Class action lawsuit over Oklahoma Earthquakes

[A Black Falcon]

Central air doesn't heat itself, something has to heat it. Do you mean it's all electricity-heated there? Here that'd never happen, electricity is far too expensive to make that a sane option! (You must have cheaper electricity then...) Instead most people have oil furnaces in their basements. There are several ways of getting the heat through the house, including air ducts or radiators (for either steam or hot water), but you don't really need central air conditioning here most of the time so few houses have that.

Considering Oklahoma "expendable" so long as you can get your precious Maine heaters on propane instead of coal is the height of privileged thinking, and yes, you SHOULD completely oppose waste water injection! I don't care WHAT it's better than, it's WORSE than a whole host of far superior options!

And this is why this is so hard -- what's better for one person is worse for another. There are multiple reasons why natural gas (not propane, which is a slightly different thing) is a good fuel to heat with:

- It's able to come in through pipe networks under the street, meaning that presuming you live somewhere with access you don't need that large, and very expensive to replace once it goes bad, oil tank in your cellar.
- Natural gas burns much cleaner than fuel oil, which means that it's better for the environment AND the furnace. Fuel oil furnaces need yearly cleanings, you see; the stuff does not burn too cleanly, so you've got to pay someone to clean it each year. With natural gas the problem is much less urgent, as the much cleaner-burning fuel means fewer cleanings are needed.
- Thanks to the boom of supply (thanks to fracking, yes) natural gas is very cheap now, so if you heat with gas it'll cost a lot less than fuel oil does.

On the other hand, if you already have a oil furnace switching over to gas (even if you have a gas line) costs a lot, so it'd take many years to see the benefit financially. But that'd be the case no matter what you switch to, of course.

Overall, of course switching over to something greener would be far better. We're seeing how awful global warming is already getting and it's going to get much, MUCH worse. However, with things as they are, what can you do? You can't heat a house with solar panels, people can't build their own wind-power windmills, and geothermal requires a good location and is very expensive. Electric heat costs even more than that, and a significant amount of that is fossil fuel-generated anyway. Considering that, what can most people do but choose between oil and gas?

(Oh, as for propane, it requires a tank on your property much like oil, except propane tanks are often outside instead of in the basement. As a heating fuel it's only for people who can't get natural gas where they are, pretty much.)

I don't care WHAT it's better than, it's WORSE than a whole host of far superior options!

What are these far superior options? It's not fuel oil, that has all kinds of drawback too, environmental and otherwise (more so overseas than in the US, but it has them!). And until or unless we get prices down and renewables up, I don't see electricity as a great option either.

Look, as I said, I absolutely support stronger, stricter rules on fracking. There should be MUCH closer examination of everything they pump into the ground, and their claims that "the stuff is too deep down to get into water tables" definitely sounds sketchy at best. Methane emissions capture or reduction is also absolutely essential. There has been too much fracking without enough regulation. But on the other hand, natural gas has a lot of positives compared to all the other fossil fuels, and it is kind of needed. So yeah, I support more regulation, but not a ban on natural gas production.