Obama Makes Fracking a Cornerstone of Climate Policy … But Fracking Does Much More Harm than Good
A Fracked Up Policy
“Clean natural gas” from fracking has been touted for years as a cure for global warming. It’s a cornerstone of Obama’s climate plan.
But scientists say that fracking pumps out a lot of methane … into both our drinking water and the environment.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas: 72 times more potent as a warming source than CO2. As such, fracking actually increases – rather than decreases – global warming.
Cornell University researchers found in 2011 that – when measured in its entire life cycle – fracked gas emits much MORE greenhouse gas than coal. And see this.
Last year, a study published by Purdue scientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that fracking puts between 100 and 1,000 times more methane into the atmosphere than the EPA assumed.
And a new scientific paper published at Energy & Science Engineering by expert and gas industry consultant Touché Howard shows that previous studies cited by the EPA and the fracking industry low-balled actual fracking emission rates “by factors of three to five.”
A 2014 study by scientists from Colorado and Brown University found that fracking increases severe birth defects – including congenital heart defects – for families living within 10 miles of fracking sites.
A team of Yale scientists published a study last year in the journal Environmental Health Perspectiveswhich found that people who live near fracking sites have more health problems than those who don’t.
