Pew Research Poll: Only Half of US Adults Know What Fracking Is
A new national poll just released yesterday by the Pew Research Center and Smithsonian magazine quizzed the Americans public on their knowledge of science and technology with questions on current topics and basic scientific concepts (see the full report embedded below). One of the questions on the quiz was this: Which natural resource is extracted in a process known as “fracking”? The multiple choice answers given: Coal, Diamonds, Natural gas, Silicon.
Readers of MDN know the answer—you have a keen interest in the topic of natural gas. How many in the overall general public of adults 18 and older know that fracking extracts natural gas, even with Gasland and FrackNation? A pitiful 51%.
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A group of at least 20 farmers from upstate New York who made the long trip to New York City and the Tribeca Film Festival with tickets to Sunday’s premier of Gasland 2 were denied entrance after having the temerity to shout questions to Gasland director Josh Fox and Yoko Ono as they sauntered down the red carpet. Such big hearts, such open tents those liberal anti-drillers have, don’t they?
This is the glorious day and age of the Internet when you can start a group and call it something like, oh, The Pennsylvania Alliance for Clean Water and Air (PACWA), and claim it’s a large group when in fact it’s one person (or a few people), launch a website with a catchy slogan, and pretend to be a grassroots “movement.” Such is the case with PACWA and their so-called “The List of the Harmed”—those who claim to have been harmed by hydraulic fracturing, supposedly in Pennsylvania (although many anti-drilling New Yorkers, where there is no fracking, also appear on the list).
Buffalo-area State Senator Mark Grisanti, a Republican, recently re-introduced several bills he previously introduced last year about this time, dealing with hydraulic fracturing in New York State. MDN received a tip from a Norse Energy investor forum that Grisanti had introduced a bill that creates a high volume hydraulic fracturing waste tracking system at the Dept. of Environmental Conservation. True, he did indeed introduce that bill (again) and the bill has been sent on to the Senate Environmental Conservation committee. Norse investors, among others, are attempting to read any tea leaves they can find for news that New York is about to allow horizontal fracking. Is this such a sign?…