…  Mr. Obama keeps telling nationwide audiences that “we have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years.” That is just not true. If he believes it then he is either 1) getting treasonously bad advice from dishonest advisors or 2) not reading reports issued by his own agencies or 3) just making shit up. This was the same week, by the way, when the US Department of Energy dropped its estimate for the Marcellus shale gas play by 66 percent, while the estimate for all US shale basins went down 42 percent. The shale gas industry is another Ponzi bubble that is about to founder on a scarcity of investment capital. Just watch.

     The “energy independence” trope is a lie, too. At least in the sense that Mr. Obama means – that we can run the suburban clusterfuck and all its accessories by other means than fossil fuels. He just says it because it makes voters feel better. By the time they find out it was just a story, he won’t need their votes anymore. Meanwhile, we’ll do nothing to prepare for a different way of life, and so, necessarily, the result will be an obscene scramble for power…

This is how a recent post from http://patryantravels.wordpress.com. Sure, it’s facetious, but that doesn’t make it any less prescient. Read the rest at Pat Ryan Travels.

Almost every single argument for natural gas is based on false basic assumptions, and each one stands directly in the way of what’s supposed to be America’s main asset – it’s ingenuity.

I remember being in the “Ecology Club” in junior high, in the early ’70s, and there was talk about solar energy, wind power, etc. 40 years later and we’ve barely made progress. Hell, we could land a man on the moon within 10 years of Kennedy’s inspirational speech, but we can’t harness enough green energy to power the country by the 21st century. Why?

The ONLY reason is because the prevailing industries benefited from the Space Race, and they benefit by stonewalling renewable energy. It is this pernicious stonewalling and mealy-mouthing that shills like T. Boone Pickens likes to miscall “progress” that is hurting real progress. Please don’t fall for these hucksters.

When people say, “Why don’t you go down to where they’re drilling in Pennsylvania and see what the people think there,” when they are trying to defend fracking.

Well, that’s what these activists did, and they found that there was a lot to complain about.

See for yourself what the deal is. This video was not funded by any group with an agenda. It just shows the real deal, as opposed to the media machine that the natural gas industry uses to hype its propaganda.

It’s just a dirty (not “less clean”) tactic of a filthy industry.

Beyond that, here’s news about how truly dirty natural gas is:

According to Newswise:

Extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale could do more to aggravate global warming than mining coal, according to a Cornell study published in the May issue of the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change Letters.

I expect that the typical disingenuous arguments will be made against this study, such as, “There’s no such thing as global warming. It’s all a liberal conspiracy – the space aliens in my attic told me so,” etc.

We, the undersigned, request the Otego Town Board to pass legislation prohibiting heavy industry in the town of Otego (including hydraulic fracturing for natural gas).

Our concerns include the protection of health, resources, property values, traditional businesses, and the natural beauty of our community.

We, the undersigned, are concerned citizens who urge our leaders to act now to pass an ordinance to prohibit heavy industry in our community.

If you are a resident of the Town of Otego (which includes the Village of Otego), please sign the petition.

(Wait for it to load – it could take a few seconds.)

Otego before and after horizontal fracking for natural gas?

Click Here to Sign the petition against Drilling for Natural Gas in Otego

How will natural gas drilling affect my health?

Water

Drinking water contaminated by drilling chemicals & radioactive materials from below the earth’s surface.

Air

Increased cases of asthma & other breathing disorders from toxic fumes.

Noise

Noise from compressor stations & drilling exceed Federal safety limits.

Traffic

Increased incidents of accidents & roadway congestion.

Sleep Patterns

Disruption of sleep due to constant noise & lights.

Your Children’s Safety

Records show increased incidents of crime & drug use from outside workers; school bus safety issues; proximity of schools to drilling sites & emissions.

Health Risks

Increased incidents of asthma, endocrine disruption, birth defects & cancer.

How will natural gas drilling affect me economically?

Real Estate Values

People unwilling to buy houses with gas leases or located next to leased land; value of homes decreases<

Jobs

Most of the jobs will be filled by workers from outside the area

Road Damage

Town taxes may be needed to repair damage from excessive weight & frequency of truck traffic.

Taxes

Your taxes may increase to undo damage to infrastructure & contamination clean-up

Effect on Local Economy

Increased  prices on rentals & food purchases – prices driven up by gas workers willing to pay higher prices by gas workers willing to pay higher prices.

Economic impacts of natural gas drilling

How will natural gas drilling affect my community?

• Increased traffic
• Strain on local emergency services
• Increased rents & food prices
• Increase in drugs in the area
• Impact on hunting & fishing
• Decreased fish & wildlife due to contaminants & noise
• Decreased demand for area farm products due to possible contaminants
• Explosions, accidents & spills
• Property values collapse
• Compulsory integration – non-leased landowners forced to have drilling beneath their lands

Even if you have not leased, the environmental and social issues will still affect you & you will get no compensation

Click Here to Sign the petition against Drilling for Natural Gas in Otego

Will the government protect me?

The Federal Government has exempted the Oil and Gas Industries from:

• The Clean Water Act
• The Clean Air Act
• The Safe Drinking  Water Act
• A host of other reporting & oversight laws

Both Village & Town residents will be negatively affected.

New York State and its Department of Environmental Conservation (the DEC )cannot effectively protect us.

What YOU can do…

1. Go to Town Board Meetings.
2. Go to rallies and presentations.
3. Write letters to the editor.
4. Contact local, county & state officials.
5. Support candidates that are opposed to gas drilling.
6. Join a group in your town.
7. Talk to people.
8. Display signs.
9. Educate yourself.
10. Educate others.

Educate yourself by checking out these websites for more information:

CDOG – http://www.un-naturalgas.org/ A good compilation of all facets of gas drilling & its effects.

Dr. Theo Colborn – http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/home.php Proven medical documentation of health effects of gas drilling.

Fort Worth, TX – www.fwcando.org First-hand accounts from people who have watched their community be impacted by gas drilling.

Texas Sharon – http://www.txsharon.blogspot.com Despite death threats, a single mother in Texas has taken on the gas drilling industry.

Sustainable Otsego – www.sustainableotsego.org A local website with current news of regional efforts to protect our county.

NERCRD Rural Development Paper – http://nercrd.psu.edu/publications/rdppapers/rdp43.pdf Implications for Marcellus shale drilling on local governments & rural communities.

Click Here to Sign the petition against Drilling for Natural Gas in Otego

The reason I want to include it is because it’s refreshing to see young people think in such a good, logical way, and not be swayed by labeling and ad hominem attacks.

To that effect, I also want to include the brilliant introduction to the first issue of “The Whisk” before the article about fracking.

Introduction – So what the heck is this?

This is a new publication from your peers here at GHS, dedicated to all things environmentally and socially progressive. Not really though. Wait, what?

You see, in this hyper-everything world that we live in, the public’s attention span is widely accepted to be quite short. Like many widely accepted things, this may not be true. But what is true is that most media and other such things in our current culture assume that this is the case; that our attention spans don’t span more than a few seconds at best. Hence, we see the use of quick words and phrases that are meant to sum up grand concepts. There is a prevailing black and white mentality, a whose-side-are-you-on, contentious mindset that fosters ill will and misunderstanding.

You are no doubt keenly aware of this. High school is one of the most concentrated places of this culture. If you dress “this” way and hang out with “these” people, then you must be “that”. This seems to carry on into the adult world, where nearly everyone is likely to be pulled into some sort of faction in the minds of others. A Democrat has to like bigger government, unions and protecting the environment. A Republican must be for smaller government, abolition of unions and corporate interests. No doubt, you are sure to find a democrat and a republican who do those things. But not all. There are democrats who are not for larger government. There are even Republicans who are for the environment! They’re called Republicans for Environmental Protection. Their slogan has a green elephant, and they operate under the motto “there’s nothing more conservative than conservation”.

The point trying to be made here is that we can’t allow labeling. We can’t content ourselves with breaking things down to their bare minimum. We have to read the facts and not the opinions. Our opinions should be our own. It may be hard to follow something that you believe when it goes against the beliefs of those around you. But we urge you to make that jump. We live in the United States! It is still our right, for the most part, to think and say and be what we feel like.

So is the whisk a hippie publication bent on infecting your soul, curving your spine and keeping the country from winning the war (to phrase from the late, great George Carlin)? Some articles might be. But that doesn’t make the entire publication such. The Whisk is not radical. It is a zine meant to call to your attention what is too often lacking in this hectic world of ours: logic. Common sense. Coming from the Environmental Club, one might say that this is biased. It’s not! In the words on one Edward Abbey: “Reason has seldom failed us because it has seldom been tried.” An environmentalist might support the shift to natural gas for our energy needs.

Someone applying reason might look at the process this entails, and the destruction and pollution it renders upon the earth, and conclude otherwise.

The Whisk seeks to try reason. Please be skeptical of everything you read here, or anywhere for that matter, that is not explicitly presented as a fact. Then, if so inclined, we encourage you to look things up for yourself. The Internet rocks. So read on with one eyebrow raised, and become a part of our little movement to eradicate ignorance, prejudice, fanaticism, pretentiousness and all such mean nasty things.

What the FRACK?

By Sylvia Wilde

As the carbon fuels that we’ve used to restructure the Earth’s atmosphere and ravage its climate begin to dwindle, coal, oil, and gas companies are scrambling to tear every last bit of fossil fuel out of the ground–as violently as necessary. Coal companies are blowing up mountains for thin seams of coal, oil companies are denuding thousands of square miles of land to get at tar sands, and natural gas companies are fracking.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, is the method used to release pockets of methane from a type of rock–such as shale–that is particularly impermeable. The process goes like this:
Gas companies will drill a well deep underground to the rock where the methane deposits are. Then, they will pump a mixture of sand, water, and other chemicals into the ground at such a high pressure that the bedrock cracks. When it does, the sand in the mixture fills the cracks, holding them open and allowing the gas to finally seep out.

This process wastes staggering amounts of water–millions of gallons for each frack–but it has the potential to pollute far more. Hundreds of tons of volatile organic compounds are used each time a well is fractured, and many of these compounds are carcinogens (cancer causers) or endocrine disruptors, which are chemicals that throw off our body chemistry by mimicking our hormones. When the casings to the wells leak, they release water contaminated with gas and toxic chemicals into the water table. Fracking has been linked to over 1,000 instances of contaminated drinking water, and some people have even had water coming out of their faucet that was flammable because of the methane in it.

So how are they getting away with this? The energy policy act of 2005 created a loophole for frackers that exempted them from the Safe Drinking Water Act and other EPA-enforced laws. Now the gas companies don’t even have to tell what chemicals they’re putting into their fracking fluid.  That means, even when there is proven water contamination, it can’t necessarily be traced back to the frackers.

All of this is starting to get a lot scarier for those of us who live out east. Companies like Halliburton have been fracking for years in western states like Colorado and Wyoming, but now they’re invading states like Pennsylvania and New York so that they can exploit the vast Marcellus Shale that lies beneath them. It’s time to get angry.

Right now, the battle over what gas companies are going to be able to do is being waged on both a state and national level. Last November, the people of New York State made a stand and put a freeze on all fracking in their state; they were unwilling to watch the NYC’s water be contaminated by corporate greed. This is a good first step, but we can’t stop here: if we’re going to protect our health and our environment, we can’t be apathetic, we need to act now.

Here’s what you can do:

1) Tell your friends and family about hydraulic fracturing and why it’s so fracking stupid.

2) Call, email, or write to your senators and your representative in congress, asking them to cosponsor The FRAC Act, H.R. 2766 or  S. 1215, which would hold natural gas companies accountable under the Safe Drinking Water act and force them to tell what chemicals they’re fracking with.

3)Learn more by going to http://earthworksaction.org/FracingDetails.cfm, gaslandthemovie.com, or the website of a trusted organization.

 Don’t let them frack our future!

Energy Boomtowns & Natural Gas: Implications for Marcellus Shale Local Governments & Rural Communities

From NERCRD Rural Development Paper No. 43 January 2009, 63 pp. Prepared by Jeffrey Jacquet
Here’s the table of contents:

Part One: The Boomtown Impact Model

• The Boomtown Narrative
• Challenges to Local Governments
• Government and Community Reaction to Boomtown Growth
• Economic Impacts
• Social Impacts
• Criticisms of the model
• The Bust

Part Two: The Case Study of Sublette County Wyoming

• Historical and Cultural Context
• Employment and Demographic
• Impacts Impacts to Economic Activity
• Impacts to Local Governments
• Social Impacts Fit to the Boomtown Model

Part Three: Implications for the Marcellus Shale:
The Recent Demand for Natural Gas Drilling
Applicability of Marcellus Shale Development to the Boomtown Model
Implications for Local Government and Communities

Download Energy Boomtowns & Natural Gas here (right click).

Thanks to Roz Shafer for pointing me to this.

Have you read this Sunday’s NY Times? Front page: Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers

Already the shills for the gas industry have mobilized with dubious critiques and half-truths to “debunk” the well-researched and devastating article in the NYT. The coalitions are showing their desperation.

Fortunately, the NYT is keeping up with reporting the truth, and has a fine rebuttal to the gas coalition’s baloney today.

This wonderfully written parody of “A Visit from Saint Nick”  (original by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823) was written by Yvonne M. Lucia in December of 2010. If anyone knows how t reach Yvonne, please let me know. It was circulated in an e-mail that I got, probably about fourth-hand.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the state,
the citizens were restless, awaiting their fate.
FONG* signs were placed on front lawns with care,
in hopes that gas drilling would commence there.

Leaseholders were nestled, all snug in their beds,
while visions of a gold rush danced in their heads.
With Cuomo in Albany and Pete Grannis gone,
will our leaders become industry’s pawn?

In Dimock , PA there’s been such a clatter -
the water’s gone bad, but what does it matter?
In Big Flats, NY people’s water is bubbling;
there’s no fracking yet , that’s what’s most troubling.

Gas flares on the breast of the new fallen snow
gave a luster of orange to objects below,
when what to our wondering eyes should appear,
but water trucks, rigs, and compressor stations near,

and armies of landmen, who bold-face lies speak;
we knew in a moment they’re from Chesapeake .
They descended like vultures circling their prey,
from farmers to widows, they promised to pay

fifty dollars an acre, now one hundred, now two,
up to one thousand, six thousand, it’s true!
“To the top of the heap! Don’t let the deal stall!
Now sign the lease! Sign the lease! Sign the lease, all!”

When permits were granted, along came denials
that there could be problems with drilling gone wild.
As gag rules were issued when water went bad,
people began to feel they’d been had.

So they joined forces and shared their sad tales -
in state after state, regulations had failed.
They held their heads high and spoke truth to power:
“This is the moment, this is the hour -

We demand our right to clean water and air,
to the seventh generation we pledge our care;
not in my backyard, or in anyone else’s
will we ravage the earth to fatten our purses.”

Their eyes, how they twinkled, their spirits were merry!
Onward and upward their voices did carry.
In spite of the obstacles, grass roots groups formed;
Now thousands strong, gas companies, be warned:

“You are NOT persons, despite what courts say.
We the people will have our way
as we take back our land, our water and air,
our victories won on a wing and a prayer.”

And then in that instant, up on the roof
we heard someone crying, we needed no proof.
As we drew in our heads and were turning around,
down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

His eyes were all bloodshot, but not from not sleeping;
“Oh Santa, dear Santa Claus, why are you weeping?”
“High up in the sky my sleigh has been flying;
when I looked down below, I saw the earth dying.

My heart is breaking, there’ll be Christmas no more
if in place of giving, greed is the lure.”
And we heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight,
“Drilling isn’t safe – keep up the fight!”

(*FONG =Friends of Natural Gas)