Fracking, the EPA, and slanted journalism

Popular media make me crazy sometimes.

It's intensely frustrating to see science misrepresented by news outlets, and people unquestioningly accepting that misrepresentation as fact.  Some copy writer with who-knows-what background in actual science is given the task of summarizing scientific research, and then it's headlined with a catchy phrase that not only doesn't reflect the story accurately but simply reiterates whatever political slant that media corporation has.  Readers then take away from that inaccurate summary whatever they got from it -- sometimes only by reading the headline -- and interpret it via whatever biases they came equipped with.

Any wonder why the average American's knowledge of science is so skewed?

Take, for example, the recent report by the Environmental Protection Agency regarding hydrofracking and its effect on drinking water.  Here's a brief excerpt:

From our assessment, we conclude there are above and below ground mechanisms by which hydraulic fracturing activities have the potential to impact drinking water resources. These mechanisms include water withdrawals in times of, or in areas with, low water availability; spills of hydraulic fracturing fluids and produced water; fracturing directly into underground drinking water resources; below ground migration of liquids and gases; and inadequate treatment and discharge of wastewater.

We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States. Of the potential mechanisms identified in this report, we found specific instances where one or more mechanisms led to impacts on drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells. The number of identified cases, however, was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells. This finding could reflect a rarity of effects on drinking water resources, but may also be due to other limiting factors. These factors include: insufficient pre- and post-fracturing data on the quality of drinking water resources; the paucity of long-term systematic studies; the presence of other sources of contamination precluding a definitive link between hydraulic fracturing activities and an impact; and the inaccessibility of some information on hydraulic fracturing activities and potential impacts.

So far, kind of an equivocal finding.  There has been some well contamination... but it doesn't seem to be very frequent... but it does sometimes happen... but there could be several reasons for that including "inaccessibility of information" -- i.e., the natural gas corporations not releasing said information when contamination happens, or maneuvering the people affected into silence via gag orders.

Understandable, of course, that the EPA wants to keep a low profile these days, considering the number of legislators who would like to see it defunded or dismantled completely.  So it's unsurprising that they're taking a "maybe so, maybe not" approach and trying to fly under the radar.

But that, of course, is not how the media spun the report.  The day the report was released, The Washington Times and The New York Post both had articles headlined, "EPA: Fracking Doesn't Harm Drinking Water."  The Times later amended their headline to read "EPA Finds Fracking Poses No Direct Threat to Drinking Water" after enough people wrote in to say, "Did you people even read the report?"  Which is marginally better but still not reflective of the waffling language in the report itself.  Even Newsweek went that way, with an article headlined, "Fracking Doesn't Pollute Drinking Water, EPA Says."

But lest you think that the conservative, pro-fracking media sources were the only ones who gave the report their own unique spin, the liberal, anti-fracking sources were just as quick to jump in and claim that the report proved that fracking was highly dangerous.  Common Dreams, an online progressive news source, ran it as "EPA Report Finds Fracking Water Pollution, Despite Oil and Gas Industry's Refusal to Provide Key Data."  Nation of Change had the story headlined with, "Long-Awaited EPA Study Says Fracking Pollutes Drinking Water," along with the following photograph:

So the conservative outlets told the conservative readers what they wanted to hear, and the liberal outlets told the liberal readers what they wanted to hear, and neither one reflected accurately what the original report said, which was virtually nothing of substance.

Add to that the fact that what little the EPA's report did say was immediately called into question, in one of those examples of weird synchronicity, by the resignation of Mark Nechodom, director of the California Department of Conservation, the day after the report was released -- over allegations that he had looked the other way while natural gas companies disposed of fracking wastewater by injecting it into central California agricultural and drinking water aquifers.

"Nechodom was named this week in a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of a group of Kern County farmers who allege that [California Governor Jerry] Brown, the oil and gas division and others conspired with oil companies to allow the illegal injections and to create a more lax regulatory environment for energy firms," an article in The Los Angeles Times said.  "Nechodom's resignation was unexpected, although he had increasingly been called upon by state officials to explain problems in the oil and gas division’s oversight of the oil industry and a parade of embarrassing blunders."

Not only that, a criticism levied against the EPA report itself appeared in EcoWatch, claiming that the writers of the report cherry-picked their data to ignore cases of contamination, including 313 documented cases of well contamination in a six-county region in Pennsylvania.  You have to wonder how much damage there'd have to be before the EPA did consider it "widespread."

So once again, we have government agencies waffling and misrepresenting the data, special interests and slanted media obscuring the real situation, and hardly anyone checking their sources, resulting in everyone pretty much thinking what they thought before.

And, of course, doing nothing about the actual problem.

The whole thing makes me want to scream.  Because what we need is responsible media, giving accurate and comprehensive reporting on issues like this -- not more shallow and skewed blurbs that do nothing but muddy the water (as it were).  And we need readers who are willing to follow the first rule of critical thinking -- check your sources.

And we also need government agencies that are willing to bite the bullet and tell people the truth, come-what-may.

And because none of that is likely, what I need is a couple of ibuprofen and another cup of coffee, because all of this depressing stuff has given me a headache.

Corporate-run small government

Some days, being an optimist is a losing proposition.

In previous posts, I have outlined the evidence supporting the claim that hydrofracking is (1) extremely wasteful of water, (2) dangerous, (3) likely to result in contaminated groundwater, and (4) contributing to climate change.  Any one of these reasons should be sufficient to prohibit it, but pushed by corporate interests, fracking is going great guns despite multiple mishaps (some of them resulting in loss of life) and most recently, the discovery of fracking chemicals in drinking water in Pennsylvania.  (For a summary of the dangers of fracking, with specific examples, see my post from last December.)

So it's not to be wondered at that some communities have taken matters into their own hands, and outlawed fracking.  And for people who claim that this is just the NIMBY principle at work ("Not In My Back Yard") -- I would argue that this technology shouldn't be in anyone's back yard.

Hydrofracking well [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

That's what the citizens of Denton, Texas did last year -- they voted in November to join a growing list of towns that have banned fracking within their boundaries.  But this week the state of Texas overrode that vote, by passing a resolution 24-7 that prevents communities from banning anything done by oil and gas companies.  The resolution is going to Governor Greg Abbott this week, who is expected to sign it into law.

"Oil and gas companies donated $5.5 million to the campaigns of legislators in the last elections," said Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas.  "And clearly they got their money’s worth."

Supporters of the bill were, of course, elated, as were the oil and gas corporations.  Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) said that the bill found "the common ground" between the energy industry and municipalities, which is true in the sense of a rabbit finding "common ground" with a wolf when it gets pinned to the ground and eaten.

"House Bill 40 enjoys widespread support because the legislation provides cities with authority to reasonably regulate surface level oil and gas activities, while affirming that regulation of oil and gas operations like fracking and production is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the state," said Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association.  Which is mighty convenient, given that most of what the petroleum industry does is underground.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/business/barnett-shale/article20199849.html#storylink=cpy

Among the many things that appall me about this is the hypocrisy of the legislators who voted for the bill.  The yes votes come from a Senate that is 2/3 Republican, and the vote went largely along party lines. But isn't the Republican ideal that small government is the best?  Don't we always hear the quote from conservatives, sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson, that "the government that governs best is the one that governs least?"

Apparently this maxim only applies if you're talking about taxes and gun control, and not about communities exercising self-determination with regard to greedy corporations pushing their way in and ruining aquifers used for agriculture and drinking water.

Oh, and preventing public school biology teachers from teaching evolution, and limiting the rights of LGBT people to enjoy the same privileges we straight people take for granted.  Perfectly okay for the government to be huge and intrusive with regards to those issues.

But if a community decides -- by a popular vote, no less -- that it doesn't want fracking wells on its land, then the state of Texas steps in and says, "Sorry.  You can't do that."

Small government, my ass.  Apparently in Texas, the Republican rule has been changed to "Small government unless it's doing something that gets me votes or lines my wallet."

The whole thing reeks of corruption.  Metzger called it right; money talked, the hypocrites voted, and the corporations won.  And the citizens of towns like Denton lost, big time.  One can only hope that they'll challenge this ruling, and take that challenge as far as it can go.

And I also hope that whatever legal obstacles they set up are put in place quickly -- before the frackers come in and trash the place.

Fluid morality

I try not to let my skepticism slide over into cynicism.  The latter, a disbelieve-everything-they-say approach, seems to me to be as fundamentally lazy as gullibility.  Being a skeptic is harder, but ultimately more likely to land you near the truth; keep your mind open, wait for hard evidence, and then follow that wherever it leads.

But there are some realms in which I am reminded of Lily Tomlin's line, "No matter how cynical I get, it's just not enough to keep up."  And one of those is the way fracking is being presented by the powers-that-be.

Consider the highly publicized publicity stunt by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who in 2013 drank a glass of fracking fluid to show how safe it was.

"You can drink it," Hickenlooper told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.  "We did drink it around the table, almost rituallike, in a funny way.  It was a demonstration… they’ve invested millions of dollars in what is a benign fluid in every sense."

[image courtesy of photographer Joe Sullivan and the Wikimedia Commons]

The gas companies have stated outright that the ingredients are "sourced from the food industry," but still refuse to give a complete formulation for how it's made, saying such information is "proprietary."  Hickenlooper agrees, and said, "If we were overzealous in forcing them to disclose what they had created, they wouldn’t bring it into our state."

Under pressure from environmental groups, the gas industry has released a list of "the chemicals used most often" in fracking fluid, along with their purpose.  They state that "there are dozens to hundreds that could be used as additives" above and beyond these, although this is downplayed.

They look like they're doing everything they can to be completely transparent, up to the point where it starts to jeopardize their trade secrets.  "Here, we'll show you what we're doing!" they seem to be saying.  "You want the water supply protected, and safety to be paramount?  Well, so do we!"

Then you have to wonder why the industry has not rushed into the breach when people have been injured by the chemicals in their "benign" fracking fluid.  Makes you almost think they're... covering something up.

In 2008, a gas driller, Clifton Marshall, came into the emergency room in Durango Mercy Regional Medical Center in Durango, Colorado, after he had spilled fracking fluid on his clothes and boots.  Marshall was in a bad way, but it didn't end there; Cathy Behr, an emergency room nurse, spent ten minutes working on Marshall without using adequate protective equipment.  By this time, the emergency room had to be cleared because the smell of the chemicals was strong enough to make people gag.  But Behr, who had come into direct contact with the contaminated clothing, was to experience worse.  Two days later, the nurse found herself back in the emergency room, but this time because she was sick; she had jaundice, and was vomiting and feverish.  The doctors found that Behr was in multiple organ failure from "poisoning by an unknown chemical."

Pressed by the hospital to tell them what was in the fracking fluid that sickened Behr and Marshall, the gas company -- Halliburton Industries -- refused, saying it was a trade secret.  If anyone released what was in the fluid, they said, they would sue -- and then pull their multi-million-dollar drilling operation from the state.

Hospital officials backed down.  To this day, no one knows what was in the fluid.

In a rural community in Pennsylvania -- no one knows exactly where, for reasons you'll see in a moment -- the owners of a 300-acre dairy farm signed a land-use agreement with a gas company, allowing fracking on their land.  The disturbance would be minimal, the gas company said, and the risk slight.  After the drilling began, though, the family who owned the farm, the "Rogers" family (not their real name), began to question the effects that the operation was having on their drinking and agricultural water, and agreed to participate in a study by an independent agency to monitor what was happening.

But they couldn't do that, they found out quickly.  Here's how TruthOut reported the story:

The Rogers did not realize they had signed a nondisclosure agreement with the gas company making the entire deal invalid if members of the family discussed the terms of the agreement, water or land disturbances resulting from fracking and other information with anyone other than the gas company and other signatories... 

Mrs. Rogers initially agreed to participate in a study Perry [the scientist coordinating the study] was conducting on rural families living near fracking operations. She later called Perry in tears, explaining that her family could no longer participate in the study because of the nondisclosure clause in the surface-use agreement. She told Perry she felt stupid for signing the agreement and has realized she had a good life without the money the fracking company paid them to use their land.

There are also dozens of cases where gas companies have been sued because their operations have permanently contaminated drinking water supplies, and have settled in the litigants' favor -- but only on the condition that the litigants sign a statement mandating that they never disclose what the gas companies did.  This is an easy out for the gas companies; people will usually settle for an amount of cash that the gas industry considers a pittance as compared to the bad press they'd receive if such information became public.  "At this point they feel they can get out of this litigation relatively cheaply," Marc Bern, an attorney with Napoli Bern Ripka Sholnik LLP in New York, who has negotiated on behalf of homeowners, said in an interview.  "Virtually on all of our settlements where they paid money they have requested and demanded that there be confidentiality."

There are also multiple cases where doctors have appealed to gas companies to release what is in fracking fluid, to allow the doctors to treat patients poisoned by exposure to it, and the industry has complied -- but only if the doctors themselves agree to a lifelong nondisclosure statement.

And state governments are caving in from the pressure by the industry.  Just last year, North Carolina passed a bill that made it a crime for anyone to disclose the constituents of fracking fluid.  The name of the bill?  The "Energy Modernization Act."

Still think that the gas companies are all about safety and transparency?  Then consider one more story, again from southwestern Pennsylvania, only two years ago.

Chris and Stephanie Hallowich lived with their two children, then 7 and 10, in a house in rural Washington County, when they started experiencing health issues from water that had been fouled by a fracking operation nearby.  They were desperate to get out of their house, and sued the gas company, Range Resources, for enough money to cut their losses and move.  Range Resources agreed to a $750,000 settlement, but required (guess what?) a nondisclosure agreement.  The Hallowichs could not speak to anyone about fracking, or the Marcellus Shale, or Range Resources, or their symptoms, or the contamination to their water supply, ever.

And that lifelong gag order also applied to their children.

The Hallowichs' attorney, Peter Villari, said directly to Washington County Common Pleas Court Judge Paul Polonsky, who heard the case, "I, frankly, your Honor, as an attorney, to be honest with you, I don’t know if that’s possible that you can give up the First Amendment rights of a child."  Pozonsky didn't have an answer to that except that this is what the Hallowichs had to agree to if they wanted to settle.

"That someone would insist on confidentiality of a minor child," Villari said, "or that it would be discussed within the context of a proposed settlement was unusual.  I have not encountered it before and I have yet to encounter it again."

"Unusual" isn't the word I'd use.  I think "unconstitutional" comes closer to the mark.

The frightening part of this is that because the gas industry is wealthy and powerful, they are pulling the strings here -- and everyone else is dancing to their tune.  They have no reason to bend.  They've been getting their own way at every turn, from politicians and courts that conveniently ignore the dangers to ordinary citizens because (frankly) money talks.

Where this skein of lies comes full circle, though, is in asking why the gas companies are this protective of the ingredients in the fracking fluid.  I simply don't believe that this is a trade secret that is worth keeping simply from a proprietary-protection argument alone.  Surely each of these companies can't have discovered a formula that they think is so wonderful, so much better than their rivals', that they'd engage in all of these dubiously-legal shenanigans to protect it?

Isn't it just slightly more likely that there's something in this fluid that is not exactly "benign?"  Something that might, in fact, be toxic enough that to make it public would alert the public to how much danger they're actually in?

But surely the Toxic Substances Control Act would protect the public from this kind of thing.  That's why it was passed.  Right?

Wrong.  TSCA has an exemption for reporting "Tier 2" exposure to chemicals -- i.e., exposure that happens after the chemicals leave the site of manufacture -- for "petroleum process streams."  If you're exposed to fracking chemicals, you have no federal leverage to force the industry to give you information, much less to force them to stop what they're doing.

So the only way all of this will halt is if enough people know about it, and refuse to sign the fracking leases.  Already we're seeing cases of eminent domain being invoked in laying in pipelines to carry the gas; the only way to halt the industry is to cut off its source.

Which is why it's so critical that people find out about these things.  Because as we've seen, once the damage is done, the industry has been more interested in hushing it up than cleaning it up (or, heaven forfend, changing their ways).  And if that doesn't justify some level of cynicism about their commitment to decency, safety, and public health, I don't know what would.

A risk too far

Assessing risk is a complicated thing.  The technical definition of risk -- that it is equal to the statistical probability of exposure multiplied by the statistical probability of harm -- seems simple enough.  But in practice, calculating those probabilities is far from straightforward.  And when you throw in questions like, "Are the people exposed to the risk the same ones as the ones who are benefiting from it?" and "What if the people involved in the risk assessment are very likely to be lying to you?", it becomes damn near impossible to determine.

Such is the situation we find ourselves in, here in upstate New York.  The current controversy that is polarizing the region surrounds the benefits and risks of hydrofracking and storage of natural gas and liquified petroleum gas (LPG) in salt caverns underneath Seneca and Cayuga Lake.  You see signs in front of houses saying "Ban Fracking!" and "Friends of New York State Natural Gas" in almost equal numbers.

So let's roll out some facts, here, and see what you think.

Hydrofracking well in the Barnett Shale, near Alvarado, Texas [image courtesy of photographer David R. Tribble and the Wikimedia Commons]

Hydrofracking involves the use of sand, salt, and surfactant-laden water to blow open shale formations to release trapped natural gas.  The gas is pumped back up, along with a toxic slurry of "fracking fluid" that then has to be disposed of.  The gas itself is transported down a spider's web of pipelines, some of which pump the pressurized gas down into the abandoned salt mines that honeycomb our area.

In upstate New York, the permission to build the infrastructure for this massive project was granted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last year, in a move that brushed aside objections from geologists and ecologists, and which appears to many of us to be a rubber-stamp approval of corporate interests over safety and clean drinking water.  Now, Crestwood Midstream, a Texas-based energy company, wants to expand the current salt-cavern storage to include LPG.

So let's see what we can do to consider the risks involved in this project.

The first piece, the risk of exposure, involves looking at the history of fracking and gas storage, to see if comparable facilities have experienced problems.  So here are a few accidents that have occurred in such sites:

• A blast that killed one and injured two in Weld County, Colorado.
• A blowout in North Dakota that released 10,000 gallons of combined oil and fracking fluid into a local creek system until the leak was sealed two weeks later.
• A second spill in North Dakota of three million gallons into the Yellowstone/Missouri River watershed that has yet to be contained.
• An illegal wastewater injection site in California that contaminated local agricultural and drinking water aquifers with three billion gallons of fracking fluid.
• Four separate accidents in Ohio, one involving a huge methane leak from a fracking site, a fracking well leak that spilled 1,600 gallons of drill lubricant into a river, an explosion and spill that leaked 25,000 gallons of various chemicals into a tributary of the Ohio River, and a well rupture in Guernsey County that required the evacuation of 400 families from their homes.
• An explosion of a gas well that required the evacuation of an entire town in Wyoming.
• A spill of an "unknown amount of brine" near California, Pennsylvania, "some of which left the containment site."

What I haven't told you, however, is the time scale involved with these events.

All of them occurred within the past twelve months.

Kind of puts a new spin on the gas industry's claim that fracking is safe for humans and for the environment, doesn't it?

What seals the deal is the question of what happens after these accidents occur.  The answer is: not much.  The question is, honestly, not so much "what is done?" but "what could be done?"  And the answer is still: not much.  Such accidents are nearly impossible to remediate completely, and leave behind fouled ecosystems and contaminated drinking water that won't be useable for generations.

So as you can see from the above list, accidents really are more of a matter of "when," not "if."  This leaves it to the local residents to consider what the response would be if the unthinkable happens.  The result would be the salinization of a huge amount of water in the south end of Seneca Lake, which would likely be permanent as far as human lifetimes are concerned, given Seneca Lake's depth and slow rate of flushing.  Aquifers would become too saline to use for drinking water or agriculture, which would destroy not only local farms but the multi-million-dollar winery industry that has become a mainstay of the economy.

And whose responsibility would it be if a problem did occur?  The answer is, "Not Crestwood's."  They are not insured against accidents of this scale.  To quote directly from their own 10K report:

These risks could result in substantial losses due to breaches of contractual commitments, personal injury and/or loss of life, damage to and destruction of
property and equipment and pollution or other environmental damage. These risks may also result in curtailment or suspension of our operations. A natural
disaster or other hazard affecting the areas in which we operate could have a material adverse effect on our operations. We are not fully insured against all risks inherent in our business. In addition, we are not insured against all environmental accidents that might occur, some of which may result in toxic tort claims.

If there was a salt cavern collapse similar to one that happened in the 1960s, the result would be nothing short of a catastrophe for the local residents, because there would be no compensation forthcoming in the way of insurance money.  The only recourse would be a "toxic tort claim" against Crestwood, which would result in costly litigation that would be far too expensive for an average resident to pursue.

And Crestwood is planning on taking the same cavern that experienced a 400,000 ton roof collapse fifty years ago, and filling it with pressurized natural gas.

So if the whole thing blows up in our faces, literally and figuratively, Crestwood can cut their losses and go home to Texas.  We don't have that option.

This hasn't stopped the pro-gas voices from characterizing the risk as minimal, and the people who are speaking out against Crestwood as crazy tree-huggers who have "drunk the Kool-Aid" and who are the victims of "imaginary delusions."  These last phrases are direct quotes from one David Crea, an engineer for U.S. Salt, a company that is now owned by Crestwood.  Responsible, intelligent people, say Crea, couldn't possibly be against gas storage in salt caverns; and he points out that a lot of the people who have been protesting the Crestwood Expansion are from the eastern half of Schuyler County, not the western half, where the facility is located.

Because, apparently, you have to live right on top of a disaster before you're allowed to have an opinion about it.  This kind of illogic would claim that the objections of a woman in Oregon to the siting of a pesticide factory 400 yards away from an elementary school in Middleport, New York are irrelevant because "she doesn't live there."  (I didn't make that up; read about the situation here, which resulted in dozens of children suffering from permanent lung damage.)

So sorry, Mr. Crea; it's not the concerned locals who have "drunk the Kool-Aid."  There's not that much Kool-Aid in the world.  It's the citizens you and your ilk have hoodwinked, and who now sit on top of a site that has a ridiculously high likelihood of catastrophic failure.  And if you multiply all of those risk factors together, you come up with a figure so large that you would have to be on Crestwood's payroll to consider it acceptable.

Fracking our way to disaster

Yesterday there was yet another article about an accident at a hydrofracking site.  In this one, an Ohio fracking well sprung a leak, causing a methane cloud that forced 25 families out of their homes for days.  The crew was "unable to stop" the leak, sources with the natural gas company said, followed with the cheery message, "the well is not on fire, but the gas could be explosive."

Merry Christmas, y'all.  I hope you remembered to bring your presents with you before you fled from your houses, so you can celebrate Christmas in whatever shelter you end up in.

[image courtesy of photographer Joshua Doubek and the Wikimedia Commons]

Of course, this isn't an isolated incident.  It's been a bad year for Ohio, in fact.  In May, a fracking well leak spilled 1,600 of oil drilling lubricant into a river.  The following month, a second explosion and spill leaked a stew of toxic chemicals into yet another river, killing an estimated 70,000 fish -- and the company that owned the well refused to release information on which chemicals were involved, calling it a "trade secret."  Then in October, a methane leak drove 400 people from their homes.

It's not limited to Ohio, of course.  Earlier this year, a blowout at a fracking site in North Dakota caused a gusher spraying over ten thousand gallons a day of a mixed slurry of oil and chemical-laced wastewater.  It took almost a week to stop the leak.  In 2013 an accident at a well in Colorado leaked benzene, a known carcinogen, into a stream in Colorado.  More "trade secret" chemicals were dumped into a popular trout-fishing stream when thousands of gallons of highly saline fracking fluid erupted during a well explosion in Pennsylvania in 2011.

Add to that the fact that fracking is a huge draw on water resources, and you have to wonder how it can still be legal in drought-stricken states like Texas and California.  At least here in my home state of New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo sided with the good guys and announced a statewide ban on fracking yesterday, citing health effects as his reason.

Health, and the environment, and, you know, clean drinking water for human consumption and agricultural use.  It's a mystery to me how anyone can still support this crazy idea, given its track record.

But they do.  Fracking still has its champions.  Karen Moreau, executive director of the New York State Petroleum Council, was irate over Governor Cuomo's decision.  "Our citizens in the Southern Tier have had to watch their neighbors and friends across the border in Pennsylvania thriving economically," she said. "It’s like they were a kid in a candy store window, looking through the window, and not able to touch that opportunity."

Not exactly an accurate analogy, Ms. Moreau.  Given that there have been twenty major fracking accidents in Pennsylvania alone, it's more like people looking through a window at a neighbor's house burning down, and weeping because they can't do anything to stop it -- while simultaneously being thankful that their own house isn't on fire.

Some of our legislators are siding with Ms. Moreau and the gas companies, however.  Representative Tom Reed, who represents my local district, said of Cuomo's decision:

I am extremely disappointed in today’s announcement from Governor Cuomo which bans hydraulic fracturing.  This move effectively blocks the development of natural gas and oil resources in New York State.  This is devastating news for the Southern Tier economy and its residents who are struggling every day.  This decision makes it even more difficult to replace the good jobs that have already left due to New York’s unfriendly business climate.  Once again Albany shows that it wants to enact an extreme liberal agenda rather than care about individual property rights and job opportunities.  I care about Southern Tier residents and will fight for them every day.  Simply put this extreme liberal agenda is not right and not fair for our future.

Because, you know, only extreme liberals like to be able to turn on their faucets without risking an explosion.  (Reed's comment caused one of my friends to respond, "Suck it, corporate puppet," which I quote here mainly because I wish I'd thought of it first.)

The fight isn't over in New York State, of course.  Just around the corner from my village we're still struggling to stop the Crestwood Expansion, a plan to double storage of natural gas and LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) in salt caverns underneath Seneca Lake, which supplies drinking and agricultural water to tens of thousands of people.  You'd think there'd be enough evidence already that this is a horrible idea, wouldn't you?  To wit:

• A methane seep from a gas storage salt cavern in Hutchinson, Kansas that caused explosions and "geysers of salt water" seven miles away.
• A collapse of a gas-filled salt cavern in Livingston County, New York in 1994 that cased methane to leak into basements and permanently fouled a drinking water aquifer.
• A 400,000 ton roof collapse that occurred in an empty salt cavern, which coincidentally is one of the ones underneath Seneca Lake that Crestwood wants to use in their expansion project.

All of which makes you wonder when we will stop placing expediency and short-term profits above concern for human health and safety.

It's not too late, and it's to be hoped that the drubbing the gas companies got at Governor Cuomo's hands yesterday will start a domino effect.  Locally, you can join or donate to Gas Free Seneca, or join the Crestwood Blockade.  (To find out more, check out the "We Are Seneca Lake" page on Facebook.)  If you're in a state or a province of Canada that allows hydrofracking, put pressure on your legislators to join in a ban.  This has progressed far beyond "Not In My Back Yard;" this kind of technology shouldn't be in anyone's back yard.  And if that means we have to cut back on natural gas production, or maybe even (gasp!) start investing in renewables, then so be it.

Take a stand.  We have allowed corporate interests and "trade secrets" to imperil our water supplies for long enough.  It's time for it to stop.

Jesus saves: the role of money in belief

Every once in a while, while considering topics for Skeptophilia, I run into a belief, claim, or point of view that is so completely foreign to my way of thinking that when I first read about it, I can barely even understand it. 

Please note that I am not talking about the usual run of things that form the basis of most of my posts here.  While I am an atheist, I can certainly understand the appeal of there being a deity watching over us, and that the events around us have meaning and purpose.  My inclination is to believe that there are no such things as ghosts, but I see why people are fond of the idea, being that winking out like a candle flame when you die seems kind of... grim.  Less seriously, I get why people like the idea of there being odd, mysterious creatures in the world, such as Bigfoot, Nessie, El Chupacabra, the Bunyip, and the rest of the gang.

But yesterday, a friend and frequent Skeptophilia contributor sent me an article from the Phnom Penh Post (heaven alone knows how he found it, he lives in Minnesota) that reflects an approach to knowledge, understanding, and the universe that at first I found bafflingly incomprehensible.

The article is entitled "Ethnic Minority Turn To Jesus As More Affordable Option."  Apparently, in a village in Ratanakkiri District, Cambodia, there has been a mass conversion to Christianity -- not because they decided it was true, but because it's... cheaper.

Somkul village, inhabited by people of the Jarai ethnic group, have traditionally held a combination of Buddhist and animist beliefs.  And amongst these beliefs was that if a relative fell ill, the only way to free him from the clutches of the evil spirits causing the disease was to slaughter a buffalo, at a cost of about US$500.

Apparently, some years ago, missionaries appeared, and told the villagers about Christianity.  When the villagers found out that all you had to do was put a little money in the collection plate every Sunday, and when you got ill, you pray to Jesus, they said, "Heck yeah, that sounds like a much better deal!"

Sev Chel, a 38 year old woman from Somkul, told reporters how before her conversion, an illness cost her a bundle to pay for the buffalo, chickens, rice wine, and all of the other stuff necessary for the ritual.

"So if I sold that buffalo and took the money to pay for medicine, it is about 30,000 riel to 40,000 riel [for them to] get better, so we are strong believers in Jesus," she said.  "If I did not believe in Jesus, maybe at this time I would still be poor and not know anything besides my community."

Kralan Don, 60, agrees.  "We believe in Christianity because we are poor; we don’t have money to buy buffaloes, chickens and pigs to pray for the spirits of the god of land or the god of water when those gods make us get sick," he said.

Okay, now wait just a moment, here.  You believe in Jesus' power to make you well not because you think it's real, but because it's cheaper?

At first, I thought, "Well, okay, maybe they believe both in Jesus and in their old gods and spirits and so on, but have switched to worshiping Jesus because they think he's more powerful -- and also, as an added benefit, less demanding in a monetary sense."  But no: the article makes a strong point that the villagers understand perfectly well that Christianity is strictly monotheistic, and that in order to adhere to it, they have to accept that their old beliefs were simply wrong.

So, I'm forced to the conclusion that these people have decided what they believe purely based on selfish motives -- not whether it makes sense, nor whether it's appealing, nor based on their interpretation of the available evidence, all of which are motives that I can understand.  They have decided that something is true solely because it is in their best financial interest to do so.

Anyhow, I was sitting here this morning, pondering this, and all of a sudden, I had a chilling thought; how is this so very different to our approach to hydrofracking?  For those of you who don't live in natural-gas-rich parts of the United States, and are unfamiliar with this gas extraction technique, it is a method that involves pumping up groundwater, adding various chemicals to it (the makeup of most of these chemicals falls under the "proprietary information" laws and has not been made public), and then forcing it back into wellheads under pressure to shatter rock strata and make gas easier to remove.  The anti-fracking movement claims that the process has contaminated groundwater (including that used for drinking water), caused environmental damage, and might even be responsible for triggering earthquakes.  Fracking advocates say that none of that is true, that the process is completely safe.

And who, exactly, are the advocates of fracking?  The ones who stand to make money from gas leases.  The places you see lots of pro-fracking signs in people's yards are almost entirely poor communities whose economies would be boosted, at least in the short term, by gas revenue.  So these folks believe that the natural gas companies' claims that hydrofracking is safe are true not because they have been demonstrated to be true -- they believe because it is in their financial best interest to believe.

And suddenly, the conversion of the Jarai didn't seem so baffling, after all.

What the frack?

Diane Tessman is at it again.  Yes, the woman who believes that clouds are camouflage for UFOs, who believes that organisms evolve, Pokémon-like, to obtain advanced powers, has now weighed in on another topic:

Hydrofracking.

If you're thinking, "Oh, this is gonna be good," you don't even know the half of it.  (Source)

Because it isn't, she said, Diane Tessman speaking; it's a superpowerful alien entity named Tibus who is speaking through her.  And boy, is Tibus annoyed with the way we've been treating Mother Earth.  He starts out, though, with a news bulletin meant to put us at ease:

 Star people, this is Tibus. I come to you in love and light.

I am smiling as I greet you, my star friends/co-workers! I am also smiling at a UFO report from North Carolina; a man was out looking for a good place to hunt (I hope we was sufficiently distracted by his UFO sighting and did not hunt), when he spotted a low flying rectangular craft with 4 amber lights. “Rectangular” is not aerodynamic but because of advanced propulsion (anti-gravity) methods, we can use rectangles, squares, tubes, and so forth. Usually, however, we like the grace and beauty of a saucer-shaped craft and have found we actually fly them more efficiently than the cumbersome-looking craft. I hasten to add that the craft this man saw belongs to a small group within Space/Time Intelligence, but not directly to any of those folk, nor their ethnic groups, who send messages to you through Diane.

Oh, good.  If they are operating within Space/Time Intelligence, I guess they're welcome to visit North Carolina.  If the craft was populated by gay aliens attempting to find a nice place to get married, however, they might want to try a different venue.

After assuring us that the UFOs we see are here on a peaceful scientific mission, and that their crews have no intention of strapping us to examining tables and implanting microchips in our skulls, Tibus/Diane goes on to the topic at hand: the natural gas industry.

Hydraulic fracking, a process which extracts natural gas, has added to the danger from the New Madrid Fault, to a huge degree. Old fashioned fracking was hurtful to Earth but not potentially catastrophic. However, modern hydraulic fracking creates a real earthquake danger and also gobbles up the water table over a vast area, right when earth needs every drop of her fresh water supply. What fresh water is not gobbled up, is left toxic and hopelessly contaminated.

So, Tibus, if we can't do natural gas extraction because hydrofracking is too dangerous, what do we do to find a source of energy?

Here is the answer: We offer Earth free energy, which was discovered by a human being, Nikola Tesla, so certainly humankind should benefit from it. Free energy was taken away from the human race very wrongly, by greedy (yes), humans who saw they could make lots of money through non-free forms of energy. We of Space/Time Intelligence now offer free energy again, freely.

Isn't that nice?  Free energy that's freely free!  Wouldn't that be freeing?  But how can we be sure that Tibus really knows what Tesla was up to, when he discovered free energy?

Tesla is with me and says that technically, alien races had discovered what he called free energy, eons before he did, but I respond to Tesla that he is being “too” conscientious, because we consider a new invention or creation to be brand new each time it is discovered by a different species on a different world. I remind him that there are wondrous ancient beings in the universe who have already discovered what we of Space/Time Intelligence have discovered, only eons before we did. Peel away the onion layers, and they are astoundingly endless. So, Tesla did discover free energy, which we use; it involves relatively simple anti-gravity techniques.

Oh.  Okay.  Simple anti-gravity techniques.  Since Tesla is right there with you, would you mind asking him how we're going to manage that?  The law of gravity, so far as I've noticed, seems to be strictly enforced in most jurisdictions.  But maybe that's just my perception because I'm stuck in the wrong layer of the Cosmic Onion.

The good news, though, is that we don't just have to rely on help from dead physicists in figuring all of this out: we also have the "God Cloud."  What, you might ask, is the God Cloud?

Some of you have asked about the God Cloud: It is a being, ancient and advanced, who offers to help. It is more ancient and advanced than any of us in Space/Time Intelligence. It is, for all intents and purposes, pure intelligence.

It traveled from a distant star cluster to help, and has “parked” near Earth. It is simply a stellar cloud of highly advanced particles of consciousness which/who function as ONE.

But how can the God Cloud, for all of its "advanced particles of consciousness," help us?

When the time is right (the micro-second when Earth reaches critical mass of enlightenment), it will throw its pure intelligence, pure enlightenment, into the electromagnetic field of Earth which will have just shifted (thus human minds will have just shifted upwards), and it will stabilize and enhance the new EM field on which human minds will function thereafter.

For those of you concerned if the God Cloud is committing “suicide” to do this, no it is not. It will remain a sovereign entity within the new EM field, and it will gather itself up as ONE, and leave when things settle down.

Whew.  I know I'm relieved.  I already had my hand on the Space/Time Intelligence Suicide Hotline.

So, anyway, that's today's hopeful message from the Land of Woo-Woo: we should stop hydrofracking because it pisses off Mother Earth, Nikola Tesla, and an alien named Tibus, but don't worry because free energy is just around the corner, not to mention an extraterrestrial super-intelligent cloud who is there to help us achieve a stable electromagnetic field of enlightened human consciousness.  I'm so glad we have Tibus around to advise us, aren't you? Maybe next time he could weigh in on such Universal Mysteries as why so many people these days seem to believe absurd, counterfactual nonsense.  I wonder what Tibus might have to say about that.