The Fracking song

The New York Times (5/20) "Green" blog notes that "The Fracking Song" has received more than 79,000 hits on YouTube since it was posted last week. An update from John Collins Rudolf explains, "If you prefer your environmental journalism rapped to a funk beat, then you can't miss with 'My Water's on Fire Tonight,' a music video out of Studio 20, the media innovation lab at New York University's graduate school of journalism. In a snappy two and a half minutes, the song outlines the pros and cons of fracking, the drilling technique that has unlocked vast new reserves of natural gas but come under sharp scrutiny for its apparent links to water contamination and other environmental harm."

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1. This is an intriguing new aspect to the propaganda wars. Obviously, the creator of this piece saw an opportunity to weave together representations that he has bought into. This is very important to note, because I'm sure it makes the ad and lobbies for Coal, Nuclear, Wind, Solar and Nuclear very happy. We have to ask ourselves, Who has the most money to gain if fracking were to be stopped and natural gas prices started to go back up. Heck, it might even be the companies who are doing the fracking, because this new availability of low cost gas is putting a dent in their profitability. (I wonder if we can get the same creative juices to work on a pro reliable clean and green good news story. The story being that if we couple natural gas and wind together properly, the impact on the American economy as our net carbon footprint would be enormous.) No Negarap here!!!Good news doesn't sell. In our time of having entire intellectual consciousness reduced to text message semi thoughts there are 2 events I see as seminal. 1. A new level of transparency is emerging that is about as controllable as wind generation. 2. This new level of transparency will allow the major influencers of public opinion to substitute viral misinformation into the minds of the unquestioning people like the authors of this video and the most successful will rule the activists. Unfortunately, neither bodes well for complete information disclosure or assimilation. The realities of the pro and cons of this debate could be the topic of many PhD publications. Where are the boundaries drawn regarding the true value and economic, environmental impact of this issue? Is it better to rip off mountain tops, or have a few petroleum, natural gas related accidents that, unpublicized, have been going on for decades.Do these kids know that more water wells are contaminated by methane seeping up from vent holes and water removal from coal mines than is even imaginable, related to deep well fracking. Do they know that more benzene is released into the air from wood burning fireplaces than all of the fracking fluids in the world. My position on fracking is the same as my position on driving cars. If done carefully both are relatively safe. If done thoughtlessly severe health impacts can result. The odds of experiencing negative health experiences related to very sophisticated and highly trained folks using fluids expensive enough to encourage MINIMUM use, and maximum capture of very valuable methane, are VERY LOW and miniscule compared to the likely accident rate of the folks who are texting and driving while their creative minds are laughing and talking about their new hit Negarap. Everywhere I look, I see people getting Nobel Prizes and tremendous recognition for propagating fear without even truly thinking through potential solutions. The top sellers are the fear with no solution books, the solution books are on the 50 cent rack, if they even got published. What are we to do?

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   1. My preference to answer your question re where we go is to develop good infographics that can be dynamically updated by a group of stakeholders who agree on the core metrics. We will look for one on fracking. If it does not exist perhaps we can get enough interest int eh community to move int his direction?