Elect Hillary Clinton - Then Pressure Her, says Environmental Author, Bill McKibben

The Climate Movement Has to Elect Hillary Clinton—and Then Give Her Hell

Clinton’s no friend of the earth, but she can be pressured. Trump, on the other hand, would be an ecological and moral disaster.

By Bill McKibben | The Nation | Oct.18, 2016

It’s an odd feeling to be working for the election of someone you know dislikes you and your colleagues. I’ve spent a good chunk of this month trying to register voters on campuses in Pennsylvania and Ohio—registering them to vote against Donald Trump, which means pushing for the election of Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t how I wanted to spend the fall—I’d much rather have been campaigning for Bernie Sanders.

It didn’t get any easier when Wikileaks released a tape of Clinton talking to backers in the building-trades unions about the environmental work so many of us (including much of the rest of organized labor) have been engaged in for the last few years. “They come to my rallies and they yell at me and, you know, all the rest of it. They say, ‘Will you promise never to take any fossil fuels out of the earth ever again?’ No. I won’t promise that. Get a life, you know.”

The good news is that when Clinton wins, none of us will be under the slightest illusion about who she is.

I know the young people Clinton was talking about, and they weren’t demanding she somehow wave a wand and stop the fossil-fuel age overnight. They were asking her about the scientific studies showing that we can’t actually keep mining and drilling new supplies of coal, oil, and gas if we’re going to meet the temperature targets set with such fanfare in Paris last year. They were asking her to support the “Keep It In the Ground” Act introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and endorsed by a passel of other senators, from Barbara Boxer of California to Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. (Oh yeah, and that guy Bernie.) They were also asking her to take a stand against fracking, since new studies demonstrate quite clearly that the release of methane from the use of natural gas makes climate change worse. Publicly, she hemmed and hawed. When Bernie said in a debate that he was against fracking, period, Clinton said, “By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.” That was a pretty weak hedge to begin with, but we now know that privately she reassured the building trades unions: “My view is, I want to defend natural gas…. I want to defend fracking.”

Truth be told, these aren’t revelations. All of us working on climate issues have known this is how Clinton feels; she set up a whole wing of the State Department devoted to spreading fracking around the world. She’d favored the Keystone Pipeline from the start, and it was abundantly clear that only Sanders’s unexpected success in the primaries convinced her she’d have to change. (And it was only his refusal to endorse her until after the platform was agreed upon that made the platform into the fairly progressive document that it is, on climate and other issues). Still, it stings to see in black and white exactly how little regard she has for people fighting pipelines, frack wells, coal ports. Though truth be told, that was no huge surprise either: Politicians are forever saying they want people engaged in the political process, but most of them really just want people to vote and then go home.

So why are many of us out there working to beat Trump and elect her? Because Trump is truly a horror. He’s man who looks at fourth-grade girls and imagines that he’ll be dating them in ten years. He’s a racist. He knows next to nothing and lacks the intellectual curiosity to find out more. He’s a bully. He’s almost a cartoonish villain: If a writer invented a character this evil, no one would believe them. But he’s very nearly president.

Because environmentalists are not just concerned about the climate—we have allies and friends whom we support. And on some of those issues Clinton actually seems sincere: She clearly cares about women’s issues and understands that we are a nation of immigrants.

Because if Trump wins, we backslide on the small gains we’ve made. We’ve forced Clinton to say through gritted teeth that she opposes Keystone, for instance. She can’t, I think, go back on that. Trump has made it clear he’ll permit that and every other pipeline, just as soon as he’s done tearing up the Paris climate accord.

But none of that makes it easy to go out and support her. We’ve watched all fall as she’s maintained a studied silence about the most dramatic and important fossil-fuel fight of the moment, the Dakota Access Pipeline. Even the sight of attack dogs being used on peaceful Native American protesters didn’t move her to break ranks with her industry allies and that fraction of the labor movement that still wants to build pipelines. That’s craven on her part, pure and simple.

And so the good news is that when she wins, none of us will be under the slightest illusion about who she is. The honeymoon won’t last 10 minutes; on November 9 we’ll be organizing for science and human rights and against the timid incrementalism that marks her approach. It’s clear that we need to beat the creepy perv she’s running against. It’s also clear that we then need to press harder than ever for real progress on the biggest crisis the world has ever faced.

“Get a life”? We’ve got a planet, just one.

~   ~   ~

Bill McKibben: Fracking Will Not Save Our Climate

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry

Our leaders thought fracking would save our climate. They were wrong. Very wrong.

By Bill McKibben | March 23, 2016 | The Nation

Global warming is, in the end, not about the noisy political battles here on the planet’s surface. It actually happens in constant, silent interactions in the atmosphere, where the molecular structure of certain gases traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out to space. If you get the chemistry wrong, it doesn’t matter how many landmark climate agreements you sign or how many speeches you give. And it appears the United States may have gotten the chemistry wrong. Really wrong.

There’s one greenhouse gas everyone knows about: carbon dioxide, which is what you get when you burn fossil fuels. We talk about a “price on carbon” or argue about a carbon tax; our leaders boast about modest “carbon reductions.” But in the last few weeks, CO₂’s nasty little brother has gotten some serious press. Meet methane, otherwise known as CH₄.

In February, Harvard researchers published an explosive paper in Geophysical Research Letters. Using satellite data and ground observations, they concluded that the nation as a whole is leaking methane in massive quantities. Between 2002 and 2014, the data showed that US methane emissions increased by more than 30 percent, accounting for 30 to 60 percent of an enormous spike in methane in the entire planet’s atmosphere.

To the extent our leaders have cared about climate change, they’ve fixed on CO₂. Partly as a result, coal-fired power plants have begun to close across the country. They’ve been replaced mostly with ones that burn natural gas, which is primarily composed of methane. Because burning natural gas releases significantly less carbon dioxide than burning coal, CO₂ emissions have begun to trend slowly downward, allowing politicians to take a bow. But this new Harvard data, which comes on the heels of other aerial surveys showing big methane leakage, suggests that our new natural-gas infrastructure has been bleeding methane into the atmosphere in record quantities. And molecule for molecule, this unburned methane is much, much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

The EPA insisted this wasn’t happening, that methane was on the decline just like CO₂. But it turns out, as some scientists have been insisting for years, the EPA was wrong. Really wrong. This error is the rough equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange announcing tomorrow that the Dow Jones isn’t really at 17,000: Its computer program has been making a mistake, and your index fund actually stands at 11,000.

These leaks are big enough to wipe out a large share of the gains from the Obama administration’s work on climate change—all those closed coal mines and fuel-efficient cars. In fact, it’s even possible that America’s contribution to global warming increased during the Obama years. The methane story is utterly at odds with what we’ve been telling ourselves, not to mention what we’ve been telling the rest of the planet. It undercuts the promises we made at the climate talks in Paris. It’s a disaster—and one that seems set to spre2ad.

The Obama administration, to its credit, seems to be waking up to the problem. Over the winter, the EPA began to revise its methane calculations, and in early March, the United States reached an agreement with Canada to begin the arduous task of stanching some of the leaks from all that new gas infrastructure. But none of this gets to the core problem, which is the rapid spread of fracking. Carbon dioxide is driving the great warming of the planet, but CO₂ isn’t doing it alone. It’s time to take methane seriously.

To understand how we got here, it’s necessary to remember what a savior fracked natural gas looked like to many people, environmentalists included. As George W. Bush took hold of power in Washington, coal was ascendant, here and around the globe. Cheap and plentiful, it was most visibly underwriting the stunning growth of the economy in China, where, by some estimates, a new coal-fired power plant was opening every week. The coal boom didn’t just mean smoggy skies over Beijing; it meant the planet’s invisible cloud of carbon dioxide was growing faster than ever, and with it the certainty of dramatic global warming.

So lots of people thought it was great news when natural-gas wildcatters began rapidly expanding fracking in the last decade. Fracking involves exploding the sub-surface geology so that gas can leak out through newly opened pores; its refinement brought online new shale deposits across the continent—most notably the Marcellus Shale, stretching from West Virginia up into Pennsylvania and New York. The quantities of gas that geologists said might be available were so vast that they were measured in trillions of cubic feet and in centuries of supply.

The apparently happy fact was that when you burn natural gas, it releases half as much carbon dioxide as coal. A power plant that burned natural gas would therefore, or so the reasoning went, be half as bad for global warming as a power plant that burned coal. Natural gas was also cheap—so, from a politician’s point of view, fracking was a win-win situation. You could appease the environmentalists with their incessant yammering about climate change without having to run up the cost of electricity. It would be painless environmentalism, the equivalent of losing weight by cutting your hair.

Federal Jury Awards $4.2 Million to Families with Water Polluted by Gas Drilling

Two Dimock, Pa., families who declined a Marcellus Shale gas driller's offer in 2012 to settle their claims of water contamination were awarded $4.24 million Thursday by a federal jury.

The verdict in U.S. District Court in Scranton was a blow to Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., which had maintained that its drilling was not responsible for the elevated level of methane in the families' water wells.

The eight-member jury found that Cabot's drilling was negligent and created a nuisance for the families of Scott Ely and Monica Marta-Ely and Ray and Victoria Hubert. It awarded the Elys $2.75 million and the Huberts $1.49 million.

In 2009, more than 40 Dimock residents sued Cabot, claiming that the Houston gas producer's rush to drill the Marcellus Shale had polluted their wells.

All but the Elys and Huberts settled in 2012 after tests showed wells contained elevated levels of methane, but none of the chemicals associated with gas drilling.

Read more at Philly.com


Interview of the Attorneys for the Plaintiffs in the Water Pollution Case

Cabot Oil & Gas company was found by a federal jury to be responsible for contaminating two couples’ wells in Dimock, Pennsylvania.

Listen to Susan Arbetter interview Leslie Lewis and Elisabeth Radow, the co-counsels for the plaintiffs, about the case at the Capitol Pressroom online (advance the tape slider to 22:10 minutes to begin).

Fracking Waste: A Radioactive Legacy for New York?

        New York Landfills Import Hazardous Fracking Waste -- TAKE ACTION to Protect Our  Environment and Health

By David Kowalski .

Marcellus Shale contains radioactive materials, including uranium and its decay products, radium and radon. Normally, the radioactive material is safely buried deep underground. However, shale gas drilling and fracking bring radioactivity in solids and liquid wastewater to the surface, posing a risk to the environment and public health if not properly managed.

Radium and radon can cause cancer if ingested or inhaled. Radium causes leukemia and bone cancer. Radon, a gaseous decay product of radium, is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers.

In 2009, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) found radium levels in Marcellus Shale wastewater that are thousands of times greater than that allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency, and up to 267 times the limit for safe discharge into the environment.

Exemption from a key federal regulation allows gas industry solid and liquid waste to pass as “non-hazardous.” However, it is becoming more widely appreciated that the waste can contain radioactive materials, in which case it should be regulated as "hazardous" waste and be managed accordingly.

Drilling and fracking waste in the form of sludge from Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale has triggered radiation alarms at municipal landfills. The sludge contains flowback fluids, frack sand and other fluids. Sludge must contain at least 20% solids according to the DEC, implying that it could contain as much as 80% flowback fluid and other fluids containing soluble radioactive material.

Liquid leachate from landfills is sent to wastewater treatment plants unequipped to monitor or remove radioactive materials, threatening drinking water sources.

Waste from drilling and fracking in Pennsylvania has been imported by 6 New York landfills  (see Map at bottom of page), including one in Niagara Falls that is not permitted to receive radioactive waste.

In West Virginia, tons of waste from Marcellus natural gas wells are going to municipal landfills, and radioactivity is leaching into surface water.

In the first four months of 2014, nine loads of Pennsylvania shale gas drilling waste were rejected by local landfills because of higher-than-normal radioactivity. Some of this radioactive drilling waste was shipped from Pennsylvania to West Virginia landfills that are not required to monitor radioactivity.

The gas industry has not identified methods to safely dispose the hazardous, radioactive waste and is shipping it to municipal landfills. It would be costly for industry to properly dispose the waste at a facility licensed to handle radioactive waste, but this is exactly what must be done to protect the environment and public health.

The industry is also failing to cleanup the hazardous, radioactive material in fracking wastewater. A peer-reviewed scientific paper reported radium levels of 200 times background in Pennsylvania’s Blacklick Creek sediments downstream of a specialized fracking wastewater treatment plant. A large portion of the radioactivity in the fracking wastewater appeared to have been removed before discharge into the waterway, but it is not clear where that radioactive material was disposed.

Avner Vengosh, the Duke University researcher who led the scientific study, said that "once you have a release of fracking fluid into the environment, you end up with a radioactive legacy." Contamination by radium, which has a half-life of 1602 years, will persist in the environment for many thousands of years.

Radioactive materials are present in a variety of gas-bearing formations, not just the Marcellus. Radioactivity can be present in the wastewater not only after high-volume fracking, but also following low-volume fracking, which is currently permitted in New York.

The DEC permits spreading fracking waste called 'brine' (salty wastewater) obtained from low-volume fracking wells and gas storage facilities on roads for de-icing, dust control and road stabilization as well as on land for dust control. Spreading applications of fracking brine have been approved for use in portions of at least 23 municipalities in 7 western New York counties: Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Genessee, Wyoming, and Seneca. Also, the New York State Department of Transportation Region 6 received approval to spread brine from natural gas storage on State roads in portions of Steuben, Allegany, Chemung, Schuyler, and Yates Counties.

Spreading of any fracking wastewater on roads or land should not be permitted without first testing for radioactive materials. If radium and radon are present, aerosols and dust containing radium could be inhaled along with radon gas. Radium in liquid runoff that makes its way into drinking water and fish could be ingested.

Radium and radon in waste from shale gas drilling and fracking pose a serious threat to the environment and public health. Cancers induced by ingestion or inhalation of these radioactive materials can take years to develop.

Regulation of radioactive waste in gas drilling is just as lax now as it was shown to be in investigative reports of 2011. The public should demand that the New York State Legislature pass laws to protect our water, land, air and health from the dire consequences of long-lived radioactive contamination.

NY State Senator Tkaczyk sponsored a common-sense bill to ban transportation of fracking waste from Pennsylvania and elsewhere into New York and ban disposal. However, the bill was defeated in the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee in a straight party-line vote (7 Nays by Republicans to 6 Ayes by Democrats).

A key bill sponsored by Senator Avella (S674), and the 'same as' bill sponsored by Assemblyman Sweeney (A1046), would close the loophole that allows fracking waste to be designated as "non-hazardous," despite the fact that it can be hazardous in ways described above. Fracking waste needs to be monitored. If it contains radioactive or toxic materials, it should be regulated as "hazardous" waste and be stored, transported, and disposed in ways that protect the environment and health. As stated in the bill, "If not treated properly, hazardous waste can, among other concerns, lead to contaminated air, drinking water, soil, and food."

TAKE ACTION: Contact your NY State Senator (Click Here) and Assembly Member (Click Here) and ask them to co-sponsor the bills (S674 and A1046) to protect our environment and health.

Public input is more important than ever given heavy campaign contributions to state legislators from the natural gas industry.

In the absence of New York State laws, the public has little choice but to call for municipal bans on fracking waste in order to protect our environment and health.

An abbreviated version of this article was published in The Buffalo News on May 29, 2014.

Sources of Pennsylvania drilling/fracking waste disposed at 6 New York landfills
Credits: Karen Edelstein, NYS Coordinator for FracTracker Alliance

FORUM: Shale Gas Potential in NY State [Update: 10.26]

[Click image to enlarge]

Printable Posters are Here

Map to the Presentation at Cornell University is Here

UPDATE - 10.26.2013: How much Shale Gas could be Produced in NY State?
Video - Chip Northrup interviewed on Capital Tonight 

Fracking -- No Complaints, No Problems -- Right? Wrong!

Drillers Silence Fracking Claims With Sealed Settlements
By Jim Efstathiou Jr. and Mark Drajem
Cross-posted from Bloomberg News

Chris and Stephanie Hallowich were sure drilling for natural gas near their Pennsylvania home was to blame for the headaches, burning eyes and sore throats they suffered after the work began. 

The companies insisted hydraulic fracturing -- the technique they used to free underground gas -- wasn’t the cause. Nevertheless, in 2011, a year after the family sued, Range Resources Corp (RRC). and two other companies agreed to a $750,000 settlement. In order to collect, the Hallowiches promised not to tell anyone, according to court filings.

The Hallowiches aren’t alone. In cases from Wyoming to Arkansas, Pennsylvania to Texas, drillers have agreed to cash settlements or property buyouts with people who say hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, ruined their water, according to a review by Bloomberg News of hundreds of regulatory and legal filings. In most cases homeowners must agree to keep quiet.

The strategy keeps data from regulators, policymakers, the news media and health researchers, and makes it difficult to challenge the industry’s claim that fracking has never tainted anyone’s water.

“At this point they feel they can get out of this litigation relatively cheaply,” Marc Bern, an attorney with Napoli Bern Ripka Sholnik LLP in New York who has negotiated about 30 settlements on behalf of homeowners, said in an interview. “Virtually on all of our settlements where they paid money they have requested and demanded that there be confidentiality.”

Energy Transformation

Because the agreements are almost always shrouded by non-disclosure pacts -- a judge ordered the Hallowich case unsealed after media requests -- no one can say for sure how many there are. Some stem from lawsuits, while others result from complaints against the drillers or with regulators that never end up in court.

“We are transforming our energy infrastructure in this country from burning coal for electricity to potentially burning a lot of natural gas,” Aaron Bernstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard School of Public Health, said in an interview. Non-disclosure agreements “have interfered with the ability of scientists and public health experts to understand what is at stake here.”

Rally for Clean Energy not Fracking -- Featured Speakers

Get On the Bus to Albany!
Buffalo/Rochester Bus: Reserve Seat Now: Click Here.
For more information, Click Here. 

Albany Rally -- No to Fracking, Yes to Renewable Energy

New York Crossroads

Rally to Stop Fracking and Demand Renewable Energy!

 

On Monday, June 17, 2013, citizens from across New York—from Long Island to Niagara Falls—will arrive in Albany to demand freedom from dirty energy, calling on Governor Cuomo to reject fracking and lead the nation in building a renewable energy economy here and now in New York.

At this march and rally, the anti-fracking movement will, for the first time, join with business leaders, faith leaders, health professionals, elected officials, farmers, and youth to demand the renewable energy jobs that our families and communities want and deserve.

• What: Stop Fracking and Demand Renewable Energy 
• When: Monday, June 17th, 12pm-3pm 
• Where: Rally and March on East Capitol Lawn, Albany 
• Buffalo/Rochester Bus: Reserve Seat Now: Click Here 

Sponsored by New Yorkers Against Fracking, Food & Water Watch, Frack Action, Catskill Mountainkeeper, United for Action, NYPIRG, Citizens Environmental Coalition, Western NY Drilling Defense, Alliance for a Green Economy and many more to be announced.

FRACKING: Animals Dying, People Sick in Pennsylvania

By Ellen Cantarow*

Cross-posted from Grist

More than 70 years ago, a chemical attack was launched against Washington state and Nevada. It poisoned people, animals, everything that grew, breathed air, and drank water. The Marshall Islands were also struck. This formerly pristine Pacific atoll was branded “the most contaminated place in the world.” As their cancers developed, the victims of atomic testing and nuclear weapons development got a name: downwinders. What marked their tragedy was the darkness in which they were kept about what was being done to them. Proof of harm fell to them, not to the U.S. government agencies responsible [PDF].

Now, a new generation of downwinders is getting sick as an emerging industry pushes the next wonder technology — in this case, high-volume hydraulic fracturing. Whether they live in Texas, Colorado, or Pennsylvania, their symptoms are the same: rashes, nosebleeds, severe headaches, difficulty breathing, joint pain, intestinal illnesses, memory loss, and more. “In my opinion,” says Yuri Gorby of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, “what we see unfolding is a serious health crisis, one that is just beginning.”

The process of “fracking” starts by drilling a mile or more vertically, then outward laterally into 500-million-year-old shale formations, the remains of oceans that once flowed over parts of North America. Millions of gallons of chemical and sand-laced water are then propelled into the ground at high pressures, fracturing the shale and forcing the methane it contains out. With the release of that gas come thousands of gallons of contaminated water. This “flowback” fluid contains the original fracking chemicals, plus heavy metals and radioactive material that also lay safely buried in the shale.

The industry that uses this technology calls its product “natural gas,” but there’s nothing natural about upending half a billion years of safe storage of methane and everything that surrounds it. It is, in fact, an act of ecological violence around which alien infrastructures — compressor stations that compact the gas for pipeline transport, ponds of contaminated flowback, flare stacks that burn off gas impurities, diesel trucks in quantity, thousands of miles of pipelines, and more — have metastasized across rural America, pumping carcinogens and toxins into water, air, and soil.

Sixty percent of Pennsylvania lies over a huge shale sprawl called the Marcellus, and that has been in the fracking industry’s sights since 2008. The corporations that are exploiting the shale come to the state with lavish federal entitlements: exemptions from the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Clean Drinking Water Acts, as well as the Superfund Act, which requires cleanup of hazardous substances. The industry doesn’t have to call its trillions of gallons of annual waste “hazardous.” Instead, it uses euphemisms like “residual waste.” In addition, fracking companies are allowed to keep secret many of the chemicals they use.

Pennsylvania, in turn, adds its own privileges. A revolving door shuttles former legislators, governors, and officials from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection into gas industry positions. The DEP itself is now the object of a lawsuit that charges the agency with producing deceptive lab reports, and then using them to dismiss homeowners’ complaints that shale gas corporations have contaminated their water, making them sick. The people I interviewed have their own nickname for the DEP: “Don’t Expect Protection.”

The downwinders
Randy Moyer is a pleasant-faced, bearded 49-year-old whose drawl reminds you that Portage, his hardscrabble hometown in southwestern Pennsylvania, is part of Appalachia. He worked 18 years — until gasoline prices got too steep — driving his own rigs to haul waste in New York and New Jersey. Then what looked like a great opportunity presented itself: $25 an hour working for a hydraulic-fracturing subcontractor in northeastern Pennsylvania.

In addition to hauling fracking liquid, water, and waste, Randy also did what’s called, with no irony, “environmental.” He climbed into large vats to squeegee out the remains of fracking fluid. He also cleaned the huge mats laid down around the wells to even the ground out for truck traffic. Those mats get saturated with “drilling mud,” a viscous, chemical-laden fluid that eases the passage of the drills into the shale. What his employer never told him was that the drilling mud, as well as the wastewater from fracking, is not only highly toxic, but radioactive.

In the wee hours of a very cold day in November 2011, he stood in a huge basin at a well site, washing 1,000 mats with high-pressure hoses, taking breaks every so often to warm his feet in his truck. “I took off my shoes and my feet were as red as a tomato,” he told me. When the air from the heater hit them, he “nearly went through the roof.”

Once at home, he scrubbed his feet, but the excruciating pain didn’t abate. A “rash” that covered his feet soon spread up to his torso. A year and a half later, the skin inflammation still recurs. His upper lip repeatedly swells. A couple of times his tongue swelled so large that he had press it down with a spoon to be able to breathe. “I’ve been fried for over 13 months with this stuff,” he told me in late January. “I can just imagine what hell is like. It feels like I’m absolutely on fire.”

Family and friends have taken Moyer to emergency rooms at least four times. He has consulted more than 40 doctors. No one can say what caused the rashes, or his headaches, migraines, chest pain, and irregular heartbeat, or the shooting pains down his back and legs, his blurred vision, vertigo, memory loss, the constant white noise in his ears, and the breathing troubles that require him to stash inhalers throughout his small apartment.

In an earlier era, workers’ illnesses fell into the realm of “industrial medicine.” But these days, when it comes to the U.S. fracking industry, the canaries aren’t restricted to the coal mines. People like Randy seem to be the harbingers of what happens when a toxic environment is no longer buried miles beneath the earth. The gas fields that evidently poisoned him are located near thriving communities. “For just about every other industry I can imagine,” says Anthony Ingraffea of Cornell University, coauthor of a landmark study [PDF] that established fracking’s colossal greenhouse-gas footprint, “from making paint, building a toaster, building an automobile, those traditional kinds of industry occur in a zoned industrial area, inside of buildings, separated from home and farm, separated from schools.” By contrast, natural gas corporations, he says, “are imposing on us the requirement to locate our homes, hospitals, and schools inside their industrial space.”

The death and life of Little Rose
Little Rose was Angel Smith’s favorite horse. When the vet shod her, Angel told me proudly, she obligingly lifted the next hoof as soon as the previous one was done. “Wanna eat, Rosie?” Angel would ask, and Rosie would nod her head. “Are you sure?” Angel would tease, and Rosie would raise one foreleg, clicking her teeth together. In Clearville, just south of Portage, Angel rode Little Rose in parades, carrying the family’s American flag.

In 2002, a “landman” knocked on the door and asked Angel and her husband Wayne to lease the gas rights of their 115-acre farm to the San Francisco-based energy corporation PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric.) At first, he was polite, but then he started bullying. “All your neighbors have signed. If you don’t, we’ll just suck the gas from under your land.” Perhaps from weariness and a lack of information (almost no one outside the industry then knew anything about high-volume hydraulic fracturing), they agreed. Drilling began in 2002 on neighbors’ land and in 2005 on the Smith’s.

On Jan. 30, 2007, Little Rose staggered, fell, and couldn’t get up. Her legs moved spasmodically. When Wayne and Angel dragged her to a sitting position, she’d just collapse again. “I called every vet in the phone book,” says Angel. “They all said, ‘Shoot her.’” The couple couldn’t bear to do it. After two days, a neighbor shot her. “It was our choice,” says Angel, her voice breaking. “She was my best friend.”
Soon, the Smiths’ cows began showing similar symptoms. Those that didn’t die began aborting or giving birth to dead calves. All the chickens died, too. So did the barn cats. And so did three beloved dogs, none of them old, all previously healthy. A 2012 study [PDF] by Michelle Bamberger and Cornell University pharmacology professor Robert Oswald indicates that, in the gas fields, these are typical symptoms in animals and often serve as early warning signs for their owners’ subsequent illnesses.

The Smiths asked the DEP to test their water. The agency told them that it was safe to drink, but Angel Smith says that subsequent testing by Pennsylvania State University investigators revealed high levels of arsenic.

Meanwhile, the couple began suffering from headaches, nosebleeds, fatigue, throat and eye irritation, and shortness of breath. Wayne’s belly began swelling oddly, even though, says Angel, he isn’t heavy. X-rays of his lungs showed scarring and calcium deposits. A blood analysis revealed cirrhosis of the liver. “Get him to stop drinking,” said the doctor who drew Angel aside after the results came in. “Wayne doesn’t drink,” she replied. Neither does Angel, who at 42 now has liver disease.

By the time the animals began dying, five high-volume wells had been drilled on neighbors’ land. Soon, water started bubbling up under their barn floor and an oily sheen and foam appeared on their pond. In 2008, a compressor station was built half a mile away. These facilities, which compress natural gas for pipeline transport, emit known carcinogens and toxins like benzene and toluene.

The Smiths say people they know elsewhere in Clearville have had similar health problems, as have their animals. For a while they thought their own animals’ troubles were over, but just this past February several cows aborted. The couple would like to move away, but can’t. No one will buy their land. 

Buffalo Premier of "Dear Governor Cuomo" with Filmmaker

A Documentary Film on the 
Anti-Fracking Movement in New York State

• WHAT: "Dear Governor Cuomo..." film and Q&A session with filmmaker Jon Bowermaster and expert panelists.
• WHEN: Friday, December 14, at 6:30 PM
• WHERE: Daemen College, Rm.107, Schenck Science Building, 4380 Main St., Amherst [Campus Map]

FREE ~ Please invite your friends

 

Join us for the Buffalo premier of “Dear Governor Cuomo…”  
The film documents the diverse coalition of New York citizens, scientists and musicians fighting for a state ban of fracking to protect our water, air and land. The film highlights advocacy actions at the State Capitol and an accompanying concert by prominent artists to demonstrate their concern for our environment. 

If you're new to the topic of fracking, the film also works as a great introduction.

The film was written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Jon Bowermaster, who will be present at the screening. It includes footage directed by Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney, and features biologist Sandra Steingraber, actor Mark Ruffalo, actress Melissa Leo, and musicians Natalie Merchant, Joan Osborne, Citizen Cope, Medeski Martin and Wood and The Felice Brothers.

Film trailer:

Download Posters: An 8x11 here and an 11x17 here.

Sponsors: Food & Water Watch, Daemen's Local & Global Sustainability program, and WNY Drilling Defense.

Coalition Urges SUNY Trustees to Close UB Shale Institute

 

After reviewing the University at Buffalo’s report to the SUNY Board of Trustees on its recently-created Shale Institute (a.k.a. the Shale Resources and Society Institute), UB CLEAR, an organization of University at Buffalo (UB) faculty, staff, students, and supporters called on the Board to:

• Make public all documents related to founding, funding, and governance of the Shale Institute
• Formally recall the Institute’s first publication
• Close the Shale Institute

In a comprehensive 14-page response to the University at Buffalo report, UB CLEAR detailed the many missteps the Shale Institute made – and the refusal of the UB Administration to recognize these missteps in the report to the SUNY Board of Trustees.

Among their criticisms of the Shale Institute:

• The Institute’s founding lecture series was underwritten and tainted by secret oil and gas company money, and it’s present and future funding remains mysterious.
• The Shale Institute’s directors have conflicts of interest between their academic work and their extensive consulting work with oil and gas companies.
• The Institute offers corporate donors an improper governance role and privileged access.
• The Institute’s initial publication was and continues to be marred by false claims of peer review, undisclosed corporate ties of the authors, an unscholarly pro-fracking agenda, and major factual errors, never acknowledged or corrected.

“Making mistakes isn’t the issue—mistakes are a given for scholars,” said Jim Holstun, Professor of English at University at Buffalo and Chair of UB CLEAR. “But doggedly standing by mistakes, as have the authors and UB administrators, carries us from the realm of rigorous and legitimate scholarship to the realm of public relations and policy advocacy.” 

“It is time for UB administrators remember that they are employees of the citizens of New York, not PR flacks for potential corporate donors with no genuine interest in education and scholarship,” added Holstun.  

In April 2012, the University at Buffalo formed the Shale Resources and Society Institute. The Shale Institute came under fire in May, when it rushed out a pro-hydrofracking report without benefit of peer review.  University of Buffalo professors have questioned the independence of the Institute, a review by the Public Accountability Initiative revealed fundamental errors in the report, and news accounts detailed undisclosed ties of its authors to the oil and gas industry. On 12 September, the SUNY Board of Trustees directed the University at Buffalo Administration to report on the Shale Institute. On 27 September, UB President Satish K. Tripathi delivered his report to the Trustees.

UB Administration's claims that no concerns were raised by "the relevant scientific community" about the report or the data used in developing the report’s conclusion were addressed in a letter to the editor of the university's newspaper by David Kowalski, Professor Emeritus in the Cellular & Molecular Biology Program, Roswell Park Graduate Division of UB, and member of UB CLEAR.

In the letter, Kowalski indicated that objectivity of UB Shale Institute report was compromised in favor of the gas industry and existing state regulations. He stated that the report should have been peer reviewed through an academic journal. "Scientists rely on the rigorous and critical peer-review process to ensure research integrity," he said. "The authors should have been held to the same high standards of peer review as the UB faculty."

About UB CLEAR - Coalition for Leading Ethically in Academic Research:
UB CLEAR is a coalition of University at Buffalo faculty, students, alums, and other community members who have been working together since May to bring transparency to the Shale Institute. Today, 29 October, they formally responded to the UB administration in a comprehensive and thoroughly-documented report sent to the SUNY Trustees: “UB CLEAR Response to the 27 September Report by UB President Satish K. Tripathi regarding UB’s Shale Resources and Society Institute.” They charge that the UB administration report is evasive and non-responsive to the Trustees’ request, providing yet another example of pro-fracking propaganda in academic guise.

Shale Institute Study Compromised Research Integrity

Letter to the Editor of the UB Reporter ~ 
By David Kowalski ~

In addressing the controversial UB shale institute study, Provost Zukoski stated, “It’s important to note that no concerns regarding the report have been raised by the relevant scientific community.” President Tripathi stated in a report to SUNY Chancellor Zimpher and the SUNY Trustees that “No concerns were raised by the relevant scientific community about the data used in developing the report’s conclusion.”

I am a scientist (professor emeritus, Roswell Park Cancer Institute), a UB research professor and an experienced peer reviewer. I have reviewed the study by the UB shale institute (Shale Resources and Society Institute) entitled “Environmental Impacts during Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling: Causes, Impacts, and Remedies.” My comments are below.

The authors listed academic affiliations in the study, but no industry ties. John P. Martin, institute director, owns a consulting company that produces public relations reports for oil and gas interests, and two co-authors have received past support from gas-industry groups. The authors’ gas-industry ties raise concern about conflicts of interest.

The objectivity of the study was compromised in favor of the gas industry and existing state regulations. The authors’ conclusion that major environmental events per gas well were declining in Pennsylvania was not drawn from their data. Based on the data, the rate of major environmental events actually increased by 36 percent in the period studied. This information was not displayed in the graphs shown. The increased rate of major environmental events and the fact that the study made no attempt to demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship between state regulations and environmental events invalidates the study’s conclusions that the “odds of major environmental events are being reduced even further by enhanced regulation” (p.iii), and that “the percentage of wells resulting in a major environmental event declined significantly, an indicator that the attention of regulators was focused on the areas of greatest concern (p.30).

The authors’ conclusions on cause and effect directly contradict a statement in the results section of the study: “While difficult to conclusively illustrate causation between regulatory actions and decreases in environmental violations, the history of regulations in Pennsylvania suggests such a relationship may exist.” (p.15)

The following statement is pure speculation and not a valid conclusion: “Findings indicate that each of the underlying causes associated with these specific events could have been either entirely avoided or mitigated under New York State’s proposed regulatory framework” (p.iii and a related statement on p.30).

Scott Anderson, senior policy advisor for the Environmental Defense Fund’s Energy Program, was one of the reviewers selected by the authors. After the study’s release, he wrote: “While I was a reviewer, this does not mean that all of my suggestions were taken or that I agree with all of the report’s opinions and conclusions.” He added: “Caution should be exercised with regards to some of the conclusions.”

Later, the shale institute authors released a revised version of the study with minor changes. However, they did not correct the invalid conclusions described above. 

Originally, the authors claimed incorrectly that the study was “peer-reviewed,” giving it an aura of scientific authenticity that it did not deserve. That claim helped attract media attention to the study’s invalid conclusions, resulting in misleading newspaper headlines and reports. The “peer-reviewed” claim was retracted by UB after the press release, but the damage in the newspapers had already been done. 

At this critical time in determining policies on fracking in New York State and the nation, it is outrageous that invalid conclusions in the study were made public and promptly cited as an authoritative source in Congress to influence policymakers. 

The shale institute aims to attract funding from various sources, including the oil-and-gas industry. Would the industry fund studies that did not prove its case? Will UB be vigilant enough to prevent promises of industry funding from dictating the institute’s conclusions?

Reports from the provost and the president cited above upheld the shale institute’s use of an “open peer-review method” for the “self-published” study.

However, open review of the institute study was ineffective. Reviewers who identified invalid conclusions have no power to enforce revision or rejection of the self-published study.

The shale institute study should have been peer-reviewed through an academic journal. In this case, if reviewers identify invalid conclusions, the journal editor has the power to enforce revision or rejection of the study for publication.

Scientists rely on the rigorous and critical peer-review process to ensure research integrity. The objectivity of the UB shale institute study was compromised. The authors should have been held to the same high standards of peer review as the UB faculty.

Published in the UB Reporter: Oct. 25, 2012

Post Comments to the letter at the UB Reporter website. The link is here.

Clean Natural Gas? Exploring the Challenge of Hydrofracking

7:30 p.m., Monday, October 29

Daemen College
4380 Main Street, Amherst
Room 336, Duns Scotus Hall

Free and Open to the Public

Film

• The Sky is Pink by Josh Fox and the Gasland Team

Panelists

• David Kowalski, Professor Emeritus; UB CLEAR; Blogs: j.mp/ReEnergizeBuffalo & j.mp/CleanEnergyNow

• Scott Sackett, President, Skipping Stone Pictures

• Joseph Currier, Mathematics Major, Daemen College

• Lynda Schneekloth, Chairperson, Sierra Club Niagara Group (niagarasierraclub.wordpress.com)

Moderator 

• Walter Simpson, energy educator & activist, Daemen College Instructor (www.energyreallymatters.com)

Pintable Flyer & Map: Click Here 

For years natural gas has been regarded as a clean fuel but no longer.  Drilling for gas in deep shale formations using hydraulic fracturing technology has changed everything. Can fracking be done in an environmentally responsible way, as suggested by an abundance of TV ads?  Or is it too risky?  And do cleaner alternatives exist?  This panel discussion will address these questions and explain the role of citizen action and media in shaping natural gas public policy.

This panel discussion is presented as part of the Alternative & Renewable Energy Issues course in Daemen's Global & Sustainability program.  For information on this exciting new major and minor, visit www.daemen.edu/sustainability.  For more information about the panel discussion, wsimpson@daemen.edu or 839-0062.

UB Shale Institute Controversy: Review and Updates

By Steve Horn ~ 

Frackademia: Controversial SUNY Buffalo Shale Institute's Reputation Unraveling (via Desmogblog)

A storm is brewing in Buffalo and it's not the record snow storm typically associated with upstate New York. Rather, it's taking place in the ivory tower of academia and revolves around hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," for unconventional gas in the Marcellus Shale basin.  Public funding has…

SUNY Trustees Require Investigation of UB Shale Institute

Board concerned about formation and funding of Institute, errors in its first report, and misrepresentation that it was peer reviewed

~ By David Kowalski and Jim Holstun ~

The SUNY Board of Trustees met in New York City on Wednesday, September 12, 2012. 

We wondered whether the Trustees would discuss the controversial Shale Resources and Society Institute (a.k.a., UB Shale Institute) created under the aegis of the University at Buffalo. Recently, 83 UB faculty and professional staff sent a letter to the university administration seeking  transparency on the Shale Institute. They urged the administration to make public all the documents that bear upon the founding, funding, staffing, operation and governance of the institute. Additionally, the New Yorkers Against Fracking announced a protest to be held outside the Board of Trustees meeting to push SUNY to stop supporting the industry-friendly Institute.

Live Webcasts of several different committee meetings were available online. We watched the meeting of the Research and Economic Development Committee.

Dr. Tim Killeen, the new President of the SUNY Research Foundation and former Assistant Director of Geosciences at the National Science Foundation, gave a presentation to the committee entitled "Advancing the SUNY Innovation Ecosystem." He indicated that there is great potential in collaborating with industry in New York. Killeen said that stimulating collaborative partnerships with industry is very important. He added that it has to be two-way, and has to be done with full integrity and ethical commitments.

Following a discussion of the presentation, Marshall Lichtman, acting chair of the committee, moved on to other business. Although the UB Shale Institute was not listed on the agenda, the discussion turned out to be devoted entirely to the Shale Institute and the University at Buffalo.

Below are excerpts from the committee's discussion:

Trustee Ronald G. Ehrenberg said "the whole issue of fracking research at Buffalo has sort of led to concerns about what policies we have in place regarding accountability and conflict of interest and conflict of commitment in terms of research." He added "Economists got into a lot of problems because a lot of people testifying or writing papers on financial regulation turned out were paid consultants to companies, and they never released that." He recommended convening the vice presidents for research at the different campuses and discussing the issues.

Trustee Joseph W. Belluck, speaking to Dr. Killeen, said "what happened in Buffalo threatens to undermine everything in your presentation, every single last bit of it." Belluck said "And what happened, and it was laid out very clearly in an NPR story that you can get on Google, is that there was a conference at Buffalo, and following the conference, an employee of a natural gas company sat down with people at the University at Buffalo and suggested to them that they set up an institute to research fracking, suggested to them that they hire a colleague of his who is a consultant to the energy industry, someone with very little academic credentials, if any, and suggested to them if they put out an article that was favorable, that they would attract additional resources from the gas industry."

"They then put out a report. They misrepresented that it was peer reviewed. As you and I have discussed, it’s the core principle of academic research, peer review. They misrepresented that. It was not peer reviewed. They misrepresented that reviewers who had read it supported the conclusions. And the Chancellor went on a television, a radio program, and asked UB to respond, and to explain what went on, take responsibility for it. And they really haven’t."

Speaking forcefully, Belluck continued "But this thing at UB, in my view, it has to be shut down. And I would like to bring a motion to the Board today that we call on Buffalo to shut this institute down. Because I don’t think that this is an academic institute. The faculty at Buffalo are upset about it because it was not set up with the rigors that an academic institute was set up for. We now have protestors coming today. It’s all over Google News. And I think it threatens to undermine us as a first-class research institute."

UB Must Investigate Its Shale Institute

Letter to the Editor of The Buffalo News - August 30, 2012 ~
By David Kowalski ~

University administrators, the press and the public are being duped by industry-backed studies masquerading as objective academic research. Specific examples involve studies released by the University at Buffalo Shale Resources and Society Institute, University of Texas and Penn State University. At all three public universities, authors of studies on the impacts of shale-gas extraction by fracking did not disclose gas industry ties, which were discovered only after their industry-biased conclusions were reported. The lead UB author also failed to disclose industry ties in a Penn State study that was later retracted by the university. The University of Texas is investigating its study's principle author. The absence of an investigation of the UB study damages the university's credibility and erodes public trust.

Publication of academic research in science requires disclosure of industry affiliations and funding sources to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. Also required is anonymous peer review mediated by a journal editor, which generally results in revision and resubmission, and ultimately, in acceptance or rejection for publication. University studies resulting from industry-affiliated research should likewise undergo rigorous peer review and be published in a journal prior to their release to the press.

The UB press release contained authors' conclusions that were not peer-reviewed, not supported by the data and were biased in favor of the gas industry. At this critical time in determining policies on shale-gas fracking, it is outrageous that invalid conclusions in the UB press release were made public and promptly cited as an authoritative source in Congress in order to influence policy makers.

The lack of transparency and academic rigor is appalling and intolerable. The UB administration should uphold academic standards and initiate an industry-independent investigation of the Shale Resources and Society Institute and its research findings. 

~ ~ ~

UB Shale Institute -- Links to selected news reports and recent updates: 

• UB report on 'fracking' draws fire of watchdog
• Institute’s Gas Drilling Report Leads to Claims of Bias and Concern for a University’s Image
• Fracking Research and the Money That Flows To It
• Frackers Fund University Research That Proves Their Case
• UB staff, students urge probe of institute
• The hidden sponsors of fracking studies
• Transparency urged for shale institute
• Faculty Question SUNY-Buffalo About Fracking Institute
• Controversy still simmers over SUNY Buffalo Shale Institute
• “Nonsense” and UB’s Shale Resources and Society Institute

~ ~ ~

 

Editorial Cartoon by Adam Zyglis in The Buffalo News - August 14, 2012

Should UB Sponsor a Shale Gas Institute?

~ By David Kowalski ~

The University at Buffalo (UB) has now entered into the controversial area of unconventional shale-gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing ('fracking') by sponsoring a newly-created "Shale Resources and Society Institute" (SRSI).

Last week, SRSI released their first study, which is entitled "Environmental Impacts During Shale Gas Drilling: Causes, Impacts and Remedies". The authors stated strong conclusions, which were included in a UB news release (May 15, 2012), and subsequently made for some sensational newspaper headlines. However, others who have since examined the study indicated that the authors' conclusions are biased and not supported by the data (see below).

And that's not all. Initial examination of the background of the study's authors indicated close ties with the gas drilling industry. Also, the UB news release claim that the report was "peer-reviewed" was incorrect. Subsequently, UB retracted that claim in a revised press release. Then one of the so-called peer-reviewers distanced himself from the SRSI study. Finally, the authors did not disclose their funding sources. All of these issues made shale gas and fracking sensitive topics at UB, as documented in a post last week.

Shown below are excerpts of new reports with a link to each full report. These articles start with an editorial letter by me, and continue with detailed analyses of the SRSI report by others, which together provide independent views of flaws and industry-bias in the SRSI study and lead one to question the wisdom of UB sponsorship.
 
Shale study harms UB’s reputation, By David Kowalski, Letter to The Buffalo News, May 24, 2012
But the fact that all three authors have ties to the energy industry raises concern about conflicts of interest. Their report and undisclosed funding sources only reinforce that concern and harm the university. 

They claimed that the decline [in environmental violations per gas well] was evidence for improved industry operations and state regulations. However, the authors completely ignored the fact that, as more wells were drilled over time, the total number of environmental violations increased by threefold. 

It is a shame that this study was done under the aegis of UB. The university should protect its reputation and re-evaluate its sponsorship of the Shale Resources and Society Institute.  

UB report on 'fracking' draws fire of watchdog, By David Robinson, The Buffalo News -- Front page story, May 25, 2012
A Buffalo-based corporate accountability research group Thursday criticized as "seriously flawed and biased" last week's study from the University at Buffalo that said stronger regulation was leading to an improved safety record among drillers in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale.

The new report from the Public Accountability Initiative disputed the conclusions of the study by UB's new Shale Resources and Society Institute, which reported that the rate of environmental violations -- both major and minor -- were declining at Pennsylvania's Marcellus wells.

"The evidence does not support the notion that fracking is becoming any safer," the new study said.

"While masquerading as independent, academic research, the report's errors all point in the direction of heavy pro-industry bias and spin," the Public Accountability Initiative study said.  

Critics question shale gas researcher, schools, By Kevin Begos, Associated Press, May 25, 2012

 A well-known expert on the natural gas boom is again facing criticism over his ties to industry and a lack of transparency in how he presents work to the public, fueling debates over research that's been published by major universities.

Timothy Considine was lead author on a shale gas report recently issued by the University at Buffalo and a previous report from Penn State University. Critics say both reports presented research in misleading ways and failed to fully disclose funding sources.

Considine, now at the University of Wyoming, has gotten funding from industry groups such as the Marcellus Shale Coalition, the Wyoming Mining Association, the American Iron and Steel Institute, and the American Petroleum Institute.

On Thursday, the Public Accountability Initiative, a Buffalo nonprofit, issued a critique of the UB study.

The University at Buffalo also said the report "was not funded or commissioned by external sources." But Considine told The Associated Press in an email that the University of Wyoming paid him and two other lead authors.

 

Martha McCluskey, a University at Buffalo law professor who was on an ethics committee there, said the new shale institute appears not to meet disclosure provisions and hasn't gone through the standard process for faculty approval and vetting of new centers and initiatives to preserve academic integrity.  

UB Pulls SRSI Website, By the Public Accountability Initiative, May 25, 2012 (updated May 26, 2012)

The University at Buffalo Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI), the subject of the analysis we released yesterday, has password-protected its website as of this morning. Notably, the SUNY Fredonia Shale Resources Institute also pulled its website recently after negative attention from Artvoice. 

The Public Accountability Initiative saved copies of most of the SRSI’s web pages.

Update (5/26): The SRSI site is accessible again, and UB has issued a statement regarding the SRSI report.