Marylanders can look to the north to see how not to approach climate change and fracking. StateImpact, a project of two NPR stations in Pennsylvania, recently broke a story that should make all of us wary about fracking and state reports.
The Pennsylvania state report on climate change, due over 18 months ago, has not yet been released. Apparently one of the hold-ups relates to research cited in the report by Penn State scientists who authored the report. Marie Cusack, one of the NPR reporters, found that “the DEP’s Policy Office wanted the team of Penn State scientists who authored the climate report to remove all references to a 2011 study from Cornell University” (StateImpact, August 27, 2013).
Lead author, John Howarth, who wrote the peer-reviewed study, concluded that the greenhouse gas footprint from fracking may indeed be greater than the footprint from conventional gas, oil, or coal due to leakage of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas. Howarth reported that methane can leak out from “flow-back return fluids -- and during drill-out following the fracturing.” Cusick noted that “methane is twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.”
Emails obtained by StateImpact indicate that Jessica Shirley, Pennsylvania DEP Policy Specialist, requested that Joe Sherrick, DEP’s Climate Change Program Manager, remove all references to Howarth from the state report on climate change. The Penn State scientists refused, and Shirley later back-peddled on the controversy, “We ended up not taking it out.” Meanwhile, Joe Sherrick quit his job. Cusick quoted him previously stating, “there was a ‘lack of support’ from the Corbett administration and the DEP for anything related to climate change.” The climate change report remains unreleased.
I attended the Maryland meeting on our state fracking report, and while our governor is an admirable voice for reducing climate change, I couldn’t help but feel that the staff who presented the report were not really listening to the voices of the public, scores of whom spoke out vehemently against fracking in Maryland. Having just seen Gasland 2, I am very fearful about fracking coming into our state. Check out SkyTruth, an amazing GIS tracking site, to see the latest fracking alerts for Pennsylvania and West Virginia. That’s pretty frightening too.
Here are links to SkyTruth, StateImpact, and the Howarth study.
http://frack.skytruth.org/pennsylvania-frack-alerts
http://frack.skytruth.org/pennsylvania-frack-alerts
By Donna McDowell, 8/30/2013