Dr. Tony Ingraffea, the foremost engineering authority on fractures, and biologist/author Sandra Steingraber bust the industry myths around the hydrofracking of natural gas. Dr. Ingraffea states that the risks are not acceptable and lists a number of problems that can occur from water and air pollution to worsening climate change. Steingraber, who founded the growing New Yorkers Against Fracking and helped to delay fracking in New York, explains the health risks. A mother of two, she states that fracking and climate change constitute the most serious risks to children’s health. Find out what you can do to stop it.
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Dr. Tony Ingraffea and Sandra Steingraber Bust the Myths Around Fracking by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud
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Articles:
US Climate Bomb is Ticking: What the gas industry doesn’t want you to know by Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese
The Right Climate for a Time Out by Sandra Steingraber
Report: Shale Gas Bubble Looms, Aided by Wall Street by Steve Horn
Horizontal Fracking – Unacceptable Risks compiled by Anne Zukowski
The Most Influential Climate Science Paper Today Remains Unknown to Most People by Katherine Bagley
Drill Baby Drill by J. David Hughes
Our guests:
Dr. Anthony Ingraffea is the Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering and Weiss Presidential Teaching Fellow at Cornell University where he has been since 1977. He holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, an M.S. in Civil Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of New York, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado. Dr. Ingraffea’s research concentrates on computer simulation and physical testing of complex fracturing processes. He and his students performed pioneering research in the use of interactive computer graphics and realistic representational methods in computational fracture mechanics. He has authored with his students and research associates over 250 papers in these areas, and is Director of the Cornell Fracture Group (www.cfg.cornell.edu). Since 1977, Dr. Ingraffea’s research has been supported by grants from both government agencies and private companies, with core grant research support primarily being from the federal government (National Science Foundation; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research; U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station; U.S. Department of Transportation; Sandia National Laboratories;) and from private industry (Schlumberger, Gas Research Institute, IBM; Caterpillar Tractor). Professor Ingraffea was a member of the first group of Presidential Young Investigators named by the National Science Foundation in 1984. For his research achievements in hydraulic fracturing he has won the International Association for Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics “1994 Significant Paper Award”, and he has twice won the National Research Council/U.S. National Committee for Rock Mechanics Award for Research in Rock Mechanics (1978, 1991). He became a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1991, and named the Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering at Cornell in 1992. His group won a NASA Group Achievement Award in 1996, and a NASA Aviation Safety /Turning Goals into Reality Award in 1999 for its work on the aging aircraft problem. He became Co-Editor-in-Chief of Engineering Fracture Mechanics in2005. In 2006, he won American Society for Testing and Materials’ George Irwin Award for outstanding research in fracture mechanics, and in 2009 was named a Fellow of the International Congress on Fracture. For his work on public education on shale gas issues, TIME Magazine named him one of its “People Who Mattered” in 2011. His website is PSEHealthyEnergy.org.
Sandra Steingraber is a recipient of the Rachel Carson Leadership Award, has lectured before the parliament of the European Union, at various medical conferences, and on college campuses. A visiting scholar at New York’s Ithaca College, her previous books include Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment and Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood. She and her husband, Jeff, have two children—Elijah and Faith, ages nine and twelve. Visit New Yorkers Against Fracking, Concerned Health Professionals of New York and Americans Against Fracking.