Fake Research Says PA Fracking Gives You Herpes & Kidney Stones
Every year or two another fraudulent piece of “research” is released supposedly showing a connection between fracking and health issues. Last March Yale released a nonsense study that says fracking causes STDs (see Yale Study Claims Ohio Utica Fracking Causes STDs). Another such jewel has just been published. This time PA Marcellus drilling causes “skin, genital, and urinary diseases.”
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We thought the tree sitting weirdos trying to block construction of Equitrans’ Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in Virginia had long returned to earth. The last of the sitters, at least in Franklin County, VA, came down last May (see
This is super sleazy. You might want to put on a rain slicker to keep the crap from sticking to you as you read it. Last week Chester County, PA commissioners asked to join a lawsuit against Sunoco’s Mariner East pipeline projects. The commissioners also voted to end easements allowing Sunoco access to the pipeline as it runs through county property, access needed so they could do work on it.
Duke Energy has a plan to build a critically-needed natural gas pipeline near Cincinnati, OH to replace an old pipeline built in the 1950s. A group calling themselves NOPE–Neighbors Opposing Pipeline Extension, is trying to defeat the project. We call them DOPEs–Dummies Opposing Pipeline Extension. The DOPErs are back, claiming a brand new pipeline through the area will be less safe and more dangerous than the old, worn-out pipeline.

Big Green insanity continues at the so-called Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF). The only thing they “defend” is their own twisted philosophy of trying to gouge out the eyes of the oil and gas industry in PA–even at the expense of de-funding their own beloved PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR).
More than a month ago MDN editor Jim Willis was contacted by PublicSource, an independent non-profit news organization based in Pittsburgh. A reporter wanted to know if Jim would grant an interview as part of a story he was doing on the Shell cracker, pipelines and the petchem industry in southwest Pennsylvania. Jim said yes.
The race-baiting, bloated old windbag Al Gore has popped up again, coming out of his massive fossil fuel-powered mansion, traveling to Virginia via fossil fuel-powered motorcade, sitting in a fossil fuel-heated church with a handful of black folks to pronounce Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s plan to build a compressor station nearby is “reckless” and a “vivid example of environmental racism.”
Finally some good news in our war against the forces of evil (i.e. Big Green). The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has rejected a lawsuit by Big Green groups that would have blocked Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and, as a bonus, would have emasculated the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s decision-making ability for all pipeline projects.
The Sisters of the Corn (our name for the a group of leftist nuns in Lancaster County, PA) asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case in which they claim their religious freedom has been trampled by Williams running a pipeline (Atlantic Sunrise) across their property. The case came up for consideration with the Supremes and they declined to hear it, meaning it’s the end of the road for the Sisters and the green group backing them.
It is beyond bizarre that the Sierra Club, which claims it defends the environment, works so hard to stop electric generating plants from converting from coal to natural gas. As we pointed out yesterday, gas-fired plants produce a small fraction of nasty pollutants like sulfur dioxide, compared with coal (see 

Perhaps two unrelated cases of individual landowners challenging Energy Transfer’s Mariner East 2 (ME2) Pipeline–one in court, the other with regulators–doesn’t make a trend, but it is worth noting. Our antennae are up.