What The Frack?

Jan 10th, 2012

As evidence continues to mount linking "fracking" to seismic instability and new earthquake activity, Scott Thill goes off:

"To what should be the surprise of no one, earthquakes caused by the junkie gas sector's hydraulic fracturing process, known as fracking, have been cropping up like Freud's repressed. The latest ominously arrived in Republican-dominated Ohio on New Year's Eve, quickly prompting Youngstown's mayor to buy earthquake insurance and lament, "You lose your whole house, that's your life savings, and if you have no money or no insurance to replace it, then what do you do?"

That's easy, Mayor Charles P. Sammarone, and anyone else finally learning these hard lessons: You stop fracking, which is to say you stop messing with the geological integrity of your cities, and their water tables. If you're Ohio, then you stop givingGOP industry stooges like Speaker of the House John Boehner and Governor John Kasich access to your precious natural resources. If you're the rest of the world, you accept that you have a serious problem with fossil fuel consumption, detach your complicity and support, and start planning for a future in which deregulated shale gas extraction, and its frackquake-causing disposal wells, are a desperate cry for psychoanalysis rather than an acceptable peak oil market."

Christopher Helman dismisses these concerns:

"After a handful of earthquakes in Mahoning County, most recently on New Year’s Eve, Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources shut down five deep wells used by natural gas drillers to dispose of chemical-laden gunk recovered from natural gas fracking operations. The quakes, biggest of which measured 4 on the Richter scale, coincided with injections into the wells, pretty much ruling out coincidence.

The Oklahoma Geological Survey has found a 10-fold increase in quakes there in recent years (including three magnitude 5s in early November), but has stopped short of blaming them on a rampant increase in gas drilling. A year ago Arkansas declared a moratorium on deep injection wells after a flurry of earth-shaking there (even though similar quake swarms have occurred there in the past). Even in England, the drilling company Cuadrilla Resources says its activities probably caused a couple quakes, but they were less than 2 on the Richter, about as rough as a truck driving down your street."

What is abundantly clear is that "fracking" is a very dirty business and is a terrible threat to groundwater systems throughout the country. 

The GOP War On Just About Everybody

Oct 14th, 2011

It took less than a day for the GOP to truly distinguish itself as one of most reactionary and dangerous forces ever to confront our country. Facts don't matter. Science doesn't matter. The health and welfare of most other Americans doesn't matter.

Photo by Declan McCullagh 

First, they passed the "let women die" bill yesterday. This unprecedented (until this year) assault on women's rights, health and actual safety, gives any hospital the privilege of denying an abortive procedure on moral grounds in all instances. Even if the pregnancy is nonviable and not performing one will kill the pregnant woman, the house GOP unanimously endorsed allowing refusal of care.

The Great Climate Change Distraction, part 3

Feb 17th, 2011

First, I stipulated that the debate over climate change was actually a tool that benefits polluters. The next day, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) lent vulgar credence to my thesis. Today, I argue with humor.

Copyright © Joel Pett 2011 

The Great Climate Change Distraction, cont...

Feb 10th, 2011

by F. Grey Parker

Yesterday, I published a piece arguing that the climate change "debate" has effectively neutered the environmental movement. 

We aren't talking about childhood leukemia and it's links to air pollution anymore. We aren't discussing industrial toxins and their direct correlation to neurodevelopmental disease. Instead, we are listening to Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) calling global warming a "hoax" and not only arguing against EPA regulations on that basis but hyping his new book on the subject before a house subcommittee.

From Tulsa World:

"I won’t tell you what it’s about, but the name of the book is 'The Hoax,'?" he said during testimony before a House subcommittee. 

"I did finish it last week." 

Just five days ago, the findings of yet another study proving a correlation between airborne toxins and childhood respiratory illnesses was published. 

From Environmental Technology:

"Childhood exposure to air pollution, particularly during pregnancy and in the first year of life, has been positively linked to the development of asthma by scientists in Canada."

The GOP doesn't care. More importantly, they have ensured that we don't publicly review the findings because the "climate" arguments take all of our time.

More from Tulsa World:

"Inhofe and House Republicans on the subcommittee focused on what they consider the enormous costs of EPA’s efforts to regulate greenhouse emissions, the jobs that could be lost and the questions that, in their view, continue to surround climate change science. 

Science is mixed, Inhofe said, but the economic impact is not."

As we all have now been trained like obedient little poodles to obey them when they start down this path, we followed the Republicans again into the trap of not discussing any other possible reasons for slowing the steady and intentional poisoning of ourselves.

Quote Of The Day

Feb 2nd, 2011

"In America today you can murder land for private profit.  You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops." -- Paul Brooks