Not the state, D.C.:
"Fracking decision due on gas drilling in forest; Forest Service to settle dispute" by Darryl Fears | Washington Post, September 15, 2013
WASHINGTON — George Washington National Forest is more than just one of the largest expanses of pristine land in the East. It is the leafy cradle for the Shenandoah, James, and Potomac rivers, a source of drinking water for millions of people in greater Washington.
This should be a very, very interesting decision.
The forest — nearly 2 million acres of natural splendor straddling Virginia and West Virginia — might also hold another treasure: natural gas trapped under a deep layer of rock called the Marcellus Shale.
By the end of the month, the US Forest Service is expected to decide whether to ban or allow a controversial method of drilling, called hydraulic fracturing, under the forest’s new, 15-year forest management plan. The decision will settle a raging dispute between conservationists and the oil and gas industry.
This will be interesting because the s***s calling the shots down in Washington have to decide wether they will allow the poisoning of their water supply in the $ervice of indu$try. If they don't approve it they will be admitting to you that fracking is destructive. But it's okay if you and your water sources are poisoned and can catch fire, 'murkns.
The oil and gas industry argues it would be unfair for the government to ‘‘slam the door’’ on hydraulic fracturing in the forest for such a long period of time, and points out that natural gas is a cleaner fuel than coal.
Whatever happened to solar and wind?
Conservationists say the drilling method, also referred to as fracking, could contaminate water at its source.
Not could, does!
Haven't you seen Gasland I and II?
The process involves drilling a deep vertical well, then bending it horizontally so millions of gallons of water and toxic chemicals can be blasted into the earth to fracture shale and capture gas.
But it's safe. Won't cause earthquakes or nothing!
The Forest Service proposed banning the practice two years ago, a move criticized by Republican Governor Robert McDonnell as overreach. But the proposed ban is backed by the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the Washington Aqueduct, and the Fairfax County (Va.) Water Authority.
And the military is one of the biggest polluters on the face of the planet, be it bases, patrols, or operations!
Both agencies provide drinking water from the Potomac River to 4.5 million customers in the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia.
Thomas Jacobus, the Washington Aqueduct’s general manager, called the forest streams and rivers ‘‘a key resource,’’ and said in a letter to the Forest Service that anything that undermines agreements made by states to preserve the water quality of the Potomac ‘‘would be unwelcome. Safe water supply is essential to life.’’
Yeah, we know, and yet the oil and gas industry already has wells scattered across this country -- all with government approval and exemptions.
One hundred species of fish and mussels live in the shallow waters of the Cowpasture and Jackson rivers, which gurgle in the forest along the Appalachian spine. There are also 70 types of amphibians and reptiles, 180 species of birds, and 60 species of mammals. The list of all the trees, plants, fishing areas, hiking trails, and campsites could fill a book.
Those will all die.
The forest streams and rivers, called headwaters, form in the region’s highest elevations and flow down.
They are the origin of the Potomac’s drinking water and provide the water that created the James and Shenandoah rivers.
The officer in charge of drafting the final management plan said he understands the stakes of allowing drilling with chemicals in one of the most pristine forests on the East Coast.
‘‘If you had a pollutant anywhere in the watershed, it would be a concern,’’ said Ken Landgraf, planning staff officer for George Washington National Forest. ‘‘But in the headwaters, everyone would have to deal with that. Everybody’s going to see that further downstream in the watershed.’’
Another concern revolves around wastewater that bubbles back to the surfaces during the process and must be stored in sealed containers that have been known to leak.
It's bubbling back because there is methane, a huge global warming greenhouse gas, leaking from the ground!
And the tanks are leaking?
Dozens of heavy trucks carry the mixture of water and chemicals to and from the drilling sites, sometimes spilling it.
Good Lord, the vagueness of this crap cover story and limited hangout makes the corporate pre$$ look $hamele$$.
More than 500 million cubic feet of gas are entombed in Marcellus Shale, which runs 95,000 square miles between Virginia and Ohio.
It's fool's gold, folks.
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Related: Frack This!
Maybe they could do something to make it rain and wash it all away:
"Global warming remedies studied by scientists; One may deflect solar radiation" by Lenny Bernstein | Washington Post, September 15, 2013
WASHINGTON — The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines, blasted enough fine particles and sulfur dioxide gas into the atmosphere to envelop the Earth in a high-altitude cloud for the better part of two months.
When scientists checked in 1992, they determined that the cloud had deflected enough sunlight to cool the planet by about 1 degree.
There is no accounting for clouds.
With the planet warming and the threat of long-term climate change looming, some experts are wondering whether the time may have come to deliberately attempt such ‘‘solar radiation management.’’
I don't think you can manage that, but you gotta have faith!
The idea is being investigated by, among others, the National Academy of Sciences, which is conducting research funded by the CIA, NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
What is the CIA doing with its hand$ in ENVIRONMENTAL RE$EARCH, folks?
I know they are hard to spot with those other alphabet liars, but c'mon!
But even considering such an endeavor raises many practical, economical, political, and ethical questions, experts said, including what the affects on global and regional climates would be....
Alan Robock, a distinguished professor of environmental sciences at Rutgers University, said additional research should be conducted despite concerns that determining the feasibility of such ‘‘geoengineering’’ might encourage a government or wealthy individual to try it, and could lessen efforts to curb greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
A James Bond movie?
Mount Pinatubo’s eruption sent an estimated 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide and ash into the stratosphere, where the sulfur dioxide formed sulfate particles that reflected sunlight back into space.
Not like I'm going to start rooting for volcanic explosions so some $cam that will benefit Wall Street banks can get off the ground.
Some believe this could be done effectively and at relatively low cost by injecting an aerosol of sulfur dioxide or some other gas into the atmosphere over a period of time, either from aircraft or missiles.
Don't they already do chemtrails?
Ken Caldeira, a senior investigator for the Carnegie Institution for Science, told a congressional committee in 2009 that such methods are inexpensive, can be deployed quickly, and probably would cool the Earth effectively.
We are already in a cooling period! Why do you want to help it along, to cull us world citizens?
He stressed, however, that it is more important to address the root cause of global warming by reducing the production of greenhouse gases.
It's fart-misting propaganda coming from this mouthpiece!
But Robock, in an interview, said the effort is ‘‘not feasible. No technology exists to do solar radiation management. There are no airplanes or hoses or missiles that exist to get sulfur up into the stratosphere.’’
A more limited variation of the idea is to spray sea salt into clouds over the ocean, probably from ships, to form more water droplets in the clouds and make them whiter, said Lynn Russell, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, at the University of California at San Diego. The brighter clouds would reflect more sunlight.
I remember my parents telling me they started doing that way back in the 1940s. Everybody knew about it. It was called seeding the clouds.
Is this what we get and will get from the propaganda pre$$ mouthpiece after 60 years regarding anything happening today?
But scientists are uncertain about how a major solar radiation management effort would affect rainfall, crop growth, and ocean life, among other things.
Then don't mess with Mother Nature!
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One never wants to discount weather manipulation "conspiracies," and one can see here that they have been doing such things for a long time; however, one must recognize that even if they have the capability it is obviously backfiring. Otherwise, we would be sizzling all the time and wouldn't be having record cold winters and snowfalls. The freak storms and unusual weather systems may also be accounted for in this way.
In any event, weather is something all of us have to deal with no matter what the cause.
And for whatever reason, I'm thirsty!
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
It doesn't look good for Washington's water supply.
"Fracking and methane tie weakened by study" by SETH BORENSTEIN and KEVIN BEGOS | Associated Press, September 17, 2013
WASHINGTON — Drilling and fracking for natural gas don’t seem to spew immense amounts of the greenhouse gas methane into the air, as has been feared, a new study says.
Study by who?
The findings bolster a big selling point for natural gas, that it isn’t as bad for global warming as coal. And they undercut a major environmental argument against fracking, a process that breaks apart deep rock to recover more gas. The study, mostly funded by energy interests, doesn’t address other fracking concerns about potential air and water pollution.
Oh, it is ANOTHER $ELF-SERVING SURVEY in my mouthpiece ma$$ media!
The results, which generally agree with earlier Environmental Protection Agency estimates, were published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
About 90 percent of the study funding came from nine energy companies that drill for natural gas with the rest coming from an environmental group. But study authors said they controlled how the research was done and how the wells were chosen for study. And even Robert Howarth of Cornell University, one of the scientists who first raised the methane leak alarm, calls the results ‘‘good news.’’
Howarth, who didn’t participate in the new work, did caution that the results may represent a ‘‘best-case scenario.’’ It might be, he said, that industry can produce gas with very low emissions, ‘‘but they very often do not do so. They do better when they know they are being carefully watched.’’
He and the study authors say more research is needed to explain why some studies have found high rates of leaking methane and others have not.
Translation: you were just lied to, readers.
The University of Texas study wasn’t a comprehensive study of all the places natural gas can leak. But Steve Hamburg, chief scientist at the market-oriented Environmental Defense Fund, which helped fund the study, noted that it presents ‘‘direct measures of things that everyone’s been hand-waving about before. These are hard numbers using the best scientific approach that we can.’’
In other words, the "environmental" group is nothing but a indu$try-funded front.
The study found that during the process of extracting natural gas from the ground, total leakage at the sites was 0.42 percent of all produced gas.
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I really am at the point where I really no longer want to read this $hamele$$ corporate $hit, readers.
