You have to wonder: Do journalists covering energy issues imagine they and their loved ones are going to be living on another planet in the not-too-distant future?
That seems like the only reason you would write a piece about the world discovering ways to extract and burn vast new quantities of hydrocarbons without mentioning one word about climate change. That’s what Bryan Walsh gave us in the May 21 issue of Time magazine—an article about fracking that doesn’t mention the technology’s powerful contribution to global warming.
The headline over this article: “The Golden Age.”
Walsh does refer to fracking’s ecological impact, referring to “environmental concerns over fracking—chiefly the possibility of groundwater pollution.” The groundwater contamination associated with fracking is certainly bad, but most environmentalists will tell you that climate change is the biggest challenge facing humanity—and that finding new ways to burn carbon (and release methane as well) is utterly unhelpful.
Walsh concludes his article: “Fracking is here to stay, scrambling a global energy picture that had long seemed settled.” Actually, the only thing that was settled was that people would have to totally reinvent their energy systems if they wanted to avoid catastrophe. But for Time magazine, ignoring that catastrophe seems to be the next best thing.
Addicts rarely respond to logic.
I’m not referring directly to the addiction to hydrocarbons, but of the overarching addiction to profit, which renders any rational consideration of the consequences of continuing and accelerating the destruction of our ecosphere moot in the minds of the moneyed.
The corpress, as courtiers to those who harbor these dark desires, merely mirrors the insanity that hurls us headlong toward the abyss.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
And who willfully blind others.
Whats the old saying “The amount of effort required to get a man to see an opposing point of view, is directly proportional to the amount his income depends on him not seeing the other point of view”.
The other thing that comes to mind is that the people never seem to think beyond the quick and easy ‘next moment’. They are sure that it will not happen in their life, so they honestly don’t care. They view it as the old “when your up to butt in alligators, it’s hard to remember your intent was to drain the swamp”. What they don’t realize is, things like fracking are the alligators, not the swamp.
Good catch.
Unfortunately, Time magazine has plenty of company; much of U.S. Congress, much of the business community, probably a majority of their subscribers.
Stanley R Scobie, Ph.D., Binghamton, NY
FAIR is complicit in maintaining the hoax of ‘global warming’, which is 1) not happening 2) logically impossible and 3) a cover for the effects of man-made atmospheric heating from saturation by radio-frequency technologies (mobile phones, wi-fi, radar, HAARP) “Fracking” and hydro-carbon extraction, combustion and addiction are EXTREMELY GRAVE PROBLEMS and DO affect ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY and therefore HEALTH but ‘climate change’ is 1) a given for this planet and 2) is NOT something we need to worry about compared to the dangers of many other FAR MORE DANGEROUS scenarios, for example, the ASTRONOMICAL LEVELS OF IONIZING RADIATION AND PLUTONIUM COMING OUT OF FUKUSHIMA.
I’ve been growing asparagus in the same place for 39 years. Every spring up until 2009 had the first cutting on exactly May 10th. Starting 2010, we cut 21 days EARLY, same in 2011, and 14 days before May 10 this year. Asparagus is not part of the “hoax” of climate change, it just is and reflects “climate” rather than “weather”. I do agree with Mr. Wefferson that Kukushima’s many reactor leaks and discharges of high levels of many forms of nuclear radiation (greater than ALL nuclear weapons testing since we started this planetary suicidal behavior!) are a more immediate and unfortunately long long lasting horrendous effects. More than a MILLION premature deaths are predicted by experts in Japan alone. However, this nuclear madness does not preclude reducing the man-made heating of our planet, come on!
Gosh, makes me think about the old fair and balanced joke of mainstream journalism: No matter how inane the “other” “side” may be, the fair and balanced thingee demands that it be given equal space/time/air. I am a retired U.S. Air Force public affairs officer. When I was running the PA office at a Strategic Air Command base in the Northeast, the joke was to reply to noise complaints from the public by telling them that the aircraft noise they heard and now complaining about was just the “sound of freedom.” Yep.
Time–and to large extent Time Inc.–is afflicted with blind business boosterism, a legacy of its founder Henry Luce. At its most intense and extreme, Time’s BBB is indistinguishable from what you’d hear at a small-town Chamber of Commerce meeting. Thus it calls a potential age of fracking “Golden” when it might well involve the destruction of many rural communities, along with their air quality and watersheds, across the Marcellus Shale in the Northeast, and surely elsewhere in the U.S. The threat is global: sizable shale-gas deposits have been found in 32 countries.
Time used to be balanced by the slightly left of center Newsweek, but now under Tina Brown it seems to have lurched rightward (and tinseltown- and royalward). One consolation, I suppose, is that Time‘s readership has to be largely geriatric and nostalgic for the good old days of the Cold War. That also helps explain its reveling in a familiar solution to an energy problem: unexploited fossil fuels. And the lack of interest in global warming: Not their problem, even though they had a hand in causing it.
The state of Vermont has now banned fracking. According to Goveror Shumlin, in the next generation or two “drinking water will be more valuable than oil or gas.” So we have the concern about a stable climate but concerns over potable water as well.
On the other hand, the Republican Party of small government in PA, has, through the passage of Act 13, usurped all local zoning across the state in favor of statewide standards in a “one gas/oil size fits all” approach. No township can enact regulations tougher than those enumerated in Act 13. All local zoning is pre-empted. As I understand it, such things as wastewater and chemical impoundments can be as close as 300 feet to a residential district because Act 13 applies to all zoning across the state. The gas/oil industry can be everywhere.
The Act is being challenged by 7 municipalities and an environmental group so things are in a holding pattern right now.
Mainstream media has become little more than a mouthpiece for the establishment. Disgusting! I no longer read Time, Newsweek etc. Rather I read ProPublica, FAIR, and the like.
Natural gas in abundance should reduced the use of coal and petroleum. This effect is important to the future health of this planet and has to be factored into these discussions. Fracking occurs way below aquifers and measures to prevent surface contamination by fracking fluids must be enacted.
As I read this I hear in the background the cheering throng of around 100,000 people enthralled in raptures over a group of infantile adults playing a ball game – the “Heinekin Cup” (Drugs, Diversion and Capitalism). I read among the comments the usual denial stuff – natural gas will reduce coal burning and the toxic chemicals used are too far underground to affect aquifers – all the benefits are, of course wondrous and all the risks and damage infinitessimal – no science, just a cosy fantasy.
I feel that these are the babblings and bleatings of an insane species on the brink of extinction. More Mendelshon, please, I need some peace.
ALL fossil fuels, and that includes coal, gas and oil, contribute to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What has CO2 done to the atmosphere? It has caused sea levels to rise, global temperatures to rise, glacial melting everywhere, extreme weather events, and ocean acidification, to name a few.
Fracking fluids don’t stay deep in the ground. At least a third return to the surface as flowback and so we have to deal with this fracked, contaminated water. It had been sent to water treatment plants until the plants could no longer handle it. It is also stored in large, above ground impoundment pits. Surface spills can occur. Further, unless one understands the hydrogeology of an area, how is it possible to know whether there is some underground route (considering all the fissures and cracks under the ground through which water moves) that will eventually allow toxic chemicals to contaminate ground water. Already, fracking has been implicated in contaminated ground water Wyoming and in a recent E.P.A. study.
If fracking is as safe as some claim it to be, why does it continue to be exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act? Why is it impossible to end those exemptions?
Mention should also be made of the enormous amount of fresh water that is used in fracking. What studies have been done to show that recharge rates are such that they can easily replace this ground water used in fracking?
I live in a ground water protected area because what is being withdrawn (the demand) can exceed the recharge rate, particularly during dry periods and lead to declining water tables and private wells drying up. In fact, an aquifer can dry up as well and there can be a total loss of available supplies.
Lowered water tables impact streams, causing a drop in water there as well, and interfering with other industies (fishing, other aquatic life) as well as the ability of that stream to assimilate pollutants that are discharged into it. When there is little or no water in the stream, it’s hard to dilute pollutants.
Thank goodness for VERMONT, as that shows some sanity remains in the nation!
Dear YES MEN: I have an idea. How about introducing a new product called “MIDAS Water, or he,y “SUN Water?” Another bottled water, ( just what we need.) But this NATURAL water…LOL comes from “below” the aquifer. ( Actually, go to Wyoming for sure and get that water that no one can drink, bottled it in a golden glass, add “natural” to the label, and present some to Mr. Bryan Walsh. See what he thinks after a glass or two. That ought to make an interesting article about how “golden ” fracking can be! I wonder if ‘fracking is here to stay” would make sense to him after drinking in this experience : )
The Golden Age of Fracking also exempts fracking from certain federal monitoring and federal requirements, thereby reducing transparency and information. It exempts flowback fluids and produced waters from regulation as hazardous waste.
In some areas, the Golden Age of Fracking has also managed to secure state laws that allow companies to limit disclosure of information regarding public health impacts of gas drilling by blocking and collecting the sharing of information.
In out-of-court settlements, litigants are usually prohibited from discussing the case and court records are sealed.
So much of this Golden Age appears to be wrapped in secrecy.
The article also fails to mention the history of mineral extraction–where extraction occurs economic bust follows. The combination of environmental devastation, economic denigration, and climate change should be a “three strikes you’re out,” but those with blinders on, like Time in this case, stumble blithely forward to the detriment of us all.
Today, in my local paper, the following was reported:
1. State Act 13 strips local municipalities of their zoning authority (as noted above)
2. The state (PA) made logging a guaranteed right in all zoning districts in 1992, capitulating to timber interests.
3.Shortly after, the state stripped municipalities of their authority to regulate corporate water extraction.
4. In 2005, the legislature adopted Act 38 which preempts municipal regulation of factory farming and gives private agribusiness a public lawyer–the state attorney general–so that taxpayer funded state attorneys can sue municipalities on behalf of corporations, with taxpayer dollars.
Many municipalities are working to elevate the rights of communities above the rights of corporation but it won’t be easy.
The above is off target from the original topic of fracking but serves as a shocking example of the merging of corporatism and government to promote corporate interests over the interests of people.
Well it is obvious that the panic over global warming is waining.And that means the left has two choices.Give up trying to squeeze political capital out of this,or…..full steam dead ahead.On the left especially the radical left,the science is, and has been ,closed since those words first came spinning out of some libs mouth that it was all Americas fault.That was plenty good enough for them.Many ,many people think it is all a scam.Most on the right think either that, or most definitely a card over played.Those on the left may agree with global warming on the whole but………How many are willing throw in all their chips with the back to horse and buggy save the earth crowd?Bottom line is the argument has changed.First it was we will soon be out of gas.Now we find an ocean of it,but we are not supposed to touch it due to environmental dangers.No one on the left ever talks about how we are doing a GREAT job on the environment in this country.Anything we develop we can do in a better and better way.Never is the idea to fix the technology.Why is that?Always it is cut and run.At this point there is no alternative to the power source of our economy.Airforce one still fills up with gas and oil.Green tech is slow but growing.That is reality.And global warming(or cooling) still is not by any means closed science…let alone the idea that it is man made.We shall under Mitt Romney move forward on exploration, and development of all our natural resources .AND on green technology.Not in the stupid government intrusive way that has marked failure for all of Obama and Biden’s ideas,but in a market and marketable aproach.