Natural Gas Fracking Will Fuck Up Your World

Yet more evidence that natural gas is not only not the "clean, safe" member of the Lethal Fossil Fuel Club, but may be even more dangerous than ocean-killing oil and planet-boiling coal.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

NPR had a fantastic story on Friday about the relationship between fracking and the cluster of earthquakes earlier this year in Arkansas. Many local residents blamed the gas companies for the earthquakes, saying that the process of blasting millions of gallons of water into the Earth is destablizing the fault line. When the companies temporarily agreed to stop, the earthquakes almost ceased.

Of course, it’s unclear whether the earthquakes starting and stopping with fracking is a coincidence. We need testing and research to determine that. But the oil companies have no intention of allowing that independent research to happen and are preparing to restart fracking in the area.

Meanwhile, fracking continues to expand across the nation. Much of New York is divided right now after quasi-Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo decided to open parts of the state to fracking. Driving from Poughkeepsie to Ithaca this weekend, I saw dozens of billboards and bumper stickers opposing Cuomo’s actions, and a few signs, mostly it seemed from the landholders who would likely host the drill sites, in support.

And also from Loomis, an awesome demonstration of the power of fracking poisons to kill whole forests:

Again, I just have a really hard time understanding why we don’t trust the energy industry to look out for our best interests?

In 2007, Berry Energy Inc. of Clarksburg began drilling a conventional, vertical gas well in a section of the Fernow Experimental Forest, a part of the Monongahela set aside for research.

Adams said what unfolded over the next two years was an unexpected opportunity for observation.

Some results were expected, from deforestation and road damage to runoff and erosion. Others, including the dramatic die-off when wastewater was land-applied, were not.

Berry Energy didn’t immediately return messages Monday, but the report says that in June 2008, under a permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection, it sprayed 75,000 gallons of treated fracking fluid on the quarter-acre.

Adams said the Forest Service hoped to minimize damage and was only told afterward that the industry standard is to use a much larger area.

“We were surprised when the vegetation responded so quickly because we were told there would be no effect, ‘This is done all the time,’” Adams said. “And there was a very dramatic response.”

Within a few days, all ground vegetation was dead. Within 10 days, the leaves of the hardwoods began to turn brown and drop. Within two years, more than half of the 150 trees were dead, and sodium and chloride concentrations in the soil were 50 times higher than normal.

I know I’m excited to see the destruction of New York forests through Andrew Cuomo approved fracking, not to mention the continued deforestation of wild, wonderful West Virginia.

Via West Virginia Blue.

Read more about fracking's non-earthquake dangers here.

Liberals demand an end to billions of dollars in subsidies to destructive, lethal fossil fuels.