Tag: shale

One-Liner Wednesday: Ban CO2 fracking!

Yesterday, 90+ New York State organizations sent a letter to NYS officials, did a press release through Food & Water Watch, and held a press event, requesting that New York ban using carbon dioxide to fracture underground shale formations to extract methane and attempt to sequester carbon dioxide; this is important not only regionally in the Southern Tier of NY where it is being proposed (and where I live) but also nationally and internationally because fossil fuel companies are using this unproven, dangerous, and most likely ineffective scheme for extraction/carbon sequestration to justify their continued drilling for decades to come, despite the gravity and acceleration of climate change impacts.

This long, informative One-Liner is part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays series. Join us! Find out more here:  https://lindaghill.com/2023/12/20/one-liner-wednesday-a-more-honest-version/ 

Disturbing fracking news

I am a veteran of the fight against shale gas development in New York State, and, more broadly, against unconventional fossil fuel development and for a rapid increase in renewable energy in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions and keep global warming as low as possible.

I am fortunate to live in the Binghamton area, not that far from Ithaca, where several prominent scientists and professors work. They often came to speak at events in Binghamton and I sometimes would travel to Ithaca for lectures. I learned a lot from them and would use their research in commenting on news articles and in writing blog posts.

One of my favorite speakers is Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Cornell University. His specialty is rock fracture mechanics and he had done hydraulic fracturing research for many years, putting him in a unique position to anticipate the dangers of combining high-volume slick-water hydrofracking with long laterals in shale. He teamed with Dr. Robert Howarth, an environmental scientist at Cornell, in the first major paper raising an alarm about methane leakage from shale oil/gas development; the paper was controversial, but prescient, with subsequent research affirming levels of methane leakage much higher than industry and government projections.

This newly released twelve minute video with Dr. Ingraffea shows the climate consequences of the decision to develop shale gas. This blog post by Sharon Kelly gives some further background and also has a link to the video, in case the embedded one below isn’t working.