Cris Pasto has been participating in a lively, but friendly email debate on natural gas versus other energy sources. Here’s how Cris responded to suggestions by his email correspondent that burning firewood and relying upon renewables are preferable to natural gas development.

Burning Wood in Your Home

Today, I got to thinking more about the idea of everyone burning firewood. Mind you, we burned firewood all of our lives until about year 2000 and I hope to never go back to it.…

Stephen J. Sullivan, IV, a Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering Student at West Virginia University discusses how the environmental, technical, and economic issues surrounding natural gas extraction in the Marcellus Shale region have all affected him personally.

As a native Pennsylvanian who hopes to forge a career in natural gas drilling and production, natural gas development has already impacted me on several different levels. I grew up camping, fishing, and hiking in the…

A publication called The Flowback has turned heads in the Southern Tier but it turns out the entire thing is not only fatally flawed, but also financed by some very wealthy NIMBY types using an eccentric UFO follower as the author.

Denise LaTourette, in a guest post on this site, recently debunked a newsletter known as The Flowback, which has been distributed throughout the Southern Tier and has been recommended by Chip Northrup. Northrup suggests the author deserves financial support…

Natural gas opponents are looking for opportunities to benefit from a prospective natural disaster by capturing photos and videos of development sites impacted by a hurricane that is just hitting our area.

Readers of this blog will recall the infamous picture of a flooded natural gas rig PennEnvironment put out last year. You know…the one that turned out to be from Pakistan. Well, it appears natural gas opponents haven’t learned anything and are waiting with anxious anticipation to…

Chenango County businesswoman Denise LaTourette debunks a silly tale that appeared in her local newspaper promoting fears about natural gas development.

A hilarious tall tale entitled the “ The ABC’s of Gas Drilling – A Cautionary Fable,” appeared on page 5 of last week’s last week’s Norwich Evening Sun. Reading over Ms. Anderson’s lengthy fable, I wondered if I had missed the Binghamton Rod Serling Twilight Zone Festival’s call for new scripts. Yes, I thought that I was “caught…

Some clergy have come out against natural gas development in Dick Downey’s neighborhood and he gently and humorously challenges them to search a little harder for the truth before seeking to convert or condemn an industry.

The “Blessing Aimed At Fracking – Count Clean Water a Gift, Clergy Say” article in the Sept. 6th Freeman‘s Journal (front page, above the fold) reported that three local clergy blessed the waters of Lake Otsego. They then chastised natural gas development, condemned…

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission held a final scoping hearing in Oneonta regarding the Constitution Pipeline. Things got out of control rather quickly as natural gas opponents continued to disrupt, obfuscate and threaten others in their desire to shut down anyone who might think differently than them.

Thursday night the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) held a final scoping hearing on the Williams Constitution Pipeline in Oneonta, New York, Otsego County. Several of…

Mark Ruffalo has been engaged in some strange behavior recently that, in any other circumstance, would suggest he was working on our behalf. We haven’t hired him and there are no dirty tricks afoot, but our opponents could certainly be forgiven for wondering.

If recent behavior is any indication, Mark Ruffalo is acting like he’s a secret agent man for the oil and natural gas industry. The actor, who has played the “Incredible Hulk” on screen and on behalf of both NIMBY and true…

Brewery Ommegang has been talking out of both sides of its mouth on the subject of water supplies and natural gas. It has been bad mouthing the natural gas industry for potentially threatening its water supply while securing special permits and a variance to discharge wastewater to the Susquehanna River, which is Binghamton’s water supply.

Sometimes you wonder how our friends on the other side manage to keep it together. Well, they don’t really, but the hypocrisy of those who, without…

Bob Poloncic, president of the Vestal Landowners Coalition in Vestal, Broome County, reviews statements made by anti-natural gas activists and finds their claims lack scientific merit.

In one of the presidential debates, Mitt Romney stated he had five boys and was used to people saying something over and over again with the hope that it would come true. It seems Mr. Romney’s boys and New York anti-natural gas activists have something in common.

Multiple opinion articles have…

Henry S. Lowman of the Lincoln Institute takes a look at U.S. natural gas export potential, specifically in the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania.

There is an old adage in the real estate business that three factors affect the price of a property: location, location, location. It is a truism that might also be adopted by Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry. Not only is the Commonwealth blessed by abundant reserves in both the Marcellus and Utica shale regions, but our geographic…

The Rational Middle Energy Series aims to educate the public about energy consumption and sources. Given a majority of the public thinks electricity comes from the wall, this series is a much needed.

No signs, no yelling, no cameras, no radical viewpoints; welcome to the rational middle. The Rational Middle Energy Series is a set of short movies geared towards the people stuck in the middle of this great energy debate about where we should obtain our energy. Like it or not, energy…

The U.S. is flush with energy sources if we have the wherewithal to develop them. It’s long past time we unlocked the potential our resources offer and move the nation toward energy independence.

This year’s presidential election is a choice election. One of the choices is the politics of scarcity versus abundance. Liberal policies never produce plenty; at best they produce subsistence, at worst shortages. This is especially true in energy.

The shortage-mongers say we have only…

The Binghamton moratorium balloon just burst and, while David Slottje tries to pretend the fragments are just celebratory confetti, the reality is that this was a failed strategy employed by a minority of communities and voices within those communities who have been exploited by David Slottje and others to deprive the majority of their land rights.

The strategy employed by natural gas opponents to stop development by delay has become personal for me because there is a concerted effort…

Uni Blake explains the problems with anecdotal evidence used by natural gas opponents. While the general public may find anecdotal evidence highly compelling, most scientists are suspicious of data that rests on anecdotes. The idea research can be based solely on pooling more than one anecdote to create data is problematic – more than one anecdote is just more anecdote(s), not data. The study released recently by Earthworks’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project, “Gas Patch Roulette” is an…

Mark Ruffalo is practicing “energy independence” by installing solar panels at one of his houses in New York using taxpayer money. According to Ruffalo, the $9,003.08 needed from him for the project was no big deal. Well, probably not given the $15,000 plus contribution from taxpayers to subsidize an uneconomical project.

A recent interview highlighted how Mark Ruffalo recently installed $20,000 to $25,000 worth of solar panels in his backyard to harvest the sun’s energy and soothe…

The passing of the new impact fee means a lot of communities, even those outside of the producible Marcellus Shale, will see tremendous payouts. But what about those who are in the Marcellus and unable to develop because of the Delaware River Basin Commission? Robert Nolan takes an in-depth look at how the numbers add up across the state. Over 400 years ago, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Marcellus uttered a similar, famous quote with reference to the state of Denmark (“Something is rotten in…

About one thousand people spent the day in Albany expressing their support of natural gas outside Governor Cuomo’s office through signs and speeches on Monday. The rally was a great success with the message to, “Put New Yorker’s back to work, let’s start permitting natural gas,” at the forefront.

Approximately 1,000 people traveled up to Albany, New York to show their support for natural gas in New York on Monday. The group assembled, displayed signs and spoke out to show Governor…

We laid the foundations for analyzing the report “The Costs of Fracking” in Part I of this series. Now we’ll delve further into this 49-page paper from a group caught twice using fabricated imagery to stimulate a negative response against natural gas development.

This report is riddled with misleading information and assumptions. One of the most widely inappropriate parts of this study was the authors took information from across the country and tried to generically apply every…

The Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, an organization with the same New York City address as other natural gas opponents in that state, has made a point of repeatedly attacking residents who actually have to make a living in the Upper Delaware valley. Curt Coccodrilli takes on the organization and one of the group’s leaders for their elitist attitude.

Early last month, Senator Pat Toomey visited Wayne County to meet with various landowners and local officials about the subject of…