Fracking and your community
What is Fracking
This report from US site Live Science gives a pretty good description of the fracking process and the arguments surrounding it
https://www.livescience.com/34464-what-is-fracking.html
This infographic shows the fracking process
Shalegas Infographic
This video explains the fracking process
Gasland, Truthland and The Sky is Pink
Gasland
Gasland is a controversial film made by American director, Josh Fox. Unfortunately it isn’t available on YouTube for us to embed here
You can buy a copy from Amazon by following this link .
Alternatively you can view it online here
The film was nominated for an Academy Award and earned the wrath of the Energy Industry who like to enjoy all the benefits of massive PR budgets and don’t like getting a bit of their own medicine back again.
It even prompted the Gas Industry to make their own documentary, called “Truthland” in return.
In the spirit of even-handedness we are happy to post a link to that film too, but we should perhaps warn you that www.timesonline.com said of it
“Truthland” is the natural gas industry’s effort to both mimic and discredit “Gasland,” Josh Fox’s multi-award-winning documentary of 2010. “Truthland” is billed as a film, though it’s really just the long version of all the infomercials put out by the natural gas industry in the past few years. This one was designed specifically, it seems, to insult both Josh Fox and the audience’s intelligence.
You can read the whole , quite amusing, review here
No, we didn’t think Truthland is terrifically good either. It looks a bit desperate to us.
Gasland has generated quite a cottage industry of rebuttals and counter rebuttals. One thing is clear however – it rattled the shale gas industry and got people to start waking up to what was happening around them in America. Not all the issues highlighted in this film would be relevant in the UK. We believe for example that open flow-back water storage pits would not be allowed here. However, it makes some good points in an accessible way.
Both Gasland and Truthland are essential viewing, but for different reasons. Watch them both and see what you think.
The Sky is Pink – Josh Fox’s follow up film on fracking
Some of the main myths debunked
A keynote address in by Anthony Ingraffea at Marcellus Shale Exposed, held March 17, 2012 at Northampton Community College, Bethlehem, PA. This video is in three parts. In his presentation, Dr. Ingraffea decimates four myths central to the shale gas industry: (1) Fracking is a 60-year old, well-proven technology; (2) Fluid Migration from faulty wells is a rare phenomenon; (3) The use of multi-well pads and cluster drilling reduces surface impacts; and (4) Natural Gas is a clean fossil fuel. The first part deals largely with well integrity, or lack there-of due to inevitable cement failures and human health impacts The second part deals with methane emissions from the shale-gas industry, and the imperative of reducing this powerful greenhouse gas immediately. The last part is the Q and A, Dr. Ingraffea is the Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering at Cornell and a co-founder of Physicians, Scientists Engineers for Sustainable and Healthy Energy. His research and modelling of hydraulic fracturing, funded by Schlumberger, have been foundational.
