Cornell Prof Asks Gov. Cuomo to Lift Drilling Ban, Uses Real Science
Not all of the professors who work at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) are out there ranging like Robert Howarth and Tony Ingraffea, who have made a cottage industry for themselves (and collected big bucks from the Park Foundation) bashing away at shale drilling. Their most infamous anti-drilling work claims burning coal is better for the environment than burning natural gas (see New Cornell University Study Says Shale Gas Extraction Worse for Global Warming Than Coal). And yet they still have jobs at Cornell. Gotta love tenure. Fortunately there’s a counterbalance at Cornell. A group of Cornell professors, including Dr. Larry Cathles, previously pointed out the gaping holes in Howarth & Ingraffea’s “research” (see New Cornell Study Says Coal is Not Cleaner than Natural Gas). Dr. Cathles recently sent an outstanding letter to NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo urging him to lift the shale drilling moratorium, giving Cuomo a Cliff Notes version of the real science that proves natural gas benefits the environment, rather than the reverse…
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Sure looks to MDN like the so-called unbiased, independent pollsters at Siena College have pulled a fast one. They’ve either unintentionally, or perhaps intentionally, cherry-picked polling results in order to report in their latest poll that “51 percent of voters int the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes oppose hydrofracking, compared to 39 percent in support.” Here’s why the poll, and therefore it’s results, are fatally flawed and meaningless…
Yesterday the 70,000-member Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY) along with several individual landowners filed an appeal in their Article 78 lawsuit that was dismissed by a lower court in Albany County, NY earlier this month. You may recall that the JLCNY sued NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Dept. of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens, and state Health Dept. Commissioner Nirav Shah over their refusal to deliver fracking regulations (see 
For years MDN (and others) have written about the shadowy Park Foundation, a supposedly philanthropic non-profit with offices in Ithaca, NY, as behind some of the most insidious and frankly false “research” that attempts to smear the miracle of hydraulic fracturing. A new article in the summer issue of Philanthropy magazine lays bare the collusion that exists between the Park Foundation and researchers at once-storied institutions like Cornell University. In fact, Park is the funder of many anti-shale groups, including Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and more than 50 large and small groups. Park has woven a clever web of bought-and-paid for “researchers” and “reporters” at both big and small media outlets to plant false stories about shale gas…
Where to begin? New York’s anti-drillers have sunk to a new low in their irrational quest to eliminate fossil fuels. They’ve resorted to intimidation, threats and now violence against public officials. For extra good measure, they’re poisoning the minds of New York’s school children–using them as props because they can’t get traction from the public for their own bizarro ideas. Let us explain the latest outrage in the antis’ fight to prevent a badly-needed liquid propane storage facility in Schuyler County, NY…
When an oil train in New York explodes from a terrorist act, don’t say we didn’t warn you. The blood of it will be on the hands of eight environmental groups (including Earthjustice, Sierra Club and Riverkeeper). New York State officials caved and decided to turn over details about Bakken crude oil train movements through the Empire State in response to a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request (see 
New Yorkers continue to react to the dismissal of a court case brought by the 70,000-member Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY) and Norse Energy against state officials to force them to release six-year-delayed fracking regulations (see 