The Earth is Flat and Fracking is Safe

It is amazing how much money and clever marketing can tell you the up is down and left is right. The power of suggestion is undeniably effective. Western religion has always been slow to catch on to facts.  So, where do the loud religious zealots get their information?  The pulpit.  Where does the pulpit get their facts? From their favorite bible and corporate contributors, science is is just irritating noise for these immovable minds.

The Christian Bible is a Flat Earth Bible! This is an excerpt from an article published by The Bulletin of the Tychonian Society #44 (in July 1987)

The author, Robert J. Schadewald … was surprised to learn that flat-earthism in the English-speaking world is and always has been entirely based upon the Bible. I have since assembled and read an extensive collection of flat-earth literature. The Biblical arguments for flat-earthism that follow come mainly from my reading of flat-earth literature, augmented by my own reading of the Bible.

Regardless of visual and physical evidence gathered by humans over thousands of years, thankfully, most Christians will admit the earth is a sphere, and not the center of the universe.  But, for several hundred years that idea was blasphemy and would get you tortured and killed.  Even after the Columbus arrived in the Western Hemisphere, the Catholic Pope made Galileo recant his discovery that the sun was the center of our solar system. The Inquisition was a potent mind changer.  To be fair, according to WIKI, many religions started out insisting the earth was flat. Now, in 2012, the blatant disregard for many, but not all things, related to science, is a Christian Evangelical disease. Today, there are several scientific facts that are loudly denied by Christian Evangelicals, who have kidnapped rational Republicans.  The danger of denial is huge. Grab Holy Money now … deal with Extinction later.

In the news today, you will find Rick Santorum criticizing Oil and Gas Fracking opponents, as Liberal Conspiracy fiction.  He dismisses any and all evidence that groundwater and air pollution are significant problems caused by Fracking and Oil Sand excavation. The KXL Pipeline and dirty GOP greed want to expand this environmental disaster into the lives of  Americans.  The KXL Pipeline means jobs, at a terrific cost to the biosphere.  Humans and the food they grow depend on the stability of the biosphere.  Fracking and Tar Sand excavation threaten this biosphere.  The temporary gratification of money now, lowers the chance of human survival in the long run.  You cannot buy a biosphere.  The earth provides it with a fragile requirement of ecological equilibrium.  Earth demonstrates her fragile balance with every earthquake, hurricane, tornado, tsunami and volcanic eruption.  Add the destructive arrogance of shallow thinking humans, and extinction is guaranteed..

Canada’s Tar Sands: So Destructive It Makes Its Well-Paid Workers Want to Quit – Amidst all the political wrangling over the Keystone XL pipeline, some may lose sight of what the fight is ultimately about. And that, of course, is one of the most environmentally devastating projects ever undertaken: the tar sands mining operation in Alberta, Canada. Today, a Reddit user who says he was until recently a well-paid tar sands worker, shared the following video—along with why he quit his job over moral objections to the destruction his work was helping to cause.

The tar sands are still a blight of epic proportions, and the U.S. oil industry and the conservative political establishment are vying to squeeze even more oil out of it. It’s still resulting in the destruction of Canada’s Boreal forest, one of the last and largest swaths of pristine forest in the world—it’s bigger than the Amazon rainforest. And it’s still unclear how much damage it’s doing to public health: officials and investigators aren’t sure how much toxic waste is leeching out and contaminating nearby waterways.

All that is to say nothing of the veritable “carbon bomb” that the tar sands contains—if we were to burn it all, the nation’s top climate scientist, NASA’s Dr. James Hansen, says it would be “game over for the climate”.

So … yeah. Nasty stuff. So nasty, in fact, that the Reddit user, jonnypondwater who posted the above video on the website today did so because he had decided to quit his job for moral reasons. Under a post entitled “I just quit my [very well paying] job in Northern Alberta, Canada because I didn’t want to be a part of this: (video)”, he added some commentary. He wrote that

“My job is probably already filled. The oil sands will probably continue to expand and be extracted for the next 30+ years. It is that sort of ignorant “oh well it’s going to happen anyway” attitude that is sending the environmental state in a downward spiral. Me quitting my job was a personal/moral decision I made because I didn’t want to be a part of the wide destruction and contamination of the environment in that area. But hey, maybe I’m just naive. People need to think differently I reckon.”

Lisa Jackson Says Public Pressure Will Clean Up Fracking. Really?

EPA Fracking Waste Rules Debated -The controversial extraction technique injects a mix of chemicals, water and sand at high pressure thousands of feet beneath the earth to free oil and gas reserves trapped in shale rock formations. The technique has sparked a boom in domestic energy production, including liquid natural gases like propane – particularly in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas. The industry says fracking is safe, but environmentalists fear it is responsible for water contamination as large quantities of chemical-laced liquid remains trapped underground.

The EPA has taken steps recently to boost federal regulation of fracking and plans to develop national standards for the disposal of wastewater. It is also investigating whether fracking is responsible for contaminating drinking water supplies. But members of the US House Subcommittee on Water Resources and the Environment questioned the EPA’s plans last week, suggesting federal interference could hamper the booming industry.

Oil and Gas Industries are blitzing the media with disinformation about the consequences of their extraction methods. Disinformation and denial are the bylines for the 2012 US Presidential candidates, because they are obligated to protect their biggest, most powerful contributors.  Money, again, will trump logic and practicality.  Yes, it may be practical to employ as many people as possible, right now, but denying the lethal consequences is criminal. You would think that consumers of main stream media would be a little wiser about the information they see and hear. There is an epidemic of disinformation and propaganda bought and paid for by special interests presented on radio, television and internet. Do not be one of these gullible consumers …  If I saw it on TV then it must be true:  We make much of our perceptions of the world, the other, through media outlets. We go to war, demonize, dehumanize, celebrate, condemn, create opinions, beliefs, all based on these frames. Do we ever make a truly educated decision based on anything we see in the news?

The earth is the 3rd sphere, orbiting a medium sized star, 2/3rds distance from the center of the The Solar System, located within one of the outer arms of Milky Way galaxy, which contains about 200 billion stars.. A spherical Earth dates back to ancient Greek philosophy from around the 6th century BC,^[1] but remained a matter of philosophical speculation until the 3rd century BC when Hellenistic astronomy established the spherical shape of the earth as a physical given.

WIKI Hydraulic fracturing:  is the propagation of fractures in a rock layer caused by the presence of a pressurized fluid. Hydraulic fractures form naturally, as in the case of veins or dikes, and is one means by which gas and petroleum from source rocks may migrate to reservoir rocks.

Energy companies may attempt to accelerate this process in order to release petroleum, natural gas, coal seam gas, or other substances for extraction, via a technique called induced hydraulic fracturing (often shortened to fracking^[a] or hydrofracking).^[1] This type of fracturing, known colloquially as a ‘frac job’,^[2] creates a wellbore drilled into reservoir rock formations. The first frac job was performed in 1947,^[3] though the current fracking technique was first used on the late 1990s in the Barnett Shale in Texas.^[4] The energy from the injection of a highly-pressurized fracking fluid creates new channels in the rock which can increase the extraction rates and ultimate recovery of fossil fuels.

Proponents of fracking point to the vast amounts of formerly inaccessible hydrocarbons the process can extract: in the United States, for example, one formation alone (the Marcellus Shale) is estimated to hold as much gas as the entire country consumes in half a century.^[4][5][6] There are environmental concerns, however, regarding the contamination of ground water, risks to air quality, the migration of gases and hydraulic fracturing chemicals to the surface, and the health effects of these.^[7][8]

A distinction can be made between low-volume hydraulic fracturing used to stimulate high-permeability reservoirs, which may consume typically 20,000 to 80,000 gallons of fluid per well, with high-volume hydraulic fracturing, used in the completion of tight gas and shale gas wells; high-volume hydraulic fracturing can use as much as two to three million gallons of fluid per well.^[9] This latter practice has come under scrutiny internationally, with some countries suspending it, or even banning it completely.

Increased Use of Natural Gas Will Make Climate Change Worse, Not Better, New Study Predicts

Beware of the GOP front-ruinning Presidential candidate.  Rick Santorum makes it clear who is pulling his strings, while he professes to be an Evangelical Saint.

Santorum’s well-compensated love of fracking – His claims about the practice’s safety puts him far to the right of his state’s GOP — and the oil industry

Santorum: "Satan Has His Sights Set on the US"

Click here for 13 full quotes on Energy & Oil OR background on Energy & Oil.

• Voted NO on disallowing an oil leasing program in Alaska’s ANWR. (Nov 2005)
• Voted YES on $3.1B for emergency oil assistance for hurricane-hit areas. (Oct 2005)
• Voted NO on reducing oil usage by 40% by 2025 (instead of 5%). (Jun 2005)
• Voted NO on banning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Mar 2005)
• Voted YES on Bush Administration Energy Policy. (Jul 2003)
• Voted YES on targeting 100,000 hydrogen-powered vehicles by 2010. (Jun 2003)
• Voted NO on removing consideration of drilling ANWR from budget bill. (Mar 2003)
• Voted YES on drilling ANWR on national security grounds. (Apr 2002)
• Voted YES on terminating CAFE standards within 15 months. (Mar 2002)
• Voted YES on preserving budget for ANWR oil drilling. (Apr 2000)
• Voted NO on ending discussion of CAFE fuel efficiency standards. (Sep 1999)
• Voted YES on defunding renewable and solar energy. (Jun 1999)
• Voted YES on approving a nuclear waste repository. (Apr 1997)

Click here for 6 full quotes on Environment OR background on Environment.

• Voted NO on including oil & gas smokestacks in mercury regulations. (Sep 2005)
• Voted YES on confirming Gale Norton as Secretary of Interior. (Jan 2001)
• Voted YES on more funding for forest roads and fish habitat. (Sep 1999)
• Voted NO on transportation demo projects. (Mar 1998)
• Voted NO on reducing funds for road-building in National Forests. (Sep 1997)
• Rated 0% by the LCV, indicating anti-environment votes. (Dec 2003)