Oil, gas and fracking Lincolnshire, part 2

Probably best to read the previous post first (if you haven’t already).

A great deal of what is being said and written about the issues surrounding fracking, dwell on the local issues of earthquakes, pollution of groundwater, lorry movements,  settlement ponds, and other environmental problems that are essentially local in character.  And that is just how the industry wants the issue framed.  Indeed that’s just how the industry itself frames it.  This is a screenshot of the centre of the front page of Cuadrilla’s website:

The one KEY ISSUE that the industry does not want us talking about is the one thing that effects all of us, living and yet unborn, anywhere on the planet and in everybody’s backyard.  Greenhouse gas.

It’s not rocket science.  Fourier, Tyndall and Arrhenius had worked it out in the 19^th century.  Add carbon dioxide or methane to the atmosphere and the temperature of the planet will rise. The rest is detail.

This is the big one that the oil industry has no answer to.  By concentrating on local issues of “Water, Seismicity, Jobs,Traffic and Visual impact” they divert attention towards the issues that they can, with varying degrees of success, argue about.

They cannot argue about the fact that extracting gas from shale will add greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.  So they want us to keep talking about the local issues.

Let’s not fall for it.