The headline on Tuesday’s editorial in Investor’s Business Daily – “Get the Frackin’ Gas” – is both clever and on the mark. The publication gets into trouble, however, when the body of its editorial veers into mischaracterizing ProPublica’s reporting on the environmental risks that need to be dealt with to produce the huge amounts of natural gas available underground in the United States.

Our reporters, led by Abrahm Lustgarten, have researched and written more than 50 stories on the subject over the past 18 months and are as expert on the topic as anyone in America.

Here is what is beyond dispute: The gas is highly desirable as a fuel, because it burns relatively cleanly and produces less greenhouse gas per unit of energy than oil or coal. There is lots of it obtainable within the U.S. using an enhanced version of an old drilling technology, called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” – much more than was widely supposed just a few years ago. That means using natural gas to power cars and electrical generation doesn’t require sending huge sums abroad, weakening the dollar and strengthening countries that aren’t particularly friendly to ours – Russia, Iran and Venezuela among them.

Here is a fact that some in the gas industry want to deny: There are significant risks to the water supply from producing these huge quantities of gas, but they are easily manageable with appropriate regulatory supervision. Unfortunately, the IBD editorial buys into the head-in-the-sand denial.

The editorial quotes a senator from the Oklahoma oil patch as saying there has never been a documented impact on water supplies from fracking. As former President Bill Clinton would understand, that depends on how you define “documented” and “fracking.” If you use any sort of sensible definitions, there have been well over 1,000 incidents in which spillage or leakage of fluids used in fracking have damaged water supplies.

An unmitigated canard quoted in the editorial – one that has a goofy way of creeping into discourse from a variety of people who dislike something we have written – is that George Soros, the global billionaire, is behind our coverage. Soros has never given us a penny, and even if he had, none of our funders know in advance what we are going to write about, nor do they have any role in deciding what stories we do or don’t do.

What our reporting over the last year and a half has demonstrated is simple: A provision in the huge 2005 energy legislation (crafted as a result of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s task force on the subject) exempted fracking from regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and left environmental supervision to the states. This gives the drilling industry huge freedom to play one state off against another in the race to get billions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs.

The growing numbers of proponents of eliminating that exemption argue that such action would provide a common regulatory framework and assure drilling could go forward in relative safety. The industry has responded with a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort to block that move, on the grounds that effective regulation would add to its costs.

ProPublica will continue to cover the issue aggressively, and factually.

Article by Paul Steiger, appearing courtesy of ProPublica

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The United States and a coalition of the world’s island nations and least developed countries are placing growing pressure on swiftly developing countries — most notably China — to commit to firm CO2 emissions reductions targets at the Copenhagen summit. As the U.S.’s chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, told reporters there’s “no way” to solve the global warming problem “by giving the major developing countries a pass,” poor states and island nations proposed that all countries sign an agreement with legally binding CO2 reductions targets. China rejected that idea.

The Alliance of Small Island States — composed of 43 nations highly vulnerable to global warming and sea level rise — was joined by 48 of the world’s poorest countries in proposing that the Copenhagen summit set a goal of holding global temperature increases to 1.5 C (2.7 F) above pre-industrial levels. But as the small nations were making that plea, the UK’s Met Office said that given rapidly rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, meeting a 1.5 C goal was virtually impossible and that holding global temperature increases to 2 C (3.6 F) will be difficult, even in the highly unlikely event that global greenhouse gas emissions peak in 2020.

On Wednesday, Stern took a harder line with China and major developing nations, eliciting a sharp response from the Chinese. Speaking with reporters, Stern said that with 97 percent of the growth in greenhouse gas emissions between now and 2030 expected to come from China, India, Brazil, and other booming developing economies, these nations must make firm commitments to reduce their output of CO2.

“If you care about the science — and we do — there’s no way to solve this problem by giving major developing countries a pass,” Stern said. “We’re not talking about the same kind of need for actions from the vast majority of developing countries. But the major ones, it’s going to be absolutely essential.

“China — I’m not being critical — has an extraordinarily successful economy… But emissions are emissions,” Stern said. “You’ve just got to do the math. It’s not a matter of politics or morality or anything else. It’s just math. And you cannot get the kind of reductions you need globally if China is not a major player in this. That’s the reality.”

Chinese diplomats struck back, with the nation’s climate change ambassador, You Sei, suggesting that the U.S. needed to rethink its stance. “What they should do is some deep soul-searching,” he told reporters. Another Chinese diplomat belittled America’s proposed reductions in greenhouse gases and said that the U.S.’s role as the largest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gases is an important factor in negotiations. “The historical responsibility of developing nations is actually low,” said Su Wei, a climate change negotiator.

As diplomats exchanged words over the responsibilities of the industrialized versus the developing world, U.S. financier George Soros identified a potential way in which rich nations could transfer tens of billions of dollars to poor nations to cope with rising sea levels and other problems associated with global warming. Speaking to reporters in Copenhagen, Soros told reporters that a proposal by wealthy nations to spend $10 billion a year to help the poor adapt to climate change was “not sufficient” and that tension over such aid “could actually wreck the conference.”

The billionaire suggested that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) use $100 billion of its funds — money set aside to assure liquidity in the global financial system — and make a one-time infusion into the climate change fund. The money, part of an arcane financial mechanism known as “special drawing rights,” would make it “possible to substantially increase the amount available to fight global warming in the developing world.” But Soros noted a major hurdle to his proposal – the U.S. exerts major control over the IMF and Congress would have to approve the funding plan.

As the conference entered its fourth day, a report by 100 of Europe’s leading marine scientists was released to the press, with the researchers warning that the Earth’s oceans are becoming acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the last 55 million years.

The report said that the seas were absorbing high levels of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as a result of human activity and that the acidity of the oceans has increased 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution. The study, an exhaustive review of existing scientific research into ocean acidification, said that coral reefs, some mollusks and the algae and plankton that are essential to the marine food web will be “severely affected” by 2050 because of the acidification problem.

Article appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360

[photo credit: New America Foundation]

Related posts:

• George Soros on Clean Energy
• George Karayannis
• A Fracking Mischaracterization
• China Pushes Commitments From Western Nations at Global Climate Talks
• Durban Climate Talks Begin With Dim Hopes for a Global Deal

George Soros, one of the world’s most successful investors and boldest philanthropists, has been more perceptive than almost anybody on the economic crisis – warning about “market fundamentalism” and the emerging credit “superbubble” since the 1980s. “The idea that financial market are self-correcting,” Soros writes, “remains the prevailing paradigm.” And it is wrong.

Rather than thinking markets are always right, Soros thinks of markets as “almost always wrong” – and has made billions by trading on this insight.

Now nearing 80, Soros’ observations carry more weight than ever. The new edition of The Crash of 2008: the new Paradigm for Financial Markets is Soros’ 11th book – and his first bestseller. In it he explains his theory and argues that clean energy investments are central to macroeconomic policy.

Soros’ theory – called reflexivity – states that human events are inherently unpredictable because people’s perceptions affect the underlying reality of the situation. For example, stock prices at any given moment more accurately reflect the prevailing bias of the market – greed or fear on the extremes -  than the underlying value of the company.

Soros, an early Obama supporter, has generally supported the president’s policies on stimulus, bank intervention, and clean energy legislation. “Energy policy could play a much more innovative role in counteracting both recession and deflation,” Soros argues. “The American consumer can no longer act as the motor of the global economy. A new motor is needed. Alternative energies and energy savings could serve as that motor, but only if the price of conventional fuels is kept high enough to justify investing in them. That might also help to moderate price deflation.”

“Neither energy security nor the control of global warming can be achieved without putting a price on carbon emissions,” Soros writes. “The United States cannot do it alone, but it cannot be done without the United States taking the lead.”

Related posts:

• George Soros’ Grand Scheme, the IMF’s Money, and Developing Nations
• George Karayannis
• A Fracking Mischaracterization
• When Can the US Get Started on Leading the Clean Energy Revolution?
• Public Support Strong for CO2 Regulation and Clean Energy