TV News LIES

On September 11, 1957, 55 years ago tomorrow, a national catastrophe was unfolding, one you likely have never heard about before. At the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility near Denver, inside the plutonium processing building, a fire had started in an area designed to be fireproof.

Soon it was roaring over, through, and around the carefully constricted plutonium as one Cold-War-era safety feature after another failed. The roof of the building, the building itself, were threatened. And plumes of radioactive smoke went straight up into Colorado's late summer night air. High into the air, if you believe the witnesses.

Some of the con­se­quences of stray methane leak­ing from nat­ural gas wells are eas­ier to spot than oth­ers. Over­flow­ing water wells and bub­bling methane pud­dles are easy to doc­u­ment. But methane plumes are odor­less and invis­i­ble, so you need some sophis­ti­cated equip­ment to track it.

Equip­ment like the “portable laser-based methane mea­sure­ment sys­tem and com­bustible gas indi­ca­tor” that Gas Safety, Incorporated’s Bob Ack­ley used to doc­u­ment methane plumes near Leroy Town­ship, Brad­ford County, on July 25.

The spoon-billed sandpiper, three-toed sloth and a long-beaked echidna named after Sir David Attenborough are among the 100 most endangered species in the world, according to a new study.

The list of at-risk species has been published as conservationists warn that rare mammals, plants and fungi are being sacrificed as their habitats are appropriated for human use. More than 8,000 scientists from the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC) helped compile the list of species closest to extinction, which was published by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

A new report for the European Union warns that tough new regulations are required for the shale gas industry because of the high risk it poses to human health and the environment.

The EC study, 'Impacts of shale gas and shale oil extraction on the environment and human health', the most comprehensive analysis yet of the shale gas sector, says that drilling for shale gas poses a "high risks", worse than those posed by other fossil fuels, EEM reported.

Shell has been accused of "stock-car racing recklessness" after apparently undertaking only the most limited testing of a key piece of equipment aimed at preventing a Gulf of Mexico-style blowout during its controversial drilling in the Arctic.

Documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request suggest field-testing of a containment dome took place over two hours on 25 and 26 June. The dome, known as a "capping stack", would be dropped over any stricken wellhead.

Short for “hydraulic fracturing,” fracking is the process by which gas companies access underground deposits of natural gas, called shales. Millions of gallons of “fracking fluid”—that’s water and sand mixed with hundreds of chemicals—are pumped deep into the earth’s crust, breaking up rock and freeing natural gas reserves.

Natural gas is being marketed as a clean, green alternative to foreign-oil dependency; this year, the International Energy Agency found that carbon-dioxide emissions in the U.S. fell by four hundred and fifty tons, the result of an increase in the use of natural gas instead of coal. But since the inception of widespread fracking in 1997, horror stories have slowly entered the national conscience: illnesses coinciding with contaminated wells, citizens who can light their tap water on fire, pet and livestock deaths, exploding houses.