Memo to Joe Nocera (and the People Who Hired Him): Try Harder!

Some of you may have noticed that The New York Times has added a new columnist to its editorial page. His name is Joe Nocera and, as a long time correspondent for business periodicals, he seems now to be the official mouthpiece for corporate insanity at The Times.

To date Nocera has published not one but two columns trumpeting the virtues of hydraulic-fracturing as a way of extracting natural gas. I have posted here several times about the stupidity of that process. Nocera seems not to have read my posts. I suppose that is excusable. But he also seems not to have bothered reading this series of articles that his own newspaper published last month on the lunacy of "fracking." And he seems to have missed the stories running in The Times today on (1) the actual practice of (as opposed to the imagined oh-so-nice-and-clean industry propaganda about) drilling for natural gas and (2) the campaign from the right to subvert state-level environmental regulations.

What is wrong with this sort of oversight? Well, there is the obvious problem is that it makes Nocera look exactly like a shill for industry. But there are a couple of other reasons. The first is that Nocera simply is dismissive of those who raise well-founded objections to natural gas drilling. His standard retort is that skeptics are somehow "biased" or self-interested. The second is that his own position depends and depends crucially on the good-will of industry and the competence of regulators. Unfortunately, there is no basis for either of those presumptions.

In his first column Nocera announced that his thinking on the "fracking" issue specifically and on natural gas drilling more generally owed a large debt to his friend T. Boone Pickens. Talk about a credibility deflating admission.* Of course, good ole T Boone is unconcerned with the money. Ask him and he'll say as much. And as for the safety of natural gas extraction here is Nocera: " In Texas and Oklahoma, it has been used for decades, with nobody complaining much about environmental degradation." You know, those two southwestern states who've built a well-deserved reputation for environmental stewardship!

This is reasoned argument? Yet Nocera has the temerity to attack the credibility of the Cornell University scientist who - as The Times reported - published research findings suggesting that just maybe natural gas is no panacea. Here is a simple asymmetry to ponder. The Cornell scientist might just possibly have come to his policy conclusions on the basis of his research; spokesmen for the extractive industries in Texas came to their policy views on the basis of the profits they have made or stand to make. We are supposed to think of the common good, the national welfare and so forth; they are allowed to speak for their economic self interest. Of course, many property owners in Pennsylvania and "upstate" New York are concerned about their property values. They might also be concerned about the water pollution and other environmental degradation that follows on gas drilling ('fracking' or otherwise). They may also be worried that the Northeast will turn into Texas or Oklahoma (and I mean that in the best of all possible ways!). Nocera never countenances either possibility.

Instead, Nocera promises us nirvana: "The truth is, every problem associated with drilling for natural gas is solvable. The technology exists to prevent most methane from escaping, for instance. Strong state regulation will help ensure environmentally safe wells. And so on." All we have to do is set aside all the reporting, all the research. Or perhaps, like Nocera, we simply need to place our faith in a world in which vigorous regulators and virtuous energy companies will take great care and avoid the incompetence and venality we've come to expect from them. Any takers? How about all those city dwellers in NYC who get their water from reservoirs upstate?

If you cannot muster the faith, Nocera will invite you on the guilt trip. The one that meanders through the corpses of American military personnel dying for oil in the middle east. There is a leap! Basically, Nocera's "argument" amounts to non-sequitors, ad hominem attacks, cozy-ing up to gas industry billionaires, leaps of faith in industry and regulators, and a plea to believe him (as opposed to reporters and researchers) that natural gas exploration is clean and safe. All this in the first few weeks of his residency on the op-ed columns. What a joke. The Times cannot be that desperate for columnists.
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* Memo to Joe: Simply admitting that you are working as a mouthpiece for the rich and financially involved does not excuse sloppy thinking or make otherwise incredible statements believable.

Stop Drilling

Over the past week or so, The New York Times has run this series of articles on the dangers of natural gas drilling generally and particular techniques called "hydro-fracking" in particular. The reports also suggest that neither state nor federal regulators are doing a terribly good job at dealing with the dangers. I take it as a sign that the reports from The Times are relatively even-handed that both the industry mouthpieces and the government officials formerly charged with regulating them both wrote letters complaining that they are one-sided.

Natural gas typically is depicted as a "clean" energy source but (as is the case with Coal and uranium mining), the extraction processes are highly toxic. They produce millions of gallons of waste water contaminated with chemicals and radioactivity. in unsurprising statement, the reporter from The Times writes: "Industry officials say they are not concerned."And government regulators are busily seeking to so narrow the scope of their inquiries that the conclusions of any investigations are foregone. Everything is just fine!

I've posted here several times recently on this topic. These reports reinforce my view that this sort of drilling is simply a disaster. The surest way to avert it is to stop the drilling now. There are better, cleaner - not perfect, but better and cleaner - ways to generate energy. Why aren't we pursuing them more vigorously?

Photographer Documents Marcellus Shale's Impact on Farmscapes

Natural gas drilling site on mountainside, Tioga County.
Photograph © Jack Preston/Terry Wild Stock.

My google alerts turned up this brief interesting notice from Lancaster Farming which I assume is a local publication in rural Pennsylvania. It is a review of sorts of a little photography exhibit "at Julie’s Coffee, a shop in downtown Williamsport, Pa"; the work being exhibited is by Terry Wild who, in his spare time, has been documenting the impact of gas drilling industry on the local landscape. You can find this "sideline" work here.

The changes ot the landscape may seem innocuous, but they are, as Wild establishes, pretty pervasive. And the drilling process, as I've noted here before, threatens the water supply in frightening ways. New York State currently has a moratorium on the drilling process (through July 1st) and I hope the legislature will make it permanent. Virtually everything we know about fossil fules and how they are extracted (or nuclear energy and how the fuel is extracted and the waste stored) makes supporting wind and solar energy it seem like a no-brainer.

"Just Plain Dumb" ~ Where the Burdens of Regulation Actually Fall

The other day Obama ventured onto the opinion page at The Wall Street Journal to, as the mainstream press put it, extend an olive branch to "the business community." He offered up this lecture about the need to adopt grown up approach to regulation. It never occurred to me that Obama needed to mend fences with business, in large measure because on virtually every issue he has been supine in that respect already. Think about how he approached health care reform by accommodating industry demands before the legislative process commenced. That is why we got an incoherent effort at health insurance reform instead of a reform of health care system. So, now what will happen is that administrative agencies will spend their time navel gazing (reassessing existing rules) instead of applying them. And industry lobbyists - and here is where the money really counts in politics - will spend their time and effort defining for regulators which rules are especially burdensome.

Coincidentally, last night Susan and I watched Gasland a film that raises serious questions about the natural gas industry, their access to government officials, the ways they have been exempted from environmental regulations, and the consequences of all that for the lives of regular people. The tale is not a pretty one. And the problems the film documents are coming to a town or village near you as the industry aggressively pushes to deploy dangerous drilling techniques in more and more areas. Watching the film made me wonder why it was that the EPA, Bureau of Land Management and various State level agencies were not doing even a minimally good job at protecting us from industry. Obama has nothing to say about that.

Something is Fishy 'Upstate' ...

In The New York Times recently have been a spate of stories on controversy surrounding wind turbines. First there is this sort of 'I told you so' column by Stanley Fish, basically reiterating a bunch of complaints that people in 'upstate' New York (the lower Hudson Valley and foothills of the Catskills is hours away from 'upstate') have made about the installation of wind turbines near their bucolic communities. Fish opposed the installation of turbines in the town where he has a summer home and seems to think that reiterating his complaints makes them persuasive. Today there is this story about an island in Maine where some residents articulate claims much like Fish's.

As I have made reasonable clear here in the past, I am a pretty confirmed supporter of wind energy. It seems to have a lot going for it. (For instance, unlike Nukes, it generates no lethal waste that needs - and lacks - safe storage for centuries; unlike the 'fracking' process for extracting natural gas that Fish disingenuously mentions as analogous to wind power, it will not poison the water table; unlike oil, it is unlikely to draw us into wars or to despoil beaches and pretty much everything else.) I am not a blind supporter, though. Turbines make noise. The physics of the things pushes us in the direction of large installations, but not inevitably. And the process for planning them (or any large scale technological project) ought to be transparent and not dominated by corporate interests. That said, I think Fish is pretty much wholly off the mark. My plan is to write a separate post on why. I figured this one can serve as background.

Using Science to Explain Biblical Stories. Part One: Sodom and Gommorah.

**NOTE: This is not an attempt to insult anyone so if you are insulted by this post then I apologize. I am starting a series here on how Biblical stories can often be explained by a modern understanding of science. I am doing it not out of a desire to destroy anyone's faith but from a personal interest explaining the stories I've heard during my 22 years as a Christian. I am a skeptic by heart and enjoy explaining the seemingly inexplicable.***

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Sodom and Gomorrah were two ancient cities mentioned in the Bible most likely near the Dead Sea. The story in the Bible says that the town was destroyed by "God" because of the their "wickedness" by fire and brimstone (sulfur rock). So what does science have to say about this story?

As we know much of the Middle East sits above oil and natural gas fields as well as atop pockets of sulfur rock or brimstone. There are fault lines in the area where most scholars believe Sodom and Gomorrah existed as well as within much of the "Holy Land." Ancients didn't know much science and therefore natural disasters would be seen as "God's" doing and explained by man's "sinning."

So all it takes is a decent sized asteroid to hit the area, which would ignite the oil and natural gas fields nearby and underneath the city. As well as the igniting and throwing sulfur rocks into the air, which would then reign down upon the nearby cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Thus giving off the effect of flaming rocks pouring down upon the cities and burning them to the ground.

Another explanation could stem from the many fault lines that exist in Israel, Jordan and throughout the Middle East. An earthquake could have cracked the Earth, which exposed natural gas pockets, pools of oil and veins of sulfur rock. All it would take is one spark from the many cooking fires to explode the pockets of gas, ignite the sulfur rock, which would reign back down upon the city burning it to the ground.

There are simple, (Occam's razor) scientific explanations for this event either way and so people who were not privy to science would seek to explain such a natural disaster with what they believed--"God." "God" was an understandable way to explain events, which were at the time mysterious in origin and thus very frightening.

~Peace to all beings~