The fracking mockumenatary Truthland played to an audience of eleven (11) in Syracuse a few nights ago. There were almost as many fracking shills and charlatans on the panel as there were frackers in the audience. Narrator dodged questions about the film itself, for obvious reasons: Truthland is a hoax. Thirty (30) in attendance in Buffalo, including seven (7) armed guards for this fracking infomercial, and the audience responded appropriately: with laughter. The narrator ducked the Q&A panel, leaving a grab bag of local shale shills to play dumb about the fracking mockumentary.
http://blogs.artvoice.com/avdaily/2012/08/01/police-vs-questioner-at-truthland-screening-in-buffalo-ny/
http://www.nofrackingway.us/2012/08/03/fracks-lies-and-videotape/
Summary :
Gratuitous use of 7 armed security officers in bullet proof vests. Check.
Videographer ejected for deadly possession of a camera. Check
University student ejected from university facility to for asking questions. Check
Audience busts out laughing at inopportune times. Check
Panelists heckle audience. Check
Panelists ignore questions about the mockumentary
EID representative heckles audience. Check
Narrator flees screening to deal with a global warming incident
Spoiler Alert !
The narrator’s Famous Bubbling Annulus is not shown on-screen.
The narrator knows more about how gas wells leak than anyone she interviews.
But she “plays dumb” about her own famous bubbling annulus during the entire fracking infomercial.
Here is Prof. Jim Holston’s account of the screening and the panel discussion afterwards:
The Energy in Depth fracking caravan arrived in Buffalo on Thursday, July 27th for a screening and discussion of the frack-happy filmlet, Truthland. Three fracksters attended: the Hon. Dennis Holbrook (Exec. VP of Norse Energy), Mr. John Holko (Owner, Lenape Resources), and Dr. Scott Cline (of Petroleum Engineering). Ms. Shelley Depue, the putative mastermind of the movie (it actually began with a pro-fracking landowners’ association, as Ms. Depue admitted in the Harrisburg Q&A), had just hurried home to Pennsylvania, ostensibly because two trees fell over on her farm. The event was held in the Burchfield-Penny Gallery of Buffalo State University.
The hall was rented by the Independent Oil and Gas Association, or IOGA. Ms IOGA, a.k.a. Cherie Messore, our mistress of ceremonies, needs to learn a thing or two about university etiquettee and free speech. When she took exception to a question from one University at Buffalo graduate student, she called on Buff State police to eject him from the hall and throw out a friend of his who was taping the festivities. They didn’t quite do that, but Buff State’s Officer Opie came up front and proudly announced that he could shut down the event anytime he felt like it. His gun remained holstered the whole evening. After the talk, I helpfully suggested to Ms. Messore that, if she wants to look like less of a corporate thug, she might want to refrain from siccing the cops on students when holding discussions on campuses. She responded that she owned the event since IOGA had paid for the hall, then flicked me away, like a fly.
The general m.o. for our fracksters was to express bafflement at the questions and talk out the clock. It’s not an easy job to have to defend Truthland, a disingenuous gee-whiz mess, aimed at an incurious ten year old whose attention fades after thirty-four minutes. It’s full of wiseacre sneers at Josh Fox, director of Gasland, being from “New York City”—it doesn’t quite add “Jew,” but you get the idea! (It never quite occurs to the cinematically-challenged manufacturers that the film is aimed at New York!). Whenever someone asked about the movie, they tended to skedaddle to the safe ground of an anecdote or a muddled distinction: between “fracking itself” and “incidental spills” (as if one could frack without drilling or flowback), between administrative violations and violations with environmental impact (as if the former were only crime-ish, not an actual crime). All three need to take a corporate PR refresher course to help them work on a tendency to sneer at the uppity proles. And the EID cameraman should join them: at one point, he launched into a gratuitous rant against one questioner, accused him of looking like a graduate student (shocking! and true!), and of being a tree-hugging, logging-disrupting Earth Firster. (I don’t believe the EID-provided refreshments for the evening contained anything alcoholic, but I could be wrong. He might have gotten into some fracking fluid. Or he may simply have been filled up with the spirit of the Lord and the job-creating power of Gas.)
A local reporter asked “How can you sleep at night?” No answer was forthcoming. Another UB graduate student skillfully brought out the spills on the farm of Shelly Depue; the panel members seemed clueless and uninterested. At one point early in Truthland, Depeu’s husband suggests the question, “Shell, is the well construction strong enough to keep our water safe?” The answer, of course, is “no, it isn’t,” if the bubbling annulus at Depue 8H is any guide. On this, see Trouble in Truth Land. Yet another questioner asked about the conflict between Mr. Cline’s testimony on fracking “flowback” percentages last night, and related testimony earlier this month, helpfully explaining to Mr. Cline that 90% of 20% is not equal to 90%. This seemed to be beyond Mr. Cline’s grasp. You really felt for him—he sounded like Spın̈al Tap’s Nigel Tufnel: “These go to eleven!” Another questioner asked why EID decided to cut away from the interview with Professor Terry Engelder right before he referred to toxic spills and “blowouts.” Evidently, there was just not enough time—35 minutes would have been way too long!
Last Halloween, during a secret speech to fracksters and one anti-fracking advocate with a tape recorder, Mr. Holbrook bragged about Norse Energy “getting” the University at Buffalo on its side. During the Q&A, I asked if it was easier to do this having UB Geology Professor Robert Jacobi on the Norse payroll; he didn’t answer. After the talk, I congratulated him on his newly awarded stock option for 1,000,000 shares in Norse Energy. He told me he’s still mulling over whether or not to take the option. Then I posed a hypothetical: “If, twenty years from now, a significant cluster of cancer cases were to appear around one of your fracking sites, would you donate your stock dividends to your victims?” He responded that the question didn’t make sense, and asked if I object to the very idea of “profit.” It wouldn’t be a real, sure’nuff frack-a-rama without a little red-baiting—thanks, Den!
There is a great deal of grass roots activism against fracking in Western New York. Because I teach at the University at Buffalo, I’m particularly interested in the role of fracking money in corrupting university scholarship. The questions of peer review and conflict of interest are booming nationwide, thanks in part to AAUP, in part to the brilliant work of Buffalo’s Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) on both the UB Shale Institute and the University of Texas fracksters—notably Professor Charles “Double-Dip Chip” Groat. I believe these questions will continue to loom large at UB, since we still do not have a full transparency about the ties to the oil industry of the four authors of the Shale Institute’s maiden publication, or an explanation for why UB rushed their sub-brilliant cut-and-paste job into print, without peer review. For more on this part of the anti-fracking struggle, see David Kowalski, “UB Shale Institute — Getting to the Bottom of It” and Martha McCluskey, “Scientific Integrity at Risk in Fracking Policy Debate.”
Here’s a link to the Buffalo News version of last night’s: “‘Hydro-fracking’ film draws crowd, exchange of barbs: Opponents question details in ‘Truthland.’” It’s not terrible, but the reporter doesn’t know the difference between “contradict” and “refute.” The Manny, Moe, and Jack of EID did a lot of contradicting, but precious little refuting.
Jim Holstun teaches English at UB.
http://www.nofrackingway.us/2012/07/23/frackademia/
Truthland played in Deposit, New York, to a similarly unimpressed audience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW7PW8omYTY
Buffalo News 27 July 2012. Web. 27 July 2012.
“Hydrofracking.” For those on either side of the debate, the use - or misuse - of the word alone can stimulate the heart as quick as any pot of coffee, pack of smokes or rush-hour traffic jam.
Or living down-wind / down-stream from the DePues. . .
Thursday evening, during a gas industry-sponsored event and screening of new pro-fracking film, “Truthland,” at Burchfield Penney Art Center on the Buffalo State College campus, proved to be no exception.
“There’s been so much misinformation out there,” Holbrook said.
He should know about spreading misinformation . . . http://www.scribd.com/doc/74614768/No-Fracking-Gas
“I think it’s critically important for people to understand what a tremendous opportunity this really is.”
For gas company executives. Not 90% of the residents. http://www.scribd.com/doc/100688155/Leases-Can-t-Vote
Like Ms. DePue’s neighbors, they get gassed, run over by frack trucks and asphyxiated by diesel compressors.
http://www.marcellus-shale.us/Depue-Truthland.htm
But many of the roughly three dozen or so in attendance seemed unmoved by either Holbrook’s explanation or those offered by the two other panelists, Scott Cline of Petroleum Engineering and John Holko, owner of Lenape Resources.
Those opposed to hydraulic fracturing chuckled and offered several catcalls during the 34-minute film that features Pennsylvania mother and landowner Shelly Depue, on a her personal pursuit for “the truth” about the hydro-fracking process after she and her family watched Josh Fox’s 2010 documentary “Gasland.”
“Gasland,” an award-winning HBO documentary film, identifies what it calls “the crisis of gas drilling” and deleterious effects it says it’s had on communities nationwide.
In “Truthland,” Depue, who lives on a Pennsylvania farm atop the coveted Marcellus Shale, sets out to learn whether drilling on her property was safe for her family.
“When we were told we could have natural gas under our farm, we felt very blessed. But that excitement was tempered somewhat by the negative stories we had heard about hydraulic fracturing,” Depue said in a statement. “The science teacher in me had questions and I owed it to my family to go out and find out what was real.”
Ms DePue knows more about leaking gas wells than anyone she interviews in the film - which makes this informercial seem like a SNL skit
http://www.texassharon.com/2012/06/13/truthland/
In the film, which was underwritten by industry and a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Energy In Depth, Depue travels around the country and meets with various experts, including geologists, state and federal environmental officials and residents about their experiences with hydraulic fracturing.
Her conclusion? “The truth is that Gasland is mostly hot air,” Depue says at the end of the film.
Actually, she is the hot air queen. The film was bankrolled by Chesapeake, masters of truthiness, who own the website. Shot by an attack ad agency, and produced by an industry front group.
Depue was to be in Buffalo on Thursday. In fact, she was - for only a matter of minutes. Just after her arrival, she turned around and headed home. The violent storms that swept through the Northeast on Thursday caused some damage to her farm, forcing her back to Pennsylvania.
Freak tornado = aka global warming anecdote #9875378590 . Thus depriving the panel of her own brand of hot air.
Holbrook said it’s geared to the “open-minded” populous who have heard about hydraulic fracturing, but might not totally understand it because of what they’ve heard from the vocal opposition’s “misinformation.”
Which is why Chesapeake paid an attack ad agency to make it and used a gas well scofflaw as its narrator . . .
Many of those opponents in the audience Thursday suggested the film was nothing more than “industry propaganda.” They questioned the panel not only about the safety and efficacy of hydraulic fracturing but about the chemicals used in the process, perceived lack of governmental oversight and inherent dangers involved in the activity.
Jim Holstun, for instance, took aim at the simplicity of Depue’s argument that the chemicals used in the process are commonly found “around the home.” Holstun cited Hydrochloric Acid, Toluene and Benzene as three of those chemicals.
“I looked around my house, I couldn’t find any,” said Holstun.
OK, what about radium 226 in the flowback ? Radon ? Methane, arsenie, barium, strontium 90 ? Keep looking Jim. Or move in next to the DePues and turn on your tap.
“There is no pathway from whatever fluids we are using to the groundwater,” said Cline.
Who neglects to mention Ms. DePue’s leakers
Incidents of gas wells causing methane geysers in Pa. and W Virginia
Or the most obvious pathway = the aging well bore itself
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Question for those who have seen the “movie” - how many gas well pads, compressor stations etc did you see?
For those who HAVEN’T seen the “movie” and have a high nausea level - if you do watch it, mark down how many gas well pads, compressor stations etc you do see.
In December of 2010, the City of Philadelphia PA produced a report entitled: Report of Philadelphia City Council’s Joint Committees on Transportation and Public Utilities and the Environment Pursuant to Resolution No. 100515: Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling’s Impact on Philadelphia.
Two of the experts in the movie were Mr. Scott Roberts, and Dr. Joseph Martin. Read what they had to say in the Philadelphia report: http://legislation.phila.gov/attachments/10946.pdf
Good catch - they told a different story when they worked for the DEP and when they were on a panel in Philadelphia
http://fracktoids.blogspot.com/2012/07/more-from-truthinessland.html
David Kauber commented on No Fracking Way:
Well, this is one sad statement about the University of Buffalo, to be so hurting for money that they have to prostitute themselves for the Corporate Take-Over of our lives.
My mother went to U.B., the University of Buffalo, during the Depression and graduated in the field of library science. Many years later, her son and my brother got his B.S. degree in math and Phd. in philosophy at this same school, with one of his professors who had our mother in his first, beginning philosophy class.
There is good reason for the liberal arts education, and specifically, ethics education, and sadly, the University of Buffalo, or the people who are NOW running it are in sore need of morality and ethics, and maybe a class or two at this school, assuming the current professors are still of substance — a class or two on ethics might be able to reach the money-hungry keepers($$$$$$$$$$) of this school.
sincerely, David Kauber, Aurora, New York
If it plays in public again - check out the “panelists” -
Such as Scott Cline
http://blog.shaleshockmedia.org/2012/08/27/energy-in-depth-is-to-fracking-as-joe-camel-is-to-cigarettes/
Or Mike Knapp -
http://blog.shaleshockmedia.org/2012/08/20/frackers-gone-wild/
Or Dennis & Ryan Holbrook
http://blog.shaleshockmedia.org/2012/08/09/son-of-frackinstein/