tagged w/ Oil & Gas Drilling
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People in North Texas worry about tornadoes, not earthquakes. That's not the case in the small town of Cleburne, just south of Fort Worth. They've had six quakes so far this month.
Cleburne happens to sit on a huge, recently discovered natural gas deposit called Barnett Shale. There's been a lot of drilling, and some people wonder if that has triggered the earthquakes. Here, a four-story drilling rig can pop up in as little as a couple of days. In the past eight years, 2,000 gas wells have been drilled here.
While most of rural America slowly dies on the vine, Cleburne is building civic center additions and opening championship municipal golf courses across the street from lakefront McMansions.
The 18-hole Cleburne Municipal Golf Course was built in part with money that the city received from royalties from natural gas companies that built on city ground.
Nobody thought much about it when a small tremor shook the town in early June. It was 2.8 magnitude quake and was the first in town history. But then a couple of days later, another earthquake. Then another quake. Then another.
Natural gas recovery in the Barnett Shale involves drilling down several thousand feet and then drilling sideways thousands of feet more. Liquid is then pumped down the wells at very high pressures, which fractures the strata releasing the pockets of natural gas. Could this be causing little quakes?People in North Texas worry about tornadoes, not earthquakes. That's not the case... more
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The earth moved here on June 2. It was the first recorded earthquake in this Texas town's 140-year history _ but not the last. There have been four small earthquakes since, none with a magnitude greater than 2.8. The most recent ones came Tuesday night, just as the City Council was meeting in an emergency session to discuss what to do about the ground moving.The earth moved here on June 2. It was the first recorded earthquake in this Texas... more
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Please watch the Center for Biological Diversity's newly released television ads about saving the polar bear.
Polar bears are dying and will soon be wiped out entirely if we don’t take immediate action to curb global warming.
Please sign the petition below and pass it on to a friend.
With your help we’ll reach our goal to get 50,000 signatures below and send a strong message to President Obama in the first 100 days of his presidency.
Global warming is rapidly melting the sea ice polar bears depend on. Accounts of bears starving and drowning are on the rise as they are forced to swim farther and farther to reach the solid ice they need for hunting and resting. Some bears are even turning to cannibalism in a desperate search for food. Those trapped on land hundreds of miles from the nearest ice are often shot as they wander, starving, near villages.
And, as if things weren’t bad enough already, pollution from oil and gas drilling threatens to destroy what’s left of the polar bear’s disappearing habitat.
If current trends continue, two thirds of all polar bears — including all bears in Alaska — will be extinct by 2050, and the rest of the species will be gone forever by the end of the century.
But we can save them by joining together to take immediate action. The science is clear. We know what needs to be done — we just need to build the political support to make it happen.
Please help us gather 50,000 signatures on the petition below in President Obama’s first 100 days to encourage him to rein in global warming and save the polar bear.Please watch the Center for Biological Diversity's newly released television ads... more
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=atTPk3ULEWeQ&refer=home
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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) will sue the Interior Department over its decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species."We believe that the listing was unwarranted and that it's unprecedented to list a currently healthy population based on uncertain climate models," says Alaska Assistant Attorney General Steven Daugherty.
To green groups, that argument is, shall we say, unimpressive. "Even the Bush administration can't deny the reality of global warming," says Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. "The governor is aligning herself and the state of Alaska with the most discredited, fringe, extreme viewpoints by denying this." Palin's litigation comes mainly out of fear for Alaska's fossil-fuel-reliant economy, even though the wording of the Interior Department decision went to great lengths to ward off any new restrictions on oil and gas drilling.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) will sue the Interior Department over its decision to list... more
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