NY Times Science Times : Rinderpest kaput, biking on yer johnson, magnet gene… and about that fracking weekend shale story
The Times and Donald G. McNeil do a good turn today, shining a bright spot light on an epochal and epic achievement: eradication of the bovine-killing Rinderpest virus from the planet. The disease is gone at least. McNeil does not say whether, like the smallpox virus that is so famous for being gone from nature, a few experimental just-in-case vials of it are kept in well-locked and layered labs somewhere. This lead story in the science section is muscular, sweeping reporting of a historic feat that, because it killed livestock but not people directly, most readers would not spontaneously recognize for its importance.
Other ScienceTimes headlines to note:
John Tierney : A Release Valve for Cyclists’ Unrelenting Pressure ; Nothing really new here, but Tierney’s exasperation with the thickheaded stupidity of people who don’t pay attention to facts when style is at stake is delightful. It largely has to do with men who sit on their weenies’ roots for long minutes, hours even, at a time. The picture shows one of the cures. Standard bicycle seats don’t do women any good either. One thing Tierney ought to have covered – maybe Tour de France riders won’t change for good reason – they spend so much time pedaling madly while in a half-crouch above their bike seats that risk of erectile dysfunction is modest?- Kenneth Chang: One Math Museum, Many Variables ; Yep, a math museum. Get a load of the square-wheeled road-conforming tricycle. I know some videos it should run, too. They’re at a site from a Harvard phenom that Mrs. Tracker the math genius in this household is crazy about – she can’t wait to master the 2n binary finger dance.
- Nicholas Wade – Magnetic Field Sensed by Gene ;
As usual, lots more at whole section.
BUT WAIT, THERE’s MORE..
- NYTimes (June 25) Ian Urbina: Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush ;
- NYTimes (Jun 26) Ian Urbina: Behind Veneer, Doubt on Future of Natural Gas ;
Y’know how just about every time there’s a technology failure or a bubble bursts, reporters dig into obscure data files and other dusty alleys to find that we were warned, or at least there were a few seers who saw it coming. And then a lot of people ask Hey! Why didn’t anybody tell me about this before?? Just in case the natural gas boom goes bust, Urbina has found some of those people in advance. Some time, musing along further here, it might be useful for a sociologist to dig into the back history of things that worked out just swell, and see if they have a higher or lower cassandra quotient than those that went bust. Maybe everything that humankind does that’s new and big has about the same doubting chorus.
Anyway. Urbina’s stories seemed interesting when I read’em the first time, but also clearly a reflection of possibility, not a forecast. The reporter, one infers, has enough respect for readers to expect them to keep perspective. Maybe there’s scads of oil and gas in shale, ready for fracking. And… maybe not and here’s evidence that a few in the know think so. But from some of the reaction you’d think the NYTimes is on some kind of party-pooping green berserker freakout. From here, it appears that the Times and Mr. Urbina are calmly saying we should learn a lesson from the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble, suggesting investers and regulators and gov’t planners step with care and not be blinkered by all the money that’s pouring in. Reaction to the story was mixed, and immediate.
- Council on Foreign Relations – Michael Levi: Is Shale Gas a Ponzi Scheme? He says no. The Times is merely waging war on shale energy.
- Forbes – Christopher Helman – New York times Is All Hot Air On Shale Gas ;
- Bloomberg – Jim Snyder: Democrat Asks Energy Agency to Say How it Estimates Natural-Gas Reserve; Lovely quote from an oil man: saying that companies “don’t invest billions of dollars in non-profitable ventures.” Uh huh. Tell it to the mortgage providers.
- Reuters – Helen Chernikoff : Natural gas drilling might disappoint investors: report ;
- Greener World Media via Reuters – Mindy S. Lubber: Why We Need to Calm the Natural Gas Frenzy ; Not a reax to the NYT stories – but in the same genre.
- Charlie Petit
June 28th, 2011 at 8:29 pm
I enjoyed McNeil’s rinderpest story, and huzzah to the Times for giving it so much space! The history is fascinating.
Indeed, rinderpest continues to exist in laboratories. This point is made (albeit in passing) in Anders Kelto’s excellent story that ran today on our radio program, PRI’s The World: http://www.theworld.org/2011/06/eradication-rinderpest/. Anders also tracked down a Masai elder who remembered rinderpest’s devastating effects. Hearing the voice of someone who suffered helped bring to life this horrible (and now, thankfully, eradicated) plague.
June 28th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
The NYT is spot on with their shale gas analysis. In the Barnett we know that the promises made are so much BS now because we were told that you could drop a drill bit in and get gas. That has not proved to be the cAse In fAct, you can have a monster well and the very next pad site over is virtually a dry hole. The rebuttals given by the industry over the last few days are pathetic! Nothing I’d substance just more hype and rhetoric and personal attacks on Urbina and the sources. the Haynesvilke recently surpassed the Barnett in production with only 1/10 of the wells. So the average Barnett well is producing 1/10 the average Haynesvilke. This is a good indication that the Times is right. Newly drilled Barnett wells in spite of all the claims of advanced technology cannot keep up with the steep declines on older wells. I applaud the Times for exposing yet another bubble.
June 29th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for recognizing the real purpose of Urbina’s article: to call attention to the concerns within the industry itself that the current projections are questionable at best. Too much of the commentary on this story has been hand-wringing over the NYT/Urbina’s supposed bias against the natural gas industry. The funny thing about this complaint is that he is just reporting on what the industry insiders are saying to each other internally, often verbatim! It’s all there in the (well annotated) documents. It remains to be seen whether these predictions turn out to be true, but I applaud the Times for at least advocating a modicum of caution in the midst of this drilling frenzy.