553 replies to this topic

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Unfortunately, it looks as if President Obama just jumped on the fracking bandwagon.
  The state of the Union address featured an explicit endorsement of shale gas and fracking.  

There needs to be a massive outcry from us.  

Perhaps we can talk him down off the ledge.  He needs to know that we are here, and we are outraged and that this position will not bode well for the coming year.
Take action!  Here are 3 things you can do:

1)  Call the White House:  Food and Water Watch and GASLAND collaborate for No Frack Friday: 888-925-7006
Simply tell the volunteer on the line that President Obama must protect his constituents and walk away from fracking for shale gas.  Fracking is unsafe, it has been shown to contaminate groundwater by his own EPA and threatens public health and clean air.

2)  Email President Obama through the WHITE HOUSE CONTACT PAGE HERE.   For language, feel free to cut and paste the OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA FROM THE UNITED FOR ACTION PAGE HERE.

3) TWITTER STORM: Today, at 2:00 EST, join a live session of White House Office Hours on Twitter with Heather Zichal, Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change and Dan Utech, Deputy Director for Energy Policy.  Ask them about the Obama Administration’s pandering to industry by using the hashtag #WHchat and follow the Q&A through the @WHLive Twitter account.
And above all, for those of you in despair (the opposite of HOPE) worrying that you will have no place to go this election year, remember, we always have a place to go to forge democracy--into the streets.  We won the crucial battles to stop the Keystone XL pipeline and halt drilling and fracking in the Delaware River Basin and it was action, not electioneering, that made policy history.     

Thanks for taking action!  

We're here, we are strong and we won't lose our homes, air, health and water to fracking.


In appreciation of you more than ever,
Josh and the GASLAND Team

More info:

On Tuesday night, during the State of the Union Address, President Obama shocked our community by hailing Natural Gas as an important new energy supply and by repeating several industry talking points which are grossly overstated.

Here are a few of the more worrisome low points of his speech, ranging from flat out wrong, to suspect and reckless:

Flat Out Wrong:  "We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years."

In fact, America's proven gas reserves (272 trillion cubic feet) are only enough to last around eleven years at the current rate of consumption (24 tcf per year).   Even the much more speculative estimate of "unproved technically recoverable reserves" (482 tcf according to the US Department of Energy) is only enough to last around twenty years.

Twenty years?  That’s hardly the 100 that President Obama spoke of.

Suspect: "Experts believe this [the natural gas industry] will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade."

Apparently the "experts" the president is referring is the gas industry itself, not staff at the Bureau of Labor Statistics which predicts that the oil and gas industry will employ only 136,000 people by 2018.   And the president, like the industry, fails to estimate how many jobs will be lost as other economic sectors such as agriculture and tourism are crowded out by high-impact industrial development.  How can responsible government do this?  Tourism, agriculture could be decimated by job losses from dirty drilling.

Reckless:  "America will develop this resource without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk.  Development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don't have to choose between our environment and our economy."

We just don't buy it.  From all of our extensive research and documentation, shale gas is an inherently contaminating toxic process with long lasting detrimental effects on our water, air and health.
There's no way around it.  We do have to choose - between a sustainable, healthy future and a destructive industrial practice that will fuel climate change, contaminate drinking water and leave American taxpayers on the hook for uncounted billions in environmental cleanup and health care costs.  

It’s critical that we let President Obama know that he can’t get away with making such irresponsible and dangerous statements about a practice that his ownEPA has found toxic, cancer causing chemicals in water supplies?

The science is in Mr. President, there is nothing "clean" about dirty shale gas and the toxicity it brings to our communities.   More importantly, shale gas is not a bridge fuel, it's a bridge to nowhere.
To donate to our work, CLICK HERE.

A parting word of resolve from Bill:
"The more we've learned about fracking, though, the clearer it's become that its damage is not confined to the local area. When you fracture the rock to make the gas flow faster, most of it is captured by the pump at the surface. But some escapes (the documentary Gasland had a remarkable shot of homeowners lighting a gas fire by holding a match under their water tap). And unburned natural gas or methane (CH4 to you chemists) is an even stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. In other words, if more than 1 or 2 percent of the natural gas escapes straight into the atmosphere, this process would cause more global warming than burning coal.  

In other words, the bridge to the energy future is a rickety pier that just stretches out into the deep water and then stops. It's one more dodge, of the kind junkies specialize in, a way to keep from coming to terms with our addiction to fossil fuel. Forget the bridge -- we need to screw up our resolve and leap across the chasm to the real future of wind and sun. Not simple, not cheap, but not avoidable either."  - Bill McKibben

http://gaslandthemovie.com/

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Well, the number of jobs that would be created by Keystone XL, is finally getting straightened out. Sort of.
The original report erred to the tune of 35,000. (Actual, about 3,500 jobs.)
And of course, the #gop picked it up and ran with it, padding the number in error to 100,000 jobs.
Oi.

"In testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday,  Assistant Secretary of State Dr. Kerri-Ann Jones should have said the pipeline’s indirect job potential was 3,500 annual jobs but instead she said 35,000.
Claims that over 100,000 jobs would be created by the pipeline were “inflated” based on a misinterpretation of the analysis conducted by TransCanada.
Republicans and industry proponents of the pipeline are flogging the horse of its job-creation potential, hard, and that horse done DIED." ( )
http://grist.org/lis...a-factor-of-10/

[jasserEnv]

The thing about the Republican politicians is that facts do not stand in the way of what they will say. If they want it to be 100,000 jobs, that is what they will argue. In my mind, they have the mentality that if they say it enough times people will believe it. Sadly, in some cases, it does seem to work. That is the thing about dogma based politics, its not about being factual, its about convincing your supporters.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

jasserEnv, on 28 January 2012 - 09:35 PM, said:

The thing about the Republican politicians is that facts do not stand in the way of what they will say.

Exactly.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

#gop attached the Keystone pipe build to the tax cuts for middle America.
That didn't fly.
So now they're attaching it to a highway bill instead.
http://www.huffingto....html?ref=green
And exactly how many kickbacks is boehner getting from the oil/gas companies to push this?
http://politicalcorr...ck/201201180004
(I've listed some of his investments, the whole list can be seen on link)
http://pfds.opensecr...003675_2008.pdf
http://pfds.opensecr...003675_2009.pdf
http://pfds.opensecr...003675_2010.pdf
Boehner Invested Between $15,001-$50,000 In BP In 2009.
Boehner Invested Between $15,001-$50,000 In Chevron In 2009.
Boehner Invested Between $15,001-$50,000 In ConocoPhillips In 2009.
Boehner Invested Between $15,001-$50,000 In Emerson Electric In 2009.
Emerson Electric Has A $9.4 Billion Contract For Oil Sands Development Support Services.
Environmentalists note that in December 2010, according to Boehner's financial disclosure forms, he invested $10,000 to $50,000 each in seven firms that had a stake in Canada's oil sands, the region that produces the oil the pipeline would transport.
The firms include six oil companies - BP, Canadian Natural Resources, Chevron, Conoco Phillips,
Devon Energy and Exxon - along with Emerson Electric, which has a contract to provide the digital automation
for the first phase of a $9.4 billion Horizon Oil Sands Project in Canada. [Washington Post]

[SpiroFlo]

Here are the numbers the company gave: TransCanada Corp predicted 13,000 jobs from constructing the estimated $13 billion pipeline, 7,000 manufacturing jobs and “the 118,000 spin-off jobs Keystone XL will create through increased business for local goods and service providers.”

It's those "spin off" jobs that were hotly debated. You could argue that a hotel created jobs based on hiriing whoever to fill a role while Kystone workers stayed there.

I got SpiroFlo a state grant in 2010 and it was all about job creation then, too. Thing is, I wouldn't call hiring a plumber for a few hours of work creating a job, but guess what, the government does. That's not just this Keystone project; it's any political party (read: all of them) trying to look good at job creation with the current unemployment rate.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

The #gop is probably even counting the clean up crews, truck drivers to haul them in, the folks that manufacture
those oil clean-up booms.............once that nasty mess springs a leak.
If they use "hair-mats" they'll count the beauty shop patrons and hair dressers too.
What a farce.
And I can guarantee it will spring a leak somewhere or worse.
It's being installed by humans into man made pipes. Duh.
(And yes, I'm a major cynic today.)

[ConservativeGreen]

By DC standards, dem or gop, if you tip a valet parking your limo you have created a job.

[SpiroFlo]

ConservativeGreen, on 31 January 2012 - 11:32 AM, said:

By DC standards, dem or gop, if you tip a valet parking your limo you have created a job.

That's the point. It's all of them playing the same game on this one.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Back to topic please-tar sands/gas fracking.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Josh Fox, the documentary journalist that gave us Gasland, was arrested while filming court proceedings
for his second documentary Gasland 2.
Republicans in charge had him arrested for "unlawful entry"-he was standing there filming the proceedings
after having received permission to do so.
Freedom of the press? Not anymore.
Freedom of speech-see the #Occupy Wall Street thread.
Voter suppression.
#gop=fascism.

"In a stunning break with First Amendment policy, House Republicans directed Capitol Hill police to detain
a highly regarded documentary crew that was attempting to film a Wednesday hearing on a controversial
natural gas procurement practice.
Josh Fox, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Gasland" was taken into custody by Capitol Hill police this morning, along with his crew, after Republicans objected to their presence.

"This is not transparency. This is a lockout and it's bad. It's the people's House, after all. We went through the proper
channels to arrange to tape this hearing.
We have taped congressional hearings before and we've been turned down before, but I disagree with the policy.
Anyone who says they're a journalist is a journalist.
It's called the First Amendment.
It's the freedom of the press, and that is fundamental to our core identity as the United States of America."
Several Democrats on the committee voiced outrage with the GOP's press blackout.

"It's an outrageous violation of the First Amendment," Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told HuffPost. "Here we've got an
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, and it's an important subject and the subject that he did his prior film on for HBO.
And they put him in handcuffs and hauled him out of there. This is stunning."

(part of the statement that Josh Fox released-the whole statement on link.)
The First Amendment to the Constitution states explicitly
"Congress shall make no law...that infringes on the Freedom of the Press".
When I was led out of the hearing room in handcuffs,
John Boehner's pledge of transparency in congress was taken out with me."

http://www.huffingto..._n_1246971.html

[still learning]

Shortpoet-GTD, on 02 February 2012 - 05:05 AM, said:

Josh Fox, the documentary journalist that gave us Gasland, was arrested while filming court proceedings
for his second documentary Gasland 2......"
http://www.huffingto..._n_1246971.html

From the linked HuffPost article "Subcommittee Chairman Andy Harris (R-Md.) was unavailable for comment, but several Democrats on the committee voiced outrage with the GOP's press blackout'

I guess Harris's displeasure with Fox filming the hearing shouldn't be surprising, but having the guy arrested? (See the Harris website http://harris.house.gov/news )

Is Fox incorporated?  Corporations get first amendment rights.

[Hayden]

here's a photo from that link:
 s-JOSH-FOX-ARREST-large300.jpg   20.2K   2 downloads

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Huffington post link (above) has the video on his arrest.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

More reason to love the Sierra Club! Integrity.

"In 2010, soon after I became the organization's executive director, I learned that beginning in 2007 the Sierra Club
had received more than $26 million from individuals or subsidiaries of Chesapeake Energy,
one of the country's largest natural gas companies.
At the same time I learned about the donation, we at the Club were also hearing from scientists and from local Club
chapters about the risks that natural gas drilling posed to our air, water, climate, and people in their communities.

We cannot accept money from an industry we need to change.

Very quickly, the board of directors, with my strong encouragement, cut off these donations and rewrote
our gift acceptance policy. Let me tell you how it came about.

In the fall of 2005, Sierra Club staff and volunteer leaders agreed to make the enormous challenge of climate disruption
the Club's highest priority.
By that time, we had already begun to have great success with our Beyond Coal campaign,
which had started in 2002, and which had already stopped the construction of several dozen new coal-fired power plants.

This Beyond Coal initiative has continued to have unparalleled success working with literally hundreds of other
organizations, small and large, and using grassroots power to
stop more than 160 new coal plants and prevent 500 million tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere.
Sierra Club activists are now fighting Big Coal pollution in all 50 states and on college campuses nationwide.
Today, the Sierra Club is not just focusing on stopping new plants from being built but is also accelerating efforts
to retire old and dirty coal plants nationwide.

The big challenge, however, is what follows coal. How do we keep the lights on as we move quickly to an economy powered by clean, renewable energy?
During the period that the Sierra Club first started receiving donations, several of our local chapters were becoming increasingly alarmed by dangerous and disruptive natural gas industry practices in their communities --
particularly horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," a technique where millions of gallons of water,
laced with other ingredients (including, often, toxic chemicals) are pumped into rock to release gas deposits.
Gradually, more and more legitimate questions were raised about the risks that fracking poses to our air, water,
communities, and indeed our climate.
It's time to stop thinking of natural gas as a "kinder, gentler" energy source."
(Read his entire message here:)


http://sierraclub.ty...atural-gas.html

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Waste water after the fact is the biggest concern. (laced with chemicals)
http://www.treehugge...o-about-it.html

[Shortpoet-GTD]

The good news.
Obama is setting new rules to disclose the chemicals in fracking fluids.
The bad news.
It's for drilling on "public" lands only. It should be for all land-public and private.
Clip from the Ed Show-talking to Josh Fox-fract act.


http://www.msnbc.msn...260190#46260190

[Shortpoet-GTD]

http://www.globalenv...’s-poor-hardest

[Shortpoet-GTD]

I wonder if all the people that can set their faucets on fire are liberals, or just plain folks?
Water well contamination's have been well documented, so it's not a conspiracy or lies. It's a fact.

Fracking fluids contain over 600 chemicals, any one of which could contaminate water. But we
have over 600 chances to have contaminated water; thanks in large part to chaney/halliburton.

It could be all the people that are sick from this toxic brew are liberals, but I doubt it.