Of course, the claim has sparked ridicule from environmentalists who know full well that outrage against fracking, the fossil fuel industry's latest scheme to get rich by destroying the biosphere, needs no support beyond common sense. Rasmussen offered zero proof of his claims and Greenpeace, the major focus of Rasmussen's dis-information statement that Russia is involved in a secret anti-fracking plot, says, “The idea we’re puppets of Putin is so preposterous that you have to wonder what they’re smoking over at NATO HQ,” a Greenpeace spokesman said,. "Mr Rasmussen should spend less time dreaming up conspiracy theories and more time on the facts.”
The story has grown like a California brush fire throughout the fracking friendly media. Some now saying that, "Russian secret agents have infiltrated Greenpeace and other campaign groups to co-ordinate the war against fracking, it has been alleged. The Kremlin's distaste for shale gas fracking is not down to a keenly-felt concern for its environmental impact. It is pure economics, born from a desire to keep Europe dependent on gas imports from Moscow." [notice the lawyerly use of 'alleged'].
Methane bubbling up through to the surface through the fractured geologic structure that contained it before fracking destroyed that containment.
The fossil fuel industry knows that studies by scientists maybe true but they are inconvenient hurdles that must be neutralized in the minds of consumers lest they begin to question the system that's delivering their world consuming exceptional lifestyles. Questioning by consumers must be avoided above all, and what better way to avoid those questions than to blame the evil Russians.
As one commentor wrote, "Drilling holes in the earth and using explosives to destroy sub-strata to release coveted fossil fuel located thousands of feet down? What could go wrong? The science is well-proven? Like all science, there are assumptions that are made based upon risk-reward modeling. I suggest that there are many more outcomes and consequences to fracking than the energy companies and regulators are willing to admit. It's against their best financial interests to do so. It's why tobacco companies maintained smoking was safe for years...until the mountain of evidence was so great, and the pool of retrievable monies so great, that the lawyers changed their allegiances to where they could reap their next class action pot of gold."
IMO, the worldwide fracking outrage is based solely on the ability of everyday people to study and learn for themselves what the truth is about any and every issue. The capitalist democratic governments can't be trusted, they are all on the corporate payroll. The authoritarian, totalitarian governments [including Russia] can't be trusted either. The corporate media is totally controlled by their owners [though by reading a very wide spectrum of their bullshit a person can often find by 'telemetry' a few bits of content that slipped through here and there, then, by accumulating those bits and following them by personal investigation, find answers to their questions].
