US Climate Bomb is Ticking: What the Gas Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know

http://clearingthefogradio.org/us-climate-bomb-is-ticking-what-the-gas-industry-doesnt-want-you-to-know/

US Climate Bomb is Ticking: What the Gas Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know
Wednesday, 06 March 2013
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers , Truthout | News Analysis

James Hansen’s eye-opening article, “Game Over for the Climate,” brought widespread attention to the Alberta Tar Sands in Canada as a source of carbon which, if tapped, would lead to irreversible global warming. There is another climate bomb in the United States, shale gas hydraulic fracking, which emits methane, more dangerous than CO2. While many rhetorically call natural gas a bridge to the clean energy future, new information is showing the opposite; natural gas will hasten climate change, poisons the air, land and water, and carries unacceptable risks to our health.

We spoke with experts – Cornell engineering professor Dr. Anthony Ingraffea and biologist and author Dr. Sandra Steingraber – to explore what the newest studies show and to bust common myths about gas shale hydraulic fracking. The path out of this situation is a combination of promoting sound science, ending the extraction economy and employing direct action to weaken the stranglehold of industry on the political process. It is time to end the “all of the above” energy strategy which ensures going over the climate tipping point and instead commit to a carbon-free, nuclear-free energy economy.

Creating the Fog Around Fracking

Extraction of oil and natural gas trapped in shale rock far below the earth’s surface is an attempt to collect the last fragments of hydrocarbons for fuels and manufacturing. As fossil fuels dwindle, the methods of acquiring them are becoming more extreme. In addition to hydrofracking, others are deepwater oil drilling, mountaintop removal, uranium mining and tar sands excavation.

Industry is going to great lengths to hide the impact of these extreme methods and to promote them as safe and necessary energy sources, even falsely calling them “clean.” The American Petroleum Institute created multimedia public relations campaignswith innocuous names such as Energy Tomorrow and Energy Citizens to provide a green-washed image of the industry as one that is concerned about the environment and health and that is creating jobs and energy security. And President Obama has aided and abetted this effort with his advocacy for “all of the above” energy, while taking large donations from energy industries.