Inside Look At How Frackers Target Environmentalists - And Why We're in Big Trouble

The map shown, from Food and Water Watch, tracks the ongoing movement against fracking. The map tracks local measures against hydraulic fracturing, as well as statewide efforts to stop or restrict it. It designates exactly where shale gas plays are located throughout the nation and which communities have been successful in taking action to protect their water and their environment by passing resolutions, ordinances or bills against fracking.

Other maps at  different sites (e.g. FracTracker) show the encroachment of fracking into water supplies across the nation,  e.g. http://maps.fractracker.org/latest/?webmap=b26c43968bf8435388cbd4b33f2c4b3d

something that bears close attention given the increasingly adverse effects on our water supplies. See e.g. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/15/2163531/fracking-is-already-straining-us-water-supplies/

But as anti-fracking activism rises to meet the challenge the frackers and especially the oil and gas lobby, have not been idle. Indeed, as a recent Bloomberg news story has revealed, one of their top lobbyists - Rick Berman - is teaching the fossil fuel companies how to fight back against green activism. Berman himself was featured on a '60 Minutes' piece which noted how he had to "play hardball"  vs. 'Mothers Against Drunk Driving'. Evidently, it wasn't enough that drunks kill thousands of innocents on the roads each year, Berman had to find a way to fight against one of the primary groups battling drunken driving. So hell, why not fight for the rights of the assholes who want to poison our air, water and soil too - to grab a few extra gigatons of oil (kerogen) from the Earth?

The Bloomberg piece noted a private confab held at the elite Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs not long ago, in which arch-lobbyist Berman confronted the oil and gas honchos and basically told them that if they wanted to keep all their operations going they had to learn to "fight dirty". As he told the gathered planetary exploiters (and please understand the whole world is now being fracked): "You can either fight dirty or lose pretty".

Uh, how about not fighting at all? How about doing what Japan is now doing and make a sweeping move toward green energy - putting tens of thousands to work and limiting CO2 effects on the atmosphere? (E.g. 'Japan Sees Green Boom, Glut', Denver Post, Nov. 2, p. 4K) Of course, in Japan, the influx of solar, wind, geothermal etc. projects is crucial given that all 48 of their nuclear reactors are now idled and they must import nearly all other energy sources (oil, gas). So it becomes critical to cut that dependence. In the U.S., meanwhile, the finding of kerogen stores as well as natural gas beneath our feet has led to the frenzied drive to grab it - but at the cost of our health.

Anyway, back to Berman and the tactics he imparted to the gathered oil-heads. And let us bear in mind here, the Repukes' win wasn't all about dumb turnout but also oil money ($95.5m worth) funding the campaigns of pro-fracking whores in congress. Still, despite the vast money influx, the oil bunch is worried about the anti-fracking movement.  Hence, Berman's call to use "fear and anger" as part of any campaign to advance the fracking cause. As he put it:

"You have to get people fearful about what is on the table, and you have to get people angry that they are being misled"

But the problem is that it's precisely the opposite: people are in fact being misled about the "benefits" of fracking. I detailed much of this earlier in connection with two articles published in the Mensa Bulletin, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/06/mensa-bulletin-looks-at-two-sides-of.html

One of the primary strategies advocated by Berman entails using opposition researchers to dig into the finances of board members serving on environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Since these are public groups the information is publicly available. The extracted material is then used to prepare agitprop for both online and billboard ads.  (For example, one particular billboard ad cited refers to Yoko Ono - a top anti-fracking activist and says: "Would you take energy advice from the woman who broke up the Beatles?"- playing on people's stupidity and/or short memories)

Environmentalists were initially worried about such attacks, but ultimately found they "didn't gain much traction with the public or press" - showing that the oil & gas fiends had radically underestimated the intelligence of the American people.

Failing that, the lobbyists and companies blew $2m to use "humor"- based ads to try to get the message across. Throughout Colorado in August, one then beheld a 60-second ad, sponsored by an industry front group called "the Environmental Policy Alliance" that  opened with a picture of a house and a sign outside that read 'Anti-fracking Meeting Tonight'.   A narrator then does a voice over: 'Wonder who's driving the conversation about fracking in Colorado?' The scene then shifts to four people sitting at a table, including one holding a sock puppet and another munching on spray cheese and cheese balls.

The man holding the gavel then says: "Last week's meeting on whether the Moon is really made of green cheese was very enlightening."

 Despite all the money, the ad basically misfired - the idiots who prepared it failing to realize it  wouldn't work in a state which ranked second in the nation in the number of people (per capita) holding college degrees.  So, instead of  the populace perceiving anti-frackers as space cadets, they saw the ad proponents painting THEM that way!

Indeed, polls showed that two initiatives put forward by Jared Polis for local control, garnered way more signatures than needed to be on the ballot and also that a majority of Colorado citizens wanted them. The ads didn't make a dent so, in desperation, Governor Hickenlooper had to call an emergency back door meeting with Polis and oil-gas execs to try to get them off the ballot. After lots of cajoling, wheeling and dealing, Polis removed them and  agreed to a "compromise". This included setting up a 20-person commission which  would take six months to make "recommendations" and then the state legislature would have its say in making new laws.

A Denver Post report on the incident observed how representatives  from the two largest fracking companies - from Texas- cheered wildly at the news.

Why are we in big trouble? Because -  while the pro -frackers use their nefarious research teams to dig out board members of Sierra Club, NRDC etc. and mock them, THEY themselves are protected by the rules of dark money donations. Which, according to Berman "are run through organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors".

Neat! But not for the rest of us - who face the fact this dark money influx enables the vermin (like Berman)  to fuck us all as well as the planet, to a far-thee -well.

Watch the flick "Interstellar" this weekend if you get the chance. Because the dustbowl Earth depicted therein is exactly what we are headed for if the Climate denialists and frackers get their way.

Truth vs. Lies In Colorado's Fracking War

"If the Democratic party has become so isolated from its constituents it might want to reconsider its business plan." - Lafayette, CO resident Cliff Wilmeng quoted in The Denver Post, July 20, 1B

"America's most dangerous enemies are not Islamic radicals but those who have sold us the perverted ideology of free market capitalism and globalization. They have dynamited the foundations of our society."  - Chris Hedges, in Empire of Illusion, p. 151.

As the fracking wars in Colorado heat up it has become ever more evident that the Democratic Party is being fractured, and large numbers of usually pro-Dem voters will break ranks with the party in the upcoming November elections. Yes, this could enable the Repukes to make great strides including possibly taking a Senate seat (Mark Udall's) but people are sick and tired of "lesser of two evils" thinking. They also understand both parties are subject to the Neoliberal market imperative, so a stand must be made somewhere against it.

Chris Hedges puts the matter bluntly in his book, Empire of Illusion (p. 185):

"Those who run our corporate state have fought environmental regulation as tenaciously as they have fought financial regulation. They are responsible, as Polanyi predicted, for our personal impoverishment and the impoverishment of our ecosystem. We remain addicted, courtesy of the oil, gas and automobile industries and a corporate-controlled government, to fossil fuels. ....

Democracy is not an outgrowth of free markets. Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic entities. Democracy...is based not on personal gain, but on self-sacrifice. A functioning democracy must often defy the economic interests of elites on behalf of citizens, but this is not happening."

Two takeaways: First, any pol who doesn't grasp that democracy and capitalism are in opposition doesn't deserve to keep his job. He will then always be a capitalist-market Neolib toady and be easily bought and manipulated by corporate lobbyists.  He will always place corporate interests over that of citizens. Second, headway is starting to be made here in Colorado by two initiatives that are in the economic (as well as environmental) interest of citizens here. Both these would grant local control of fracking operations to local communities.

The precedent already exists - as of a few weeks ago as per an AP wire report published July 1 (Denver Post, p. 15A),

"New York's top court handed a victory to opponents of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas by affirming the right of municipalities to ban the practice within their borders."

This State Court of Appeals "affirmed a mid-level decision by an appeals court that said state oil and gas law doesn't trump the authority of local governments to control land use through zoning."

Which has been the case in this country for many years. Thus, a neighbor in a residentially zoned neighborhood cannot just suddenly decide to start a hog farm, or now - in Colorado - a marijuana grow operation. Local zoning ordinances prohibit it! The same clearly applies to the practice of fracking,  irrespective of its claimed economic benefits.  It doesn't matter! Whatever those benefits are they don't trump citizens' rights to proscribe the operations via zoning. Indeed, the whole practice of zoning was established to be able to exclude those intrusive, disruptive or inappropriate activities (including porno dives and pawn shops) that didn't fit in with a neighborhood's profile. I mean, Jeebus, why would any right-thinking citizen want pawn shops or sex toy emporiums right next to schools or their homes ? So why would you want a frack well right in your neighborhood?

Here in Colorado, the first casualty of the fracking wars is likely to be Dem Governor John Hickenlooper. He "cannot count on fracktivists' support" according to the Denver Post (op. .cit., p. 8B)  Why?

"The former geologist who is friendly to the oil and gas industry once infuriated the left when he told a U.S. Senate committee he once drank fracking fluid to show it was safe."

Actually, in a Colorado photo-op, this asshole picked up a murky glass of water he claimed was fracked water and drank it before a crowd. (Of course, the punk might have easily later - after the PR appearance- upchucked it all following the usual method of bulemics.)  But it showed most of us that 'Hick' is just a bought and sold corporate whore. As I recently told wifey, I'd vote for Mickey Mouse on the ballot before this turkey.  (Hick's Neoliberal treachery actually traces back to 2012 when he filed a lawsuit against Longmont for voting in fracking regulations which he claimed were "against state law")

Reinforcing my decision, as the Post went on to note (ibid.):

"Hickenlooper announced last week he will work to defeat the measures (for local regulation) if they make it to the November ballot, saying 'they risk thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in investment and millions in tax revenue'."

In other words, 'Hick' is determined to work against Colorado citizens'  health and environmental welfare, in the interest of more oil and gas "investment" and "thousands of jobs" - which aren't worth rotten beans if they generate polluted water, diminished fresh water reserves in a drought prone area, contaminated soil and air and hundreds of cancers of the liver, pancreas, esophagus, lungs, brain etc. As for tax revenue, the idiot Hick could get that in spades if he pressed for a level state tax field applied to retail and medical marijuana. Currently,  the latter is taxed much less, so that most Colorado buyers - naturally - will go via medical MJ route to get it as opposed to the retail route. By instead making both tax burdens the same (e.g. at the medical MJ rate), the state MJ tax revenue could radically increase.

More localities selling MJ would also drastically increase the retail outlets and the state tax revenues. While it's understandable many locales would prohibit retail MJ sales out of a false morality, I still maintain if given the choice most residents would opt for MJ stores as opposed to frack wells.

More lies:

Two former Colorado governors, Roy Romer (D) and Bill Owens (R) have appeared in a campaign "PR blitz claiming 'fracking has a 60-year track record of safety here with the toughest regulations and enforcement you'll find anywhere.'"


Which is total, unadulterated BS. If the enforcement and regulations were so damned great, then how is it the Denver Post (May 4, p. 1A.) could report:

"State data also show that 12.3 percent of the past 1,000 spills (since June 24, 2012) already had contaminated groundwater before companies began cleanups.”

Beyond the contamination of soil and groundwater, the Post's data analysis showed that drilling of new wells unearthed an estimated 652,000 tons a year of sludge-like drill cuttings. These are supposed to be taken to special landfills but more often than not  spread them instead on “leased fields” which were totally unregulated.

But see, corporate PR can get the careless citizen to believe anything. This is why it's so critical to obtain news from outside the corporate contaminated mainstream.

Why are Colorado citizens so energized now to the extent they would be willing to dump office holding Dems? Quoting Pete Maysmith, executive director of Conservation Colorado, a statewide group that works on issues of climate change and environmental damage:

"Now you've got moms - and dads for that matter- who are waking up and seeing a drilling rig just over their back fence or when they drop the kids off at the neighborhood school."

Regarding the new fracking methods which were never around 60 years ago and make use of far more intrusive technologies - that can go beneath homes, he notes:

"In the last few years, communities have identified this process as a threat to their health, safety and welfare."

If Colorado state reps then are truly OUR reps and not corporate -bought whores, we must expect they will support the citizen in his bid for a healthy environment not inundated by polluted fracking liquids, methane and soil contaminants. Again, this is because health and welfare trump economic investment and "jobs" - that are really environment destroying, invasive and debasing devices that benefit the oil and gas corporations for the most part.

Other lies that have been circulated include that "natural gas is less a greenhouse threat for the environment" and fracking is safe for water. For example, in respect to the first lie, in a subsequent examination (Denver Post, May 8, 1A) the article pointed out that scientists have found that Colorado's front Range oil and gas boom has been emitting three times more methane than previously thought. The rate, is 19.3 tons an HOUR. This is serious given the EPA has determined methane is 20 time more potent (i.e. higher forcing component) than CO2.   This study was done at the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration's Cooperative Institute for Research on the Environment.

As for water pollution from fracking, we already know the extent of it even if the frackers aren't totally forthcoming about disclosure.  According to a 2010 report obtained by Sen. Diane DeGette, the product of an inquiry by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, fourteen of the nation's most active hydraulic fracturing companies used 866 million gallons of chemical fracturing products, and more than 650 of the chemicals named in the report were known carcinogens . Among the choice chemicals documented as having been  injected into the  state's water supply:

- Benzene,, a powerful bone-marrow poison (aplastic anemia) associated with leukemia, breast and uterine cancer

- Styrene, which may cause eye and mucous membrane irritation, neurotoxic effects in the central and peripheral nervous systems.

- Toluene, which may cause muscular incoordination, tremors, hearing loss, dizziness, vertigo, emotional instability and delusions, liver and kidney damage, and anemia.

- Xylene, with cancer-causing (mainly in the kidneys, liver) and neurotoxic effects, as well as reproductive abnormalities.

- Methylene chloride, which may cause cancer, liver and kidney damage, central nervous system disorders and COPD.

Clearly, science is on the side of the critics and those who seek to have local bans on fracking, not on the frackers or their PR shills.


This November will determine whether Colorado voters have succumbed to the oil and gas industry's money (as 'speech') and lies, or seen fit to act as authentic citizens - not bought out consumers.

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/22/oil_and_gas_drilling_damaged_pa_water_supplies_over_200_times_in_the_past_6_years/

It's Confirmed: Fracking is Sucking Up Most of the Water in Drought-Ravaged West

A frack well near a community in northern Colorado.

Well, as if we didn't know, it's now been confirmed the gas and oil frackers are not only ruining our precious water supply here in the mountain West but depleting it as well.  According to a report published today in the UK Guardian, "America's oil and gas rush is depleting water supplies in the driest and most drought-prone areas of the country, from Texas to California,".

This is extremely bad news given how our water resources are already depleted from drought. Las Vegas, for example, barely has 300 days of water supply left from the Colorado River unless it drills another deep well to supplement the pitiful amount left in Lake Meade. This is why a new deep water drilling project has commenced.

In California the drought is so bad now that many communities are within 8 weeks or less of having to undergo water restriction and rationing. And yet the insane frackers, driven by a Neoliberal political matrix with no investment in people - only money - carries on, fouling existing water with pollutants and depleting the rest.

Of the nearly 40,000 oil and gas wells drilled since 2011, three-quarters were located in areas where water is scarce, and 55% were in areas experiencing drought, the report by the Ceres investor network found. 

The report estimated that fracking those wells consumed 97 BILLION gallons of water, raising new and well justified concerns about the country's mad energy rush. It's as if neither the frackers or the political idiots that support them grasp that humans can live (albeit with difficulty) without gas or oil, but can't live without water. 

According to Mindy Lubber, President of the Ceres network, and quoted in the Guardian:

"Hydraulic fracturing is increasing competitive pressures for water in some of the country's most water-stressed and drought-ridden regions,"

Lubber warned without tough new regulations, the industry water gobblers will be on a "collision course" with other water users, public and private.

Here in Colorado, the limited water rights are usually secured at auction, with farmers and others competing with the oil companies for our scarce supply. Generally, because the latter have vastly more money they can out bid all other stake holders at will  - hence the spread of fracking throughout the state, though we've been in a severe drought now for nearly three years.

Professor James Famiglietti, of the University of California -Irvine,  sees it as a "wake up call". According to him:
 
"We understand that as a country we need more energy but it is time to have a conversation about what impacts there are, and do our best to try to minimize any damage."


 I'd add that it is also time that we understand that water-intensive fracking operations ought to be banned in drought -afflicted states. Especially those which have experienced severe drought for more than two years. This ought to be plain old common sense, given that it can take millions of gallons of fresh water to frack a single well, and much of the drilling is tightly concentrated in areas where water is in chronically short supply, or where there have been multi-year droughts

 But  evidently commons sense is in short supply amongst the Neoliberal energy hucksters. (Recall, as I noted before, fracking amounts to "snake oil" - as from the recent book by Richard Heinberg. It is not going to solve or ameliorate our long term energy problems nor is it any panacea.)


To see the full story, go to:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/05/fracking-water-america-drought-oil-gas

   

Gasland II - Fracking is Worse Than You Think

Josh Fox during filming of 'Gasland II'- you'll be appalled at what he reveals.

Part 2 of Gasland II,  Josh Fox's intense and informative HBO documentary,  begins with interviewing Jeremiah Gee, a Pennsylvanian, and Ph.D. candidate at Penn State.  Gee relates the "real" definition of fresh water is - as provided by the company(Shell Appalachia) fracking near his home.  That is, one can no longer go by the standard definition, but rather that "fresh" means "fresh to THIS site" - where they are now fracking.  It doesn't mean pure or free of contaminants, just free of contaminants from previous frack sites - maybe.

Then the camera pans to Gee's barn and the loads of bottled water which he now needs to ship in, because ingesting the fracked water would be a death sentence. At a cost of over $1,000 a month he has no other choice, and as he notes, he even has to provide it to his chickens and pet dogs. The alternative is obviously too horrific to contemplate.  As one watches this, absolute fury builds at the assholes that have destroyed his quality of life and imposed such destruction of his prime life resource. Meanwhile, a realtor conveys the actual current  market value of his home, at 00.00. Readers can see more in this article:

http://www.sungazette.com/page/content.detail/id/565860/Tioga-County-family-struggles-with-methane-in-its-well-water.html

The emphasis then shifts to  Tony Ingraffea, a Cornell Professor of geological engineering. He is a two time award winner - from the National Research Council - for rock mechanics research - so is in no way the bozo that the frackers' anti-Fox disinformation websites have portrayed! Ingraffea explains clearly and with easily understood diagrams, how cement can fail and methane can migrate into ground water. Referencing one of the fracking pipes, Ingraffea sketches the interior cement annulus of 1 -inch which is the sole barrier between the fracking contaminants and the water supply. As he says, "what you don't want is for that cement to fail".

"Failure" includes: corrosion, crumbling, or disappearing entirely as a barrier over time. If that happens, then "what's down there" (i.e. the contaminants) can get into the annulus. He then rubs out the chalk barrier representing the cement in the annulus, using his fingers and indicates an arrow moving into it from outside. To quote Prof. Ingraffea:

"So now shallow gas goes into the open annulus, pressurizes the annulus, and the gas migrates into an underground source of drinking water."

Once this happens, other frack contaminants can also migrate into the water, such benzene, toluene and dozens of cancer causing chemicals.

Alternately, the scene flashes to the lying scumball Tom Ridge - appearing on a talk show- who insists that such problems as methane in water "occurred long before there were any fracking wells." In truth, such incidents were relatively rare and represented no where near the level of contamination of water currently experienced, when water issuing from hoses can be set afire - and homeowners are advised to not even water their lawns. Ridge, as a PR whore hire, is merely repeating the bollocks fed to him by the PR firms underwriting the misinformation campaign waged against citizens, and those like Josh Fox who seek to expose their disastrous schemes.

Prof. Ingraffea notes that the cement failure phenomena he illustrates are "very well known and at least as long as we've been drilling wells and casing them".  He adds that in his view there are only "three things that are certain: death, taxes, and fracture".  In the latter case, he explains that amongst the thousands of gas wells including those offshore, there is a probability of 1 in 20 will immediately show a failure (opening between the well casing and rock), and that means methane migration. It also means anything else stored in the rock, including salts, heavy metals, other deleterious things now have a pathway.

That is, 5 percent of all wells will be affected and woe betide any home owners in their vicinity. Ingraffea invokes the 100,000 odd wells in PA alone, noting that failure rate means 5,000 wells have immediately failed in Pennsylvania alone. That translates to 5,000 methane migrations into the ground water and ruination of citizens' lives. Just one well going bad means one aquifer will be polluted, such as in Dimock.

From Prof. Ingraffea, Josh goes to an expert on corporate public relations, Naomi Oreskes, on the PR Departments that serve the vermin frackers and their lot. She is the author of 'Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming'.  Oreskes explains that the job of corporate PR depts. is not to necessarily show they're right, but merely to spur and stir phony debate. Once the debate is consolidated, it becomes a matter of endless back and forth, "he said, she said" etc, and the ruse succeeds by staving off regulation because, hey, "the issue isn't settled". But in reality it is, as much as the fact that 6 million Jews perished in a holocaust.

Josh names the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton which in the 1950s-60s and later was responsible for mounting the phony campaign that tobacco smoke doesn't cause cancer- sowing enough doubt to postpone regulation for decades. America's Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) hired Hill and Knowlton in 2009 as their PR firm, so when you google  'Gasland 2' and find ANGA website blistering Josh Fox and his documentary, you know it's really Hill and Knowlton behind it.  And be sure, they want to sow enough doubt in your mind to foist a national debate, as opposed to the undeniable observed facts that Fox has revealed. (The recently released "DOE study" - see next blog- which claims fracked water is now "safe" - smells to me like another elaborate PR stunt wrapped up in the supposed gravitas of "gov't scientists". Well, hey, government "scientists" i.e. in the Ramsey panel, were also behind the botched acoustic interpretation of the shots fired in the JFK assassination!)

To show ANGA are liars about the extent of gas leaking, Josh presents actually published memos (Some "fell off the back of a truck" - fortunately for the rest of us!) from the gas industry, headed up 'Leaking Through Casing'. They indicate aspects like "2,000 components" in the fracked liquid, the influence of "harsh conditions",  how wells fail and that they've been trying to solve the problem "for decades".  Worse, they concede in the documents that there's no way of completely preventing or fixing the problem.

In one document, from Southwestern Energy, the diagram clearly shows that the gas well has a cement barrier with a casing that prevents gases from migrating upwards. But this isn't a Powerpoint about drilling wells but rather about how cement and casings fail and allow methane gas and other substances to migrate into aquifers.  Thus, we see from their own documents how cement fails.

Another document from Schlumberger, shows that cement failure occurs at alarming rates - as depicted in one of their graphs showing 'fraction of wells affected by cement failure' vs. the well age in years.  Pausing the DVR to show the graph, I can read off a failure fraction of 40 percent after only 12 years, and a failure fraction of 50 percent after 30 years.  That means if 1.5 million new wells are added in the US of A, as projected, 750,000 will leak after thirty years. If 180,000 are added to PA, that means 90,000 will leak after 30 years.

Another document from Archer, a well servicing outfit, shows the existing percent of wells with "integrity issues" and in the Gulf of Mexico this is 45% of all 6, 650 wells (and according to news reports last night, one is already burning, reminiscent of the BP disaster) and 34% in the North Sea, out of some 1, 600 wells. Moreover, 40 percent are at high risk of "uncontrolled discharge".

Another power point slide is shown from the Society of Petroleum Engineers, that shows given an existing global well population of 1.8 million, and that 35% of them are leaking.  Despite this, the idiots plan to drill MORE wells in the next decade than have been drilled in the last 100 years. (All of which, btw, points to the fact we indeed have passed the Peak Oil mark, and which explains the extent to which extreme drilling is now becoming so common- to the point people's drinking water, air quality is an accepted collateral casualty.)

Recent Department of Pennsylvania Environmental Protection stats back up findings of failure, showing 1,609 wells were drilled in 2010 an there were 97 well failures, or a 6% failure rate. Of the 1,972 wells drilled in 2011, 140 failed, for a 7.1% failure rate.  Of the 1, 346 wells drilled in 2012, there were 120 failures, or an 8.9% rate. Who are you going to believe on this, the paid PR liars for the gas fuckers....errrr....frackers, or your lying eyes?

The Dept. document concluded that the published statistics are "consistent with previous industry data" and that the situation "is not improving".

As Josh puts it, "just as there are no safe cigarettes, there is no safe drilling, and they know it".

Indeed they do. So why LIE to us about it? Why make us, the citizens who note the lies and complain about the destruction of our life quality, the bad guys? The "anarchists"? The "terrorists"? Well, because money is on the line, lots of it, and they want to spread this malignancy worldwide!  That is the next part of Gasland II, Part 2 designed to send shivers down your spine.

Thus we see a humble Australian farmer also is having to deal with flaming water, contaminated by methane gas, and an inability to tend to his land. This, in a country with an already at- risk water table because of prolonged drought. But does the industry care? Does the U.S.? Hell no! As Josh goes on to show, in 2010 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration started the 'Global Shale Gas Initiative', charting shale "plays"  in over thirty countries and pledging a "government to government engagement to help develop shale gas around the World, from Europe, to Africa, to the Arabian peninsula to southeast Asia and South America. Everything now will be destroyed, all the planet's remaining potable water, for the profits of the gas -shale oil frackers. So, in a matter of months, the blighted U.S. map (smeared with red for fracking contaminated regions) metastasized into the map of the world undergoing the same. (Believe me the Germans are pissed off at this as well, and my friend Reinhard assured me they're prepared to fight it tooth and nail!)

Now, all this might be accepted IF the technology of hydraulic fracturing was proven safe and reliable, but as the stats presented show, it isn't.  Hence, it follows that the spread of shale fracking is indefensible.

It's even more indefensible because contrary to the spin, according to Prof. of Environmental Biology at Cornell, Bob Howarth, shale gas is not any better for global warming than other fossil fuels. He notes that the hypothesis that natural gas is a "good transitional fuel" has been tested and the answer is 'NO!'. Howarth adds:

"The White House has clearly bought into this idea that natural gas is part of the solution to moving us gradually off fossil fuel. But they didn't do that with good science".

Howarth estimates that between 3.6% and 7.9% of the total amount of gas produced over the lifetime of a well is emitted into the atmosphere as methane. As he notes there is "continual leakage at the well head, at the storage and processing facilities, purposeful venting and also in the pipeline systems."

This is important since methane is 120 times more efficient at trapping heat than CO2 is over a short 20 -year period. That means that if much more methane outgassing also occurs - from melting permafrost in the Arctic- and those global drilling wells are multiplied, we will likely be in the throes of the runaway greenhouse effect much, much sooner.

Sadly, at the end we see the Paar family in Texas moving from their family home, as well as the Gee family in PA, as well as hundreds of other families. None of them are allowed to tell their stories due to binding 'shut your mouth' mandates issued by the frackers. As Josh notes, "there is something inhuman about not even allowing people to talk". And having to leave their life long homes is bad enough.

Louis Meeks, in Pavilion, WY, meanwhile, isn't about to leave and he attends a meeting with neighbors where the water tests conducted by the EPA are being disclosed. The findings?

-Methane in 10 of 28 water wells at "near saturation" level of 19 mg/L, with "similar isotropic signature to production gas"

- Presence of synthetic organic compounds including glycols, alcohols and 2-butoxyethanol.

- Other petroleum -related detections including - benzene at 50 times the safe drinking water level, as well as phenols, tri-methylbenzenes and diesel and gasoline based organics on a "fairly widespread basis"

The last scenes of the documentary are heartbreaking to a real citizen, as Josh attempts to gain access to a House fracking hearing with his camera (to film for the public's benefit) but is instead handcuffed and led away. NO first amendment rights, at least if you show up with a video camera to hold the vermin weasels in our gov't to account for their own words!
Does this nonsense have to be stopped? Absolutely! The alternative is our total water supply being filthed and undrinkable within another five years. 'Good' only for rats and vermin and I doubt even they'd drink it.

THIS is what's driving the anti-fracking movement (including returned, outraged vets from Iraq shown having to deal with fracking effects including from poisoned water and earthquakes), and what's for sure is it will not stop - not so long as citizens are engaged and aware

To be fully aware, citizens need to know the massive misinformation campaign mounted by the gas frackers against Fox and his documentaries. To see one illustration of the misinfo (as well as disinfo) see:

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/09/new-plan-from-gasland-ii-the-faucet-fire-lie-wasnt-big-enough-were-going-full-garden-hose/


Sadly, Fox shows the power basis of much of this is because our government has become corporatized, and now corporations wield more power over it than do citizens. (Whose cyclical votes are inevitably trumped by corporate campaign contributions and lobbyist bribes once the dust settles.) How else explain the writing and passing of a law that actually exempts the frackers from the Safe Drinking Water Act?  Read more at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/06/gasland-part-ii-sequel_n_3554756.html

and: https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/04

Also, see this Youtube presentation on the gas industry's misinformation campaign and why you, as a citizen, need to see this documentary however you can. What befalls and affects your fellow citizens also affects you. The corporate gangster state laying waste to your fellow citizens' lives will also one day come to destroy yours, if you are passive and non-engaged.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNhpxIkhgBc

As Fox observes, quoting the mayor of Dish, TX, "Now you know. Once you know, you can't  not know".

Gasland II - Too Intense for Wifey to Continue (Review Pt. 1)

Scene from the Josh Fox documentary ‘Gasland’ in which a homeowner lights his tap water on fire. The gas-sparked "water fires" are still burning in Gasland II!

Josh Fox's documentary "Gasland II" opens with Obama bloviating about a "100 year supply of natural gas that's right beneath our feet" and the goal to "develop it safely" as well as a determined Hillary Clinton saying emphatically: "The United States will promote the use of shale gas. I know that in some places that's controversial" .

Yes, Mrs. Clinton, but we also know for damned sure it's not controversial in any of the gated communities or high rises where the elites live. Their kids don't have to worry about bleeding orifices, sores and lung problems because their water and air, the essentials of life, are contaminated, degraded. But see, the political elites have no use for these facts, since they KNOW Peak Oil has long since arrived (in 2005, to be exact) and the real reason they're going nuts cranking out shale oil and natural gas is because the cheaper, more bang for the buck oil is now receding. "Limiting our imported oil costs" is merely useful PR for the sheep or the proles, since 95% of all the shale oil is sent overseas anyway.

Anyway, past this blitz of elite blather, we behold Josh Fox and his home near the Delaware River, threatened now by the presence of "thousands of natural gas" wells. As Josh notes, playing his banjo and after introducing the family home in Milanville, Penn.:

"Every day I wake up with the fate of my back yard and the watershed - the source for millions of people- up in the air."

The scene then switches to the BP Oil spill disaster in the Gulf and how the elites have kept us from knowing the extent of environmental damage there as well (this is before Josh's place is threatened, in an earlier  filming expedition).  We see how extensively polluted the Gulf is as a result of Josh's plane being able to fly much lower than other journalists' planes.

"It's hard to believe my eyes. As far as I can see the surface of the Gulf is streaked with oil- like ghosts on the surface. Nothing can really prepare you."

Josh notes scenes such as he filmed and reported were not visible on the news, since journalists' flights were restricted to 3,000 ft. and above. (Journalists would call the FAA to clear flights, but BP would answer the phone. Corporatocracy anyone? Gov't in the paws of the corporations!)

By the time Josh Fox documents the extent of havoc in the Gulf, especially with the use of the toxic chemical dispersants that "actually makes the oil more toxic" (damaging the sediment where most aquatic organisms live)  and has been banned in Britain- we return to his homestead- he observes a news "surprise neighbor": a frack well. This was compliments of the Delaware River Basin Commission to open up the river basin to 18,000 gas wells. The commission had approved 15 exploratory wells, one of which abutted Josh's land.(A mile from his home)

Josh's home, he relates, was built by his dad (a holocaust survivor)  in 1972, out of love and dedication. He used a diagram out of 'Popular Mechanics'.  To his family, home was in the right place. Life was good, until receiving a letter in 2008, that the family home was atop a shale deposit, part of the Marcellus Shale - the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas".

The letter indicated a "signing bonus" of $100,000 if he only let the gas frackers "frack"

As Josh noted: "The F-word isn't in the dark anymore. It's in the top three words used in 2011, behind Occupy and deficit."

He adds that "with one to two million wells projected, America is in a fracking frenzy".

But for whom? Not for the elites, or one percenters or toffy-nosed political class who lord it over us proles! They are safely ensconced in tucked away communities where rigorous regulations or locations protect them. It is the ordinary hoi polloi who are burdened by the extreme costs of this crude form of energy extraction, as Josh then proceeds to show.

The frackers claim, and a new Denver Post editorial yesterday attempted to bolster, the notion that "fracking is safe for water". But IF it is, why is fracking exempt from compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act? Surely, NO exemption is needed if it was truly safe. Logically, the only reason one would need the exemption from the Act is if it patently wasn't!  According to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, shown on screen shots 14 minutes into the documentary, the industry doesn't have to tell the public of the chemicals they're using.

The scenes then switch to the families affected, including those in Dimock, PA, featuring a '60 Minutes' snippet where Leslie Stahl asks a group of homeowners 'How many have lost their water supply?" and all raise their hands.

One of the home owners exclaims on having gas in the water, and that he can actually fill up a jug - shake it and light it, and he proceeds to do so to demonstrate. A magic trick? A deception? Hell no! Only the ungodly truth of what the fracker PR firms like Hill and Knowlton are trying to deny. (These are the same twerps that tried to represent smoking tobacco as ok and fine and dandy.)

Just as H&K's PR hacks earlier claimed smoking didn't cause cancer, they now have the frackers claiming they don't believe the flaming water was caused by fracking chemicals. Well, by what then, inflammatory fairies?  Anyone who believes them needs to read the PR expose book, Toxic Sludge is Good for You, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, based on the 1990s tactic of toxic industries to try to soft sell the use of their sludge in fertilizers.


The Dimock families, finally having had enough, banded together to sue Cabot Oil & Gas. One former Cabot worker, now a witness for the families, is quoted as saying:

'We feel like horses being pushed toward a dirty hole. And you know, horses won't drink bad water. They just won't do it"

And as Fox adds at this point: "Or having to tell your kids they can't swim or fish in the water."

Victoria Switzer, one powerful spokesperson, recounts how the families begged Cabot for water. She notes they were originally told there's be only one well and now there were 30. Truth anyone? She then holds a map of the area showing them all, adding: "I dread to imagine what will happen to property values out here. How would you advertise this house? Bring your own water?"

But the issue isn't facetious for the families, kids, elderly who have to be subjected to this crap. Sadly, Dimock wasn't alone, since as Josh notes "a huge change had swept across Pennsylvania, after Governor Ed Rendell had rolled out the carpet for the gas drilling industry."

Well, we already know  - as I exposed earlier - that though a nominal "Dem"- like so many these days- Rendell is actually a Neoliberal punk tool and part of the 'Fix the Debt' battalion now trying to push through the Chained CPI (see also; http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/01/fix-debt-cover-to-undermine-your-future.html )  As I noted therein:

"Philadelphia magazine  notes that Rendell is currently a “corporate consigliere Greenhill & Co investment bank” and the co-chair of “Fix the Debt” — a “blue-chip cabal of 130-plus plutocrats who have anted up a $43 million kitty to fund a multimedia stealth campaign/public relations offensive” pushing to both preserve tax breaks for the wealthy and dismantle Social Security."

So, we understand even before Josh Fox's segment, where this sellout turd stands. With the other Neolib turds trying to destroy the welfare of the actual citizens of this country!  And if the punk has no sympathy for elderly who stand to lose the most via dismantling Social Security, why the hell would he give two shits about some hundreds of people losing their drinking water in Dimock, PA or any other Pennsylvania town? (And I harbor lots of connections to Pennsylvania, places like Lancaster, after tracing dozens of my ancestors back to those areas, including Conrad Brumbaugh who fought in the Revolutionary War.)

Some effort to ameliorate Rendell's gas frack frenzy was initiated by Lance Simmens (liason to Governor for Intergovernmental affairs) when he told Rendell: "We have got to get the people of Dimock clean water. This is the United States of America and we need to have this as a primary right for all of our citizens."

Rendell then agreed and asked Simmens what can be done, to which Simmens responded, "connect Dimock to a public water supply."  This would have been via a water pipeline connection to the public supply in Montrose, PA. In the wake of this, various news releases (from the Dept, of Environmental Policy)  showed the state of the Dimock wells, including: inadequate cement, cracked cement, or now cement, especially in the most crucial part of the well that's supposed to keep gas from migrating to aquifers. Well, those crucial parts had failed. (In part 2 of Gasland II, it would be revealed by a Cornell professor of engineering how 5% of all wells fail this way, so if there are 100,000 wells in a region that immediately means 5,000 failures and this after only 10 years. After 30 years the failure rate becomes 50%)

In a document released as Attachment A, dated Nov. 3, 2010, as Fox narrates, "it showed scientifically that Cabot had contaminated Dimock's water with methane."  This then fueled residents of other PA towns demanding the Dimock water line be "a precedent for the state."

Alas, the ultimate cost of over $12m is rejected when a new Repub administration enters under John Corbett - who received $1.6m from the frackers, and the water project is killed as Corbett's spawn appear on TV ads and drink 'fracked" water - asserting how good it is. They advised residents to move, but the residents have soundly delivered a load of middle finger salutes. Interestingly, three of Rendell's former  top aides (Battisti, Roy and Sexton), go to work for the gas industry in the wake of the administration change and Rendell himself joins a private equity firm with interests in the natural gas industry. He then goes on to advocate publicly for drilling without disclosing his industry ties. (And to think at one time I actually was a fan of this shit wad!)

Josh returns from Dimock to his own worsening situation and the only place left, the Delaware River,  where the gas frackers hadn't despoiled the watershed with their disgusting wells and leaking effluent.  But that was soon to change, bearing out Josh's quote of an old saying: 'you can never put your foot in the same stream twice'.

Flash then to Pavilion, WY where we see the frackers also demolishing the water, and the EPA issuing warnings to residents not to drink it. Louis Meeks, one resident, turns on the tap and releases water into a bottle. It's murky and smells like turpentine. The guy tells it like it is:

"This place isn't much but it's all we wanted. You want to tell me to shut my mouth? Well I'm not gonna!"

Meanwhile, resident John Fenton notes the chemical in his water is "something that's only been seen a couple times....ever'.  He adds:

"If this country worked the way it should. If the laws were designed to protect the people and protect the environment and not to make the corporations rich, they'd have the chemical lists for the water,"

Flash forward then to the Barnett Shale deposits in Texas, and the havoc drilling there is wreaking on residents. We finally meet a one-percenter, a "self made millionaire" who owns a 12,000 sq. foot home which is dubbed by Fox "the nicest gas drilling pad in America".  The proud owner proclaims that while he can control what goes on in his home he can't control the fracking effects outside or how it affect the home, including turning the water into flammable material. (Which he demonstrates for Fox by lighting on fire the water coming out of a hose.)

The self-made millionaire is also warned that if methane -laden water continued to go into the house, it could explode. Testing of the water shows: boron, methane, strontium, benzene, toluene. The lab that ran the tests added a note they'd never seen "anything like it that came from a water well". And "tell that homeowner, he can not use it for anything, even watering the yard." Obviously, because the grass will catch on fire.

Dish, TX is Josh's next stop, where the wife of a homeowner (actually mayor of the place) notes the prevalence of nosebleeds in her kids and that she doesn't want to see Leukemia flare up in them. As the mayor puts it: "Knowing what I know it's my duty as a human that we go and share our experiences here."

He adds that: "Three years ago I was a Republican, now I'm an independent."

We go next to Lisa and Bob Paar in Wise, County, TX. (Not far from Fort Worth in the Barnett Shale). But now,  Lisa has fracking chemicals in her lungs, and she notes there "are twenty one wells around us." We then see photos of Lisa's daughter, covered in a rash and with a nose bleed. Blood is seeping fro her nose as the poor kids tries desperately to get some relief. Outside in the yard, Lisa has come home to dead chickens and a near comatose dog. She then shows photos of her own rash which looks disturbing like a case of run amuck impetigo or cowpox, extending from her mouth, upper torso, arms, legs to the bottoms of her feet - adding her throat would start swelling. Her face then drew p on the left side like she had Bell's palsy.

Tests disclosed chemicals in her lungs including: HCl (hydrochloric acid). She relates that an internal specialist has informed her that if the family didn't move they would "spend more time and money in hospitalization, chemotherapy and morticians than anything else."

She acknowledges the family has been forced to leave because they're all sick. The solution from the head honcho of the town?

"Move! They need to move! Different people have different tolerance levels for getting sick. Those who do need to take the losses financially and get out of where they are. Your personal health is more important than anything else!"

So, in other words, never mind the beautiful home and life quality you may have now. If the gas frackers move in and fuck it up, fuck up your air, water and your life, well.....you had best just move - take your losses, and leave.....or be fucked! Hey, ever heard of the "pursuit of happiness"? How can you entertain such if your health can be destroyed with one frack well pouring out its rotten effluent?

But we haven't see the worst yet from these fucking  fracking reprobates and their corporate-bought, government whores. Oh no! The best is yet to come in terms of turning their attention on the "activist insurgency".   Here, Fox highlights a Powerpoint presentation on how the "gas industry is trading notes on their war effort." We see the advice to PR hacks:

"If you are a PR representative in this room today, we recommend you do three things:

- download the U.S. Army/ Marine Corps Counterinsurgency manual

Because we dealing with an insurgency!"

(Best believe it, fucker! )

"There's also a course provided by Harvard and MIT called 'Dealing with an Angry Public' . Take that course, A lot of officers in our military are attending this course"

It also didn't seem to matter that the U.S. military had already allegedly ruled it was illegal to use psyops techniques against Americans. (Though truth be told, they've been doing it, along with the spy state, since Kennedy was assassinated in November, 1963. Thus, every reference to the claim of Lee Oswald being the "lone assassin" is also effectively a use of psyops against the American people learning the truth. This is as egregious and damning as the use of counter insurgency PR is against the people learning the truth about fracking chemicals)

Reference is subsequently made to community outrage, and how "if one loses moral legitimacy one loses the war."

Near the end of Part 1 of Gasland II, we learn now Tom Ridge, former governor of PA and head of Homeland Security, signs on to be the chief spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition. (The same group that fights any regulation of gas drilling). The next month the Pennsylvania Dept. of Homeland Security "begins issuing briefs that lists anti-fracking protest groups as possible eco-terrorists."

This is registered under 'Pennsylvania Intelligence Bulletin No. 131", issued 30 August, 2010. The Bulletin notice reads:

"Environmental extremism trending towards eco-terrorism and criminality was a rising threat to the security of Pennsylvania".

One retired Air Force officer living in Dimock was forwarded the bulletin,and posted it on a gas drilling Listserv. Incredibly, after doing it, Pennsylvania Homeland Security chief James F. Powers, wrote her an email - assuming she was a pro-gas drilling stakeholder. He indicated the Dept, of PA Homeland Security has contacts with pro-drilling groups like the Marcellus Shale Coalition.  He also noted, that agents were "showing up at protests and spying on gas drilling activists"

They weren't only sending their collected information to law enforcement, but to the gas industry. Hearings were held by state rep. Lisa Baker into the misconduct. One activist witness testified that she "no longer feels safe in her home, and worries that her phone calls are being recorded and that her emails are being monitored."

Well, now, thanks to Ed Snowden's revelations, we know how true that is. Also she is likely listed as among those against whom action may be taken in any continuity of government scenario.  Powers, meanwhile, bloviated that any and all communications were only about "situational awareness" - a typical generic PR vanilla term to baffle with BS.

Finally, we're introduced to the 'Institute of Terrorism Research and Response'  - with which the state of Pennsylvania has a contract. Their goal? To assemble lists of terrorists and "anarchists" - including anyone who bitches too loudly about having their water polluted by frack wells or their air. Imagine that these delirious fuckheads actually believe no American has the right to be enraged, outraged and complain when the basic necessities for life are ripped from out under him and his family! What fucking planet do they inhabit? Maybe the same one that the yahoo PR pricks now attacking 'Gasland II' on various websites come from!

By this time, wifey had lost it and was unable to continue watching. Imbued with the sort of idealism shared by many new citizens (she became one in 1998) she couldn't believe what she was seeing and hearing. Was this the nation of freedom, first amendment rights, 4th amendment protections etc. and so on she had signed on to? The issue of the fracking wells and despoiled water and air looms large, since we are also near to supposed deposits here in Colorado..

Despite Janice's staunch refusal to watch Part 2 of Gasland II, I will, and will continue my review of Josh Fox's documentary. Maybe wifey will read about it when my blog post goes up!

Josh Fox Eats Niall Ferguson’s Lunch on Bill Maher's Real Time

Scene from the Josh Fox documentary ‘Gasland’ in which a homeowner lights his tap water on fire. Fox had the last laugh on terminal bore Niall Ferguson, appearing on Bill Maher last night.

Gasland and Gasland II film maker Josh Fox didn’t hold back Friday night when confronted by the Harvard conservative prof and Über Troll, Niall Ferguson. The fur flew, diatribes were unleashed and Ferguson howled “Cheap Shot!” after Fox suggested he might be one of the beneficiaries of fracking which is why he so avidly defends it. Ferguson resorted to just about every tawdry ruse and cheap tactic in the pseudo-armory of the entitled, aristocrat class, including denigrating Fox’s credentials, asking at one point: “What qualifies you to do this apart from being a film maker?” Fox responded: “I’m an American CITIZEN!” To which the audience cheered. Bravo! And to be sure, the citizen has paramountcy when federal, state and local governments try to undermine our voices.


Ferguson, twisting his face up to emulate a spoiled brat, then deplored the absence of any “science” in Fox's film efforts. But Fox held his own, especially on the issue of the water contamination- challenging Ferguson on whether he’s actually examined the data.


Most pleasing to the audience was Fox calling out Ferguson for his constant interruptions: “You haven’t let me complete a single sentence yet without interruption!” But this is common for the entitled likes of a twerp Harvard history professor. One can only feel sorry for his students who must resort to extreme distractions when they’re caught up in one of his classes.


Ferguson harped on an “MIT study” but that study MIT: The Facts On Fracking Methane Emissions,   was more concerned with the level of methane emissions relative to ordinary gas drilling – it didn’t address the water contamination issues at all. What we DO know is that Theo Colborn and researchers at the Endocrine Disruption Exchange here in Colorado pored through industry and government documents to assemble a list of generic chemicals used in hydraulic fracking, with the findings published in the journal, Human and Ecological Risk Assessment(2011).


The results are scary to say the least. Of  353 fracking chemicals for which they could find health information, nearly half affected the brain and nervous system. Meanwhile, a quarter were likely carcinogens and forty percent had the potential to adversely impact the endocrine system which regulates sexual development, pregnancy and critical aspects of child development.


Oil and gas industry PR meisters and hacks insist the levels of their chemicals are so low that there’s no need for concern, but scientists like Colborn aren’t assured. They know the existing data show that fetal and early childhood exposures to even very low levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals can have lasting effects over a lifetime. These effects include infertility and early puberty in girls.


Another worrisome aspect that twits like Ferguson overlook, is the debris – including radioactive- hurled up to form pools of produced water. These pools contain not only the chemicals originally injected into the ground, but heavy metals as well as radioactive material – which can drift into nearby homes, school yards. This finding has been published in ‘New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy’ by Alisa Rich who has studied such ponds, pools in Texas.


At the end of the Maher Real Time show it was a double TKO for Josh Fox, taking out both the troll Niall Ferguson as well as Neoliberal hack Jonathan Alter who at one point came to Ferguson's aid. (Neoliberals of the same political class stick together like rats.....errrrr.....birds of a feather.)


Of course, make no mistake the oil and gas industry will squeal like stuck pigs, just as much as the intelligence community is for having its own excesses exposed. We citizens will always have to expect those who would keep us deaf, dumb and blind to react this way. They want us to remain sheep, and when others help us to break out of the sheep mold, the arrogant corporate-war-spy state goes ape shit, along with all their whore lackeys. This is what the real citizen comes to expect, and we ignore it in our pursuit of truth and transparency pertaining to issues affecting our lives. We also continue to try to wake up our slumbering, semi-comatose fellow citizens who, for some reason, seem to think none of this matters, at least in their self-contained, egocentric social media universe.

Mail Call Brane: Readers Seeking Answers

Just curious as to the latest on Colorado’s MJ laws, and Implementing them.- Allan, Montreal, Quebec

A. The latest news is that on Wednesday the Colorado legislature made history, becoming the first in the nation to pass laws regulating recreational marijuana use. This now makes 4 major bills passed this year on marijuana legalization, and now the legislature awaits Gov. Hickenlooper to sign them. If he does sign them, and as a Dem Governor presiding over a D-legislature he ought to, then we will see the following (Denver Post, Thurs. May 9, p. 1A):


1-Marijuana will be sold in specially licensed stores that can also sell pot-related items such as pipes. However, only Colorado residents can own and invest in the stores, and only current medical marijuana dispensary owners can apply to open recreational pot shops for the first nine months. The first stores will open on Jan, 1, 2014.

2- Colorado residents will be able to buy up to an ounce of marijuana, the maximum legal amount for non-medical needs. Out of staters will be able to purchase only a quarter ounce at a time. The pot must also be sold in child-resistant packages, with labels that specify potency.

3- Voters will have the option of imposing heavy taxes on pot sales. A ballot measure set for November will ask voters to approve a 15 % excise tax and an additional 10 percent sales tax on marijuana. The excise tax will fund school construction while the sales tax will fund MJ regulation. Hickenlooper has already advised voters to pass the bills, and one wonders given his past MJ opposition, whether he will postpone signing the passed bills until November. And also, if the tax ballots don’t pass, then vetoing the four already passed MJ bills. I wouldn’t put this past a guy that once drank fracked water and claimed it was fine.

4- Incorporated marijuana collectives will be banned, so will MJ coffee shops, MJ-smoking in bars and gov’t run MJ stores. Though Colo. will have the most liberal MJ laws in the country – it will have the most restrictive laws in the country for MJ-themed magazines. These, like pornography, will have to be kept under the counter. (Publications such as 'High Times' have vowed to sue.)


5-Colorado drivers for the first time will be subject to a “stoned driving limit” (which is still being worked out). Juries will be allowed to presume that anyone testing above the limit was too high to drive.


Q. Were you aware that Sally Jewel, President Barack Obama's newest appointed Secretary of the Interior, is a pro-fracking hireling? Having read your blogs on fracking I wonder what you make of this appointment?
- Cheryl T., Wauwatosa, Wisc.


A. Okay, what Jewell actually said is: “ We must develop our domestic energy resources armed with the best available science, and this unbiased, objective information will help private, nonprofit and government decision makers at all levels make informed decisions about the responsible development of these resources. “ And yes, a number of right wing papers (i.e. The Washington Examiner) have taken this to be a strong endorsement of fracking. But as the Examiner puts it:


"Jewell was referring to hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking, ' the process by which a pressurized mixture of (mostly) water and chemicals is injected into shale rock formations deep underground. The process provides access to natural gas deposits that would otherwise be impossible to reach. The technology has been in use for 60 years in Texas and Oklahoma, but its phenomenally successful use more recently in Pennsylvania to develop the Marcellus Shale and in North Dakota to develop the Bakken formation has sparked an energy revolution in this country.  Environmentalists oppose fracking, claiming it threatens groundwater even though the evidence for this claim is all but nonexistent.”


Of course, assuming this is so, then it would be an unmitigated disaster. Anyone who has read my prior blogs on fracking would see why, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/02/that-disgusting-oil-reeking-fluid.html
and  http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/03/doctors-muzzled-to-prevent-warning.html


The facts are substantial so that appeal to scientific basis must mean not going forward with fracking and applying the precautionary principle: the frackers must prove their methods aren’t harmful to ground water supplies, not the converse- that potential victims must prove the harm. Already there have been more than 1,000 documented cases of water contamination while methane leaks associated with hydraulic fracturing have caused houses and wells to explode.  Moreover, fracking doesn’t just contaminate water but air as well. Residents in Dish, TX have repeatedly complained of illness since frackers arrived. Air quality tests have revealed high levels of benzene in the air.


The notion of natural gas as “clean energy” is also a myth. While it emits half as much carbon as coal and 70% as much as oil, it still imposes a carbon burden. In addition, it emits large quantities of methane gas which is 30 times more potent than CO2.  These figures, though smaller than the coal and oil carbon burdens ought not be ignored given that we have now hit 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, a threshold not reached for nearly 3 million years (Denver Post, today, p. 1B). What the new threshold means is that we have far less margin for error. Do we really want to conduct an aberrant experiment to turn our planet into another Venus, with a runaway Greenhouse effect - making it uninhabitable for future generations?

The production of this fuel also isn’t “clean” as it damages water, air and infrastructure. It is, in reality, no different from fouling our own nest to get a temporary solution to an energy problem –which is really spawned by too high a global population and too concentrated energy use.


Here are 5 other facts on fracking that ought to cause alarm and get the attention of our politicos who are too often hostage to special (read 'monied') interests:

1- Fracking a single well requires more than a million gallons of water. Here in COS, a number of wells have consumed over 3 million gallons, and many have come up empty. This insanity is occurring in an arid region in which we’ve had severe drought the past three years. The wastewater produced by fracking also contains high levels of radioactivity that wastewater treatment plants aren’t equipped to deal with.


2- Dangerous fracking chemicals are kept secret. In many states, the drilling companies won’t disclose the chemicals used in the fracking fluid, claiming the mixture is a “trade secret”. But independent analysts have identified 41 known chemicals most highly toxic carcinogens.


3- There exists a “Halliburton Loophole” with respect to most laws and oversight applied to fracking. This means the effluent generate by the frackers as well as their shale driller cohorts is exempt the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act So, E coli, is controlled in your water but it’s A-ok if carcinogenic benzene piles up.  Pardon me, but this selective regulation shows the paws of big, I mean BIG, lobby money!


4- The number of fracking wells is now growing at an exponential rate, in 28 states.

5- Turning on your tap (see image in previous links) liberates water accompanied by methane which can catch fire.

Fracking is unacceptable as an energy extraction process, since it imposes severe long term health costs to extract a temporary energy fix.


Q. In your April 13 blog on Bird Flu you mentioned the reported mortality rate of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza and that “studies of the levels of cytokines in humans infected by the H5N1 flu virus show elevated levels of tumor necrosis factor-alpha a protein associated with tissue destruction at sites of infection and increased production of other cytokines” What does this mean for getting sick? How sick can you get? - Delores, Bellingham, WA


A. Pretty damned sick! So sick in fact, that even if you don't die you will likely want to. The tumor necrosis factor-alpha a protein is implicated in severe inflammation and also potential degeneration of organs affected, including kidneys and lungs. Similar effects were reported during the Spanish Flu pandemic but of course the micro-biological, genetic marker tie- ins weren’t then available. However, doctors who performed the autopsies of some patients reported lungs turned to jelly as well as other organs. Basically, with the cytokine storm and tumor necrosis factor-alpha a protein, your whole body is sent into a death spiral of organ shutdown, shock,coma from immune system over-stimulation.

The closest I came to this was in December, 1968 when I got the Hong Kong Flu. I vomited for days, could barely breathe as I coughed up bloody mucus with each spasm, and felt like I had burst at least one lung. It was a god-awful experience I never want to repeat, and that flu barely killed 1 m around the world. The H5N1 will likely be 100 to 500 times more lethal and brutal.  I took more than 2 months to recuperate.


Q. I got a kick out of your brother Mike’s comments in your April 21 blog on the biblical exegesis test. He claimed that “the Jesuits themselves are the “storm troopers” of the RCC, and their purpose is propagation of the RC faith by any means possible? (i.e., SATAN!)”

What is he some kind of a crackpot? I couldn’t believe this guy couldn’t take the bible test or even answer one little question. And he claims to read the good book! It seems to me he’s got a lot of talk but little to show for it. I notice that since April 30 you have totally ignored him. Is this intentional? Alice K, Joliet, IL


It is. I think I mentioned in my blog on Colorado MJ issues and Mike's onerous errors (‘Reefer Madness Redux’, April 30) that since it's useless to try to argue or debate him (since he’s totally ignorant of the basic parameters that apply to the content of any worthwhile argument) . there'd be no further exchanges. At least not until he could pass a basic test in logic, for which I provided a link at the end of the blog.


Up to now, he’s not taken the test - which indicates to me he has no logic to demonstrate, nor is he the least interested in using logic in his arguments. This being the case, he's all about making noise and nothing more.

Therefore,  it’s a waste of time to engage him on any issue. He can believe whatever he wants to believe, but I don't have to give any heed to what I regard as noise.  If then he chooses to come to this blog (which he probably does to dredge for new material since he can’t think of any on his own) that’s his choice. As far as I am concerned his blog exists only as background noise in the blogosphere. It merits no more attention than noise, and certainly not being considered as any signal.  And if it is noise, then none of his harangues or "issues"  merit being dignified by any response.

Q. My husband of 44 just had his lab test come back and his PSA has tripled in 2 yrs. from 1.8 to 5.5.  I have pleaded with him to get a biopsy but he's terrified of sepsis as he read that this occurs in any cases with these biopsies. He also fears, after reading your own blog of July 19 last year (Notes on a prostate biopsy) having a young female physician assistant doing the procedure and not the actual urologist. He also fears the type of pain you described. Is there any way to get him to change? I fear he might have an aggressive cancer that might kill him!- Genevieve R.,  Los Angeles, CA

A. Your husband is actually quite right to be concerned, as the incidence of deaths, infections (including from sepsis, or massive blood poisoning via infection) have risen sharply, see e.g. http://www.naturalnews.com/033660_prostate_biopsy.html

As the article notes:

"....the research team found that having a prostate biopsy resulted in men being more than twice as likely to need hospitalization in the immediate post-procedure period. And once hospitalized, the men were at an increased risk of serious complications including bleeding and infection, flare-ups of underlying medical conditions (such as heart failure or breathing disorders) and death.


The researchers emphasized in their paper that their new data should remind doctors to carefully consider the risks and benefits of biopsy for individual patients before performing biopsies to look for cancer in the prostate"

See also: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/23/136501992/doctors-fret-over-rise-in-prostate-biopsy-infections


So what to do?  The best advice is to discuss the problem with one's personal physician, and this includes a cost -benefits assessment. In my case, the biopsy was done after PSA doubling, and then after the free PSA test, which also yielded a high probability of cancer. (The free PSA may actually be the most sensible next step. It measures the concentration of free prostate specific antigen, i.e. in the blood, relative to the bound form. The result comes back as a percentage. If it is 25% or higher then the chances are more than 90% the problem is enlargement of the prostate, not cancer. If the result is 5% or less, then the odds switch in the other direction: 77% that it's cancer and not benign hypertrophy.)


My biopsy, done after the free PSA,  then found an aggressive adenocarcinoma in two cores (Gleason socre 4+3) , and cancer present in five (lowest score Gleason 3+3). I was told by the urologist that watchful waiting could not be an option, so elected to have high dose radiotherapy. 

The infection risk from prostate biopsies can be contained with scrupulous cleanliness, and that means a thorough enema before hand. Also, the biopsy patient  takes a ciproflaxin  pill just before. Another alternative is to have the biopsy performed via the trans-perineal route (through the perineum) which carries vastly less risk of infection because the rectum wall isn't being penetrated by the tissue extracting needles. The problem is that this trans-perineal procedure is usually more costly, since in general the patient has to be put under (general anesthesia) and more staff are needed to be present.

Re: the physician assistant, I don't think the sex ought to matter - but whether the person is competent. A good way to find out is to become a temporary member of 'Angie's List' and then look up urologists and see what the reviews say.  The fact is that more and more physician assistants are now doing these procedures, and if they have the proper training - which most do - then the expertise should not be an issue.