The EPA recently released a report stating that while hydrofracking has not led to significant impacts on drinking water, contamination may occur with “potential vulnerabilities in the water lifecycle that could impact drinking water”. In this extract from Hydrofracking: What Everyone Needs to Know, Alex Prud’homme breaks down the cases for and against hydrofracking.

The post The cases for and against hydrofracking appeared first on OUPblog.

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Tell Congress to stop supporting FRACKING and spend our resources developing clean, renewable resources! 

The oil and gas industry has created a massive PR campaign to convince the public that fracking will create American energy independence, while working behind closed doors to open up export facilities to ship gas abroad. This would drive up gas prices for U.S. consumers and create huge oil and gas profits, all at the expense of U.S. communities.

And now, the industry is trying to use the recent crisis in Ukraine as leverage to get Congress to rubber stamp approvals for new export facilities, even though the gas would be sold to 158 World Trade Organization (WTO) countries on the open market. Bills to allow these exports have been introduced in the House (H.R. 6) by Cory Gardner (R-CO) and in the Senate (S. 2083) by Mark Udall (D-CO). However, the ploy is a complete sham by the oil and gas industry to take advantage of a foreign crisis.

Exporting natural gas spells disaster at all points. First, it requires more fracking – a process that is poisoning Americans’ water, air and health while dramatically increasing methane emissions in the atmosphere. Second, it entails enormous multiple football-field-sized facilities along our coasts to supercool gas to -259 degrees – facilities that are a huge energy sink and pose grave threats if they explode as they have in the past. Third, the liquefied gas must be shipped overseas in huge tanker ships, re-gasified, compressed, transported and ultimately burned. The climate implications of the entire process are extreme.

It is irresponsible to push for more fracking and an extremely dangerous export process that is contributing to climate change, leading to more global instability and in the long run, undermining any national security goals that proponents claim will be achieved. The real solution is to transition off of fossil fuels through proven clean energy solutions.
Tell Congress to stop Fracking and develop renewable, clean resources!

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Coming soon to your part of fracked Aztlán

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Have you seen GASLAND?

I finally watched it last night. The documentary had been on my "to watch" list since I heard about it. School and other obligations have kept me from watching a single movie for a long time.

Holy smoke. I want EVERYBODY in the country to watch this movie. The destruction of water systems, drinking water, livelihoods, farmland, human health to say nothing of ANIMAL health, is devastating. And the oil and gas companies don't seem to care because they're making soooo much money.

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And bikes galore at the Rapidan park. Pie from Jenny at the Dam Store. Everybody was delighted.

And entirely unrelated, Tuesday night is the big meeting about the proposed frac sand plant in Lime Township. Now we realize we need to get the TOWNSHIP in charge of the planning...to be the planning committee or to appoint one, so the township can set the conditions for the use permit. Hopefully, a moratorium can be placed on its operation for a year....but that's not entirely looking hopeful.  More research needs to be done FAST!!!

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Laura Grace Weldon takes a careful, thorough look at an issue we should all be learning as much about as possible.

A few quotes—

Re safety and long-term effects:

But technically, assertions that fracking is safe are largely true. That’s because industry and government regulatory agencies use the term “fracking” only as it relates to the actual process of pumping fluids into the ground to break apart rock. So when they make claims about fracking safety, they don’t include what happens while drilling, constructing the well, setting off explosions, dealing with blowouts or well fires, storing waste water in open containment basins, vapors emitted from condensate tanks, open flaring to burn off gasses, transporting waste, injecting waste water into deep disposal wells, or at any point in the future when the wells may leak.

That’s convenient, because a University of Texas study found that these are the activities actually contaminating air, water, and soil. So both sides are “right” in the fracking debate. The industry is correct when they say that fracking is largely safe because of their limited definition of the word. People concerned about the environmental and health consequences lump all activities associated with the process under the term “fracking,” making their claims of risk correct too.

Re land rights:

But local citizens have very little control over fracking. Depending where they live, fracking may occur under cemeteries and in state parks. Some cities as well as colleges are considering lease offers. Despite regulations that normally zone residential areas apart from industrial areas, drilling can take place near homes and schools. Residents in Colorado, Texas, West Virginia, and elsewhere are advocating for stronger regulations to protect schoolchildren from the noise and dust generated by these sites. In some areas drilling sites are only required to be 350 feet from schools and 200 feet from homes. (In New Mexico, one school playground is 150 feet from a well.) No matter how vehemently citizens object, the ability to pass local ordinances regulating gas and oil producers can be superseded by state or federal regulations. This provides the industry rights normally not allowed under the law.

For example, in 38 states you can’t say no to fracking on your land if others in your area have already signed leases.

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Gratitude: 1. the state of being grateful. 2. What the 1% feels all the time; what the 99% want to feel at least 1 day a year. 3. Melinda Palacio's La Bloga post yesterday and something worth reading.
Gratuity: 1. A favor or gift, usually in the form of money, given in return for service. 2. What Americans get showing up early Black Friday.
Nongratuity: 1. What American Latinos and the rest of the 99% get every day from the 1%. 2. A word I made up.

[Some] Occupy updates – [some] gratitude

I at least feel grateful for protestors across the world who created and have sustained all the Occupy's. It's provided real hope during another round of elections that provided little, at least to me. Some of our elected officials have escalated their anti-Occupy actions to the level of Nazi Germany book burnings, while sparing us the expense of the matches.

From an intro to a Rebecca Solnit article comes this:
"On November 15th when the NYPD entered the encampment at Zuccotti Park, a weaponless and peaceable spot filled with sleeping activists and the homeless, they used pepper spray, ripped and tore down everything, and tossed all 4,000 books from the OWS “library” into a dumpster, damaging or mangling most of them. Books couldn’t escape the state’s violence, nor could the library’s tent, bookshelves, chairs, computers, periodicals, and archives. Even librarians were arrested.

"Novelist Salman Rushdie tweeted a perfectly reasonable response to the police action: “Please explain the difference between burning books and throwing thousands in the trash and destroying them.

"It put the Constitution in the dumpster."

Update on Marcela Landres questions – the gratuity

In return for the service of your readership and sending us a question, La Bloga is offering the nonmonetary gratuity of having a Latina professional answer your burning question about publishing your work. See last week's post for details.

This is from Marcela herself concerning that offer: "I just shared the link with my followers on Twitter, etc. and am very much looking forward to seeing the questions. Please forward all the questions after the deadline and

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