Bird’s Eye: We follow last week’s “Isolated Cultures” with a companion piece on landscapes.
* Beautiful & Unusual Desert Images World Geography
* Alien Landscapes Daily Mail
* Icelandic Landscapes National Geographic Magazine
* K2 National Geographic Magazine
Bird’s Eye: She’s been teaching us for millennia: as ye sow, so ye shall reap. Fracking produces earthquakes; giant dams redistribute weight, and then things shift; warmer weather produces changing weather patterns. There’s a lesson here, though I don’t suppose we’ll be quick to learn it without some more of Her exemplary grandmotherly kindness.
* Earthquakes Linked To Oil And Gas Extraction, Studies Show Toronto Star
If you prod Mother Earth, she’s likely to shake you up, a new U.S. study has found. It builds on earlier studies – some performed in Canada – that draw links between small earthquakes and a gas production technique known as “fracking,” or breaking up underground shale to release natural gas.
A study by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey says that a “remarkable” increase in the number of small quakes in the middle of the U.S. is “almost certainly manmade.” The frequency of quakes recorded in 2011 was six times anything recorded before 2000, the study found. “A naturally occurring rate of change of this magnitude is unprecedented outside volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock, of which there were neither in this region,” the abstract says.
* Three Gorges Forces Further Displacement China Digital Times
Twenty years ago this month, the Chinese government, amid great controversy but with the blessing of a Canadian government report, authorized construction of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.The critics said the dam would be an environmental and economic nightmare that would flood millions of people off their land, induce landslides and earthquakes, cripple navigation and produce unaffordable electricity.
Twenty years later, the critics have been proven right on all counts. The arguments in favour of the dam were always thin gruel, without scientific depth or credibility, repeated ad nauseam in the form of propaganda, while the arguments against the dam were extensive and detailed and, as we now know, accurate.
About one year ago, Beijing officially acknowledged the negative social and environmental impact of the project. So far, over a million people have been forced to relocate as the waters of the Yangtze consumed their homes and farmland, and more may soon be forced to move due to related geological changes. The Washington Post reports: Another 100,000 people may have to move away from China’s Three Gorges Dam due to the risk of disastrous landslides and bank collapses around the reservoir of the world’s biggest hydroelectric facility, state media said Wednesday.
* Global Warming is Affecting Weather
Global warming is making hot days hotter, rainfall and flooding heavier, hurricanes stronger and droughts more severe.
This intensification of weather and climate extremes will be the most visible impact of global warming in our everyday lives. People who have the least ability to cope with these changes–the poor, very old, very young, or sick–are the most vulnerable.
Bird’s Eye: More horrible (though not surprising) news of the long term effects of corexit, the BP oil dispersant on the fisheries that once lived in the Gulf. Some glorious photos of tropical fish, and a marvellous BBC video of an osprey on the hunt.
* Gulf Seafood Deformities Alarm Scientists Al Jazeera
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“The fishermen have never seen anything like this,” Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. “And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I’ve never seen anything like this either.” …Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP’s 2010 oil disaster. Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp – and interviewees’ fingers point towards BP’s oil pollution disaster as being the cause. Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp. “At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these,” Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp. According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: “Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets.” |
* The Most Beautiful Fish In The World Buzzfield
* The Osprey – The Ultimate Fisher The Presurfer
Bird’s Eye: Watch the 32 second video, and see the temperatures over the last 130+ years. Juan Cole looks at the likely implications, and the OECD looks at the projected rise in greenhouse gases if nothing changes. Fair and balanced, we offer Faux News reporter Joe Bastardi’s opposing lunacies point of view. And a truly marvellous resource: 100 documentaries you can watch free online, from michael Moore, to Amy Goodman, to the Yes-men, to Noam Chomsky…
* Global Warming: 1880-2011 32 second visualization of annual temperatures
* 2010 Hottest Year on Record Juan Cole Informed Comment
The hottest year on record is 2010, not 1998, according to new calculations of the major British climate study unit….Since 1900, the average surface temperature of the earth has increased by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit, about .75 degrees C., because of the enormous amount of carbon dioxide and soot that industrial society is spewing into the atmosphere. Because of increasing carbon emissions, the earth is likely headed toward a 3-5 degree C. increase (5-7 degrees F.), which will over centuries melt all the surface ice, produce tropical conditions over the entire planet, and cause a sea level rise of dozens of meters/ yards. In the worst case scenario, a third of all land will be submerged.
New research on the Pliocine era has shown that even a 2 degree C. increase will likely cause a sea level rise of as much as 60-70 feet (20-23 meters). That would affect 70% of the earth’s inhabitants, hundreds of years down the road.
* O.E.C.D. Warns of Ever-Higher Greenhouse Gas Emissions New York Times
Global greenhouse gas emissions could rise 50 percent by 2050 without more ambitious climate policies, as fossil fuels continue to dominate the energy mix, theOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Developmentsaid Thursday. “Unless the global energy mix changes, fossil fuels will supply about 85 percent of energy demand in 2050, implying a 50 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions and worsening urban air pollution,” the Paris-based O.E.C.D. said in its environment outlook to 2050 . The global economy in 2050 will be four times larger than today and the world will use around 80 percent more energy
* Fox News Science, Again Media Matters for America
“Completely wrong.” “Simply ignorant.” “Scientifically incorrect.” “Utter Nonsense.” “Very odd.” These are words scientists have used in the past to describe the nationally televised ramblings of weather forecaster Joe Bastardi, who Fox News hosts from time to time in an apparent effort to dismantle whatever its viewers might know about physics.
…Here he is on Fox Business this morning, declaring that carbon dioxide “literally cannot cause global warming”:
BASTARDI: CO2 cannot cause global warming. I’ll tell you why. It doesn’t mix well with the atmosphere, for one. For two, its specific gravity is 1 1/2 times that of the rest of the atmosphere. It heats and cools much quicker. Its radiative processes are much different. So it cannot — it literally cannot cause global warming.
Asked about Bastardi’s statements, Kerry Emanuel of MIT said: “Utter rubbish. Sorry to be so direct, but that is just the case.” NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt added: “Bastardi is attempting to throw out 150 years of physics.” “He seems very confused,” said physicist Richard Muller.
* Environmental Cinema: The Top 100 Documentaries Inspiring the Shift to a Sustainable Paradigm
Just imagine what could become possible if an entire city had seen just one of the documentaries below. Just imagine what would be possible if everyone in the country was aware of how unhealthy the mainstream media was for our future and started turning to independent sources in droves.
….Our society needs a new story to belong to. The old story of empire and dominion over the earth has to be looked at in the full light of day – all of our ambient cultural stories and values that we take for granted and which remain invisible must become visible…..So take this library of films and use it. Host film screenings, share these films with friends, buy and give copies to your elected officials and school faculty. Get this information out in to your community and you will be laying the foundation for a local movement for mass societal, environmental and economic change.
1. Followups
Bird’s Eye: We start with two more perspectives on Syria. Robert Fisk begs to differ with the prevailing view that Assad is on the verge of falling, and has some powerful backing for his perspectives, as always. Meanwhile Stephen Zunes puts the Russian and Chinese vetoes of the anti-Assad UN resolution into a much-needed historical context. We have a list of the 100 best SFF novels, and a look at green energy in the third world, and the roles it can fill there.
* From Washington This Looks Like Syria’s ‘Benghazi Moment’. But Not From Here Robert Fisk The Independent
But look east, and what does Bashar see? Loyal Iran standing with him. Loyal Iraq – Iran’s new best friend in the Arab world – refusing to impose sanctions. And to the west, loyal little Lebanon refusing to impose sanctions. Thus from the border of Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, Assad has a straight line of alliances which should prevent, at least, his economic collapse.
The trouble is that the West has been so deluged with stories and lectures and think-tank nonsense about the ghastly Iran and the unfaithful Iraq and the vicious Syria and the frightened Lebanon that it is almost impossible to snap off these delusional pictures and realise that Assad is not alone. That is not to praise Assad or to support his continuation. But it’s real.
* Putting the UN Veto in Perspective NationofChange
What is striking is the response from US officials and pundits so roundly condemning the use of the veto by these two permanent members of the Security Council to protect the Syrian regime from accountability for its savage repression against its own citizens.
A little perspective is required here: Since 1970, China has used its veto power eight times, and Russia (and the former Soviet Union) has used its veto power 13 times. However, the United States has used its veto power 83 times, primarily in defense of allies accused of violating international humanitarian law. Forty-two of these US vetoes were to protect Israel from criticism for illegal activities, including suspected war crimes. To this day, Israel occupies and colonizes a large swath of southwestern Syria in violation of a series of UN Security Council resolutions, which the United States has successfully blocked from enforcing. Yet, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insists that it is the Russians and Chinese who have “neutered” the Security Council in its ability to defend basic human rights.
* The 100 Greatest Science Fiction or Fantasy Novels of All Time This Recording
A good list, though the fun of such things is always where one differs. Your editor’s score: 51/100
* World’s 1.6 Billion Poor Going GreenJuan Cole Informed Comment
Renewable energy is often thought of as an initiative of advanced, sane countries such as Portugal and Germany. But there is another arena where green energy is making an impact– on the lives of the world’s poorest populations, in the global South. For them, it is not a luxury or prudent planning for the future or a dutiful attempt to save the planet from the looming catastrophe of climate change fueled by humans pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Rather, it is a way of solving their present, low-tech energy crisis.
Kevin Bullis explains that many villagers use expensive kerosene for cooking and heating, and to fuel lamps for light. Cell phones have spread rapidly in Africa and Asia (where often there is no grid of copper wires or underground fiber optic cables and so mobile phone towers allow them to leapfrog to a newer technology). But given that many villagers do not have electricity, they have to take their phones to private charging centers and pay an arm and a leg for the recharging.
Both kerosene and the private charging stands can be replaced right now, in the present, with cheaper solar batteries. For light, solar-powered light-emitting diode (LED) panels are much cheaper than light bulbs powered by burning kerosene.
1. Followups
Bird’s Eye: We start with a viral video that is painfully funny and pretty accurate about the difference between men’s and women’s brains. The standup guy, Mark Gungor, is pastor of Celebration Church in Green Bay, WI. Russian drillers have reached Lake Vostok, though we’ll have to wait at least 8 months to learn the key answer: is there life? A long and fascinating piece looks further at Western perceptions of Islamic women (Part 3 goes on with this).
* “The Nothing Box” (AKA. Men’s vs. Women’s Brains)- YouTube (Thanks Melissa)
* Drilling Reaches Lake Vostok, Long Trapped Under Antarctic Ice SheetNew York Times
The first hint of contact with the lake was on Saturday, but it was not until Sunday that pressure sensors showed that the drill had fully entered the lake. Lake Vostok, named after the Russian research station above it, is the largest of more than 280 lakes under the miles-thick ice that covers most of the Antarctic continent, and the first one to have a drill bit break through to liquid water from the ice that has kept it sealed off from light and air for somewhere between 15 million and 34 million years.
There have been much-disputed hints that life might still exist there. If so, that would give a great boost to hopes of finding life in similar conditions in icy water on one of the moons of Jupiter.
* Islam, Women and the West Informed Comment
Soon, an entire commercial apparatus to manufacture the eroticized imagery of the Middle East was in place. Entrepreneurs set up local studios where they could gather props, hire prostitutes as models, and then stage harem scenes to create the erotic Oriental postcards their audiences back home demanded. “What the postcard proposes as the truth,” writes the scholar Malek Alloula, “is but a substitute for something that does not exist.”
What is most interesting about this seeming confusion between the imagined and the real, between reading and seeing, is the extent to which the former so often takes precedence over the latter. This, in turn, reflects the primacy in Western thought of the expert “text” – philological, anthropological, theological, etc. – over any lived experience or personal observation of the Muslim world…. This phenomenon reflects what I call the anti-Islam discourse, a totalizing western narrative that dates back to the run-up to the First Crusade at the close of the eleventh century. Yet, its core elements – that Islam is inherently violent, sexually perverse, and anti-modern – remain as influential today as they once were in the halls of the Roman curia.
…Exhibit A may be found in our obsession with the hijab, or veil, as a barometer of social progress and overall well-being within Islamic societies, to such a degree that it has become a commonplace of Western mass-media coverage, social activism, and political discussion alike. For years, the veil has been a staple of endless news articles, books, and documentaries, and it is captured in magazine and television images – all as shorthand for a society, a civilization, or a system that is backward, alien, immobile, and inherently antithetical to human rights and dignity.
Bird’s Eye: Like many others, I’ve been puzzled as to why there has been such intense denial to the obvious and proven fact of man-made climate change. In a great article Bill McKibbon makes the answer clear. Because to stop using oil would cause massive economic dislocation to oil companies. This is an article worth reading; and the January image of our planet, centred on snow-free north America is pretty telling. The second piece explores the economics further, the 3rd looks at the crisis renewables face, and we end with a Big Picture photo feature on coal. Lovely photos; depressing scenarios.
* The Great Carbon BubbleBill McKibbon NationofChange
We have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology. Last month, for instance, NASA updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization’s gallery: “Blue Marble,” originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on January 4th, a good day for snapping photos because there weren’t many clouds….As Jeff Masters, the web’s most widely read meteorologist, explains, “The U.S. and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the Western U.S. is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s….Watching the weather over the past two years has been like watching a famous baseball hitter on steroids.”
In the face of such data — statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet — you’d think we’d already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we’re witnessing an all-out effort to… deny there’s a problem.
And when they do break their silence, some of our elite organs are happy to indulge in outright denial. Last month, for instance, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by “16 scientists and engineers” headlined “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” The article was easily debunked. It was nothing but a mash-up of long-since-disproved arguments by people who turned out mostly not to be climate scientists at all, quoting other scientists who immediately said their actual work showed just the opposite. It’s no secret where this denialism comes from: the fossil fuel industry pays for it. (Of the 16 authors of the Journal article, for instance, five had had ties to Exxon.) Writers from Ross Gelbspan to Naomi Oreskes have made this case with such overwhelming power that no one even really tries denying it any more. The open question is why the industry persists in denial…
* The Big Choice Capital Institute
Barring a miracle technology advance in the next decade (keep working brilliant scientists and entrepreneurs), if we want to avoid civilization-transforming and global security threatening climate change, we must absorb a global security threatening $20 trillion write off (that’s 40 percent of global GDP) into our already stressed global economy. Even if gradually spread over a decade or more, with partial offsetting value creation in sustainable energy industries, this is an unprecedented challenge.
* Rare Minerals Dearth Threatens Global Renewables Industry Guardian
Shortages of a handful of rare minerals could slow the future growth of the burgeoning renewable energy industries, and affect countries’ chances of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, business leaders were told at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week.
Last year, prices of many scarce minerals exploded, rising as much as 10 times over 2010 levels before dropping back, said PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Terbium, yttrium, dysprosium, europium and neodymium are widely used in the manufacture of wind turbines, solar panels, electric car batteries and energy-efficient lightbulbs. But because these “rare earths” are mined almost exclusively in China, it is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to source them in the required quantities.
In a survey of some of the largest clean energy manufacturers, 78% told PwC said they were already experiencing instability of supply of rare metals, and most said they did not expect shortages to ease for at least five years. Currently, 95% of the rare earth minerals needed by clean tech industries come from China which has set strict export quotas. Last year China reserved most for its own for its domestic wind, solar and battery industries, shifting costs to the US and Europe which do not mine any of the minerals.
* Coal The Big Picture
Bird’s Eye: Pictures of extreme festivals, freezes, rivers, and ancient things.
* Deep Freeze Spreads Across Europe In Focus
* 9 Rivers of Superlatives The World Geography
* 22 Incredibly Old Living Things
Rachel Sussman has been traveling the world for the past few years photographing some of the oldest living things on Earth. Here’s a look at some of what she’s found.
* Chinese Lantern Festival 2012 In Focus
Bird’s Eye: Life below the ground comes in many forms. A stunning excavation of an ant megalopolis (BBC) leads off. We follow with a look at Derinkuyu, a marvellous underground city of 20,000+ in Eastern Turkey. (This link had the best pictures.) And the largest living creature on earth is mostly underground: a 6000 ton clone that has 47,000 aspen trees above the root system. There’s more than we knew living down there.
* Excavating An Ant Colony Boing Boing
An ant megalopolis.
This is simply breathtaking.
In the video, researchers pump 10 tons of concrete down an [abandoned] ant hole and then slowly, carefully excavate the site to see what an ant colony looks like. The result is an intricate structure, equivalent in labor to humans building the Great Wall of China.
The largest of the Cappadocia underground complexes is multi-storey (18 storeys, 85m deep), with fresh flowing water, ventilation shafts and individually separated living quarters or ‘apartments’, shops, communal rooms, wells, tombs, arsenals and escape routes. It has the potential to house up to 20,000 people. The complex was air conditioned throughout, with 52 air shafts discovered so far, one of which is 55m deep… some wells were not connected with the surface, presumably in order to protect the dwellers from poisoning during raids.
* The Glorious, Golden, and Gigantic Quaking Aspen Scitable
One remarkable clone in the Fishlake National Forest is named Pando… [and] represents the astonishing capabilities of an individual clone to spread itself over a huge area. Pando covers about 107 acres and contains about 47,000 individual ramets, each complete with stem, branches and leaves. To date, this clone remains the most massive living organism ever reported with an estimated weight of at least 6,600 tons…. Given its size, it may also be very old, perhaps 80,000 years….
Bird’s Eye: Learn more about Lake Vostok on Wikipedia: the third largest lake in the world, hidden under two miles of ice. It should be drilled into this week, and there’s the opening scene of your horror film, as out of it climbs Cthulhu… But the horror of that pales to nothing when you read about the most terrible polar expedition ever, as described by its sole survivor. And welcome our new giant crab overlords, as over a million start colonizing Antarctic waters.
* Scientists Close To Entering Vostok, Antarctica’s Biggest Subglacial Lake Washington Post
After drilling for two decades through more than two miles of antarctic ice, Russian scientists are on the verge of entering a vast, dark lake that hasn’t been touched by light for more than 20 million years….If the Russians break through as planned within the next week, it will cap more than 50 years of research in what are considered the harshest conditions in the world — where the surface temperatures drop to 100 degrees below zero. ….Vostok, which is about the size of New Jersey, is the world’s third-largest lake by volume of water. Priscu said the gas in the lake makes it like a can of carbonated soda: Open it under high pressure, and it will spurt out.
He said the doomsday scenario for the Russian breakthrough would be if the suddenly released water pushed its way past machinery to block it and shot up the borehole, which is six to eight inches in diameter at the top. The result, he said, could be an enormous geyser that could empty a quarter of the lake. Priscu said he didn’t expect that to happen, but if it did, the sudden addition of substantial water vapor to the antarctic atmosphere could change the continent’s weather in unpredictable ways.
* The Most Terrible Polar Exploration Ever The Smithsonian Magazine
Even today, with advanced foods, and radios, and insulated clothing, a journey on foot across Antarctica is one of the harshest tests a human being can be asked to endure. A hundred years ago, it was worse. Then, wool clothing absorbed snow and damp. High-energy food came in an unappetizing mix of rendered fats called pemmican. Worst of all, extremes of cold pervaded everything; Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who sailed with Captain Scott’s doomed South Pole expedition of 1910-13, recalled that his teeth, “the nerves of which had been killed, split to pieces” and fell victim to temperatures that plunged as low as -77 degrees Fahrenheit.
Cherry-Garrard survived to write an account of his adventures, a book he titled The Worst Journey in the World. But even his Antarctic trek—made in total darkness in the depths of the Southern winter—was not quite so appalling as the desperate march faced one year later by the Australian explorer Douglas Mawson. Mawson’s journey has gone down in the annals of polar exploration as probably the most terrible ever undertaken in Antarctica.
* Climate Change Sees Giant Crabs Invade The Antarctic The Independent
King crabs up to a metre across have invaded deep waters on the edge of Antarctica, probably because of climate warming, and are playing havoc with the seabed wildlife, according to a new report. More than a million of the crabs are thought to have colonised the Palmer Deep, a basin more than 4,300ft down off the Antarctic Peninsula, where they are wiping out species such as sea cucumbers, sea urchins and starfish.
Bird’s Eye: Coming to a water-faucet near you! What tarsands are to Canada, fracking is to the US: dirty hydrocarbons with major environmental side effects. The New Yorker gives an overview, followed by closeups on problems in New York, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming.
* Marcellus Shale, Hydraulic Fracturing, and the E.P.A. The New Yorker
Americans have never met a hydrocarbon they didn’t like. Oil, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, tar-sands oil, coal-bed methane, and coal, which is, mostly, carbon—the country loves them all, not wisely, but too well. To the extent that the United States has an energy policy, it is perhaps best summed up as: if you’ve got it, burn it.
America’s latest hydrocarbon crush is shale gas. Shale gas has been around for a long time—the Marcellus Shale, which underlies much of Pennsylvania and western New York, dates back to the mid-Devonian period, almost four hundred million years ago—and geologists have been aware of its potential as a fuel source for many decades. But it wasn’t until recently that, owing to advances in drilling technology, extracting the gas became a lucrative proposition. The result has been what National Geographic has called “the great shale gas rush.” In the past ten months alone, some sixteen hundred new wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania; it is projected that the total number in the state could eventually grow to more than a hundred thousand. Nationally, shale-gas production has increased by a factor of twelve in the past ten years.
…Every kind of energy extraction, of course, poses risks. Mountaintop-removal mining, as the name suggests, involves “removing” entire mountaintops, usually with explosives, to get at a layer of coal. Coal plants, meanwhile, produce almost twice the volume of greenhouse gases as natural-gas plants per unit of energy generated. In the end, the best case to be made for fracking is that much of what is already being done is probably even worse.
* ‘Hydraulic Fracturing as It’s Practiced Today Will Contaminate Our Aquifers’ Alternet
A former staffer at a state government agency responsible for regulating hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has warned that allowing the controversial gas drilling method in New York would lead to contamination of the state’s aquifers and would poison its drinking water.
These stark warnings, issued by Paul Hetzler in a letter to an upstate newspaper, came as a current employee and union representative at the Department for Environmental Conservation (DEC) sounded alarm bells over the under-staffed agency’s ability to monitor the industry and to deal with any emergencies if the plan goes ahead.
* Northeast Ohio Rocked By 11Th Earthquake Linked To Youngstown Injection Wells. Ohio.com
The 4.0-magnitude quake was centered near Youngstown, reported the U.S. Geological Survey and the Ohio Earthquake Information Center. The earthquake at 3:05 p.m. was felt as far away as Michigan, Ontario, Pennsylvania and New York, reported Michael C. Hansen, state geologist and coordinator of the Ohio Seismic Network, part of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Geological Survey.
The quake was “a pretty good-sized one,” he said. There were no initial reports of injuries or major damage, he said. The quake was the 11th over the last eight months in Mahoning County, all within two miles of the injection wells, he said. Saturday’s quake was the largest yet.
* A Fracking Chemical Appears in Wyoming Aquifer The Atlantic Wire
An EPA study found cancerous compounds, including one used in hydraulic fracturing to harvest natural gas, in an aquifer in Wyoming, ProPublica reports.
The findings come from monitoring wells near Pavillion, Wy., an area where residents have long complained about contaminated drinking water, which some have long blamed on the hundreds of hydraulic fracturing operations in the area.
The area’s residents “have alleged for nearly a decade that the drilling — and hydraulic fracturing in particular — has caused their water to turn black and smell like gasoline,” writes Abrahm Lustgarten, who has covered the fracking debate for ProPublica. “Some residents say they suffer neurological impairment, loss of smell, and nerve pain they associate with exposure to pollutants.”
The new findings are not conclusive, but seem to strongly suggest that the fracturing of underground shale to free natural gas has, in some instances, allowed the high-pressure chemical mixtures — and the released gas itself — to leak into the aquifer that supplies the region’s fresh water.
