Wednesday
Jun102015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill A fracking barney
Jun 10, 2015 Energy: gas Take a look at Fox News's interview of anti-fracking campaigner Josh Fox. I'm not sure I've ever seen an interviewer called a liar live on air. I must say, I think you would have to be a bit less shifty-eyed to carry it off.
Reader Comments (38)
The phrase swivel eyed loon appears to have been invented for Josh Fox.
"I did it myself!" wasn't peer reviewed, that's the problem.
Just because you have witnessed it, doesn't mean it happened.
Whilst it deeply pains me to agree with anything that Josh Fox says...the EPA's "findings" on fracking ARE unexpected. They have absolutely no problem with fabricating the "science" in may other areas of their remit and beyond and it is a puzzle that they have come down fairly firmly to say that fracking is mostly harmless if done properly. It is out of character.
Elsewhere, in the eco press, the encounter is being spun as a Josh Fox "debating" victory.They have no shame.
Further...although I first want to make clear that I regard Josh Fox as a despicable band-wagoneer and outright mendacious chancer...there is the possibility that the convenient personal claim by Varney of lighting his own tap water years before fracking is also a bit of a porky. Taking a snap judgement, I absolutely believe Varney...but it is not completely impossible that he made it up on the spot.
What do you all reckon?
He demonstrates the full tactical range of modern SJW warriors.
Keep talking fast never shut up never agree move on don't deal with anything keep talking keep talking talk louder...
Repeat. Increase volume. Accuse of bigotry. Repeat.
Go on Twitter. Claim you won. Call for sacking. Call for boycott.
I followed Jonathan Drake's link to this on 'Unthreaded' and I'll repeat what I said there that the comment by Martin Boley is something that we perhaps don't say as often as we should, namely that the oil and gas industry isn't perfect and their mistakes tend to be big ones (or at least have 'big' results) and they need regulating. But on balance what they do benefits us all.
As for the clip itself, what is about these guys that they always manage to look like everybody's caricature of an eco-loon? And behave like one as well.
I appreciate the loonies are on their side. Things like these frighten away regular folks.
The whole gas through the tap thing was, probably, the key selling point for Gasland. No surprise that Fox feels resentful when anyone has the temerity to question his journalistic integrity in that matter. Interesting that his defence involves questioning the integrity of a journalist.
A typical fanatical warmist. Wouldn't stop talking, then fell back on a personal insult when proved wrong.
a bike-crash interview
Josh Fox seems to have forgotton that he has previously stated that he is aware of reports from as far back as 1936 that methane in tap water could be lit :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9CfUm0QeOk
listen at 2 mins in
@JackSavage
Perhaps some parts of the EPA aren't as bad as others. Who knows. As for the lighting the tap water thing, I thought it was commonly accepted that it's possible to get methane up through the water supply in some areas. The problem was with JFox who decided to run with it as 'evidence' of the evils of fracking.
It must be a bit of a sore point for him, because he did say during the
interviewrant he thought they'd agreed not to talk about it. So perhaps he was a bit pissed off when it was raised.Shame they didn't invite Bez along as well....
Personally I'd like Josh (Fox!!) to get the Andrew Neil treatment .... that ... I would pay to watch :-)
!thumbsup!
Methane removal from deep water supplies is a standard part of water treatment. You do it by spraying the water in air.
As for the tap water being lit, the Director of that film staged it as a trick, and admitted doing it.
I suspect the only real way to try to conduct and interview with people like this is to place them in a soundproof booth, equipped with a light that tells them when their microphone is on (and a countdown timer), and power speakers that can drown out their shouting with volume set by whether or not they are continuing to talk over the incoming question or point being made by a more reasonable participant in the debate.
Verbal diarrhea on a high plus lies. What a clown.
I think Mike Jackson has summed up the energy industry succinctly. When they foul up they must put their hands up & pledge to clean up, Exon Valdise/Deepwater Horizon, etc. It's the only way they can bring doubting/borderline greenalists on side, but they will never win over the hardliners! This Josh Fox struck me as a particularly unpleasant fellow, typical of the breed though as everyone seems to have noted here! The shear gall of him to call the interviewer a liar was incredible, but I just loved the put downs by him, "you're out of here, young man!".
Josh Fox was something. On the other hand, if the baseline is that water wells in certain areas are subject to methane contamination, then the anti-fracking movement will have a much harder problem persuading responsible agencies.
Fox was pointing at Dimock as an example of contamination, but the drilling company - Cabot - seems pretty clear that they were not the cause of the problem. The lawsuit appears to have been settled and the PA EPA seems to have withdrawn its objections to Cabot's drilling. http://marcellusdrilling.com/?s=cabot+dimock&submit.x=0&submit.y=0 In essence, Josh Fox was misrepresenting the facts.
Bernie1815:
A good coverage of the issues about Dimock is here:
http://frackland.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Dimock
The first paragraph on the EPA webpage about fracking* reads:
"Natural gas plays a key role in our nation's clean energy future. The U.S. has vast reserves of natural gas that are commercially viable as a result of advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies enabling greater access to gas in shale formations. Responsible development of America's shale gas resources offers important economic, energy security, and environmental benefits."
So despite pressure from all sides they do understand what is at stake.
*http://www2.epa.gov/hydraulicfracturing
That's why greens seldom debate, because almost every time they do they make themselves look absolute clowns. The centre ground of public opinion won't warm to the likes of Josh Fox on performances like that.
Josh Fox is a thoroughly rude, nasty and deluded little man. The interviewer didn't raise his voice and was considerably more polite than I would have been. I'm with 'bernie1815' on this, as accepting that methane existed before fracking pretty much nullifies the eco loons' argument and so needs to be denied at all costs.
Without cheap energy we would still be in the Victorian age.
Martin:
I once showed the YouTube clip of Phelim Macaleer questioning Josh Fox about lighting the taps, to a group of students. The sheer mendacity of Fox's response was such that students who had come into the lecture theatre thinking that fracking caused pollution of ground water, went out thinking the opposite.
FarleyR:
So yes, a thoroughly rude, nasty and deluded little man. Quite useful, really, for debating purposes.
On cheap energy and the Victorian age. We need to push it back a bit further than that. Cheap energy in the form of coal has been lying around for a long time. The real game changer was the steam engine, which allowed that cheap energy to be turned into useful power. That happened in the 18th century. The Victorian age, with its opulence and vitality, was a product of cheap energy. If we want to go back before cheap energy, then we have to go to 17th century Europe. I would like to see the Luddite greens of our time trying to cope with living conditions then.
Malcolm Chapman
"I would like to see the Luddite greens of our time trying to cope with living conditions then."
More's the pity that we can't use them as guinea pigs in green boot camps (so's they can demonstrate how well their solutions work) - they want to *force* us to pay for their delusions... (so not exactly "Luddites":-)
One thing that Josh Fox manages to swerve around is who's funding him...? (and all his jetting around) I personally think we should be enlightened in that department - Hugo Chavez's Yanqui baiting oppos were in there for a while (and prominent champagne swiggers at the premier of Gasland2 - the sequel).
Perhaps we should remember that the first energy crisis in England was caused by a shortage of firewood. It was that that drove us to exploit coal more systematically. Firewood shortages have also been behind energy crises in many third world countries in more recent times where they lacked access to cheap alternative fossil fuel sources.
A cynic would say that the EPA is merely dealing with their targets piecemeal. Coal first.
They have been allowed to define carbon dioxide as a pollutant, so they could easily come back and tighten the regulations further against gas once coal use has been extinguished. Of course, it is possible that they really just wanted to use CO2 as a bigger stick than particulates emissions with which to beat big-coal, but that takes a lot of believing.
And, by their own logic, why would anti CO2 campaigners be content with reducing CO2 emissions by only 50% or even 75%? It wouldn't make much difference.
Josh Fox is a perfect example of an lunatic ecofascist.
All the more dangerous that he can get away with making blatant propaganda (Gaslands) and putting his deranged views on the airwaves.
Goebels would have been proud.
Jeez. I was only able to watch him for less than a minute. Being positive, now I feel like I've gained over three minutes by not watching the rest.
One of Josh Fox's chums (also on Faux News):
https://youtu.be/BLvOHsQBcSg
On the grounds of the State Capitol of South Dakota there is a geothermal well with enough natural gas in it to sustain a flame nearly continuously as an eternal flame to honor SD soldiers fallen in battle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkDnP40sCPM
Yes, it's a first for me, too--I've never seen an interviewer called a liar. Fox clearly lost the argument on every level and came across as a very rude person, a propagandist projecting his own proclivities upon others.
ZT - that's close! can you imagine somebody doing the same for say, Caroline Lucas this side of the pond? or perhaps Marcus Brigstock? or Natalie Bennett - or Gummer/Yeo/Davey/Huhne?
I suppose we'll have to just accept the provincial self parody that is Bez.....
What's so odious about JF (beyond his film oeuvre) is the way tries to whip up folk in public with really toxic class war crap and pays "minders" to make sure he's not interrupted.
I remember back when Garland came out one the skeptics was challenging him in a Q&A and pointed out that the Colorado Geological survey conducted a survey of water wells in the state about 1936 which had taps that you could light on fire.They analyzed the gas in the water and noted that it was of biogenic origin. Fox's response to this information was something along the lines of -- It's not germane to the story.
Historical Evidence for Occurrence of Shallow Natural Gas
Historical documentation suggests that the presence of methane gases in the shallow subsurface has been observed for over 200 years in Susquehanna County, long before the expansion of shale-gas fracturing in this area in 2006. For example, there are several dozen instances of flammable effervescing springs and water wells dating back to the late 1700s (Blackman 1873; Lohman 1939; Soren 1963; Breen et al.2007; Susquehanna County Historical Society 2010; Williams 2010; Table S7 for a full list of citations). In addition, water well drillers have frequently reported encountering gas during drilling, particularly in valleys and other low-lying areas (Bell Brothers Well Drilling, Creswell Drilling, Beavers Well Drilling, Karp & Sons Drilling, JIMCON Drilling, Drake Drilling, personal communication, 2010).
Several gas fields in the past century have produced from formations less than 3000 feet below surface in northeastern Pennsylvania (e.g., Shrewsbury Gas Field, Lovelton Gas Field, Harveys Lake Gas Field), and there are numerous reports of gas shows between 80 and 800 feet during the drilling of oil and gas wells (Ashley and Robinson 1922; Hopbottom Well Record 1957; Soren 1961). For example, the 1881 publication “The Geology of Susquehanna and Wayne County” reported significant volumes of gas during the drilling of an oil boring in the Catskill Formation to a depth of 680 feet (White 1881). The presence of methane in natural springs and water wells has also been cited in adjacent New York State, where a survey of 239 water wells from 1999 to 2011 showed that 9% of water wells contained dissolved methane concentrations exceeding 10 mg/L (Kappel and Nystrom 2012). Due to potential gas contamination from natural sources, guidelines issued by the Pennsylvania DEP and other state agencies recommend the routine venting of water wells (PA DEP 2004).
I'll try that again...
Evaluation of Methane Sources in Groundwater in Northeastern Pennsylvania
tomo
I'd pay good money (well Euros) to see Marcus Brigstock given a going over by Andrew Neil. Brigstock is an arrogant, supercilious numbskull who steers clear of rational debate.
I kept looking for traces of white powder under Fox's nostrils...
SandyS
I live in hope :-p
Marcus Brigstock is a favourite of the BBC.