TV News LIES

Even if foes of the Keystone XL pipeline block it, companies seeking to get Canada’s oil sands to U.S. and world markets could travel the old-fashioned way: by rail.

While TransCanada has been trying to obtain a U.S. permit to build the 875-mile northern leg of its Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian and U.S. railroad companies have been busy installing new track and loading facilities to carry the oil sands crude from northern Alberta to refineries in the United States and Canada.

Green activists and climate change scientists have slammed a new report from the Obama administration that raises no serious objections to building a massive and controversial oil pipeline.

The Sierra Club, one of the US's oldest and most respected environmental advocacy groups, attacked the State Department study into the proposed Keystone XL piepline – which will bring oil from Canadian tar sands deposits down to the Gulf of Mexico – as a "deeply flawed" analysis of the environmental consequences of the project.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo came as close as he ever has to approving fracking last month, laying out a limited drilling plan for as many as 40 gas wells before changing course to await the findings of a new study after discussions with environmentalist and former brother-in-law Robert F. Kennedy Jr., several people familiar with his thinking told The Associated Press.

The turning point, which could delay a decision for up to a year or longer, came in a series of phone calls with Kennedy. The two discussed a new health study on the hydraulic fracturing drilling method that could be thorough enough to trump all others in a debate that has split New York for five years.

When looking for evidence of humanity's hand in climate change, it's easy to spot the belchers of greenhouse gases sitting at eye level: snaking rivers of bumper-to-bumper cars, say, or vapor-shrouded smokestacks at power plants.

Few people tend to look straight up, though, which if you had done it last Friday would've yielded a jittering mess of billowy streaks.

state laws protect us and our children. They do, in many cases, but NOT went it comes to health and safety regulations concerning the fracking of natural gas and oil. In Ohio, there are so many holes in the oil and gas regulations that the loopholes are big enough to drive a bus through.

I wondered what would happen if a truck full of liquid waste (brine) from a horizontally hydrofracked well hit a school bus on one of our rural roads – say Ohio Rt.144 in Athens County where a permit for the Atha Injection well is pending. So I started asking questions.

Almost exactly nine months ago on May 22, 2012, I wrote an editorial in the Fort Collins Coloradoan newspaper, Fort Colllins Should Ban Fracking. And yesterday, on Feb. 19, a sharply divided Fort Collins City Council voted 5-2 to ban fracking in the City of Fort Collins.

Nine months ago the conversation around fracking was relatively new in Colorado and few people and environmental groups were directly addressing it. Now, nine months later, very much has changed—fracking is in the news constantly, many environmental groups are engaged in the fight to stop fracking and the issue is escalating wildly throughout the public across the state.

On Sunday, an estimated crowd of 35,000 people joined the Forward On Climate rally in Washington, DC, where protesters delivered a clear message to President Obama: Take immediate action on climate change by rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Organizers of the rally described as the “largest in U.S. history” also called on the president to issue overdue Clean Air Act standards to limit carbon pollution from power plants.

More + photos....

After four months helping in ground zero recovery post-Sept. 11, New York City Police Officer Nick Russo sought respite by moving with his family to the rolling hills of Orange County, on the northern fringe of the metropolitan area.

The county has gotten a reputation as a haven for generations of retired or commuting police and firefighters from the city; the hamlet of Westtown wears the nickname "Guns & Hoses."