TV News LIES

The institute’s leadership has met with key figures in the Obama administration, which has signaled it will take aggressive action on global warming in the coming months. The president warned in his inaugural address last month that failure to act "would betray our children and future generations," and he’s expected to expand on the same theme in his State of the Union address next week.

There are four main areas of opportunity where the administration can act without involving Congress, Bianco said. The biggest impact could come by applying higher standards for carbon dioxide emissions to existing power plants – a politically dicey move that’s expected to meet with resistance from industry.

The destruction of the world’s fresh water due to fracking is at the uppermost of our minds, as we live and drink the water in the Great Lakes state. How much water is being used for Michigan’s frack industry is now proven to be obscenely underestimated.

Michigan may have set a national record for allowing Encana Oil & Gas USA to frack a natural gas well with more than 21 million gallons of water.

A second nearby well is set to be fracked with more than 16 million gallons, according to a permit granted Encana late last year by Michigan regulators.

New York's selection of a university geologist and gas-industry consultant to study hydraulic fracturing and earthquakes prompted a drilling opponent to say conclusions of a state agency may be tainted.

Robert Jacobi was picked by the Department of Environmental Conservation for a seismology study as part of its environmental review of the drilling process known as fracking, Lisa King, an agency spokeswoman, said in an e-mail this week. Jacobi is a University at Buffalo professor and has advised drillers for two decades.

Last week, a news report by the Timesonline revealed that the Pennsylvania Department of Environment (DEP) has been avoiding using its most stringent water testing method for determining if local drinking water has been polluted by fracking. The report serves as yet one more chapter in the continuing saga regarding DEP’s water testing practices that turn a blind eye to fracking contaminants.

The whole issue revolves around how the Pennsylvania DEP tests and reports results for water supplies reportedly contaminated by fracking. Over the years, DEP has developed a number of specific tests—each with its own numbered code—designed to measure contaminants of concern related to fracking. If the Pennsylvania DEP field agents send a water sample to the lab labeled with the code “942,” for example, that tells the lab to measure for 24 types of water contaminants1—including heavy metals.

The Senate’s top Republican on energy issues, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has crafted a blueprint for U.S. energy policy that calls for increased drilling while opposing laws to cap greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming.

"Energy 20/20" is a signal of how the Republicans want to proceed on energy policy in the coming years as the nation wrestles with contentious debates over oil drilling, fracking and climate change.

When red knots descend on the beaches of Delaware Bay this spring famished from their marathon flight toward the Canadian Arctic from the tip of South America, the rosy-breasted shorebirds may find slim pickings instead of the feast of horseshoe crab eggs they count on to fuel the rest of their migration.

Superstorm Sandy scrubbed away almost all the sand the crabs need to spawn upon. Restoring it in time is a top priority of wildlife groups beginning to repair Sandy's massive damage to dunes, beaches and salt marshes along the Eastern Seaboard that support a diverse population of birds, fish, marine organisms and other wildlife.