Fracking Around Los Alamos

It would seem that fracking is indeed occurring in the Los Alamos valley.

In my February 2011 post I raised the specter of adding pollutants from invasive oil and gas drilling to an already diminished aquifer in the Los Alamos valley. At the time, there was no direct evidence that hydraulic fracturing techniques were being used. I had learned, however, that there was rejuvenated interest on the part of Venoco Inc. in utilizing new fracking and horizontal drilling techniques to extract oil from the Miocene Monterey formation, a rich but not naturally fractured layer underlying much of the transverse California coastal ranges, including the Los Alamos Valley. The appearance of two drilling operations within a few hundred feet of each other within the San Antonio Creek flood basin down the valley suggested to me the possibility of a Monterey Shale hydraulic fracturing oil play. But there was no ready means of identifying the proprietary oil company or of determining their intentions. The leases being worked had been passed hand to hand with minimal disclosure to the uninitiated and although Vencoco reported (in a shareholders' report) the existence of three Monterey Shale fracturing operations in the nearby Santa Maria valley with a fourth in the offing the location of the last exploratory well was not disclosed. 

In my February post I detailed my reasons for believing that the Los Alamos valley operation might be that fourth, and apparently less public, exploration. After publishing the post I discussed this possibility with a friend, a former participant in the Los Alamos planning board, who agreed that this operation likely involved hydraulic fracturing. He called the office of District County Supervisor Doreen Farr for information. They had none, but promised to look into it. The representative of Supervisor Farr was responsive but seemingly ineffective, ultimately sharing an informative film describing the fracturing methodology currently in use which stressed containment and safety. 

But apparently more was going on than was being made public.

On May 5, 2011 The Independent of Santa Barbara published an article stating that "with the recent discovery by county energy's Doug Anthony" our suspicions were confirmed and that Venoco inc. is indeed utilizing fracking to extract oil and gas at that location, described as "two separate leases in the North County" and vaguely "on private land, just off Highway 135 near Vandenberg Air Force Base".  Anthony asserts that Venoco "did it" without permission and that they "have been resisting" providing information but the two sides are "still working through that". (What?) 

It seems that "the current county onshore drilling application does not have fracking-specific language" (which I can only regard as a serious oversight) and that they are drilling deep, "like 11,000 to 12,000 feet". If true, that is considerably deeper than the conventional Miocene oil plays in the area, including the Chevron Los Flores well drilled nearby to only 5998 feet. In this area, I have read, the Monterey shale ranges from 4800 to 6200 feet in depth and is between 600 to 1100 feet thick. Oil companies have often promoted deep drilling as a safety feature, suggesting that the greater depth provides a safety barrier between toxics and the water supply. But isn't it really just a matter of time? 

The above descriptions are vague. And the general knowledge demonstrated by local public officials and leaders regarding oil extraction methods in the area appears to be scant. We have just emerged from a wet winter. Our water reservoirs are full. For now. Water conservation as a concern may have slipped down the priority list just a bit. But the reality of a warming planet won't change and the value of water as a vital resource can only grow. How will we balance our energy needs against our water supply needs right here in our own backyard? 

Leadership requires the ability to see the big picture and to adjust one's compass  accordingly, both morally and actually. The mariner in a storm battles each wave at a time but the wiser mariner checked the forecast and stayed in port, avoiding the hazard altogether.

Related articles

• Shale gas extraction: The need to be seen to be clean (economist.com)
• France To Ban Fracking (businessinsider.com)

A Futuristic View of Education

By far and away my most visited post is "Sorry Parents…There Still Is No Free Lunch" in which I restate the importance of parental involvement in the education of our own children and the assumption of responsibility in fair part when things go wrong (or right!). Parental involvement is important now but I believe parental ownership of the eduction of their children will become the way of the future.

My view of education in the future is drawn from a new understanding of how the brain learns. This future includes a shift of the entire educational experience to a much younger start…and a younger finish. At the far end I recognize the increasing desirability of enlisting younger people into the work force, thus reaping the benefits of their burgeoning creativity and special cyber talents for society even as they continue to learn (as we all do all of our lives) either while pursuing studies while working at home or benefiting from a mentoring system in the work place. This projection assumes that a larger piece of the educational pie in the preadolescent to mid adolescent curriculum will be devoted to building individualized life, character, and social skills leading to essential capabilities for abstract projection and empathy, abstract thought and spirituality, ethical reasoning, and the research and validating tools to access the data needed. At the beginning, education would begin with the parents before the birth of the child and begin for the child immediately after birth, if not before, guided by a real or virtual partnership with educators, thus launching a fifteen or sixteen year collaborative educational journey, not unlike the relationship of the professional athlete and his agent.

If all of this seems very far-fetched, think again. It is in essence how children have always learned best- in a tribal way, from role models and with guidance from all members of localized communities, then to assume adult roles in those communities in their mid to late teens. The great advantage today is the technology which permits this transition into roles of responsibility in larger communities in greater ease and personal safety. Industrialization and a burgeoning population have over time been permitted to shape and form our education processes rather than best practices. But best practice today has never been as good! Learning begins with the brain and we know very much more about the brain and how it learns than ever before. We need to use what we know.

The egg does precede the chicken and education begins with purpose. Nel Noddings, in "Happiness and Education" talks about the importance of well defined teaching aims. To what purpose, after all, are we teaching this child? For financial success? For happiness? For adaptability to a changing world? Nel asks, "Should our efforts be designed to enhance society (the state) or should they be directed at benefits for the individual?" School aims (the egg) may be found scrolled above door lintels or on the proscenium of the school stage. The spectrum is usually too wide and the challenge too great: once a school begins to generate a list of such worthwhile goals as Health, Citizenship, Industry, Character, Respect, Honor, and Truth, etc. there is difficult in deciding what to omit. A child staring at such a list is likely to regard it as multiple choice. The egg  preceding the chicken can be made simpler than this….and better, when the process of learning is correlated to the developmental stages and genetic predisposition of the brain. Perhaps our egg should be, simply "Learn to Live and Live to learn."

Schools today find themselves spending increasing amounts of time and resources attempting to deal with impediments to learning. Most of these impediments are to be found conveniently located in the brain itself since they generally develop from some misdirection or misunderstanding of emotions, brain readiness, or brain differences. The education of pre-natal parents in this future model will likely begin with learning how such obstacles to learning grow and learn strategies to prevent or, in equally part, recognize and understand them. Our model parents might begin by learning about the brain from volumes similar to John Ratey's 'A User's Guide to the Brain' to gain an overview of the way the brain develops to realistically time expectations for their child in terms of brain readiness and windows of learning opportunity, behavior and discipline, ethics and values assimilation, and emotional intelligence. And then, as the parent team is growing in readiness and even as early as the third trimester prior to birth the child's formal education can begin by surrounding the expectant mother with elements of music and language. John Medina, in his wonderful book 'Brain Rules'  in which he synthesizes brain science for use right now, sees education begin in the second week of life. "The amazing cognitive ability of infants" he envisions "would be unleashed in a curriculum designed just for them", a curriculum not yet created but that could and should be easily derived from a cooperative effort between educators and the research of brain scientists, an effort that could begin right now. 

Once the educational collaborative between parents and the educator 'coaches' begins each developmental stage that follows can be addressed in a time appropriate, pre-emptive manner. The time to move from the home to an appropriate learning facility might be suggested by the child's progress or by particular needs and might occur as a gradual transition to a community learning center, perhaps to enhance personal and social skills or to gain advanced conceptual learning skills with teachers in a particular subject area. The point is that the structure of the education collaborative is that of an individualized curriculum that can change and flex to address the specific needs and changing directions for a particular student and respond to a particular brain.

In my next posting I will take up those areas of new emphasis in learning and changes to old paradigms that brain science suggests.