23 Jun Denise Robbins of Media Matters for A
Denise Robbins of Media Matters for America notes that these figures and estimates greatly exceed the findings of previous studies. Robbins also points out that quite a few major news outlets, including Reuters, CNBC, Forbes, and the Los Angeles Times, covered the IHS report without mentioning the companys financial ties to petroleum and related industries. Americas Natural Gas Alliance, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Chemistry Council, the Natural Gas Supply Association, and similar groups all had a part in funding the bullish study.
Does Fracking Cause Human Health Problems?
The political element and the popular press exploit this question. The recent trend toward “false balance” in news reporting from television and press has created the impression that the subject involves considerable debate.
The Checks and Balances Project has implicated these factors in the growth of false balance thinking:
Growing influence of the corporate lobbying industry.
Declining size of the press corps available to fact-check and accurately describe that industry.
Severe time impoverishment in newsrooms caused by drastic cutbacks in the size and depth of the press corps, combined with the acute new time pressures of blogging, iterative reporting, and tweeting.
Ultra-technical nature of energy and environmental issues, which enables charlatans to cloud the debate and crowd out honest brokers, such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, with authoritative-sounding pronouncements.
The Politics of Fracking
Politicians have oversimplified the issue of pollution and human health in the fracking debate and have sharpened their arguments accordingly. Each side now tends toward simply demonizing the other. Here are several relatively plain examples of loose health statements on the anti-fracking side:
Along with this fracking-enabled oil and gas rush have come troubling reports of poisoned drinking water, polluted air, mysterious animal deaths, industrial disasters and explosions. We call them “Fraccidents.”
Health consequences of concern include infertility, birth defects, and cancer.
And a more grounded conclusion from the AP study:
People who live close to natural gas drilling in four states complain of similar health symptoms, ranging from respiratory infections to lesions and neurological [disorders]….
Compare to these the pro-fracking bias involved in a popular University of Texas at Austin examination of fracking made in concert with the inappropriately named Environmental Defense Fund [EDF]. EDFs “oddly rosy findings” won praise from the American Petroleum Institute, Energy in Depth, the p
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