Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar had a few tips for environmental journalists last week about under-covered stories on their beat.
Speaking at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ twenty-first annual conference here in Miami, Salazar said that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010 revealed that Americans were “hungry” for news about its causes and consequences, and that they care “deeply” about land, water, and wildlife.
The spill also laid bare a larger truth about the importance of journalism, he said:
A second lesson from the coverage of Deepwater Horizon is that Americans aren’t just passionate about conservation, they also demand knowledge and information about the natural world and how it’s changing.
Yes, our attention spans are shorter in the digital age. And yes, there is a demand for sound bites, bulletins, and punditry. But Deepwater Horizon proved that there is also a huge appetite—and appreciation—for complicated information, scientific perspectives, and nuanced reporting.
How else do you explain that “loop current,” “blowout preventer,” and “hydrates” became familiar terms in American households? The oil spill put a premium on good reporting. It put a premium on good reporters.
Complimenting spill coverage by NBC’s Anne Thompson and the Houston Chronicle’s Jennifer Dlouhy, he asked journalists to pay more attention to three other “big” environmental stories.
The first was “the countless locally-driven, consensus-based conservation efforts that have taken root across the country,” he said. “They don’t get much attention because there’s often no conflict involved, but what’s happening along the rivers of America, what’s happening in the Dakota Grasslands and the Flint Hills of Kansas, and what’s happening right here in the Everglades, is nothing short of a revolution.”
Salazar explained that the following day he would lay four planks on a boardwalk at the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge near Vero Beach, Florida inlaid with the names of the four latest areas to join the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s conservation system: the Flint Hills Legacy Conservation Area of Kansas, the Dakota Grassland Conservation Area of South Dakota and North Dakota, the Cherry Valley National Wildlife Refuge of Pennsylvania, and the Tulare Basin Wildlife Management Area of California.
The second story that the Secretary said deserves more attention is “the inextricable connection between the health of land and water and the health of our economy” evinced by the Gulf oil spill.
“The fact is: America’s great outdoors are a massive economic engine for our nation,” he said. “The extent to which our land, water, and wildlife fuel our economy is not adequately understood or reported—and, unfortunately, that knowledge gap can have real consequences when people make decisions about investments and fiscal priorities.”
Lastly, Salazar asked for reporters’ “help explaining what is at stake for conservation at this moment in our history.” He highlighted the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, saying that over the last two years, the Obama administration had “moved mountains to provide additional funding and to move Everglades restoration from planning to on-the-ground results.”
The following day, the Secretary toured the Tamiami Trail Bridge Project where construction is under way on a one-mile bridge, to be completed by 2013, which will help restore water flows to the Everglades. Such conservation projects, in the Everglades and around the country, are “in jeopardy,” Salazar said.
“It’s not simply a matter of budgets, although the House Republican budget would force the closure of an estimated 100 national wildlife refuges to the public,” he said. “It’s also about a fundamentally different vision of who we are as a nation and what we can do as a people.”
Indeed, as The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin recently reported, House Republicans have targeted the Land and Water Conservation Fund for “drastic cuts,” yet resistance to environmental goals extends far beyond Capitol Hill.
Hiaasen chastised Republicans’ efforts to peg environmental regulations as killing jobs and economic growth. Columnists at Time and Forbes, and editorials at the Los Angeles Times and Dallas Morning News, have likewise criticized the GOP’s assault on rules that protect valuable natural resources and public health. They’re not alone, either. Still, there could always be more.
I don’t get the last part, the “there could always be more”? Wouldn’t it be better to have a real debate and factual conversation about the competing costs and benefits of environmental regulations? Couldn’t we be discussing if the EPA’s authority has outstripped its original mandate? With the economy in the shape its in aren’t there compelling reasons to delay or cancel new stringent waste rules, especially when some of them are unachievable on an industrial scale?
It seems that you want an entirely one sided monologue on this subject and deem it to be the highest standard of journalism. Funny, I always thought journalism was about presenting facts to a reader .. not just conclusions from sources that appeal to our values.
Hiaasen’s criticisms of Scott seem a bit childish and a touch oversensitive. It seems very clear that Scott’s comments were geared towards promoting tourism not on his love of killing alligators. It was a bit of a cheap shot, but for a good liberal like Hiaasen par for the course.
#1 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Wed 26 Oct 2011 at 12:46 PM
Meanwhile, in the real world outside the Democratic media/political echo chamber (when Ken Salazar speaks, journos should regard him as an assignment editor, that's the gist of this story), NPR's Michele Norris recused herself from political coverage until after the next election. Her husband is going to work for Obama, which is no surprise to followers of NPR. The same husband spends his time when not fund-raising as a lobbyist for all the usual corporations denounced by left-wingers. Somehow, conventional journalism never gets around to trying to square that circle, or even suggesting that squaring the circle is impossible - there is a thing called cognitive dissonance in politics. For an enviro angle, Michele's husband lobbies for TransCanada, aspiring authors of the Keystone pipeline.
When CJR gets around to finding its guts and looking into the connections between institutions which profess 'left-wing' policies and rhetoric, and which practice policies or do actions contrary to those pronouncements - more or less like the church-going type who then breaks most of the Ten Commandments for the other six days of the week - there will be plenty to work with there, and CJR will be a better and more trustworthy source of analysis. Steve Jobs was a liberal Democrat in his politics, but Steve Jobs outsourced work on his smart-phones to China as rationally and ruthlessly as any capitalist, and was not personally a pleasant piece of work. But hey, he had adopted some hippie/Zen affectations and admired the same cultural figures revered by bourgois liberalism. So he got the hero treatment.
Don't want to unduly shake up Brainerd or Chittum or others, but many voters figured out a long time ago that the 'liberal' rich are hypocrites attempting to protect their status with liberal-sounding policies that are covers for selfish ends.
#2 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 26 Oct 2011 at 05:31 PM
So, journalists are taking marching orders from the Feds. (What else is new?) I wonder if the Los Angeles Times was following a D.C. directive when it recently published a particularly despicable story (debunked here) about the empire's Libyan loot.
#3 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Thu 27 Oct 2011 at 06:41 AM
First off, it's hard for citizens to take action on an issue if reporters don't point out what the origin of the issue is.
For instance, "Originally, the state was supposed to cut the flow of phosphorous into the Glades to ten parts per billion by 2012, but the state legislature pushed the deadline back to 2016. Scott said he now needs another six years on top of that, requesting that the deadline be extended to 2022."
That's nice. Where is the phosphorus coming from? Can citizens use that information to take action/make changes? Need the info.
Turns out phosphorous comes from fertilizer (from the farms) and from laundry detergent of all things. Laundry soap manufacturers put phosphorus into the soap to reduce water "hardness" from ground water minerals. The phosphorus bonds to mineral ions in the water, allowing the soap to do a better job cleaning. They call this filler.
Consumers could use this information to make choices about laundry soap based on the effect it has on the ecosystem.
And, yeah, Ken Salazar should talk less about the rivers and conservation efforts of environmentalists until he's willing to do some.
For instance What's your stance on fracking, Salazar?
And yeah, you might want to stay away form deep water too.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 27 Oct 2011 at 11:19 AM
For instance What's your stance on fracking, Salazar?
Interesting you should mention that … the good folks over at the University of Pennsylvania just released a study the other day in which they compared water samples taken before frilling and water samples taken after drilling and you know what they found: a whole lot of nothing. But because Josh Fox found someone could light their water faucets on fire, its time to soil our panties.
#5 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 27 Oct 2011 at 11:37 AM
You talking about this study?
http://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-flammable-drinking-water-to-fracking/single
No, probably not.
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 27 Oct 2011 at 02:33 PM
I noticed Lustgarten, who has been called out before on his shod-didily-oddy reporting in the past, didn’t spend to much time on this conlcision from the Duke study he was writing about.
We found no evidence for contamination of drinking-water samples with deep saline brines or fracturing fluids.
SCIENCE BE PRAISED
Additionally, the Penn state study I mentioned had baseline water samples for all the wells they investigated, and they made a similar conclusion.
Almost makes me wonder why liberals hate science so much?
#7 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 27 Oct 2011 at 02:54 PM
Mike H. wrote: "Almost makes me wonder why liberals hate science so much? "
padikiller responds: Because science is simply rigorous scrutiny, and the fact is that commie/liberal silliness can't suffer even cursory scrutiny.
The standard commie/liberal response to a particular scientific fact-thingie?.Burn the witch!....
#8 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 27 Oct 2011 at 03:18 PM
Nice try, assholes.
Let me know when the right wing vouches for science when science goes against business interests. It doesn't, never. Just like the both of you automatons.
In the meantime, what the report actually said:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/89472/methane-contamination-of-drinking-water.pdf
"Methane concentrations were detected generally in 51 of 60 drinking-water wells (85%) across the region, regardless of gas industry operations, but concentrations were substantially higher closer to natural-gas wells. Methane concentrations were 17-times higher on average in shallow wells from active drilling and extraction areas than in wells from nonactive areas...
A different potential source of shallow groundwater contamination associated with gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing is the introduction of hypersaline formation brines and/or fracturing fluids. The average depth range of drinking-water wells in northeastern Pennsylvania is from 60 to 90 m, making the average vertical separation between drinking-water wells and the Marcellus Shale in our study area between approximately 900 and 1,800 m. The research area, however, is located in tectonically active areas with mapped faults, earthquakes, and lineament features. The Marcellus formation also contains two major sets of joints that could be conduits for directed pressurized fluid flow... The majority of this fracturing water typically stays underground and could in principle displace deep formation water upward into shallow aquifers...
Based on our data, we found no evidence for contamination of the shallow wells near active drilling sites from deep brines and/or fracturing fluids. All of the Na, Cl, Ca, and DIC concentrations inwells from active drilling areas were consistent with the baseline historical data, and none of the shallow wells from active drilling areas had either chloride concentrations >60 mg L or Na-CaCl compositions that mirrored deeper formation waters... In sum, the geochemical and isotopic features for water we measured in the shallow wells from both active and nonactive areas are consistent with historical data and inconsistent with contamination from mixing Marcellus Shale formation water or saline fracturing fluid. (This is the part Mike H cited. It goes on)
There are at least three possible mechanisms for fluid migration into the shallow drinking-water aquifers that could help explain the increased methane concentrations we observed near gas wells. The first is physical displacement of gas-rich deep solutions from the target formation. Given the lithostatic and hydrostatic pressures for 1–2 km of overlying geological strata, and our results that appear to rule out the rapid movement of deep brines to near the surface, we believe that this mechanism is unlikely. A second mechanism is leaky gas-well casings. Such leaks could occur at hundreds of meters underground, with methane passing laterally and vertically through fracture systems. The third mechanism is that the process of hydraulic fracturing generates new fractures or enlarges existing ones above the target shale formation, increasing the connectivity of the fracture system. The reduced pressure following the fracturing activities could release methane in solution, leading to methane exsolving rapidly from solution, allowing methane gas to potentially migrate upward through the fracture system.
Methane migration through the 1- to 2-km-thick geological formations that overlie the Marcellus and Utica shales is less likely as a mechanism for methane contamination than leaky well casings, but might be possible due to both the extensive fracture systems reported for these formations and the many older, uncased wells drilled and abandoned over the last century and a
#9 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 27 Oct 2011 at 10:15 PM
So the closer you get to a gas well... The more gas you find in the rocks and in the groundwater?
Let me repeat this, so we can all wrap our heads around it. When you get closer to natural gas wells... More natural gas turns up. And when you get further from gas wells, then less natural gas turns up.
I've noticed this kind of thing elsewhere. The closer I get to a coal mine, the more coal I see lying around, and the further I get from a coal mine, the less coal there seems to be.
Whoda thunkit?
There's a Nobel in this for somebody...
#10 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 27 Oct 2011 at 10:39 PM
"leading to methane"
"exsolving rapidly from solution, allowing methane gas to potentially migrate upward through the fracture system.
Methane migration through the 1- to 2-km-thick geological formations that overlie the Marcellus and Utica shales is less likely as a mechanism for methane contamination than leaky well casings, but might be possible due to both the extensive fracture systems reported for these formations and the many older, uncased wells drilled and abandoned over the last century and a half in Pennsylvania and New York...
Compared to other forms of fossil-fuel extraction, hydraulic fracturing is relatively poorly regulated at the federal level. Fracturing wastes are not regulated as a hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, fracturing wells are not covered under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and only recently has the Environmental Protection Agency asked fracturing firms to voluntarily report a list of the constituents in the fracturing fluids based on the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. More research is also needed on the mechanism of methane contamination, the potential health consequences of methane, and establishment of baseline methane data in other locations."
Boy, that doesn't sound like the blow off you made it out to be. It sounds like they found the gas that Josh Fox made faucet fires out of from UNDER the bedrock, that the methane escape indicates potential escape routes for briny materials to escape, that the brine water and frac fluid is trapped in the ground - once injected - forcing well owners to continually monitor in case the buried poisons find an escape route into the well, and that the industry needs more regulation.
And in other news, you have a paper coming out of a university that has gotten an 88 million dollar gift from a gas executive and a whole bunch of other perks and donations from the industry. (If you're going to frame every critic and journalist that perturbs your industry driven loins as "shod-didily-oddy", then we have to look at the history of your shod-didily-oddy University before we consider its studies)
From their study:
http://www.rural.palegislature.us/documents/reports/Marcellus_and_drinking_water_2011_rev.pdf
"Marcellus gas wells generate large volumes of waste fluids from fracking fluids returning to the surface (“flowback” fluids) along with naturally occurring deep brine water. The wastewaters typically have a high level of total dissolved solids (TDS) due to the variety and concentration of many different constituents such as chloride, sodium, barium, strontium and iron (Hayes, 2009).
The concentration of many water quality parameters in various types of gas drilling flowback fluids and wastewaters reported by Hayes (2009) are substantially above levels considered safe for drinking water. As a result, even small amounts of pollution from improperly constructed wells, inadequate waste storage, or spills can impact nearby water supplies.
Gas well drilling and storage fields have also been implicated in cases of methane migration into shallow groundwater aquifers (Breen et al., 2007; and Buckwalter and Moore, 2007). Methane gas dissolved in water presents an explosion hazard as it escapes from the water into confined household spaces (Keech and Gaber, 1982).
There have been reported instances of methane gas migrating from drinking water wells into homes or seasonal camps resulting in explosions (Pittsburgh Geological Society, 2009; and Gough and Waite, 1990) including an occurrence near Dimock, Pa., that was related to Marcellus drilling activity (DEP, 2009). A recent study in northeastern Pennsylvania also found increased concentrations of dissolved methane in shallow groundwater wells close to Marcellus gas well sites (O
#11 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 27 Oct 2011 at 10:45 PM
"from the water into confined household spaces (Keech and Gaber, 1982)."
"There have been reported instances of methane gas migrating from drinking water wells into homes or seasonal camps resulting in explosions (Pittsburgh Geological Society, 2009; and Gough and Waite, 1990) including an occurrence near Dimock, Pa., that was related to Marcellus drilling activity (DEP, 2009). A recent study in northeastern Pennsylvania also found increased concentrations of dissolved methane in shallow groundwater wells close to Marcellus gas well sites (Osborn et al., 2011)"
Oooo. That doesn't sound so "whole lot of nothing". Let's read further.
"Marcellus gas well drilling has increased concern among water supply owners based on various, often contradictory, research reports from Pennsylvania and other states (Osborn et al., 2011; Lustgarten, 2008; Thyne, 2008; Griffiths, 2007; and Gorody et al., 2005).
While public concern about potential impacts of Marcellus gas drilling on drinking water wells is persistent, the actual occurrence of problems based on a large-scale and unbiased study is lacking. The primary goal of this research was to conduct an unbiased and large scale study of water quality in private water wells both before and after the drilling of Marcellus gas wells nearby.."
Okay, but a university with an 88 million dollar gift from the industry does not unbiased make, right oh sciency climate denying right wingers?
Conclusion?
"While this study included a large number of water wells located across a large portion of the Marcellus region of the state, the results should be interpreted with caution. The investigators looked to combine a smaller but more controlled study (Phase 1) with a less robust investigation of a larger set of water wells. Both phases of the study relied on two point measures (pre- and post-drilling) and should not be used to infer potential impacts on water supplies at shorter or longer time scales. The researchers suggest that additional shorter- and longer-term monitoring is necessary to more precisely determine impacts at different time periods."
Swistock, the study's chief author, has mentioned, "The study's modest number of samples for methane and bromide and the relatively short length of the study speak to the need for additional data collection and analysis."
So the authors state we shouldn't read to much into these results. The time frame was too short and the sample too small.
But maybe they're right. Maybe there's enough geo-universality to guarantee the drilling practices safe on one sort of field are just as safe on another. Maybe when the drilling companies pull out all the stops because of the university study next door, the water is as safe the day the study ends as it will be ten/twenty years from then.
What about when the companies don't pull out the stops. You've both claimed regulations and regulators are useless. And we've seen what happens when an energy company runs amok.
http://www.propublica.org/article/bp-accidents-past-and-present
"Current and former workers and executives said the company repeatedly cut corners, let alarm and safety systems languish and skipped essential maintenance that could have prevented a number of explosions and spills. Internal BP documents support these claims...
“BP's cost-cutting measures had really cut into their plant maintenance, into their training, into their investment in new and safer equipment,” Barab said. “When you start finding the same problems over and over again, I think you are pretty safe in saying they've got a systematic problem.”...
Marc Kovac, one of the mechanics who first complained to Pascal, told ProPublica that the company follows what he called a policy of “run to failure”—minimizing maintenance as it tries to squeeze the
#12 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 27 Oct 2011 at 11:10 PM
“BP's"
"cost-cutting measures had really cut into their plant maintenance, into their training, into their investment in new and safer equipment,” Barab said. “When you start finding the same problems over and over again, I think you are pretty safe in saying they've got a systematic problem.”...
Marc Kovac, one of the mechanics who first complained to Pascal, told ProPublica that the company follows what he called a policy of “run to failure”—minimizing maintenance as it tries to squeeze the maximum possible production from each link in its chain of facilities."
What's to prevent a profit seeking shale company from "running to failure" its wells and pumps and dumping its waste water into various water sheds.
They've already done so.
I guess the only way to prevent such a situation is to ban, by your reasoning, You can't legislate a conscience, right?
#13 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 27 Oct 2011 at 11:19 PM
If you're going to frame every critic and journalist that perturbs your industry driven loins as "shod-didily-oddy", then we have to look at the history of your shod-didily-oddy University before we consider its studies
Sorry, Penn state is one of the most well respected universities around in the technical arts and has a well established expertise in this particular field. Lustgarten was savaged by David Kopel and shown for the hack he is. Using crackpot “scientific” opinion, inventing evidence and drawing conclusions from the evidence and misrepresenting sources. If you have a specific beef with the Penn State study, you should let the peer review folks know all about it … I am sure they would value your input.
Boy, that doesn't sound like the blow off you made it out to be. It sounds like they found the gas that Josh Fox made faucet fires out of from UNDER the bedrock, that the methane escape indicates potential escape routes for briny materials to escape, that the brine water and frac fluid is trapped in the ground - once injected - forcing well owners to continually monitor in case the buried poisons find an escape route into the well, and that the industry needs more regulation.
Richard and Sharon Weigelt knew something was wrong the day the tap water caught fire in their North Cooking Lake home. The discovery was sudden and frightening. Mrs Weigelt was working in the kitchen. The gas stove, right besides the sing, had an element burning. She turned on the hot tap water. Suddenly a flame from the tap shot across to the tap and ignited the water.
Edmonton Journal, February 1, 1973
L.C. Gilder turned on his faucet today and got fire water. On New Year’s, too. This was both fire and water though. Gilder explained it was from the new well he dug at his home. He said natural gas apparently rises from the 400 foot well.
The Spokesman-Review, January 2nd, 1951
Must have been from the fracking, huh?
Since you so brilliantly discovered the natural phenomenon of natural gas being found in and around natural gas deposits (the Duke study), I will bring you up to speed on another recently discovered physical phenomenon: buoyancy. The fracturing fluids are several thousand feet UNDER the water table and since the gravitational pull of the earth exceeds the buoyant forces of their local environment, the fracturing fluids will necessarily stay right where they are. Its simple really, and the principle can be readily demonstrated.
ALL HAIL SCIENCE!
But maybe they're right. Maybe there's enough geo-universality to guarantee the drilling practices safe on one sort of field are just as safe on another. Maybe when the drilling companies pull out all the stops because of the university study next door, the water is as safe the day the study ends as it will be ten/twenty years from then.
The reason the gas exists in these shale deposits and hasn’t leaked into the atmosphere in the 120million years it been there (remember our lesson on buoyancy) is because all shale gas deposits share a common geological feature: they are covered with 1000’s of feet in impermeable rock formations.
SCIENCE BE PRAISED!
#14 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 28 Oct 2011 at 10:05 AM
"The reason the gas exists in these shale deposits and hasn’t leaked into the atmosphere in the 120million years it been there (remember our lesson on buoyancy) is because all shale gas deposits share a common geological feature: they are covered with 1000’s of feet in impermeable rock formations."
And yet some how, after 120 million years we're using that gas in our ovens and heaters. How did that gas get through all that impermeable rock and into our kitchens. There must have been a means of escape, perhaps magic? Well, in that case let's rely on the magic to keep us safe, it's worked so well in places like Fukushima and the Gulf of Mexico.
#15 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 28 Oct 2011 at 11:42 AM
How did that gas get through all that impermeable rock and into our kitchens. There must have been a means of escape, perhaps magic?
You really arent that thick are you?
#16 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 28 Oct 2011 at 02:52 PM
Let's talk about hacks.
David Kopel is one of those wingnut welfare recipients who contributes to CATO and the National Review, each of which is a repository of such hackitude that they could produce a Bible of Shod-didily-oddy each. But hey, that's not why we should discount him (though his theory that gun control is responsible for the rise of the nazis is pretty good fodder) though it does make me question his accounts of personal correspondence.
Let's look at his cite:
According to Kopel:
"After describing the Wyoming situation, the article continues: "The contamination in Sublette County is significant because it is the first to be documented by a federal agency, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. But more than 1,000 other cases of contamination have been documented by courts and state and local governments in Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio and Pennsylvania."
I asked Lustgarten for the basis for his claim about more than a thousand "documented" state cases of hydraulic fracturing water contamination. "
What did the article say:
http://www.propublica.org/article/buried-secrets-is-natural-gas-drilling-endangering-us-water-supplies-1113
"The contamination in Sublette County is significant because it is the first to be documented by a federal agency, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. But more than 1,000 other cases of contamination have been documented by courts and state and local governments in Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In one case, a house exploded after hydraulic fracturing created underground passageways and methane seeped into the residential water supply. In other cases, the contamination occurred not from actual drilling below ground, but on the surface, where accidental spills and leaky tanks, trucks and waste pits allowed benzene and other chemicals to leach into streams, springs and water wells.
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of each contamination, or measure its spread across the environment accurately, because the precise nature and concentrations of the chemicals used by industry are considered trade secrets. Not even the EPA knows exactly what's in the drilling fluids. And that, EPA scientists say, makes it impossible to vouch for the safety of the drilling process or precisely track its effects."
Ooookay. So when Kopel talked to... who was it again? Oh yeah, David Neslin, not state and local governments in Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio and Pennsylvania. When he talked to him what did he ask?
"how many cases they had "documented" of groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing. He said, "None.""
And what does David Neslin mean when he says that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysCXeXDt4_Y
Hacks abound.
#17 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 28 Oct 2011 at 03:09 PM
David Kopel is one of those wingnut welfare recipients who contributes to CATO and the National Review, each of which is a repository of such hackitude that they could produce a Bible of Shod-didily-oddy each.
Ohhh nooo .. the right wing boogeymen are mucking up a perfectly good hit piece! Whatever shall we do! Quick, someone cowpie and throw it at him, that'l fix his tomater!
I’d like to thank you for your recent editorial on the ProPublica article. I was one of the folks (I’m with the WY Dept of Env Quality) interviewed for this article by Mr. Lustgarten. I spent several hours on the phone and around a dozen follow up emails to try and help him write a factual article. Unfortunately he seemed to have his own agenda. The one error that was most blatant from my perspective was the “20 mile long plume” that he mentions. I must have told him 5 times that it was individual impacts to separate water wells due to water well drilling practices – not related to oil and gas drilling at all – but that did not make it into his article that way. - Mark Thiesse, the Wyoming groundwater regulator who was quoted by Lustgarten
That’s what I love about you Thimbles … you look just as hard as you need to confirm what you want top believe … a case study in confirmation bias.
#18 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 28 Oct 2011 at 03:22 PM
"How did that gas get through all that impermeable rock and into our kitchens. There must have been a means of escape, perhaps magic?"
I'm not that thick, and I'm not so thick to discount the effect of the extraction process on the impermeability of the seal.
As mentioned in the earlier study:
"There are at least three possible mechanisms for fluid migration into the shallow drinking-water aquifers that could help explain the increased methane concentrations we observed near gas wells. The first is physical displacement of gas-rich deep solutions from the target formation. Given the lithostatic and hydrostatic pressures for 1–2 km of overlying geological strata, and our results that appear to rule out the rapid movement of deep brines to near the surface, we believe that this mechanism is unlikely. A second mechanism is leaky gas-well casings. Such leaks could occur at hundreds of meters underground, with methane passing laterally and vertically through fracture systems. The third mechanism is that the process of hydraulic fracturing generates new fractures or enlarges existing ones above the target shale formation, increasing the connectivity of the fracture system."
#19 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 28 Oct 2011 at 03:24 PM
OMFG!!! Gas has leaked from a gas well!!! That must mean all that nasty fracking fluid has come out too ….. but it hasn’t …. hmmm …. and no cases have been documented of a fracking job contaminating an aquifer … even with 100,000’s of wells dug and fracked ….. interesting … I suppose its time to reevaluate my comprehensive body of knowledge on this subject I got from watching Gasland.
Since you have made the earth shattering discovery that natural gas can be found by natural gas wells and I explained the new fangled discovery of buoyancy, you should also familiarize yourself with the concept of viscosity.
#20 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 28 Oct 2011 at 03:52 PM
There's just no evidence at all that the third (of "at least three") of these "possible" processes - namely hydraulic fracturing - contaminates anything.
This according to the Duke study Thimbles cited.
P E R I O D.
This is just the scientific R E A L I T Y.
But hey! Why let the mere scientific reality get in the way of another Commie anti-corporate Fairy Tale, right?
#21 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 28 Oct 2011 at 03:53 PM