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Church and State Used Flawed Data for Fracking Report
Dear ,
Dame Vivienne Westwood and The Grim Reaper visited the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury to deliver our damning new report proving fracking could be considerably worse than coal in terms of its effect on climate change.
The report completely undermines the Conservative manifesto and the Church of England’s report in support for hydraulic fracturing. Our report compiles peer-reviewed studies which prove that the MacKay-Stone report, which the government depended on to support their case for fracking, is fatally flawed and riddled with false data. MacKay-Stone did not disclose any of their industry associations and only utilised biased industry directed samples.
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Is Fracking Worse than Coal?
Our report shows that the government was evidently misled and in turn continued to mislead parliament and the public with the findings of the MacKay-Stone report. Furthermore, this evidence now suggests that shale oil and gas extraction could be considerably worse than coal in terms of its effects on climate change and global warming.
The environmental impact of shale gas extraction is proven to be 300-400 times higher than reported in the MacKay-Stone report. In the MacKay-Stone report, the figure for leakage calculation was only half what it should have been. The figure for gas production is twice what it should have been. Additionally, MacKay-Stone deliberately excluded the figures in the Howarth study (2011) from their final calculations to support their own findings.
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Conservative's Shale Manifesto Left in Tatters
Our report completely undermines the Conservative party's policies in support of shale oil and gas extraction. May's manifesto does a complete u-turn on their promise to give communities a voice in deciding whether or not fracking happens in their local area. The Conservatives would allow drill sites they consider as “non-fracking”, to be authorised as ‘permitted development’, bypassing the same scrutiny and regulations of fracking applications.
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The Church & the Flawed MacKay-Stone Report
The Church of England’s Mission and Public Affairs Council, and the Environment Working Group chaired by the Bishop of Salisbury, stunned Christians nationwide in January 2017 when it said that fracking was “morally acceptable” because it replaced "dirtier energy", meaning coal. The Church also quoted MacKay-Stone in its ‘Briefing Paper on Shale Gas and Fracking’.
The Church owns 100,000 acres of farmland and has already allowed energy company Aurora to carry out seismic surveys to assess shale gas potential on land near Ormskirk, Lancashire.
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Vivienne vs The Church of England
Dame Vivienne Westwood wrote to The Archbishop of Canterbury on 18th May 2017 expressing her concerns over our new found evidence. A representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury responded saying “shale gas should not be ruled out”, criticised the report’s author for his findings despite our report being a compilation of peer-reviewed science.
The Church conceded however, that if new research comes to light, it will be open to changing its position. Dame Westwood hit back pointing out that the Allen report, cited by McKay-Stone, uses a faulty Baccharach sensor that has a serious design fault which causes the machine to significantly under report methane emissions.
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Is this the Final Nail in the Coffin for Fracking?
MacKay-Stone said fracking would help the UK transition to a renewable energy future whilst helping us reach our climate change reduction targets. However, our report proves that using this method of extreme energy extraction will completely blow out our climate change targets under the COP21 agreement which 195 countries signed included the UK and would send us on a backward course.
This also completely contradicts the aims of The Climate Change Act 2008. If we don’t stop fracking, we will never meet our agreed climate change targets.
Find out more at talkfracking.org | Read report in full
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