How Low Can Frackaphobes Go?

Winston Churchill once quipped that, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” If so, then natural gas drilling myths have been doing full-speed planetary orbits while the facts are still crawling to the dresser drawer.

But pants and facts fans rejoice, half a trouser leg of truth was put on last week by an Associated Press article that found some outspoken frackaphobes are nothing short of propagandists.

According to the article, “Critics of fracking often raise alarms about groundwater pollution, air pollution, and cancer risks, and there are still many uncertainties. But some of the claims have little – or nothing- to back them.“

How far down do the lies go?  How about manufacturing claims of high breast cancer rates that spike where intensive drilling has taken place?  That stoops well below the accuracy aquifer and it’s why experts are finally speaking out.

Researchers and experts flat-out haven’t seen the spike proliferated by environmental groups with one professor declaring the campaign, “a classic case of the ecological fallacy.”

But surely when presented with the facts, the groups would retract, right? Sadly, no, they pressed on with the likes of Gasland’s Josh Fox doing his best Baghdad Bob impersonation, claiming there was “more than enough evidence to warrant much deeper study.”

Perhaps enough evidence to warrant deeper study for journalists and sociologists, indeed.  But you keep manufacturing those boogeymen, Mr. Fox, we’ll keep drilling for the truth, one pant leg at a time.