Over ten thousand evacuated & ca. 600 homes gone

From an Article by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, December 31, 2021

Tens of thousands of Coloradans were forced to flee their homes Thursday as two fast-moving wildfires—whipped up by wind gusts reaching 110 mph—tore through communities just outside of Denver, engulfing entire neighborhoods in flames and destroying hundreds of buildings.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has declared a state of emergency to help aid the disaster response as officials characterized the late-December fire event as among the worst in the state’s history. “None of this is normal,” said Colorado state Rep. Leslie Herod (D-8). “We are not OK.”

Experts said the combination of months of unusually dry conditions, warm winter temperatures, and ferocious winds set the stage for the devastating blazes, which meteorologist Eric Holthaus viewed as further evidence that “we are in a climate emergency.”

The Colorado branch of the Sunrise Movement agreed, writing on social media that the fires were “fueled by the climate crisis.” A growing body of evidence has detailed the extent to which human-caused climate change is driving more frequent and intense wildfires in the U.S. and across the globe.

“People are losing their homes and running for their lives from a fire that started December fucking 30th,” Sunrise Colorado tweeted before turning its attention to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and the Big Oil-friendly infrastructure law he helped craft. “Sen. Manchin, your Exxon highway bill isn’t going to save our homes or our lives,” the group said. “Your greed and corruption is not only torching our future. It’s burning our communities and destroying lives tonight.” Manchin, a close ally of the fossil fuel industry, is currently blocking progress on Democrats’ Build Back Better Act, a $1.75 trillion reconciliation package containing hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-related investments.

Officially known as the Marshall and Middle Fork fires, the blazes have thus far torched nearly 600 homes and 1,600 acres in the Boulder County area. Avista Adventist Hospital, a 114-bed facility in Louisville, was forced to evacuate its intensive care units. No deaths and several injuries had been reported as of late Thursday as firefighters worked to contain the damage, an effort they hope will be assisted by a forecasted New Year’s Eve snowstorm.

Colorado Public Radio observed that while the exact cause of the destructive blazes is not yet clear, “early evidence suggests a sparking power line could have ignited the fires.”

“Late-December wildfires aren’t unheard of in Colorado, but the colder fall and winter months used to mean a break from the state’s peak fire season,” the outlet noted. “Scientists and fire ecologists say climate change, fueled by human-made carbon emissions, has added 78 days to the fire season since the 1970s.”

Environmentalist Bill McKibben likened the horrific images emerging from Colorado to “when the comet hits in ‘Don’t Look Up,’” a globally popular new film satirizing climate denial. “So look. Long and hard,” McKibben said. “And then get to work breaking the power of the fossil fuel industry.”

Marcellus shale drilling operation

Article by E. Mayfield, J. Cohon, N. Muller, I. Azevedo & A. Robinson, Nature Sustainability, Vol. 2, Pp. 1122–1131(2019)

ABSTRACT — Natural gas has become the largest fuel source for electricity generation in the United States and accounts for a third of energy production and consumption. However, the environmental and socioeconomic impacts across the supply chain and over the boom-and-bust cycle have not been comprehensively characterized.

To provide insight for long-term decision-making for energy transitions, we estimate the cumulative effects of the shale gas boom in the Appalachian basin from 2004 to 2016 on air quality, climate change and employment.

We find that air quality effects (1,200 to 4,600 deaths; US$23 billion +99%/−164%) and employment effects (469,000 job-years ±30%; US$21 billion ±30%) follow the boom-and-bust cycle, while climate impacts (US$12 billion to 94 billion) persist for generations well beyond the period of natural gas activity.

Employment effects concentrate in rural areas where production occurs. However, almost half of cumulative premature mortality due to air pollution is downwind of these areas, occurring in urban regions of the northeast.

The cumulative effects of methane and carbon dioxide emissions on global mean temperature over a 30-yr time horizon are nearly equivalent but over the long term, the cumulative climate impact is largely due to carbon dioxide.

We estimate that a tax on production of US$2 per thousand cubic feet (+172%/−76%) would compensate for cumulative climate and air quality externalities across the supply chain.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0420-1

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CMU study suggests taxing natural gas to offset environmental damage

Article by Paul J. Gough, Pittsburgh Business Times, December 10, 2019

PHOTO in ARTICLE: A drilling rig stands about 100 feet tall on a well pad being developed in the Utica shale play near Marietta, Ohio. From Jeff Bell | Columbus Business First

A Carnegie Mellon University study said a $2 per thousand cubic foot tax on natural gas production would help compensate for the climate and air quality impacts of drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the Appalachian basin and elsewhere.

The study, co-written by former CMU President Jared L. Cohon and Princeton University’s Erin N. Mayfield, was published in Nature Sustainability, an academic journal published by the same company that owns the globally respected journal Nature. The article, published in Nature Sustainability’s December 2019 issue, looks to reconcile what it said was the environmental and socioeconomic costs of drilling not just in the field, but through the supply chain.

The researchers found benefits and costs on both sides of the equation, including economic development and job gains, while at the same time an increased amount of deaths from air quality related to the shale gas activity. The study estimated between 1,200 and 4,600 premature deaths due to shale activity between 2004 and 2016, and about 469,000 job years in the period. Job years are defined in the study as a part-time or full-time job over a year.

The analysis projected $12 billion to $94 billion in additional climate impacts over the course of 30 years. It also found long-term impacts further away from the shale drilling areas, with what it said was half of the premature mortality happening downwind in the Northeast. The drilling activity modeled occurred in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio between 2004 and 2016.

“The cumulative effects of methane and carbon dioxide emissions on global mean temperature over a 30-year time horizon are nearly equivalent but over the long term, the cumulative climate impact is largely due to carbon dioxide,” the study said.

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Fires ravaged parts of Southern California in December 2017, unusually late for fire season

HOST: Steve Curwood, Public Radio International, Living on Earth.

DATE: January 12, 2018, WEB-SITE: www.loe.org

CURWOOD: From PRI, and the Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood.

NOAA – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – tells us America suffered a record amount of damage in 2017 from natural disasters, with a tab of more than 306 billion dollars. And to put that 306 billion in perspective, consider that it’s more than the interest on the US national debt, and twice the federal budget for health, Medicare, and education. Extreme weather hit almost every state this year: wildfires out west, Hurricanes Irma, Maria and Harvey in the South, and disasters that got less press coverage but still cost of over a billion dollars — events like the Minnesota hailstorm and drought in the mid-west. Here to discuss these steep costs and how they relate to climate disruptions is Kendra Pierre-Louis from the New York Times Climate Desk. Welcome to Living on Earth Kendra!

PIERRE-LOUIS: Thanks, Steve. I’m so glad to be here.

CURWOOD: So, 2017 was only the third hottest year on record in the US, but at 306 billion dollars, disaster damage broke all records.
PIERRE-LOUIS: When you go back to 1980 when they first started keeping records, there were only 3 natural disasters that topped a billion dollars. This year it was 16. The only other year where there are 16 events that topped a billion dollars was in 2011. So what we’re seeing is it’s not just that we’re having severe weather events, we’re having more of them.

CURWOOD: So, $306 billion dollars. Just how unprecedented is this figure record-wise compared to previous years?
PIERRE-LOUIS: Yes, it’s record-breaking. The next closest disaster year was in 2005, and that was the year of Hurricane Katrina and that was $91 billion dollars less.

CURWOOD: Now, of course, we’re not saying that climate caused all of this, but climate amplifies these disasters.
PIERRE-LOUIS: Right. We can definitely say that climate change amplified these disasters, and that we can see especially when it comes to, like, the western fires or the hurricanes that happen this year, we can definitely see the fingerprints of climate change. Researchers found that when it came to Hurricane Harvey that 38 percent of the rain can be attributed to climate change. That means in some places where as much as 50 percent of the rain fell, almost 20 of those inches you can blame on climate change.

The Tubes Fire, the most destructive wildfire in California’s history, destroyed parts of Napa, Sonoma, and Lake Counties in the Northern part of the state.

CURWOOD: Now, what kinds of natural disasters account for the largest portion of these costs?
PIERRE-LOUIS: Hurricanes account for the largest portion of these costs, but it was also the most costly fire year on record as well. And then when you start digging into the data it’s just the sheer number of incidences. When you go back to 1980 when they first started keeping records, there were only three natural disasters that topped a billion dollars. This year it was 16. The only other year where there were 16 events that topped a billion dollars was in 2011. So, what we’re saying is it’s not just that we’re having severe weather events. We’re having more of them.

CURWOOD: It seems that there are many disasters that cost a billion dollars or more that didn’t surface in the national consciousness in a big way this year, but nonetheless had a fairly staggering impact collectively. Talk to me about some of those.
PIERRE-LOUIS: Sure, you have the Missouri and Arkansas floods and severe weather. That was $1.7 billion dollars. You have hail storms and high winds in Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee…that was $2.6 billion dollars. One of the ones that I think did not get a ton of attention was the drought, for example, in South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana. And droughts are really tricky because there are so slow moving that we don’t notice them. But for the farmers who it impacted, a lot of them like cattle ranchers, it caused them a tremendous lot of financial loss.

CURWOOD: Talk to me a bit more about how climate change may have aggravated all this damage.
PIERRE-LOUIS: Yes, so it was unusually warm across the country. NOAA came out with that release the same day they came out with the disaster data, and so it’s a threat multiplier. A really good example is the hurricanes. The oceans were warmer than usual, so that warm water fed the hurricanes. The wildfires out west, California was wetter in the winter and then it was really really dry, so all of that moisture created a ton of grass that grew really quickly, then the grass died off because it was so dry and then when the fire started it fed on all of that dry grass, and so that was all amplified by climate change.

A hailstorm in Minnesota racked up $2.4 billion in damage for the state.

CURWOOD: And how does 2017 figure on warming … on the warming record?
PIERRE-LOUIS: It’s the third warmest year in the United States on record. The global data isn’t out yet, but it should be out next week.

CURWOOD: So, things are really heating up.
PIERRE-LOUIS: Yeah, the Earth has a fever.

CURWOOD: How are insurance companies dealing with this? How much of the damage are they paying for?
PIERRE-LOUIS: A lot. This was a very expensive insurance year. It was the most expensive disaster year on record for insurers according to Munich RE, one of the world’s largest reinsurers. They’re recently the insurers of insurance companies. A lot of it was fueled by the disasters in United States, but there was also significant flooding in Asia. Obviously, what they’re going to do is they’re going to start passing those costs on to people. So, if you’re living in places that are at high risk for flooding or high risk for fires, you’re going to end up seeing increased costs because that’s the only way that they’re doing it. The one exception is in Florida because a lot of Florida flooding insurance and hurricane insurance is backed by the federal government. So, actually taxpayers are on the hook for those costs, and so there’s going to be sort of a reckoning when it comes to Florida about how they handle the insurance.

CURWOOD: Beyond the bottom line, what kind of toll is this taking on people’s psychological well-being?
PIERRE-LOUIS: There was a study that basically suggested that when these kinds of disasters happens, it’s actually really psychologically traumatic because not only do you lose your home in many cases, but you also lose your social connections, you don’t have your neighbors, you don’t have this breadth of support system. How you’ll deal with it really depends on whether it’s the first time you’ve gone through this or if it’s multiple occurrences. But basically it’s really traumatic and that’s ignoring, for example, the death toll rate. Like, if you’ve lost a loved one in one of these disasters that’s obviously going to be even permeate even further.

CURWOOD: So, does it get worse the more times you go through it or do you become more resilient…you say, ‘Oh all right, here it is again.’
PIERRE-LOUIS: It seems like people get worse. The one researcher that I talked to that looked at the flooding in Lafayette, I believe in 2016, said that after the rains happened in Lafayette the children whenever it rained a little bit too hard, the children would freak out. They really thought they were going to lose their homes again, they thought the floods were coming back. They really didn’t know how to deal with it.

CURWOOD: Kendra, what’s the lesson that we should be taking from this?
PIERRE-LOUIS: The lesson is two-fold. The first is that we should be taking steps to reduce the amount of carbon emissions that we’re releasing into the atmosphere so we can stave off the worst effects of these natural hazards. The other thing is we need to go deep into planning for the future, which is to accept that these kinds of occurrences are more likely to happen. When you look at Harvey in particular, we have people who are moving into flood zones, moving into places that were designed to flood and so it’s hard to say that that’s natural, right? We need to think really through in terms of where we are putting our communities and how we’re planning our communities, so that we are more resilient when these kinds of weather events happen.

CURWOOD: Kendra Pierre-Louis is a Climate Desk reporter for The New York Times. Thanks so much for taking the time with us today.
PIERRE-LOUIS: Thanks so much for having me.

Review: Art show mixes fracking with nature

Photo exhibit at Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, August 28th to September 27th

At first glance, Brian Cohen’s panoramic photographs are merely pictures of the snowy, Pennsylvanian wilderness. But taking a second glance, it’s difficult to see that lurking behind the frostbitten trees is an industrial-looking tower storing the contents used in hydraulic fracturing.

Cohen is one of six photographers featured in the Marcellus Shale Documentary Project which made its debut at the Handwerker Gallery on Aug. 28. The project is a travelling photography exhibition and online archive that seeks to educate audiences on the social, environmental and economic impacts of fracking in Pennsylvania and on its residents. The exhibit also features photographers Noah Addis, Nina Berman, Scott Goldsmith, Lynn Johnson and Martha Rial.

Most of Cohen’s photographs in the exhibit show his human subjects outdoors and often grouped together with animals. Hidden behind trees or in mist in the background is the infrastructure of the pipeline along the Marcellus Shale, keeping a subtle but looming reminder of its threat.

Addis’ work, which documents naturalistic scenes obstructed by drilling machines, draws parallels between the affected residents and their environment.

His portraits leave no room for obscurity; the blank backdrop emphasizes the tired, resilient expression visible in all of his subjects. Resident Fred McIntyre’s wrinkled face mirrors the form of the gas pipeline construction along Valley Chapel Road in Morris, where a once-dense forest is now parted by the upheaval of land. These stylistic choices create emotionally charged images despite their objective banality.

Berman’s work lies more within the realm of traditional documentary photography, which is typically candid shots of people. As such, her style forgoes pin-sharp accuracy. Berman’s photographs play with reflections, and the juxtaposition of light and dark give her images a surrealism that justifies the collection’s artistic merit.

Goldsmith’s work tends toward abstraction. His use of alternative lenses — like windows and mirrors — give his photographs a quiet sense of observation. He crops figures and skylines, imitating the close ambiguity of the media’s coverage of fracking. Goldsmith’s depiction of the landscape is almost magical, and it has a deceiving quality; a black tarp in the water turns into gold, the water itself turns into fire and fireflies dance around fields supposedly misted by toxic fracking fluids.

Johnson’s collection of “impressions” from all corners of Pennsylvania was taken on her iPhone, a decision that amplifies, rather than inhibits, the effectiveness of her work. The portability and discretion of the iPhone allow Johnson to capture a less vulnerable, more defiant and determined subject. Candid, simple and viral, these photographs aim to translate this phenomenon into the visual language to which our technological society is more accustomed.

The saturation of Rial’s photographs brings a traitorous luminosity to the lives and landscape affected by the gas drilling. The vibrant reds, blues and greens act as an almost artificial additive to the underlying industrialization of this sector.

Despite the varied styles and subjects of these photographers, their collective message remains cohesive. Their images maintain an artistic quality not lessened by documentary intent.

Overall, the artists in the “Marcellus Shale Documentary Project” do a beautiful and subtle job of mingling the ugly reality of fracking with idyllic Pennsylvanian farms, wilderness and people.

The exhibition runs through Sept. 27. For more information visit: www.ithaca.edu/handwerker or www.the-msdp.us

>>>>>>MarkWest Flaring Marcellus “Wet Gas”

Check out this video of Shale Gas Fireballs at the MarkWest Cryogenic Separation Plant located just west of Houston, Washington County, PA.

Just received from SkyTruth regarding the MarkWest flaring activities is this latest incident.

From: www.marcellus-shale.us

By S. Tom Bond, Co-Editor of FrackCheckWV and a resident farmer in Lewis County, WV

At the present the shale drilling industry is not required to carry insurance against any damage it might cause in West Virginia nor most other states. This is consistent with the claim they never do any damage to health, aquifers, livestock, property value, or in fact most anything else. It comes from the story they tell politicians, judges and smaller business men. It results in the hard nose position they adopt in court, and most importantly, helps keep any third party from objective evaluation of their drilling.

An insurance industry article, see below, begins by pointing to a long list of damages that have unequivocally been caused by shale drilling for gas and by similar kinds of contamination. These comprise many of the 27 references. Similar kinds of contamination are used to estimate the cost to the public of remediation damages to be expected from the drilling industry.

The article recognizes these categories of anticipated problems: contaminated aquifers, poor air quality, surface spills and health effects of natural gas production related chemicals. (Disclosure: the author is a member of an environmental group seeking to clean up damages caused by coal mining a century ago, using public funds. That extraction industry simply pawned off its damage on the public.)

Calculation of risk is exceedingly difficult, but the insurance industry is adept, and if brought into the job, has ways to both work out the risk and handle it financially in a way acceptable to the public for minimum cost. They do this by study of activities engaged in by drilling companies and comparison with problems experienced by other industries. For example, aquifer pollution by shale drilling is comparable to aquifer pollution by methyl-t-butyl ether, the gasoline additive which began to be recognized as a pollutant about 1990. Remediation would be very similar, both methods and cost.

Public anticipation of just compensation would go a long way to reduce the argument for moratoriums. Certain kinds of public loss, including Global Warming, would not be compensated by payment of damage to individuals, of course.

Several methods of insurance companies dealing with large potential losses are unfamiliar to most of us. They are prepared for loses beyond those in the historical record. Insurance companies which engage in large risk have other insurance companies to insure them. These are called re-insurers. Beyond this, insurance- linked-securities accept risk of re-insurers. So, insurance companies are able to accept very large, infrequent risks.
Where several companies are drilling in an area, the insurance companies which would insure them can work together, offering similar insurance policies to each and sharing the largest risks. The insurance industry “spreads the risk.” Competition between companies would insure lowest cost to the drillers.

Insurance also would help with a nasty practice engaged in by the drilling industry. They often form a small Limited Liability Corporation or Limited Liability Partnership to drill only one (or a few) well(s) and then flick out of existence after drilling and transfer of ownership to a larger company for maintenance and production. If a large loss occurs, the business simply goes bankrupt and the injured individuals and/or the public is left holding the bag.

Insurance helps not only the injured, but the companies themselves. For example, if they have bad luck, they do not have to go broke by paying damages that cut far into their capital assets.

The authors below also say: “Another benefit of insurance requirements is that energy producers will have additional incentive to employ best practices, because any reduction to their expected insurable losses will allow them to realize savings through premium rate reductions. In situations where there are disagreements or distrust between energy regulators and the energy producers, insurers could play a valuable role as an independent third party known to be focused solely on those safety practices that are most effective and cost-efficient. Insurers may also provide valuable advice based on experience in underwriting similar risks in other regions around the world.”

And finally, “Considering the history of pollution costs associated with energy production, the potential risks of fracking, and the expected expansion over the next several decades, there are compelling reasons for all parties involved to come together, consider all possibilities, and invest the time and effort in order to make sure we have the most effective systems in place to cover the pollution costs now, rather than later.”

It seems that to require insurance coverage of shale drilling would be best for all parties involved including the injured, the companies and also government regulators, because of the risk-management expertise they provide.

Information for this article was taken from “Fracking: Considerations for risk management and financing,” appearing in INSIGHT, published 21 June 2012. It was written by Richard Soulsby, Jason Kurtz and Bhavini Kamarshi. INSIGHT is published by Millman, a company that does insurance analysis. However, the author’s interpretation is from the point of view of the embattled victim trying to get just compensation for the very obvious effects of shale drilling. The article is located at:

 http://insight.milliman.com/article.php?cntid=8107