Scientists urge Brown to stop fracking
By Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News
Twenty of the nation’s top climate scientists have sent a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown, telling him that his plans supporting increased use of the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” will increase pollution and run counter to his efforts to cut California’s global warming emissions.
The letter is the latest example of the increased pressure that environmentalists and others concerned about climate change have been putting on Brown in recent months. Their argument: The governor can’t say he wants to reduce global warming while expanding fossil fuel development in California.
“If what we’re trying to do is stop using the sky as a waste dump for our carbon pollution, and if we’re trying to transform our energy system, the way to do that is not by expanding our fossil fuel infrastructure,” said Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University.
Caldeira signed the letter along with other prominent climate scientists, including James Hansen, the former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Richard Houghton, acting president of Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts; and physicist Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology at Penn State University.
Let’s go back to the Stone Age. Who needs petroleum.
But first let M. Mann give up his car, home heat, airplane travel, etc., etc.
Awe Suspicious, which route gets us forward to the stone age faster? Using resources quickly or conserving?
Dear Fungi,
Why am I itching all over?
Very possibly in the next 50-100 years
new sources of energy such as fusion will
finally be developed, but in the meantime
we need to use the abundance of hydrocarbons
for our energy needs. You can be the first
on your block to give up using any and all
hydrocarbon energy sources, OK.
One more thing. When the uber lefties in San Francisco tear down Hetch Hetchy and don’t steal other peoples water I will give consideration to your thoughts.
Um Suspicious. You do realize that Hetch Hetchy belonged to Native Americans to begin with and that frackings biggest problem is ground water contamination? Perhaps if we had diverted the oil, coal and gas subsidies over the past decades to fusion development, this article would be moot.