck, how hard is it to replace one panel in the middle? I know that they don't fix wind turbine blades typically and just junk the whole thing... 🤷‍♂️

The world's oil reserves are vast enough Florida will be 80ft under water before we exhaust them.
 
Yeah I honestly don't know... I'm just going off of how disposable our society has become. If at year 4 the entire field is 25% less efficient what happens, how do they identify which of the 30,000 acres of panels are sucking the most. Given how tight those rows may look way tighter than the width of a truck, how hard is it to replace one panel in the middle? I know that they don't fix wind turbine blades typically and just junk the whole thing... 🤷‍♂️
Do we scrap substations when they break or become obsolete with improved tech? Or dams? No we fix what is broken and improve. Same thing with our drinking water system, you have an O&M plan that allows for improvements, a few every year so that you are constantly staying on top of maintenance. Yes, both wind and water turbines are scrapped, but they don't tear down the entire structure and move over 10 miles and do it again.
 
but they don't tear down the entire structure and move over 10 miles and do it again.

I'm more worried about a company, just leaving a crappy marginally producing field to rot for decades because they don't want to have to spend money on it...

Drinking water... well the city of flint would disagree

Dams: https://www.glencanyon.org/all-dams-are-temporary-sedimentation/

Our grid sucks because we don't scrap substations and fix them in a timely manner... among other things: https://www.npr.org/2016/08/22/4909...e-nations-electrical-grid-is-the-weakest-link

I'm just saying maintenance is something we are terrible at across the board, and it's more expensive to diagnose and fix a problem than to just build something new from scratch. We typically go with the easy cheap option.

There will be negative impacts about however we produce power, I just would prefer if we tried to understand them and picked the lesser of the evils. That might be wind and solar, I don't honestly know.
 
SITKA Gear

Forum statistics

Threads
113,615
Messages
2,026,754
Members
36,246
Latest member
thomas15
Back
Top