British columnist Johann Hari recently took to the Huffington Post to try to whip up alarm about the supposed dangers posed to drinking water by ‘fracking,’ a.k.a hydraulic fracturing, an American-made technological miracle in natural gas production that has roughly doubled known North American gas reserves in only the last five years. I rebutted Hari’s baseless environmentalist talking points in a previous post, and I am much pleased to report this morning that the British Parliament agrees with my debunking of his nonsensical claims.

According to Public Service Europe (by way of the Global Warming Policy Foundation),

“Shale gas drilling has been given the go-ahead by members of the UK parliament who have insisted that the process is safe. An inquiry by the Energy and Climate Change committee concluded that fracking, the process by which gas is extracted from shale rock, poses no risk to underground water supplies as long as drilling wells are properly constructed.”

Dow Jones NewsWire’s writeup includes this money quote from Tim Yeo, the Conservative member of Parliament who chairs the bipartisan committee,

“There has been a lot of hot air recently about the dangers of shale gas drilling, but our inquiry found no evidence to support the main concern–that UK water supplies would be put at risk. There appears to be nothing inherently dangerous about the process of ‘fracking’ itself and as long as the integrity of the well is maintained shale gas extraction should be safe.”

Hear, hear! Is Hari listening?

London Independent columnist Johann Hari feels betrayed by British Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to embrace the American-made revolution in natural gas production, known as hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a., ‘fracking’). Recently, he wrote in the Huffington Post,

“When the British Prime Minister David Cameron gazed into the dewy eyes of a husky and promised to lead “the greenest government ever,” what did you think that would involve?… you certainly wouldn’t have expected David Cameron’s latest plan. He has decided to convert us to a new energy source [fracking] that seems, in the US, to have released cancer-causing chemicals and radiation into the water supply…”

“Cancer-causing chemicals” AND “radiation” have been released “into the water supply”….that sounds really scary! Fortunately for this American tap-water enthusiast, Hari is full of it. As I explain here,

“While there is some evidence that poorly built “fracking” rigs could lead to the escape of methane into local groundwater wells, this isn’t as disturbing as it sounds. Methane (ie, natural gas) does not make water poisonous, and there is no evidence that the fluids used in the process, which could be toxic, have leaked into well water. Much more importantly, there is ZERO evidence that the process affects water tables used for utility scale water supply, although environmentalist special interests are quick to try to conflate well-water methane contamination with water table contamination. The upshot is that hydraulic fracturing has been used in this country for fifty years, without harming public health and environment.”

Hari hits a wrongness exacta. His claim that hydraulic fracturing has released “cancer causing chemicals and radiation into the water supply” is bogus, and he also incorrectly conflates methane seepage into local wells and the contamination of utility scale water supply with toxic fluids.

At first I thought Hari was making stuff up, but then I learned he was simply borrowing from someone else who made this stuff up. To lend evidence to his baseless claims, Hari links here, to the Amazon page for “Gasland,” a thoroughly debunked agitprop documentary on the supposed evils of fracking.