Recent NPR coverage of Horizontal Hydraulic Fracking
It is beyond belief what kind of misleading half-truths the shills for the natural gas industry will spew. For a hefty dose, check out NPRs recent coverage of the issue at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104565793. Don’t forget to check out the comments, too. You’ll notice that just about every comment that is favorable to the industry (though, mercifully, there aren’t many of them) is posted by someone who is paid by that industry, and every unfavorable comment is made by a concerned citizen with nothing to gain, monetarily.
In a previous post about fracking lies I talked about one of the gas-industry flunkeys misrepresenting horizontal fracking as the kind of thing they’d been doing for fifty years.
In the NPR piece, another industry spokesperson pulled the same stunt. Erica Carr offered a common type of disinformation that we’ve heard used before by people who are intentionally or ignorantly trying to mislead the conversation. To wit:
“It is important that the public really understand the facts about hydraulic fracturing before drawing conclusions based on misinformation…”
and then she disingenuously neglects to mention that the issue is not simply “hydraulic fracturing” but horizontal hydraulic fracturing – which is not, as she indicates, “…a common half century old technology…”
I’m sorry if Ms. Carr cannot tell vertical from horizontal, but I can assure her that NPR listeners can. She’s sadly mistaken if she thinks she’s taking anyone here in with that kind public-relations spin. (Apparently I am wrong on this, as evidenced by another apologist for the industry offering the same argument a few comments further down in the piece. Makes you wonder if that argument could be an orchestrated industry talking-point, like, “There is no evidence that cigarette-smoking can cause cancer.”)
By the way, is there anyone who has a good word to say about that industry who isn’t shilling for them?
The fact that the industry has to repeatedly stoop to that kind of half-truth should be enough to convince anyone that something stinks like gas.
I would hope that those people who believe they are going to get “free money” from the gas industry give it a second or third thought. There’s no free money, and you’re not winning $25,000,000 from the Publisher’s Clearinghouse, either, so don’t rush to send in your check to participate.
Protect yourself. Don’t be taken in. It may sound like a dream. It is. And then you wake up.
