Splendid first episode.
I've chosen my top ten inconsistencies, I'm sure there are dozens more:
1. Surely everybody knows that methane is CH4, i.e. emits as much CO2 when you burn it as oil does, so it's hardly some super duper save the world type 'alternative energy'.
2. Why would you need to drill for the stuff, Wiki and other sources say that it's buried under the sediment on the ocean floor, isn't that sort of mud and loose rock
3. Is it really possible that you can trigger an earthquake by doing a bit of drilling or scraping up sediment? You can just about trigger an earthquake by detonating a nuclear bomb underground, but not from a bit of test drilling. I'm not sure I believe that story about fracking causing an earthquake near Blackpool.
4. Even if you can trigger an earthquake by drilling, surely that'd only happen in an earthquake zone along a fault line. Surely there's plenty of ocean floor which is safely well away from fault lines where it would be perfectly safe.
5. Did John Ross seriously think he could get away with drilling for oil in a far flung corner of his uncle's ranch?
6. Isn't Bobby the biggest hypocrite of all, refusing his nephew permission to drill for oil on a far flung corner of his ranch, seeing as he made his millions in the oil business?
7. When Bobby announced he was going to sell Southfork, why didn't John Ross congratulate him for his wise decision and then buy up the ranch behind Bobby's back. Admittedly, JR had hatched exactly this blindingly obvious plan, but how thick is John Ross?
8. When Elena told Christopher about the email (which John Ross sent her, purporting to be Christopher and dumping her just before she and Christopher were to get married) why didn't he deny it a bit more strenuously?
9. And seeing as he was about to snog her, five minutes before his wedding to the fat boring American chick, wouldn't it be traditional for his actual fiancée to walk in and see them and then run away crying? I mean, if you're going to do hackneyed and predictable plot twists, why not that one? I feel a bit cheated to be honest.
10. If Bobby is so caring and considerate, would he not tell his wife that he was dying of cancer? And what happened to little Pam? Did she die in the original series or something? Get shot in the shower, maybe?
11. How come JR snapped out of his clinical depression so fast? Or was he faking it the whole time, if so why? How did he fool the nursing staff into thinking he was seriously mentally ill? Did he actually take his "med's" or chuck them down the toilet?
If they keep this up, I'm going to have to start cross-referencing all these little contradictions to try and keep track. FFS, they've had twenty years to come up with a plausible script and this is what we get?
Wednesday 5 September 2012
Dallas: My top ten inconsistencies from Episode One
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11 comments:
Cementing yourself as the most assiduous pedant in the blogosphere, Mark. Inspired stuff, I enjoyed that. :)
Methane is a greenhouse gas and a far more powerful one than carbon dioxide. Roughly 72 times more powerful in fact. When you burn a litre of Methane and two litres of oxygen, producing a litre of carbon dioxide and two litres of steam, you are actually replacing 72x of warming by x+[a little bit]. The little bit is due to the steam but that tends to rain out in 9 days or less so not really worth worrying about.
So unburnt methane causes far more global warming than burnt methane whereas unburnt oil causes none, unlike burnt oil. And that's why anyone who really buys into global warming should forget oil and burn as much methane as they can afford to buy.
Derek: true, if it's methane who is bound to enter into the atmosphere, such as landfill gas, manure lagoons etc., this is just good housekeeping and can be cost neutral. Methane on the seafloor or in shale isn't going anywhere without help, GW or not.
Fair points, Kj.
DP, thanks. Problem is, I've now got to watch the next episode to see whether any of these inconsistencies are resolved or explained. So basically, I'm hooked.
D, aha, that makes sense. Let's burn methane then,
Kj, yes the stuff on the sea floor is not going anywhere, but it might do, and it's no worse than oil. Although not necessarily better either.
"Although not necessarily better either."
Yes, it is, slightly. Methane is CH4, petrol is a mixture of pentane and octane, which are C7H16 and C8H18 respectively, so when you burn methane, you get one molecule of carbon dioxide for two of water, whereas when you burn petrol you get one molecule of carbon dioxide to one and a bit of water.
However, 1, water vapour (in the form of clouds) is far the worst "greenhouse gas" and 2, the whole "CO2 as greenhouse gas" theory is bollocks anyway.
The methane on the ocean floor is in the form of methane clathrates, which is different from, say, North Sea Gas, which you have to drill for. Those sediments you mention are actually sedimentary rock, like shale.
Pam died of burns from a car crash.
B, I would still assume that scraping up sedimentary rock is less likely to trigger earthquakes than drilling.
"the whole "CO2 as greenhouse gas" theory is bollocks anyway"
I've had no end of grief for saying that out loud in public. It seems the idea still has a lot of traction with the general public.
P, thanks for back up info. I could have sworn that I still see her sometimes on the shopping channels, advertising skin cream and such like.
M, AFAIK, it's not the drilling, but the injection of high-pressure water that causes the earthquakes.
And the earthquakes are actually good earthquakes anyway. It's a matter of causing a lot of tiny earthquakes, so tiny that no one notices them as against leaving the strain to build up naturally to something big enough to make ornaments quiver on the mantelpiece.
Actually methane does not emit as much CO2 when you burn it as oil does. Methane has a greater ratio of hydrogen atoms to carbon atoms than oil, so burning it produces more water and less CO2.
For the same reason, burning a gallon of diesel fuel produces more CO2 than burning a gallon of petrol.
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