Gasland: how to turn good news into bad
...What’s missing from Gasland is the equally pertinent observation that environmentalists are desperately trying to find a reason to scare people away from a cheap new source of energy that isn’t renewable or zero-carbon. If shale gas takes off, as it seems to be doing, the pressure from scares about ‘peak oil’ and the dangers of deepwater drilling for energy won’t have the same purchase in the public’s mind.

As one analyst wrote in the Wall Street Journal last year: ‘I have been studying the energy markets for 30 years, and I am convinced that shale gas will revolutionise the industry—and change the world—in the coming decades. It will prevent the rise of any new cartels. It will alter geopolitics. And it will slow the transition to renewable energy.’...

Scepticism is not an ‘attack on science’
...Thus, the debate is multi-dimensional, and controversy exists throughout. But for Nurse, identifying the areas of disagreement and offering up an analysis isn’t the point. Instead, he takes for granted that ‘the science is in’, and wonders why trust in scientific authority seems to have been eroded. One reason for this loss of trust just might be that controversies and other inconveniences are swept aside by the polarisation of the debate, leaving a perception that authoritarian impulses are hiding behind scientific consensus. ...