Phelim McAleer and his wife Ann McElhinney are journalists and documentary filmmakers. You may remember Not Evil Just Wrong (2009), their takedown of Al Gore and Global Warming hysteria. Now they want to tell the truth about natural gas development and hydraulic fracturing in a full-length documentary titled FrackNation . McAleer says: FrackNation will skeptically examine some of the scarier claims made by anti-fracking activists and look at how shale gas is helping some of the poorest communities in the US and potentially across the planet. It will feature small farmers, the working class and others who are benefiting from this economic boom. We will look at the backgrounds and motives of those opposing fracking. [Click here to see the producers' Kickstarter pitch for the project. (2:53)] FrackNation will go head-to-head with GasLand II , Josh Fox’s planned sequel to GasLand (2010), the highly effective anti-gas propaganda piece. With scant concern for earth science and demonstrable fact, GasLand earned an Academy Award nomination and stirred up anti-fracking hysteria nationwide with its memorable footage of flaming faucets. PBS and HBO will jointly bankroll Gasland II to the tune of $750,000. It is set to air on HBO this fall. Here’s how you can fight back: To tell their grassroots tale, McAleer, McElhinney and co-producer Magda Segieda will rely on grassroots financing. The website kickstarter.com provides a fundraising platform for creative projects. FrackNation ‘s goal is a modest $150,000. For as little as $1.00 , you can support a professional, fact-based counterargument to GasLand II . $20 donors will receive a copy of the DVD upon release. All donors will be named executive producer of the project. But why fracking? In 2011, McAleer called out Josh Fox, quite publicly , for conveniently neglecting to tell GasLand ‘s audience that flammable methane in groundwater is unrelated to gas development, and in fact predates gas development in Colorado, New York, and Pennsylvania. The Colorado Oil and Gas Commission looked into the claims in their state and concluded that the gas was “biogenic” in origin (i.e., naturally-occurring shallow gas, and not deep gas-well gas). Fox dismissed those reports as “not relevant”: Fox and his attorneys had the video above shut down for a time on both youtube and vimeo. The attempt at suppression inspired Phelim and Ann in their current project. Josh Fox is an intelligent man must be quite aware that he is pandering to the fears of the people. Radical environmentalists see cheap natural gas as the #1 threat to the development of wind, solar and other alternative forms of energy. By playing fast and loose with the facts, they can mobilize public sentiment against gas development. That’s why it’s important and timely to counter those arguments with facts and reason. “Normally, Kickstarter projects are pro-radical environmentalism,” said McAleer. “ FrackNation will be the first documentary funded through Kickstarter to challenge the environmental establishment. It will appeal to the workers and small farmers who know the truth, but never see it represented in modern documentaries.” Fundraising began quietly on Monday, with a full press campaign due on Tuesday. As of this writing [Tuesday morning], a total of nearly $7,500 $14,600, 5% ~10% of the goal, had already been achieved. [Updated 5:00 pm ET, 2/7. - Ed.] Cross=posted at stevemaley.com .
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Coming Soon: FrackNation
Phelim McAleer and his wife Ann McElhinney are journalists and documentary filmmakers. You may remember Not Evil Just Wrong (2009), their takedown of Al Gore and Global Warming hysteria. Now they want to tell the truth about natural gas development and hydraulic fracturing in a full-length documentary titled FrackNation . McAleer says: FrackNation will skeptically examine some of the scarier claims made by anti-fracking activists and look at how shale gas is helping some of the poorest communities in the US and potentially across the planet. It will feature small farmers, the working class and others who are benefiting from this economic boom. We will look at the backgrounds and motives of those opposing fracking. [Click here to see the producers' Kickstarter pitch for the project. (2:53)] FrackNation will go head-to-head with GasLand II , Josh Fox’s planned sequel to GasLand (2010), the highly effective anti-gas propaganda piece. With scant concern for earth science and demonstrable fact, GasLand earned an Academy Award nomination and stirred up anti-fracking hysteria nationwide with its memorable footage of flaming faucets. PBS and HBO will jointly bankroll Gasland II to the tune of $750,000. It is set to air on HBO this fall. Here’s how you can fight back: To tell their grassroots tale, McAleer, McElhinney and co-producer Magda Segieda will rely on grassroots financing. The website kickstarter.com provides a fundraising platform for creative projects. FrackNation ‘s goal is a modest $150,000. For as little as $1.00 , you can support a professional, fact-based counterargument to GasLand II . $20 donors will receive a copy of the DVD upon release. All donors will be named executive producer of the project. But why fracking? In 2011, McAleer called out Josh Fox, quite publicly , for conveniently neglecting to tell GasLand ‘s audience that flammable methane in groundwater is unrelated to gas development, and in fact predates gas development in Colorado, New York, and Pennsylvania. The Colorado Oil and Gas Commission looked into the claims in their state and concluded that the gas was “biogenic” in origin (i.e., naturally-occurring shallow gas, and not deep gas-well gas). Fox dismissed those reports as “not relevant”: Fox and his attorneys had the video above shut down for a time on both youtube and vimeo. The attempt at suppression inspired Phelim and Ann in their current project. Josh Fox is an intelligent man must be quite aware that he is pandering to the fears of the people. Radical environmentalists see cheap natural gas as the #1 threat to the development of wind, solar and other alternative forms of energy. By playing fast and loose with the facts, they can mobilize public sentiment against gas development. That’s why it’s important and timely to counter those arguments with facts and reason. “Normally, Kickstarter projects are pro-radical environmentalism,” said McAleer. “ FrackNation will be the first documentary funded through Kickstarter to challenge the environmental establishment. It will appeal to the workers and small farmers who know the truth, but never see it represented in modern documentaries.” Fundraising began quietly on Monday, with a full press campaign due on Tuesday. As of this writing [Tuesday morning], a total of nearly $7,500 $14,600, 5% ~10% of the goal, had already been achieved. [Updated 5:00 pm ET, 2/7. - Ed.] Cross=posted at stevemaley.com .
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Coming Soon: FrackNation
The secularists of the French Revolution regarded the Roman Catholic Church as the last obstacle to atheism’s final triumph. Blurting this out, the French dilettante Denis Diderot proposed to his fellow revolutionaries that they strangle the last priest with the “guts of the last king.” Under this spirit, the forces of secularism picked up speed in the 18th and 19th century, went into overdrive in the 20th, and now floor it in the 21st. Barack Obama is the one these revolutionaries have been “waiting for.” He is the stealth radical, soft in temperament but hard in thought, who seeks to use religiosity without religion to purge all traces of God from public life. Not wanting to repeat John Kerry’s electoral debacle — which even Nancy Pelosi attributed to the leaden senator’s undisguised secularism — Obama worked hard to con the religious into voting for him in 2008. He “valued” religion, particularly the votes of the religious. On his campaign web page, “people of faith” enjoyed their own special slot, a mere two tabs down from the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community.” Obama cast himself as a “post-partisan” politician on matters of the spirit. He found fawning dupes in the religious community to provide him with pulpits and platforms for faux-pensive addresses on his newly conceived “connection between politics and religion.” This pretentious throat clearing amounted to nothing more than Alinskyite advice to his fellow Democrats that they exploit religion for secularist and socialist purposes.
What I am about to say will probably not be very popular around here, and may end up costing me several good friends, at least on a temporary basis. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to say it anyway: when it is my turn to pull the lever on Super Tuesday, I’ll vote for Mitt Romney. And it won’t even be an especially difficult choice. I have said all along that as a Super Tuesday voter, I fully expected my choices to come down to Romney or one other option. I have thus been able to lay back in the weeds to see if a candidate who is preferrable to Romney would survive the early primaries. Now that it is apparent that the only serious alternative to Romney will be Newt, I can confidently say that the answer to that question is “no.” Let me explain how I reached this answer so easily. First, I begin with a strong presumption (which I have explained at greater length here ) that governors in general make better Presidential candidates, and better Presidents. Nothing that has happened during the course of this campaign season has convinced me that Newt in particular is exempt from the problems that plague legislator candidates; and in fact, quite a lot has reinforced that belief (most notably his haphazard campaign organization which failed to even get him on the ballot in Virginia or Missouri). In addition, Newt’s temperament and poor attention to detail, supposedly improved and mellowed with age, have recently again reared their heads as liabilities for Gingrich, when he was forced to shamefacedly admit that the angry denunciation of John King was premised upon an absolute fabrication. In addition to the problems presented by Newt’s lack of experience, he faces huge electability problems. He consistently gets slaughtered by Obama in head-to-head matchups worse than any of the other candidates , usually including Rick Santorum. For many candidates, you could write off this sort of early result as being the product of low name recognition; however, in Newt’s case, the problem is that he is well-known and yet disliked . A non-incumbent nominee with “very unfavorable” numbers north of 30 before the general election even begins faces a very steep uphill climb. Some folks insist, based on no evidence whatsoever, that Gingrich and Romney have equal chances of beating Obama. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about everything, but the actual evidence thus far suggests that Gingrich’s march to the White House is longer and covers much rockier terrain. Finally, on the merits, I have a hard time believing that Newt is substantially better than Romney from an ideological perspective. As Ben covered earlier today, Newt has been loudly and publicly in favor of individual mandates for the better part of two decades . His election-year conversion to principled crusader against individual mandates is every bit as transparent and cynical as any of Mitt Romney’s changes of position. Ditto his flips on global warming, etc. So far as I can tell, the chief difference between the two is that Gingrich will give you an “aw, shucks” smile and admit that he has flip flopped on this issue or that, whereas Romney and his many annoying defenders will try to tell you that he’s never flip-flopped on anything other than abortion. After all, who are you going to believe, them or your lying eyes? While I’m grated by this as much as anyone, it’s not really a convincing reason to vote for one candidate over the other. I get not really being enthusiastic about Romney being the Last Man Standing. Certainly on a personal level he rubs me the wrong way a lot of the time – his emotions don’t seem authentic or natural, and from an ideological standpoint he’s less than ideal (at least as far as I can tell, which is not very far). The question, “What sort of judges should I appoint?” is probably not even interesting to Mitt Romney, whereas it’s probably my most important question. But I figure, nominating a liberal justice has never helped a Republican win independents, but it has helped them lose Republicans, and Romney is smart enough to figure that out. And I will say, contrary to a large number of emotionally worked up people, that I will enthusiastically and without reservation be able to support him over Barack Obama. Even if he is as much of a blank-slate technocrat as the most recalcitrant of us fear, he will still be a huge upgrade over the current resident of the White House. At the very least, he has a proven record of fixing problems in an executive setting, and a pretty good understanding of how wealth is created, so he is light years ahead of the current resident of the White House. And if you’re seriously unable to see that, then I’m glad you’re one of the people whose life hasn’t gotten significantly worse over the last three years, but please leave the rest of us out of your pointless revenge fantasy. Mitt Romney wasn’t my first choice when this election cycle began, but in my mind he is clearly better than both Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama, and so on Super Tuesday, he’ll get my vote.
Although the issue of “sustainability” has been around a while, recently it has grown in popularity and influence. The way it’s happening follows an all too familiar pattern. There are several common ingredients in how the left enlarges its control over our lives. The first is the selection of some aspect of reality — global warming, carbon footprints, population growth, inequality, diversity, for example. The second element involves designating the selected aspect of reality as a crisis. The third step is to explain that the only way to avoid Armageddon is by reducing everyone’s freedom and by giving more centralized power and control to those who understand the magnitude of the crisis. The rest of us are told that our freedoms are a luxury we simply can no longer afford. Another common element of the process is defining the crisis as ambiguously as possible. Ordinarily, a desirable characteristic of a definition is that it draws a bright line between what is included and what isn’t. Clarity, however, is contrary to the objectives of the crusaders — in regard to defining the problem, the slipperier the better. For example, climate change (or climate disruption) beats global warming. Global warming is too quantifiable in comparison to climate change. No one is quite sure what “climate change” is or isn’t or how it can be measured. Sustainability is even more ambiguous than climate change and thus has more sustainability as a ruse. Ideally the designated crisis is as expansive and open-ended as possible. A vague, loosely defined crisis provides politicians and bureaucrats with what amounts to a blank check or a no-limit credit card, a credit card where someone else gets sent the bill. A problem having no clear definition is a problem without borders. At Arizona State University you can get a B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in sustainability. ASU has an entire “School of Sustainability.” The school’s website offers several answers to the question, “What is sustainability?” Here are four of the answers they offer:
