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PPG Columnist “Stuck in the Middle” of Marcellus Debate

Brian O’Neill, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and author of the book The Paris of Appalachia: Pittsburgh in the Twenty-first Century, writes in a PPG column today that although his heart is with the enviro-left movement, his head tells him that shale gas is the best option for now.

O’Neill puts himself squarely in the middle of the gas drilling debate with clowns to his left and jokers to his right. He’s a true believer in man-caused global warming but believes that natural gas is the “other” (and preferred) fossil fuel, like pork is the other white meat.

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Boone Pickens Sells Chesapeake Stock, Strange Comment on NatGas

Has T. Boone Pickens, Texas oil billionaire and author of “The Pickens Plan” that calls for America to use natural gas to reduce our dependency on OPEC oil and as a bridge to a renewable energy future, now turned his back on natural gas? His investment company, BP Capital Management, has sold off all of its Chesapeake Energy stock. Pickens’ comment on the reason for selling off Chesapeake was a tad strange:

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Comments from an Environmentalist Oil Industry Geologist

A very interesting interview with someone who works as an exploration geophysicist for the oil and gas industry who considers himself to be an environmentalist—or rather, a “realistic environmentalist”—recently appeared on the Adventure Journal blog. The interviewee, who asked to remain anonymous, responded this way when asked if other environmentalists give him a hard time about his choice of career:

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Fracking’s Existential Threat to Green Energy

Check out an excellent column today by Paul Driessen on the TownHall.com website. Paul is a senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality. He’s also author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death.

In today’s column, Paul makes the point that the Sierra Club and other so-called environmental groups oppose clean-burning natural gas and shale drilling because it’s a threat to their alternative-energy-nirvana ideology (something MDN has long pointed out). The column starts this way:

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Solar Panels Can’t Compete with Cheap Shale Gas

An article published today by NPR (no less) exposes the simple truth about solar energy: It just can’t compete with shale gas economically.

The article recounts the experience of a Pennsylvania family who installed 21 solar panels with government subsidies (that is, the government sliding their sticky fingers into your pockets to help pay for it). The end result? Even with taxpayer subsidies, the payback period for solar energy is 17 years—the lifetime of the system. At best it’s break-even, but in reality, it actually costs you more money than other forms of energy.

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