I am told that Diane Rehm has 150 acres in Harford, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania and has told others that she was a near lone hold out in refusing to lease her land for drilling.
To be clear, I would defend the right of any private land owner to lease their land or not to lease their land. Gas drilling is industrial activity and it cannot be done with zero impacts. Some landowners have joined Ms. Rehm in not leasing their property, while the vast majority have signed leases.
But the favoritism that Ms. Rehm shows toward the NYT Reporter and the Cornell professor who wants to ban shale gas and the hostility she cannot conceal for those who disagree with that view now makes a lot of sense.
Amazing what comes out in the wash, eh?
ReplyDeleteMore good news on the gas for electricity front:
http://thedailyreview.com/news/moxie-energy-proposes-to-build-power-plant-in-asylum-twp-1.1169139
800MW high efficiency, low emissions gas-fired plant, will draw and discharge ZERO water from the nearby Susquehanna and provide electricity for 600-700K homes.
Could you please give a source for this? It seems a serious charge in the context of her show where no such interest was revealed.
ReplyDeleteGee, you'd think that might be relevant information for the listeners.
ReplyDeleteI used to live in the country and there was a big tension between wealthy people with weekend houses who bought there for the peace and beauty and working class people who live there because it's where they've always lived. They tended to not focus on the beauty as much but on the freedom to fish, hunt, ride snow mobiles, etc. These people want jobs and to be able to hold on to their land. I'd imagine that tension is quite a bit worse in areas where Marcellus leasing and drilling are going on.
For many opponents, fear that it will change the area they chose to live in for the peace and beauty is the first and last reason that they oppose development. Perhaps they are embarrassed about that or want to scare enough of the less wealthy neighbors to join in their opposition so they make up other fake reasons to be opposed. Howarth and Ingraffea live in Ithaca and they don't want it to change. I have sympathy for that. But don't corrupt science or create fake controversies to cover up what you might be afraid seems like an elitist position. That hurts science. We want people to have faith in science on things like evolution and global warming, but the approach these guys are using will further erode faith in science which is already pretty low.
The Duke and Howarth papers made me wonder what peer review even means anymore. The science in those papers was so bad that it became clear that peer review does not mean what I used to think it meant. If all of the peers who review the paper have the same personal or political preference for results then all sorts of crappy science can pass peer review.
Happy Birthday, John Hanger
ReplyDeleteFor those who haven't seen it, this is an ABSOLUTE MUST SEE! This is a video from back when the Cornell professors first rolled out their study, in front of a room of their peers. Their tone and rhetoric is vastly different from when they are in public these days. They conclude their presentation with comments like "we do not expect you to take this as any sort of definitive study on this subject, it clearly is not" and "we're basing this report on questionable data".. "this study is only meant to provoke further study"...
ReplyDeleteThey then open up to questions and their peers immediately eviscerate the way the study was put together and its conclusions. It's really quite the sight to see. My conclusion is that they quite like the attention they are receiving from this, and have now changed their tune and are trumpeting their data as if it was indeed comprehensive (and accurate). The video is almost an hour long but this link SHOULD take you right to the part where they end their presentation. If not, jump forward to 38:09
http://bit.ly/iPAXD0
-Mike
Mike:
ReplyDeleteCould you resend the link to the video? It is not working.
I would like to post the video so everyone can see it.
Here it is John
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHg6Ueb2t-E
I watched it - the comments are really good. Many of the problems were immediately obvious to those in the audience.
I watched this video a year or so ago when it came out. It seemed to show what I've seen before at academic presentations, peer review.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.landex.com/webstore/jsp/cart/DocumentSearchResults.jsp?LastName=REHM&FirstName=*&StartDate=&EndDate=&MunicipalityCriteria=%2B.landex.19&InstrumentCriteria=%2B.landex&DisplayItemsPerPage=250&MaximumMatches=250
ReplyDeleteA search in Landex supports the claim on the face of it. No guarantee. Personally agree that every landowner, AT THIS STAGE, has the right to say no to development in Pennsylvania.