Let’s say, hypothetically, that a deep-pocketed organization was financially underwriting the
bulk of activities associated with a campaign to stop oil and gas
development in America, including organizing and orchestrating research
projects designed to attack 65 years of history, science and experience
with respect to the safe use of hydraulic fracturing.
Now let’s stop pretending and recognize that everything we’ve described above is, in fact, happening, and the organization so-described is the Ithaca-based Park Foundation. Would that classify as news fit to print?
Not according to the New York Times, it isn’t.
What the Gray Lady does view as a story, however, is a fresh round of grumbling from opposition groups charging that a recently released paper on Marcellus regulation in Pennsylvania from the University at Buffalo is “biased” – and that, because of this paper, the entire university’s reputation is now at risk. You know, the same way Cornell’s reputation was reduced to a smoldering husk following the release of the now widely debunked Howarth and Ingraffea GHG papers.
Wait, what? Cornell’s doing just fine? Right, that’s what we thought.
Anyway, the report about which activists are screaming “bias!” (more on that later) was released last month by the University at Buffalo’s Shale Resources and Society Institute. It found that even as natural gas development from the Marcellus Shale has increased in Pennsylvania in recent years, the number of environmental incidents has actually fallen on a per-well basis, and that New York’s proposed regulations would have prevented many if not all of those incidents from occurring in the Empire State.
But opponents say the opposite is the case, citing the increase in total violations in Pennsylvania as evidence that things are getting worse, not better.
The reality, though, is that the term “violation,” especially as it relates to oil and gas operations, suggests (at least through implication) an environmental problem. But most violations are actually administrative in nature and relate to the mountain of paperwork that must be filled out before, during, and after a well is drilled. These are logged as “violations,” but there’s obviously no environmental damage resulting from an unfilled box on a piece of paper submitted to the Pa. Dept. of Environmental Protection.
According to the UB study, 62 percent of all violations were for “administrative or preventative reasons.” The study also points out that the number of violations constituting the remaining 38 percent is itself a bit misleading, as multiple violations often referred to the same incident. And as the folks at EID-Marcellus have previously observed, the number of violations per well has actually been decreasing in recent years.
Read more: http://www.energyindepth.org/ub-marcellus-study-the-numbers-dont-lie/
Now let’s stop pretending and recognize that everything we’ve described above is, in fact, happening, and the organization so-described is the Ithaca-based Park Foundation. Would that classify as news fit to print?
Not according to the New York Times, it isn’t.
What the Gray Lady does view as a story, however, is a fresh round of grumbling from opposition groups charging that a recently released paper on Marcellus regulation in Pennsylvania from the University at Buffalo is “biased” – and that, because of this paper, the entire university’s reputation is now at risk. You know, the same way Cornell’s reputation was reduced to a smoldering husk following the release of the now widely debunked Howarth and Ingraffea GHG papers.
Wait, what? Cornell’s doing just fine? Right, that’s what we thought.
Anyway, the report about which activists are screaming “bias!” (more on that later) was released last month by the University at Buffalo’s Shale Resources and Society Institute. It found that even as natural gas development from the Marcellus Shale has increased in Pennsylvania in recent years, the number of environmental incidents has actually fallen on a per-well basis, and that New York’s proposed regulations would have prevented many if not all of those incidents from occurring in the Empire State.
But opponents say the opposite is the case, citing the increase in total violations in Pennsylvania as evidence that things are getting worse, not better.
The reality, though, is that the term “violation,” especially as it relates to oil and gas operations, suggests (at least through implication) an environmental problem. But most violations are actually administrative in nature and relate to the mountain of paperwork that must be filled out before, during, and after a well is drilled. These are logged as “violations,” but there’s obviously no environmental damage resulting from an unfilled box on a piece of paper submitted to the Pa. Dept. of Environmental Protection.
According to the UB study, 62 percent of all violations were for “administrative or preventative reasons.” The study also points out that the number of violations constituting the remaining 38 percent is itself a bit misleading, as multiple violations often referred to the same incident. And as the folks at EID-Marcellus have previously observed, the number of violations per well has actually been decreasing in recent years.
Read more: http://www.energyindepth.org/ub-marcellus-study-the-numbers-dont-lie/
No comments:
Post a Comment