Celebrities are now upset about fracking, the injection of chemicals into the ground to crack rocks to release oil and gas. With everyone saying they want alternatives to foreign oil, I'd think celebrities would love fracking.Posted on 03/13/2013 4:38:38 AM PDT by Kaslin
Celebrities are now upset about fracking, the injection of chemicals into the ground to crack rocks to release oil and gas. With everyone saying they want alternatives to foreign oil, I'd think celebrities would love fracking.
I'd be wrong. Lady Gaga, Yoko Ono and their group, Artists Against Fracking, don't feel the love. Yoko sang, "Don't frack me!" on TV.
Stopping fracking is the latest cause of the silly people. They succeeded in getting scientifically ignorant politicians to ban fracking in New York, Maryland and Vermont.
Hollywood gave an Oscar to Gasland, a documentary that suggests fracking will shove gas into some people's drinking water, so the water will burn. It's true that some water contains so much natural gas that you can light it.
But another documentary, FrackNation, shows that gas got into plumbing long before fracking came. There's gas in the earth. That's why it's called "natural gas." Some gets into well water. Environmental officials investigated the flames shown in Gasland and concluded that the pollution had nothing to do with fracking.
FrackNation director Phelim McAleer tried to confront Gasland director Josh Fox about this, but Fox wouldn't answer his questions. Instead, he demanded to know whom McAleer works for. He also turned down my invitations to publicly debate fracking. Many activists don't like to answer questions that don't fit their narrative.
Even some homeowners who filed a lawsuit claiming that their water was poisoned by fracking weren't happy to learn that their water is safe. I'd think they would be delighted, but FrackNation shows a couple reacting with outrage when environmental officials test their water and find it clean.
The real story on fracking, say scientists, is that the risks are small and the rewards immense. Fracking lowered the price of natural gas so much that Americans heat our homes for less, and manufacturing that once left America has returned. For those concerned about global warming, burning gas instead of oil or coal reduces CO2 emissions.
Skeptical Environmentalist author Bjorn Lomborg points out that "green" Europe promised to reduce emissions, but "only managed to cut half of what you guys accidentally happened to do when you stumbled on fracking."
Still, the process sounds dangerous. It requires chemicals and explosions. So fracking is now scapegoated for the usual litany of things that peasants feared when threatened with curses centuries ago: livestock dying, bad crop yields, children born with deformities.
None of it is backed by scientific evidence. Even environmentalists who usually are too cautious (by my standards) see little danger. President Obama's first EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, told Congress that the EPA cannot show "that the fracking process has caused chemicals to enter groundwater."
One of the more outlandish fears is that fracking will cause earthquakes. Silly people at MSNBC say fracking creates "a skyrocketing number of earthquakes." Yes, cracking rocks does cause vibrations. But then, so does construction with dynamite or jackhammers -- not to mention trucks on the highway.
Time and again, as humans make a good-faith effort to find new, cleaner ways to produce the energy a growing population needs, environmentalists find a reason -- often very small or non-existent -- that makes the new method unacceptable.
They say coal is dirty and normal oil production might overheat the planet. Hydroelectric dams kill fish. Nuclear plants could suffer meltdowns. Windmills kill birds.
Some won't be happy unless we go back to what we did before industrialization: burn lots of trees and die young.
Nothing is completely risk-free. Companies make mistakes. Chemical spills happen.
But those risks are manageable. They are also far preferable to the risk of paying more for energy -- thereby killing opportunities for the poor.
So far, most regulators outside New York, Maryland and Vermont have ignored the silly people. So thanks to fracking, Americans pay less for heat (and everything else), the economy is helped, new jobs get created, we create less greenhouse gas, and for the first time since the 19th century, America may become a net exporter of energy.
Good things happen if the silly people can't convince all politicians to ban progress.
What I see that is the REAL danger is that some of these “silly people” are really fanatics. And the danger of all fanatics is not that they are willing to die for their beliefs. The danger is that they are more than willing for you and I to die for their beliefs.
Yoko Ono ????
We put a man on the moon in the 60s. Planes were flying at 600 MPH in the 50s. Billions and billions spent on the intercities...EPA etc etc....
What do we have? NOthing. The dark ages...
Our country should be prosperous...with every man woman and child living the best possible with good housing, food and medical care. INstead the money squandered by fat cat gov’t unions and the Jessie Jacksons out there.
Transportation should have been a done deal with high speed rail privatized, and no one flying if it’s less than 300 miles. Mail system too. INstead we have mediocrity every place we look that has the federal gov’t involved.
In short, these environmentalists have sabotaged our country. And they will continue to do so in the future if we let them.
AMEN!!!!
Elitist beyotches. Can afford to travel anywhere even if gas is $20 per gallon.
Frack Away!!
IMHO, the silly people are not only silly, they are pseudo elitists who desperately wish to reduce the rest of us to peasants. Readily available, inexpensive energy is surpassing the gun as the great equalizer. Anyone who opposes energy development opposes a high standard of living for the average citizen - you know “the masses”.
And their not through! Their going after private land exploration and drilling here in West TX. They started with that damn lizard and when that fell through their coming back with the Lesser Prairie Chicken. This will effect West TX and much of eastern New Mexico.
Yeah, her. Don’t you know who she is?
I believe they will pay the price in 2014 and 2016. Drill Baby Drill and the economy will take off like we haven't seen in 50 years.
Some old Japanese hag who lives in NYC and thinks she is relevant to anything?
I believe they will pay the price in 2014 and 2016
Didn’t you see the results of the last “election”? What people actually put on their ballots doesn’t matte any more. Votes for Romney got converted to Obama. This was discovered in FL and I suspect is the reason 19 wards in PA had not a single Romney vote. This also happened in OH. And let’s not forget I think it was Bolder, CO with more votes than voting age adults....
Elections are now fully rigged.
Cheap energy means that everyone can afford to live at least a little bit like the “elite” can,
and that’s why they hate it.
[Readily available, inexpensive energy is surpassing the gun as the great equalizer.]
I hear ya, but how did that work out for the Soviets and their Cesium tractors, or various ecological disaster they created in the process of their quest for "equalization".
http://www.google.com/search?q=Soviet+ecological+disaster
At the end of the day, Water is superior to inexpensive energy on Maslow's hierarchy of needs; and I don't intend to be quietly turned in to an H20 slave by the same corporatist jackwagon energy investors who FUND, and benefit from, environmentalist useful idiots.
Supply plus Demand = What?
====================
So, who are these guys at the NRDC? Well, it’s an interesting list.
Natural Resources Defense Council Board of Trustees
Chairman
Frederick A. O. Schwartz, Jr.
Partner, Cravath Swaine & Moore; (a British Law Firm) Former New York City Corporation Counsel (under Mayor Ed Koch)
Executive Director
Frances Beinecke
Co-founder, The New York League of Conservation Voters (with RFK Jr.)
Trustee
Laurance Rockefeller
Private philanthropist; Former Chairman, Rockefeller Brothers Fund; Former chairman, Citizens Advisory Committee on Environmental Quality; Trustee, the Laurance Rockefeller Charitable Trust
Trustee
Thomas A. Troyer
Partner, Caplin & Drysdale; Former Chairman, the Foundation Lawyers’ Group; Former member of the IRS Commissioner’s Advisory Group on Tax-exempt Organizations; (no conflict of interest there?) Board member, the Carnegie Corporation of New York
Pres & Co-founder
John H. Adams
Former Assistant US Attorney (New York)
Vice Chair
Adam Albright
Board member, Redefining Progress; Board Chair, Population Communications International; Program Chair, Conservation International
Vice Chair
Alan Horn
Chairman & Chief Operating Officer, Warner Brothers
Vice Chair
Burks Lapham
Chairman, Concern Inc.; Director, Chesapeake Bay Foundation (a relatively benign group)
Vice Chair
George Woodwell
Founding Director, Woods Hole Research Center; Co-founder, Environmental Defense Fund (they banned DDT, Alar, etc.)
Co-founder & Treas
Richard E. Ayres
Partner, Howrey & Simon; Former Chairman, National Clean Air Coalition
Trustee
Patricia Bauman
Member, Pew Environmental Health Commission; Former Manager, National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences; Co-Director, The Bauman Foundation
Trustee
William Richardson
Former US Secretary of Energy; Former US Ambassador to the United Nations; Former US Congressman (D-NM)
Trustee
Michael Finnegan
Managing Partner, J.P Morgan Securities
Is this "Natural Resources" defense, or natural resource SUPPLIERS defense?
Now, let’s look at who gives the NRDC money, shall we?
Top Funders of NRDC
Funder
Total Donated
Comments
Descriptions in bold are major energy investors
Pew Charitable Trusts
$11,568,000.00
Sunoco money
Blue Moon Fund
$7,818,735.00
This is W. Alton Jones Money (Citgo)
Energy Foundation
$6,965,000.00
Launched by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and The Rockefeller Foundation. The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation joined as a funding partner in 1996, and The McKnight Foundation joined in 1998. In 1999, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation joined to support two programs: the U.S. Clean Energy Program (now the Climate Program) and the China Sustainable Energy Program. In 2002, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation joined to support advanced technology transportation and clean energy for the West.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
$5,636,500.00
Bankers Life and Casualty money (investment portfolio unknown)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
$4,681,097.00
Your tax dollars at work subsidizing the interests of whom?
Turner Foundation
$3,795,167.00
CNN, and a lot more
Public Welfare Foundation
$3,500,000.00
Too confounded to determine
Joyce Foundation
$3,309,445.00
Timber Wealth
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
$3,022,340.00
General Motors
Ford Foundation
$2,733,300.00
Ford
Beinecke Foundation
$2,150,000.00
Major player at Yale.
J. M. Kaplan Fund
$2,057,500.00
William Bingham Foundation
$1,995,000.00
Homeland Foundation
$1,733,000.00
San Francisco Foundation
$1,654,739.00
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
$1,377,510.00
Them again
McKnight Foundation
$1,365,500.00
Robert Sterling Clark Foundation
$1,310,000.00
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation
$1,310,000.00
Bauman Family Foundation
$1,226,000.00
Nathan Cummings Foundation
$1,220,000.00
Educational Foundation of America
$1,210,000.00
Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund
$1,205,000.00
Mertz Gilmore Foundation
$1,201,000.00
Carnegie Corporation of New York
$1,200,000.00
Park Foundation
$1,198,010.00
New York Community Trust
$1,186,821.00
Overbrook Foundation
$1,182,585.00
Surdna Foundation
$1,147,000.00
Bullitt Foundation
$1,122,675.00
William & Flora Hewlett Foundation
$1,075,000.00
Note also the participation with the Energy Foundation
Quod erat demonstratum.
Most, if not all of these people at NRDC are energy investors.
=================
http://www.wildergarten.com/wp_pages/articles/nrdc_energy_racketeering.html
(with the usual Kudos to FReeper Carie Okie)
More liberal style of substance. It is easy to sit in an ivory tower and judge us commoners for wanting a better life. If these libtards really believe fracking is dangerous, then they should ban the sale of any natural gas that was produced by fracking. The result would be that citizens in New York, Maryland and Vermont would pay 3x - 4x for natural gas. However, these would require these liberal monarchs to come down from the Ivory Tower and explain to us commoners why fracking is bad. Something they surely do not want to account for.
****It’s true that some water contains so much natural gas that you can light it.***
Over in Oklahoma, in an area where there are NO oil or gas wells, and NO FRACKING, a co-worker’s sister was burned to death when static electricity ignited methane from her water well.
IIRC, those areas heat with fuel oil, or at least a significant number of people do, unlike say, the Northern Plains, where we not only produce Natural Gas, we use it. (North Dakota, for example).
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