Wednesday
Jan042017
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill FoE in full flight
Jan 4, 2017 Greens 
The Advertising Standards Authority has been conducting an investigation into Friends of the Earth's wild stories about unconventional oil and gas in recent weeks. Today it was announced that our green friends have decided that a hasty retreat is in order. Rather than fighting the allegations against them they have decided to promise to stop telling said porkie pies rather than wait for an official ruling that they are, in fact, wholesale purveyors of baked meat products.
Reader Comments (40)
FoE says "the ASA has dropped the case without ruling";
Reality? FoE promises not to lie about fracking.
We'll see.
The person who represented them on the Today programme didn't sound very apologetic. It seems that if you think something like fracking is wrong, then claiming that it causes cancer and other problems is quite legitimate.
The public needs to understand that FoE should be no friends of theirs.
Meat heads? No, just liars!
First things first.
Welcome back your grace, a happy New year to you and yours from over the Tay.
Basically all the propaganda from the Waurmunistas, is the original fake news.
For instance on the biased BBC radio 4 last night was a classic piece from Roger 'Harridin' .
Luckily my wife managed to put the wireless back together as it somehow collided with the wall when the item finished!
It'a amazing how the greenies can make something quite innocuous sound like an incarnation of the devil. First of all the actual fracking takes place around 8000 ft underground, up until then the well is drilled like any other well. Fracking takes a few hours and once completed the average well will continue to provide/oil and gas for ten years or more without pumping.
There are of course dangers in any enterprise, and so it is with fracking, there is a danger that if not handled correctly during extraction the a waste water spill could contaminate local water supplies. That is why the removal of the waste water is heavily regulated.
The finished well is about the same size as a one car garage and easily hidden from view.
For residents the downside is the extra traffic on their roads caused by lorries coming to collect the gas/oil, which is why communities living near to fracking sites are compensated by the fracking companies, I hope handsomely.
There has never been an adverse report about fracking in any consultation carried out by professional bodies, yet it's described as "controversial" which is akin to describing the holocaust as "controversial" because a few nutters question it.
It might be worth commenting that the spokesman for Friends of the Earth was blown apart by John Humphreys this morning. He was left floor wiping and seldom have I heard JH more distainful.
A change by the BBC? - probably not, but it started my day well.
Even the Guardian is reporting this as Friends of the Earth ticked off over claims in anti-fracking leaflet.
The ASA said that it has told FoE not to make claims about the likely effects of fracking on the health of local populations, drinking water, or property prices “in the absence of adequate evidence”.
It's also in The Times, and at the BBC.
The picture of the Lake District with "Don't let fracking destroy all of this" is particularly remarkable. Just how stupid are these people?
Friends of the Earth are a bunch of liars.
How much of the "evidence" submitted to Planning Committees has been deliberated contaminated by Friends of the Earth?
Are they a Charity?
Slightly off topic- but there's a classic piece on the BBC today about the eeeeeevils of nitrogen fertiliser, illustrated with a picture of a farmer hard at work not applying fertilizer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38305504
Welcome back. We're having quite a flap over fake news here in the colonies. Thing that surprises me is the notion that fake news is new. It certainly isn't here.
FotE, pronounced 'faute' and is one.
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Wrong, jf, we never had fake news until the Russians hacked Trump and kept him from bombing the Germans at Pearl Harbor.
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@geronimo, Jan 4, 2017 at 12:20 PM
Once construction finished extra traffic for collection shouldn't be an issue in UK as - unlike USA - most areas are within a short distance of the UK gas grid.
Well said.
Re: FoE & ASA on Fracking
"Jan 4, 2017 at 6:19 PM | kim"
That is, I hope, humour. Fake news in the US goes back past the Spanish-American war. In that instance alone there is the well known instruction from Hearst to Remington (Frederick Remington) - "You furnish the pictures. I'll provide the war." Hearst effectively created the entire war as a favour to friends who wanted to control Cuba's sugar industry. Fake news should include the remarkable feat of Meriweather Lewis, who purportedly managed to shoot himself fatally twice with a single muzzle loading pistol during the Jefferson administration.
Heh, Duster, Mark Twain is always informative about the news business. I understand Julius Caesar was a tremendous publicist. I came, I saw, I published.
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Welcolm back; we've missed you.
Happy New Year.
kim:
Were those the German's guarding the chest containing Obama's long form birth certificate?
Heh, jf, you know, I wonder if he was delivered by a midwife who simply botched the paperwork. But also, in my belief, the requirement of 'natural born' excludes the son of a British Commonwealth citizen. I also believe that when Obama, in his peculiarly petty way, humiliated Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2012 over the authenticity of the produced certificate, that is when Trump decided to run for President. These little things can sometimes have such mighty consequences.
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Green Blob technology is lethal. People die of cold
Check out the chiefio, 'Hacks, Leaks, Investigations - Leaps.'
on that 'Russian' hacking, Looks like everyone was in there -
oh the horror!
A pork pie being a normal pie with the gravy siphoned off.
Kim. " I understand Julius Caesar was a tremendous publicist. I came, I saw, I published"
Don't forget Trump's oratory. "I came not to praise Obama, but to bury him".
There is a book cover in which it is stated that Obama was born in Kenya. It is authentic.
The birth certificate issue comes from the fact that, having an American mother, he would get an American birth certificate.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2146622/Barack-Obama-Kenyan-born-2007-according-literary-agency--months-announcing-bid-U-S-presidency.html
Also, while he may have registered with Columbia University and even graduated from it, there is no evidence he attended classes there.
More importantly, the likely reason for all the mysteries.
Barack Obama Worked For The CIA - twice UK journalist of the year John Pilger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezcr18NTOtA
"Barack Obama Worked For The CIA - twice UK journalist of the year John Pilger"
Wow, spooky!
Has social media made today's fake new any different from what went on in the past? Although it comes from NPR, I found the following story persuasive (especially the live interview), especially since generators of fake new stories can make significant amounts of money from their activity.
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs
FWIW, I find the idea that social media is bombarding us with dubious information very persuasive. It even happens here. For example, above Duster claims: Fake news in the US goes back past the Spanish-American war ... Hearst effectively created the entire war as a favour to friends who wanted to control Cuba's sugar industry. Fake news should include the remarkable feat of Meriweather Lewis, who purportedly managed to shoot himself fatally twice with a single muzzle loading pistol during the Jefferson administration."
Whatever the truth behind Meriweather Lewis's death (which has always been controversial), he man did suffer from serious bouts of depression, was in financial difficulties and lived for several hours with his wounds. There is nothing "remarkable" or implausible about the possibility that he committed suicide.
As for Hearst causing the Spanish-American War, Hearst's "yellow journalism" and ego are historical facts, but there is no evidence linking Hearst to the explosion of the battleship Maine (ignored as a cause by Duster). Hearst may have wished to aid his friends who wanted to control the sugar industry, but the declaration of war contained the Teller Amendment clarifying Congress's intent to go to war to achieve Cuban independence and not annexation to the US.
What does it mean to be a skeptic? If we are selectively skeptical, are we any better than the alarmists who claim our skepticism is funded by big oil?
If we are skeptics only about climate or the
https://www.asa.org.uk/News-resources/Media-Centre/2016/Opinion-piece-A-fractious-debate-but-a-clear-outcome.aspx#.WG5yQvmLTRY
FoE are another group of corrupt liars.
After FoE tried issued a misleading statement about the case yesterday, ASA Chief Executive Guy Parker, took the unusual step of setting the record straight.
The most egregious piece of post truth fake news has to be that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is man made and dangerous - all thanks to Cook et at (2013).
I had feared you lost to the exhaustion from the constant fight to stand up for rationality.
Anthony was away for a year, Stephen McIntyre blogs so seldom these days, and you yourself were missing, hors de combat I feared. Welcome back, Your Grace. From those who have done so much, much more is expected. Where else are we to look for those of your character?
The news in your post is welcome, though perhaps overstated. I'm more inclined to call it a 'rearranging of the deckchairs' rather than a retreat. In fact they're spinning it as if they'd been acquitted and exonerated.
Happy New Year, Bish. Glad to see regular posts.
FoE telling porkies- whatever next?
Given past form, more porkies.
FoE are institutional liars.
Yorkshire Post letter page carries the backlash that YP may have intended to provoke by mentioning anti-fracker camp has CAUSED the same problems it's supposed to stop.
YP kings of GreenPR use trick of including tweets to get 14 Angry AntiFracking msgs onto it’s printed edition Letter Page
Now
online they don’t include the tweets, but the letters page itself has started attract anti-anti-fracker comments.
London Times
pg31 3/4 page News-vert for the NYorks AntiFracking Camp
This time the staged photo has near vertical solar panels instead of the caravan gas bottle.
Protesters are claiming 1977 Squatters Rights over a field owned by FlamingoLand
Pg 35 photo of yesterday’s GP stunt Mary Poppins in a gas mask image hoisted n front of HOC .. no news story.
Friends of the Pork Pie get extra relish.
http://order-order.com/2017/01/06/friends-of-the-earth-fracking-claims-debunked/
This time the staged photo has near vertical solar panels instead of the caravan gas bottle.
Jan 7, 2017 at 4:41 PM | stewgreen
If you look at the shadow of the protestor, you will note the low angle of the sun. It is near dusk or dawn. The solar panels were set up, or adjusted just prior to the photo being taken. From 8am to 4pm, that solar panel is going to struggle to boil a kettle at this time of year.
The gas bottle must be somewhere else.
FoE is in denial about the positive potential of fracking for the UK. Huge reserves of shale gas have recently been discovered, that could meet all current UK demand for at least 50 years. Like in the USA it could lower energy costs and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. FoE are leading the moves to prevent this happening. I have looked at their main webpage on fracking. The key points I make are:-
- The claims of dangers of fracking raise questions, that need to be answered before they can be considered credible.
- The claim that fracking could affect house prices is totally unsupported.
- The claim that shale gas will not significantly affect energy prices is based on out of date data. The British Geological Survey has shown that the potential of shale gas is huge. Friends of the Earth has played a major role in preventing that potential being realized.
- FoE has consequently helped prevent shale gas from relieving the energy crisis brought upon by the Climate Change Act 2008.
- Claims that pursuing shale gas in Britain will affect global emissions are pure fantasy. Also is a fantasy the belief that Britain is leading the way on emissions reductions. We ain't leading if collectively the world is not following. The evidence shows clearly shows this.
Kevin Marshall
"Huge reserves of shale gas have recently been discovered, that could meet all current UK demand for at least 50 years".
Don't think so; the potential is there but reserves have still to be demonstrated. The wells being drilled are attempts to demonstrate them. The gas that may be there might be considered "speculative resources" in the current jargon. Don't spend your pension on them (yet).
Jan 8, 2017 at 10:36 AM | Supertroll
Thank you for that clarification. The sooner we find out, the sooner decisions can be made, based on evidence, not bogus claims.
The UK Green Blob are leading on the bogus claims. If UK Taxpayers money has been diverted into promoting lies and bogus claims, from genuine "just causes", a dim view may be taken about the actions of some senior civil servants.
FoE, like the BBC, hides behind "the science" (or "the physics") to disguise a purely political agenda. Their view is characterised by this from the Independent of 01-05-2004: "Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week." That is CAGW by another name, whatever the denials.
What these people are peddling is their own hubris, not science. The messianic narcissism exhibited by FoE indicates they will not apologise for anything they do because they think the end justifies the means. An appearance of apology is merely that. The last time such overweening self belief was rife, millions died in the gulag for it. And of course the more extreme Greens want just that - an extinction event for us thicko plebs.