Shale Bait
I got something for everyone.
New research confirms that natural gas drilling is polluting drinking water. Taking note of this and the previous commotion over the Cornell study, Ronald Baily at Reason harrumphs:
Environmentalists Were for Fracking Before They Were Against it
Whatever, says Matt Ridley. Shale is bountiful and cheap!
Finally, Zeke Hausfather does a belated (but helpful) deep dive on the controversial Cornell study, and concludes that it
makes a useful contribution in raising the issue of additional fugitive emissions from shale gas. However, by highlighting the controversial statement that shale gas is worse than coal, and basing the statement on somewhat dubious assumptions, the paper probably contributes more to confusing the issue than to helping to clarify it.
Hey, I thought that was the media’s job?
The media’s job is to clarify, and Zeke did that.
So for a change, rather than carping and complaining, let me congratulate. A hat tip to Keith for the link and congratulations and thanks to Zeke for the excellent work.
As for the shale gas, well, maybe it isn’t quite as ugly as coal but the whole “bridge fuel” thing was always dubious and now it looks still less appealing, Zeke’s mitigating analysis notwithstanding.
To your closing snark, if reports on policy relevant science in newspapers commonly looked like Zeke’s report here, I for one would actually buy newspapers or at least subscribe to their websites. I wonder if I am alone in this. Anyway, yes, since you raise the point, this level of respect for the readership and for the quantitative facts is exactly what those of us who want more from the media are looking for.
“Hey, I thought that was the media’s job?”
Anyone that pays attention to the media(MSM) knows that the “media’s job” is to sell advertising and promote leftist propaganda(present company excluded at times and on this fracking issue in particular 🙂 ).
Interesting. First we get the IPCC renewables report:
http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/press
Which was reported in the UK Guardian newspaper here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/09/ipcc-renewable-energy-power-world
With an extremely interesting concluding paragraph (emphasis added):
As with all IPCC reports, the summary for policymakers ““ the synopsis of the report that will be presented to governments and is likely to impact renewable energy policy ““ had to be agreed line by line and word by word unanimously by all countries. This was done at Monday’s meeting in Abu Dhabi. This makes the process lengthy, but means that afterwards no government or scientist represented can say that they disagree with the finished findings, which the IPCC sees as a key strength of its operations.
And on the same day a ‘shale gas-killer’ from Duke.
Pure coincidence, of course.