failures of pro-gas arguments

As only a dog can do, I’ve decided to put together a couple resources so that you humans have a quick and easy place to refer back to when you need some scientific and logical back-up while picking apart pro-gas arguments. There is a standard set of industry talking points, most notably repeated by the Wall Street Journal. Each of these is fairly easily rebutted using common sense, logic, and basic science.

It aint rocket science. I dig holes all the time.

So, the set of industry talking points looks a bit like the list below. Near the bottom of this page, I give you two links to either read or watch the debunking of these statements.

• Fracking is a 60-year-old well-proven technology.
• Gas migration from faulty wells is a rare phenomenon.
• There has never been a known case of water contamination from fracking.
• Use of multi-well pads reduces surface impact.
• Natural gas is a clean fossil fuel.
• Methane migration in PA is a common, non-Marcellus related occurence.

Now, the validity of most of these statements you would be able to ascertain for yourselves with little help from a dog like me. For example, look at the last statement. You don’t need a scientist to realize that the methane is in stable pockets that only migrate when they are disrupted. It doesn’t matter whether the gas is “deep” or “shallow” or anything like that– the only thing that matters is that it used to be securely trapped and now it’s not. Why? Because the drilling process disrupted it. And, you can’t frack unless you drill, FYI.

Stuart Smith, a lawyer who is “fighting Big Oil” critiques the recent Wall Street Journal article point by point. (Links to that article and others are at the bottom of his article.) Depending on whether you’d rather read or watch a video, you could follow up with the Wall Street Journal article above or you could view Dr. Tony Ingraffea’s video presentation where he debunks the myths of natural gas development.

Please post any questions with comments you might have. I’ll be going through these myths one at a time in upcoming weeks. Now, though, it’s time for a lazy summer nap.