Titans of Industry category archive

Get the tee shirt!

About 20 people showed up at the hearing (about fracking–ed.) wearing turquoise T-shirts that said “Shale Yes North Carolina” — and at least some of them were bused from a homeless shelter in Winston-Salem.

An activist with the anti-fracking Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League videotaped a conversation outside the hearing venue between Betsy Ashby, an activist with the Jackson County Coalition Against Fracking, and some of the men, who were not knowledgeable about fracking. One of the men who identifies himself as Christian Bradshaw of Winston-Salem and who has a Shale Yes T-shirt draped around his neck confesses in the video, “We did not know about none of this.”

Ashby reports that before filming began, another man who was part of the group told her he was bused there from a Winston-Salem homeless shelter and came for the money. That same evening, a reporter with The Sylva Herald spoke with a man who was part of the Shale Yes group and said he was an Army veteran living at the Bethesda Center for the Homeless in Winston-Salem and came because he was told fracking would help the environment. He said he felt misled.

More frackery at the link.

She’s a little over-wrought. Wrought would have been enough.

Via Kos.

Industry is poisoning, well, just about everyone and everything.

A pervasive agricultural insecticide that has been linked to the decline of honeybees is now a near-constant presence in the small and great rivers that flow through Midwestern farm country, according to the first major review of its kind.

Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey tracked the toxins called neonicotinoids in six states and nine Midwestern rivers, including the portion of the Mississippi that drains southern Minnesota, and found that they were universally present throughout the growing season in every watershed tested.

And to hell with them when they do get fracked. Just sacrifice them (emphasis added).

A group of scientists from Pennsylvania and neighboring states have stepped in to fill this gap by forming a nonprofit—apparently the first of its kind in the United States—that provides free health consultations to local families near drilling sites.

(snip)

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection—which oversees the oil and gas industry—has no ongoing or planned health studies, though it is researching air and water quality at certain sites, Scott Perry, the agency’s director of oil and gas management, said at a media event last month. None of the hundreds of millions of dollars in impact fees the state has collected from the industry since 2011 has gone to state or local health departments.

Revenue for the Plutocracy trumps the well-being of the populace every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Via Lee Camp.

Shaun Mullen tries to figure out what’s wrong with General Motors. He thinks it may be a cultural thing. A nugget:

In a blistering report last month prompted by the deadly Chevy Cobalt ignition switch problem that only scratched the surface of the GM culture, former federal prosecutor Anton Valukas described what he called the “GM nod.” That’s when managers nod in agreement about a course of action but then do nothing. Then there is the “GM salute.” That’s when managers, arms folded and pointed outward, indicate that the problem at hand is someone else’s responsibility.

I have a GMC Sonoma pick-up; I got a truck so I could pull my boat back when I had a boat. It has been a fine vehicle; it still has almost all of its original components, except for the battery and the radiator. After over 100,000 miles, I can’t complain. Stuff does, after all, wear out.

I also once had a Chevette, which I purchased used in a hurry because I had to have a car right then. It lasted till 138,000 miles; by the time it finally died, the floorboards had rusted out (I replaced them with cookie sheets because I couldn’t afford to get a different car), the fuel gauge could no longer be relied on, and it had gone through three clutches (one of which my mechanic replaced under warranty after telling his supplier, “Look, this guy’s driven a shift for 20 years and he’s been my customer for 10–I know he didn’t mistreat your damned clutch”).

Two retirees from the Pennsylvania Department of Health say its employees were silenced on the issue of Marcellus Shale drilling.

One veteran employee says she was instructed not to return phone calls from residents who expressed health concerns about natural gas development.

“We were absolutely not allowed to talk to them,” said Tammi Stuck, who worked as a community health nurse in Fayette County for nearly 36 years.

Another retired employee, Marshall P. Deasy III, confirmed that.

Deasy, a former program specialist with the Bureau of Epidemiology, said the department also began requiring field staff to get permission to attend any meetings outside the department. This happened, he said, after an agency consultant made comments about drilling at a community meeting.

In the more than 20 years he worked for the department, Deasy said, “community health wasn’t told to be silent on any other topic that I can think of.”

No doubt this was because there is no chance that pumping large quantities of secret, likely toxic, liquids into the earth with enough pressure to break rock deep under the ground is as safe as a pillow fight at a elementary-school sleepover.

Also, pigs, wings.

Much, much more at the link.

Via C&L.

Much more here.

Via Informed Comment.

. . . even if they just say no.

Facing South reports:

Independent scientists who have reviewed a water analysis conducted by state authorities of a Texas resident’s drinking well say the chemical signatures found in the water may provide “the nation’s first conclusive link” between fracking operations and aquifer contamination.

Though a state investigation — conducted by the Texas Railroad Commission in response to an official complaint filed by landowner and Parker County resident Steve Lipsky — said it found the chemical analysis of the water inconclusive, experts shown the results say the commission was simply wrong. “And not just by a little,” reports local ABC-affiliate WFAA News who shared the results with several scientists, “but by a lot.”

Do read the rest, then answer this essay question:

Why did the official scientists get it wrong?

Lately, there has been quite kerfuffle in my local rag about the coal dust that covers much of the western part of Norfolk.

Indeed, it has reached the point that a muckety-muck from the Norfolk Southern wrote an op-ed disparaging folks who don’t like waking up to find coal dust on their properties and vehicles. According to the muckety-muck, the Norfolk Southern wasn’t there, didn’t do it, didn’t see a thing, there’s nothing to see here, move along folks.

I’ve driven past the Norfolk Southern’s coal piles–huge mountains of powdered coal waiting to be loaded on ships bound for China. If you haven’t seen them, you would have trouble believing them.

Turns out, they are grandfathered in.

There’s nothing like an informed consumer.

Airlines want to keep it that way.

Airlines tried and failed to block a federal rule making them tell passengers up front the full cost of airfare, including government taxes and fees. So they’re trying another route, asking Congress to do what the Obama administration and the courts refused to do: roll back the law.

I’m beginning to think that humans are to the Earth as termites are to a home: heedlessly destroying it from within because their nature compels them to.

Geologists in Ohio have for the first time linked earthquakes in a geologic formation deep under the Appalachians to hydraulic fracturing, leading the state to issue new permit conditions Friday in certain areas that are among the nation’s strictest.

Termites, though, can move to the next house.

Much more at the link.

Speaking of Pigg River, to quote Pogo. “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Foreign Policy in Focus reports:

But the greatest dangers for the United States do not lurk in terrorist cells in the mountains surrounding Kandahar that are planning on assaults on American targets. Rather, our vulnerabilities are homegrown. The United States plays host to thousands of nuclear weapons, toxic chemical dumps, radioactive waste storage facilities, complex pipelines and refineries, offshore oil rigs, and many other potentially dangerous facilities that require constant maintenance and highly trained and motivated experts to keep them running safely.

The United States currently lacks safety protocols and effective inspection regimes for the dangerous materials it has amassed over the last 60 years. We don’t have enough inspectors and regulators to engage in the work of assessing the safety and security of ports, bridges, pipelines, power plants, and railways. The rapid decline in the financial, educational, and institutional infrastructure of the United States represents the greatest threat to the safety of Americans today.

And it’s getting worse.

More at the link.

Via Asia Times.

It appears that the price of human lives, as determined by the fee hand of the market, is 57 cents each.

Just ask it.

As a federal grand jury probes possible criminal activity by Duke Energy, attorneys for the utility have asked a Wake County Superior Court judge to temporarily limit what information it must exchange with state regulators and environmental organizations in a lawsuit.

(snip)

The motion states, “Duke intends to cooperate fully in that investigation so that it may receive a fair and unbiased assessment of its actions.”

To do that, Cooney and other attorneys for the utility contend, materials provided to the grand jury should be withheld, temporarily, from the civil proceedings underway in Wake County Superior Court stemming from DENR’s pollution cleanup enforcement actions against the company.

Buccaneer Petroleum has learned nothing.