did fracking cause Italian earthquakes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7KNN8qYjDA

Fracking On Trial: call out

THE TRIAL

The trial for the first fracking rig occupation in Lancashire last November kicks off next week. Starting Tuesday 10th July and scheduled to last till Friday 13th July... so four full days at Preston Magistrates Court.

If you're against fracking and want to see it stopped, it'd be great to have your support, both inside and outside the court room! If you can't make it down you can still help out by spreading the word (see below for social media details), and solidarity actions are always welcome.

Three protesters have been charged with aggravated trespass and are pleading not guilty based on 'necessity'; asserting stopping fracking is necessary in the context of run-away climate change and the damage it will cause the environment and local communities. Defendants will also be challenging the 'lawfulness' of the extractive process.

The defendants will be backed up by a number of witnesses, both 'experts' and from the local community, who will testify about the consequences of climate change and hydraulic fracturing, the damage it causes to water contamination, air pollution, severe health risks, earthquakes etc. The defence aim to totally rebuke industry claims that fracking is a harmless 'environmentally friendly' way to extract fossil fuel... and instead put the industry on trial.

THE ACTION

Protesters stormed the gas rig in Banks, Lancashire on 2nd Nov 2011, with one team climbing the derrick (drill) and a second team scaling the pipe handling system, occupying the rig and stopping work at the site for a day, decorating the slimy machinery with anti-fracking banners while they were at it.

The occupation of the rig was timed to coincide with an industry sponsored “Shale Gas Environmental Summit” in London, a farcical event where industry and government regulators meet to collaborate on greenwashing PR to cover up the damage done by the fossil fuel industry.

The rig occupation also coincided with the release of a report by Cuadrilla admitting that the hydraulic fracturing of its first well had caused several earthquakes.

Since fracking came to the UK last year there have been mobilisations of local community groups and environmental activists across the country rising up against the industry. Including another occupation of the site in December 2011 [1] and a blockade at PR Marriot Drilling in Chesterfield, where the rig was being serviced, last month. [2]

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Halting the extraction of more fossil fuels is essential at a time when the planet is warming exponentially. Compared to 100 years ago the climate is 0.75 degrees warmer and now, in 2012, the International Energy Agency warn we are on a trajectory to warm by 6 degrees Celsius in the next 100 years. [3]

For the younger generation this means the world will become largely uninhabitable in their lifetime, certainly for their kids, if emissions are not cut. The immediate period, now, is regarded as a tipping point and despite a lot of rhetoric about ‘tackling climate change’ from governments, financial institutions and industries alike, in recent years we have seen the highest emissions ever. [4]

Extracting resources on this scale to feed the industrial system is destroying the environment that our lives depend on.

As conventional oil and gas production peaks, government and industries continue to steam roll ahead developing destructive practices that will provide profitable new markets to line their pockets.

Fracking is part of a recent boom in more extreme methods of extraction, described as ‘unconventional energy sources’; Tar Sands, Mountain Top Removal, Deep Water Drilling, Coal Bed Methane, Underground Coal Gasification and Nuclear expansion.

Extractive industries notoriously deny damaging the environment and negatively effecting humans, animals or the environment. However there is a long history of these industries causing wide-scale destruction, and also long history of cover ups.

Its time to put fracking on trial!

You can keep up to date with proceedings on Twitter @frack_off or #frackingontrial, on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/frackoffuk or at http://frackingontrial.org (available soon).

NOTES

[1] [http://risingtide.org.uk/node/428]

[2] [http://frack-off.org.uk/fracking-protesters-lay-siege-to-cuadrilla-drill-rig]

[3] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/world-on-track-for-nearly-11-degree-temperature-rise-energy-expert-says/2011/11/28/gIQAi0lM6N_story.html]

[4] [http://www.iea.org/index_info.asp?id=1959]

Message from Councillor Paul Crossley (10.5.12)

I’m going to my first fracking conference this month in London to deliver a presentation about how fracking may potentially affect Bath’s hot springs, and the Co-operative are holding a fracking café in Bath on 29^th May, so there will be more visibility on this issue over the next few weeks.

Councillor Paul Crossley

Leader of Bath & North East Somerset Council

Guildhall, High Street, Bath. BA1 5AW

Telephone: (01225 477496)

Facsimile: (01225 477062)

Email: paul_crossley@bathnes.gov.uk

www.bathnes.gov.uk

The man from the Environment Agency he say " Renewables just won't do it.....nuclear and fracking are the way to go, but we must be careful!"
Hear his spiel 'are green and growth compatible?' on the RSA website

every little helps

If 100,000 people sign th,e petition below Fracking could be debated in the House of Commons (if not in current debate or going through legal proceedings).
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/5927And on the anti-nuclear front: http://epetitions.direct.gov..uk/petitions/1035

Are we having the wrong debates?

I thought this was an interesting set of views:

Discussion of climate change and the wider public interest has been jettisoned in the rush to lobby against alternatives

• • Zoe Williams
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 April 2012 20.29 BST
  • Article history

Illustration by Matt Kenyon

It's been a big week for alternative energy sources. On Tuesday, the British Geological Survey effectively greenlit fracking, with its conclusion that the earthquake risk was low. Tomorrow National Opposition to Windfarms launches its campaign in the House of Lords. My instincts are pro-wind and anti-fracking, from a straight climate change perspective: wind is renewable and not harmful, while shale gas is not renewable and contributes as much or more – much more, according to a study by Cornell University – to the greenhouse effect than either oil or coal.

The anti-fracking lobby should just stick with this argument – that if you're serious about halting global warming you have to concentrate on energy sources that don't contribute to it. However they don't want to – believing, possibly correctly, that the political will to prevent irreparable climate change just isn't there.
Instead, the anti-frackers range freely around in their opposition; some of it's grounded and some isn't. What strikes me is the similarity in approach from the anti-wind camp and the anti-frackers.

First, they talk about the aesthetics of these energy sources – National Opposition to Windfarms talks about windfarms destroying tourism, and their opening gambit is that the area becomes so unspeakably unattractive that people will simply stop going there. In the Ribble Valley and across the areas affected by fracking, the sheer ugliness of industry is emphasised.

There's a counter-argument in both cases. The aesthetics of windfarms are pretty subjective – some people like them. National Opposition to Windfarms quotes a survey from the Welsh Tourist Board in which 71% of respondents said turbines spoilt the environment; Renewables UK quotes a survey in which an almost identical proportion, 75%, finds the effect of turbines either positive or neutral.

Fracking occurs predominantly underground, so while heavy machinery is rarely attractive, it's nothing like as ugly as a coal mine or a nuclear power station. But, more important, unless you're prepared to stop using energy or you have an alternative, "I don't like the look of it" isn't enough. "It's too expensive to produce" isn't enough, either – it will look a lot less expensive when the existing energy sources run out.

Windfarms are ahead of frackers in the way they comprehend their obligations. They pay rent to landowners but also £1,000 per megawatt a year to the community – and this sector is also creating a new model for small-scale finance. You can, from Saturday, invest in a wind turbine in the Forest of Dean for as little as £5, with the expectation of a return. More on that another day; there are so far no small-scale investment plans for fracking the Bowland Basin in Lancashire.

But there is a huge swath of shale gas in the north of England; the mineral rights are owned by the crown. That money could be sucked into the centre, or it could be kept in Lancashire, dispersed to local authorities. What would the north-south divide look like then? Is there any requirement to privilege local companies in the granting of contracts, either for wind energy or shale gas? Where there isn't, why isn't there?
What would society look like if the shareholders in its major energy companies were regular people on median incomes? What would it look like if the people living above the gas supplies were its beneficiaries? These questions will affect the wealth distribution of this country for the next 200 years. And yet what does the debate concentrate on? How many jobs are created building a road to the well site? How much a unit of wind energy costs to produce? It's so narrow as to be a distraction.

Finally, both the anti-winds and the anti-frackers are guilty of such overstatement as to collapse their arguments. Respectable anti-windfarmers generally don't make the case for adverse health effects, but on the ground protesters are still talking about infrasound and flicker, and how they cause suicide. National Opposition to Windfarms claims losses to bird life that are disputed by crowning bird fanciers the RSPB. Anti-frackers claim that France has a moratorium on fracking because it has learned and understood the lessons of the film Gasland.

If this is true, it is remarkable: not just because France's geology is different to that of the film's US location, but also because the scientific arguments lodged in that film are nothing like a done deal. There's a scene in which someone turns on a tap, and gas comes out that you can light with a match. Scientists contest that this was localised methane in the aquifer and nothing to do with the fracking process. Thermogenic methane is associated with gas production, while biogenic methane isn't, and it's apparently easy to tell the difference.

People counter with "well, they would say that, wouldn't they?" – that point was made by the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission of Colorado – but you can't cherrypick the science that suits you and reject that which doesn't. Frackers, incidentally, believe France's moratorium is linked to lobbying by the nuclear industry. As enjoyable as it is to see big businesses eat each other for a change, it's not exactly the sight of everything working in the public interest.

I remain pro-wind and anti-fracking; but my main worry is that both will go ahead, and the real concerns of energy users – proximal or not – won't be resolved or even discussed, just swamped under anxious misinformation.
Twitter: @zoesqwilliams
• This article was amended on 20 April. The original referred to the British Geological Society. This has been amended

FROME ANTI-FRACKING has now forged links with Frack-Free Somerset.
http://www.frackfreesomerset.org/
sign up on their website for ACTION ALERTS