Who Will Protect the Public Interest?
Fracking does nothing to improve the landscape, the roads, the air, the water, or the lives of the locals. And energy companies are devious and without honor in these matters. Who will safeguard the parks?
Can’t Make it Go Away
When you throw something away, where is “away?” The Westmoreland County Landfill is one “away” place where fracking waste is disposed of. But there is no away. The fluids leach out of the landfill and must be disposed of, or should we say disposed of again. WSL currently transports radioactive leachate and other chemically-laced liquid
Climat News
The Waste Doesn’t Just Go “Away”
Fracking does nothing good for the environment.
Information and Propaganda
If you read the following article, you would think that fracking was a benign technical option. The problem with articles like this one should be obvious. It fails to address the history of things that can and do go wrong. Nor does it discuss the issue of sealing abandoned wells, which may be a practical
Guess Who Pays the Bill?
Players in the energy industry know how to skip on their cleanup obligations. Nobody wants to admit to it, but there are ways to game the system so that investors can take the money and leave behind a shell that has no capacity to clean up the mess they leave behind. “IBG/YBG” means “I’ll be
Let’s Be Skeptical
Here is a Reuters article about a government study that concludes fracking doesn’t necessarily hurt our water. The problem with such studies is always in the circumstances that were not considered. Keep in mind that the process involves punching a big hole through many different layers of strata, lining it with a big pipe and
Scary Video
The energy industry does not want us to focus on fossil fuel-induced global warming. They want us to perceive it as a distant and equivocal risk. But we should be alarmed by evidence like this: The data shows us that global warming is real and is accelerating. Many things contribute to this vicious cycle, but
About those Fracking Earthquakes: It’s True
Here’s the abstract of a study summarizing the reliability of findings concerning induced earthquakes. The evidence is credible. Claims of industrially induced seismicity vary from indisputable to unpersuasive and yet the veracity of industrial induction is vital for regulatory and operational practice. Assessment schemes have been developed in response to this need. We report here
Consequences
New York State is trying to put the externalized costs of fossil fuel back on fossil energy producers. I don’t know if this legislation will be effective, but it sure focuses attention on the fact that “cheap” fossil energy is not truly cheap when the consequences of burning such fuels are considered. Pennsylvania, are you