Shale gas does not cause earthquakes, pollute water or use toxic chemicals. Wind turbines do far more damage.
It was the US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who once said: “You are entitled to your opinions, but not to your own facts.” In the debate over shale gas — I refuse to call it the fracking debate, as fracking has been happening in this country for decades — the opponents do seem to be astonishingly cavalier with the facts.Here are five things they keep saying that are simply false. First, that shale gas production has polluted aquifers in America. Second, that it releases more methane than other forms of gas production. Third, that it uses a worryingly large amount of water. Fourth, that it uses hundreds of toxic chemicals. Fifth, that it causes damaging earthquakes. None is true.
Let’s start with the aquifers claim. The total number that has been found to be polluted by either fracking fluid or methane gas as a result of fracking in the United States is zero. Allegation after allegation has been found to be untrue. The Environmental Protection Agency closed its investigation at Dimock, Pennsylvania, concluding there was no evidence of contamination; abandoned its claim that drilling in Parker County, Texas, had caused methane gas to come out of people’s taps; and withdrew its allegations of water contamination at Pavilion, Wyoming, for lack of evidence. Two recent peer-reviewed studies concluded that groundwater contamination from fracking is “not physically plausible”.
The movie Gasland showed a case of entirely natural gas contamination of water and the director knew it, but still pretended it might have been caused by fracking. Ernest Moniz, the US Energy Secretary, said this month: “I still have not seen any evidence of fracking per se contaminating groundwater.” Tens of thousands of wells drilled, two million fracking operations completed and not a single proven case of groundwater contamination. It may happen one day, of course, but few industries can claim a pollution record that good.
Next comes the claim that shale gas production results in more methane being released to the atmosphere than coal. (Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but stays in the atmosphere for a shorter time and its concentration is not currently rising fast.) This claim originated with a Cornell biology professor with an axe to grind. Study after study has refuted it. As a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology put it: “It is incorrect to suggest that shale gas-related hydraulic fracturing has substantially altered the overall [greenhouse gas] intensity of natural gas production.”
Third comes the claim that fracking uses too much water. The Guardian carried a report this week implying that a town in Texas is running dry because of water used for fracking. Yet in Texas 1 per cent of water use is for fracking; in the US as a whole it is 0.3 per cent — less than is used by golf courses. If parts of Texas run out, blame farming, by far the biggest user.
Fourth, the ever-so-neutral BBC — in a background briefing — has described fracking as releasing “hundreds of chemicals” into the rock. Out by an order of magnitude, Auntie. Fracking fluid is 99.51 per cent water and sand. In the remaining 0.49 per cent there are 13 chemicals, all of which can be found in your kitchen, garage or bathroom: citric acid (lemon juice), hydrochloric acid (swimming pools), glutaraldehyde (disinfectant), guar (ice cream), dimethylformamide (plastics), isopropanol (deodorant), borate (hand soap); ammonium persulphate (hair dye); potassium chloride (intravenous drips), sodium carbonate (detergent), ethylene glycol (de-icer), ammonium bisulphite (cosmetics) and petroleum distillate (cosmetics).
As for earthquakes, Durham University’s definitive survey of all induced earthquakes over many decades concluded that “almost all of the resultant seismic activity [from fracking] was on such a small scale that only geoscientists would be able to detect it” and that mining, geothermal activity or reservoir water storage causes more and bigger tremors.
The media has done a poor job of challenging the Frack Off rent-a-celeb mob with factual rebuttals. So the debate is not between two sincerely held but opposite arguments; it is an unequal contest between truth and lies. No wonder honest folk such as the residents of Balcombe are frightened.
Now it appears that the Diocese of Blackburn has circulated a leaflet about how fracking “has lured landowners to sign leases to drill on their land” and that it could cause lasting harm to “God’s glorious Creation”. Hang on, bishop. Did you say the same about wind power? Let’s run a quick comparison.
Luring landowners with money: wind farms pay up to £100,000 per turbine to landowners and most of that comes from additions to ordinary people’s electricity bills. What has the Church to say about that?
Spoiling God’s glorious creation: as Clive Hambler, of Oxford University, has documented, each year between 6 million and 18 million birds and bats are killed in Spain alone by wind turbines, including rare griffon vultures, 400 of which were killed in a year, and even rarer Egyptian vultures. In Tasmania wedge-tailed eagles are in danger of extinction because of wind turbines. Norwegian wind farms kill ten white-tailed eagles each year. German turbines kill 200,000 bats a year, many of which have migrated hundreds of miles.
The wind industry, which is immune from prosecution for wildlife crime, counters that far more birds are killed by cars and cats, and likes to point to a spurious calculation that if the climate gets very warm and habitats change then the oil industry could one day be said to have killed off many birds. But when was the last time your cat brought home an imperial eagle or needle-tailed swift?
Wind turbines are not only far more conspicuous than gas drilling rigs, they cover vastly more area. Only ten hectares (25 acres) of oil or gas drilling pads can produce more energy than the entire British wind industry. Which does the greatest harm to God’s glorious creation, bishop?
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