You don’t have to look further than a legislature for hubris, but for truly Texas-sized arrogance you have to go to Texas. The small Texas towns of Azle and Reno sit atop a geological formation called the Barnett Shale, ground zero for fracking in Texas. It’s ground zero for a swarm of earthquakes too; earthquakes that started right after fracking did. Since that could just be a coincidence, the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC, the agency in charge of oil and gas regulation in Texas) held a hearing to determine if drilling and fracking were contributing factors in the quakes. You may be relieved to know that they concluded there was NO LINK. Whew! But you’ll be less relieved to find out how they kicked aside the peer-reviewed study sho
wing there WAS a link (by Texas scientists, no less), how they fixed testimony in the hearing, and how they bent themselves into pretzels to justify their reasoning.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) is an actual scientific agency that “…provides impartial information on the health of our ecosystems and environment, the natural hazards that threaten us, the natural resources we rely on, [and] the impacts of climate and land-use change.” Founded in 1897, it is the sole scientific agency of the US Department of the interior. According to USGS, between 1973 and 2008 there was an average of 21 magnitude 3 or stronger (M3+) in the Azle/Reno area. This jumped to an average of 99 M3+ earthquakes between 2009 and 2013, and there were 659 M3+ quakes in 2014 alone. This was enough to prompt many people to think there may be a link to fracking, which began in the Barnett shale in the early 80’s and was in full swing by the mid 2000’s. Researchers at Southern Methodist University in Dallas (SMU) did the actual research and found that (surprise!) there was a link. The report was peer reviewed and published in Nature Communications, a scientific journal for the natural sciences.
So now let’s get Furious… In June, the Texas Railroad Commission held a hearing to determine whether XTO Energy (a subsidiary of ExxonMobil) was contributing to the earthquakes by pumping millions of gallons of drilling and fracking wastewater into the ground. Believe it or not, in this hearing XTO was the only party to offer direct evidence, the SMU study wasn’t mentioned, and the TRC found in XTO’s favor.
But it gets even worse. The oil and gas lobby spends billions not only lobbying, but in spreading doubt about doubtless issues like climate change. If the knowledge that fracking causes earthquakes got out then reality-based people might realize they have an interest in regulating it. Right-wing rag The Daily Caller sailed in to the rescue by pointing out a distinction without a difference. They differentiated “fracking”, the industry, from “fracking”, the drilling process, by pointing out that the fracking itself doesn’t cause the quakes, but the deep injection wastewater wells that fracking requires do. They also pointed out that until the EPA interfered the poisonous fracking fluids could be dumped directly into open waterways, thus eliminating the threat of earthquakes.
We could go on, but we’re incensed enough already. If you aren’t, then here are the articles that irritated our id enough to produce this article…
Texas Railroad Commission says no to peer-reviewed science study linking earthquakes to oil and gas, Walter Einenkel on Daily Kos, Sep 2015
Railroad Commission Refutes Peer-Reviewed Study Linking Quakes to Oil and Gas Industry, Mose Buchele on KUT.org, Sep 2015
Earthquakes and the ever-dissolving credibility of the Texas Railroad Commission, Rudolph Bush in the Dallas Morning News, Apr 2015
Azle earthquakes likely caused by oil and gas operations, study says, Anna Kuchment in the Dallas Morning News, Apr 2015
USGS Earthquake Hazards Program; Induced Earthquakes
Scientists: Fracking is not causing earthquakes, Michael Bastasch on the Daily Caller, May 2015
Texans angrily protest fracking after 30 earthquakes hit town, RT Question More, Jan 2014
Fracking is not the cause of quakes. The real problem is wastewater., Becky Oskin in the Washington Post, Apr 2015
Darn it, we just can’t let these other articles go by without notice. Although the Texas Railroad Commission situation was the focus of Furious, this obstinate refusal to acknowledge science is ubiquitous. We ran into a couple other sources describing how ideology is corrupting science, specifically in global warming…
Scientists try to replicate climate denier findings and fail, Suzanne Jacobs on Grist, Aug 2015
Congressman: Don’t Trust Climate Scientists, They’re In It For The Money, Emily Atkin on ThinkProgress, Sep 2014
Learning from mistakes in climate research, Benestad et al, Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Aug 2015
