The government is convening a panel of experts to weigh in on how (and whether) fracking can be made safer. Yay! Six of the seven committee members have financial ties to the natural gas industry — including the chairman, who's a board member of two energy companies and has received $1.4 million from them over three years. Boo!
A group of concerned scientists has written a letter to the Secretary of Energy in which they object to the panel's skewed composition:
The committee appears to be performing advocacy-based science and seems to have already concluded that hydraulic fracturing is safe. We believe that the best science should be done first to determine whether increased unconventional natural gas production is sufficiently safe – from the individual water well to climate impact – and that policy should follow.
Complete and impartial analysis before policy? Uh, guys, that is NOT how we've been doing it.
