Results of Cornell Natural Gas Study a Foregone Conclusion

Yesterday, I noted a study coming out of Cornell University that states that natural gas development and use is as dirty or dirtier than oil and coal. It is my contention that this peer reviewed article is a worthless piece of doctored data produced for the express purpose of using it to inhibit the drilling of natural gas in New York. I thank the Lonely Conservative and Left Coast Rebel for picking up on the story and adding an interesting, yet not surprising aspect that I didn't know about. More on this later.

It was also my contention that this study would be used by environmental leftist's as a, see I told you so lets end the debate right here, canard. Right on cue the articles start flying. I will link only a few as examples. There are more and can easily be found with a google search, but they all say the same thing. NYT, HuffP0, and Democratic Underground. I offered my rebuttal here. See Energy in Depth for much more detailed information.

The whole affair reminds me of the APG hoax. Where an outcome was pre-ordained and all that was needed was some data to support it. So statistics are manipulated to show something that doesn't exist, or that exists only as a natural phenomenon. In this case we have a undoubtedly brilliant scientist who needed data and a study to support his contention and belief that hydraulic fracturing was inherently unsafe. Why do I say pre-ordained? Sam Foster, at Lonely Conservative has unearthed a video showing lead author Dr. Robert Howarth leading a rally of environmentalists condemning natural gas drilling while touting the findings of his yet to be published study. This was in September 2010. Either Dr. Howarth is woefully slow in getting studies published or he knew what the results would be before he ever looked at the numbers.

Need I say: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics!

Here he is, in April 2010 boldly predicting that natural gas has a far greater "carbon footprint" than oil/coal. Interestingly his initial report on the subject had to be pulled because of a major error of not including the methane leaks from coal mines in the data, prompting the author to admit, "I blew it". A second try is viewable at Technology Review, titled Preliminary Assessment of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Natural Gas obtained by Hydraulic Fracturing. The first report has been removed. A few things jumped out at me as I read this report, "This estimate is highly uncertain...", "These numbers should be treated with caution." This sounds a lot like what we are hearing from this most recent study. I refer you to the video embedded below. Posted to Youtube this month, it is a presentation by the authors regarding the study which is to be released tomorrow. Thanks to Energy in Depth for the transcription....

• Howarth: “They are limited data. These are not published data. These are things teased apart out of PowerPoint presentations here and there. So rather than try to extrapolate based on any complicated formula, we’ve ended up simply taking the mean of those values.” (Howath presentation to colleagues, 22:30, March 15, 2011)

• Howarth: “A lot of the data we used are really low quality, but I’m confident that they are the best available data.” (38:50)

• Howarth: “Let me just as an aside say that, again, the quality of the data behind that number [methane emissions during well completion] are pretty lousy. You know, they’re these weird PowerPoint sort of things.” (44:15)

• Ingraffea: “We do not intend for you to accept what we have reported on today as the definitive scientific study in respect to this question, clearly it is not. We have pointed out as many times as we could that we are basing this study on in some cases questionable data.” (38:20)

• Ingraffea: “I hope you don’t gather from this presentation that we think we’re right.” (57:15)

• Howarth: “We did not look as carefully at coal. … We didn’t put anywhere near the amount of effort into them [coal numbers], but I’m sure they are lower than natural gas.” (39:10 – 40:08)

I shouldn't have to tell a scientist that if the information you are using to draw conclusions is crap, the results of your analysis will be crap! President Obama was supposed to usher in the Age of Science, instead we are left with scientists (and doctors) using their position and prestige to advocate their own political agenda.

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