Shout out to all you L.A. Disco Divas out there! Does the picture look familiar?

Salt Lake City County

It may not be The Valley skyline but you might recognize the lovely brown haze hovering over the landscape. If you look closely, you’ll notice that nobody in the picture is wearing bell bottoms or a “Movember” mug. Go ahead. Zoom in.

Oh is it pixelated? Whoops.

No matter. The point is that this picture is not from the Donna Summer archives, it was taken last year and EcoWatch has something rather interesting to say about it:  Greenwashing.

Enter the Environmental Defence Fund (EDF), the tweener in the Frackenstein Versus Ra WWF match (World War Frack). Would you trust the data analysis from a morally ambiguous organization which will not release its measurement data for independent assessments?

Without full disclosure, the industry funded emissions studies smell a little like the Marlboro Man to me. At least he had a cool clean cowboy hat on his head. Salt Lake City County just gets the stench and L.A. is not far behind…

…if Frackenstein wins.  “Go Ra Go!” I say.

Just like you can Do The Math on atmospheric carbon, on Tropical Toronto, and on the Gyre Consequences of drinking, you can quickly forecast the environmental cleanliness of fracking by comparing 2 simple numbers:

Number 1
The % cutoff where the pounds of methane gas leaks with respect to the overall production of natural gas have the same greenhouse effect as the coal it replaces

Number 2
The actual % of methane leakage

The simple equation then is?

If Number 2 > Number 1, then the claim that fracking has a lower greenhouse gas footprint than coal is FALSE! Tada!

So…let’s look at the numbers from Climate Central’s article on Methane Leaking in Utah

Number 1 = 3.2% (the cut-off)

Number 2 =  between 6.2% and 11.7% (measured leakage from one field in Utah so far)

Dirty fracking business is it not?

Granted this is only one study, but it’s 4 to almost 8 times the EDF’s claim that only 1.5% leakage is likely. And even if Number 2 were closer to 3.2%, the fact remains that the claims the EDF makes are not “measured” values.

Hmmm. Which do you prefer: real or fake? (Ahem! Numbers, dear male Woman Not Waiting supporters)

While we wail for EDF’s University of Texas study and while the California legislature debates Senate Bill 4, we are losing time to stop the bigger climate change tipping point: 450 ppm of CO2.  Why wait for a study funded by the very corporations who serve to profit from favorable calculations?

Follow the money. (And send some my way so that I can fund a marine preserve 🙂 ).

Soak in all that golden sun from your rooftop right into your dishwasher, fridge, light, air conditioning, TVs,… Show the world what a Golden State you are proud and privileged to call home.