Guest essay by Eric Worrall

According to Police Federation chairman John Apter, a recent court ruling has placed police who arrest climate protestors at potential risk of legal repercussions.

Officers Fear Arresting Extinction Rebellion Vandals over Threat of Legal Reprisals: Police Representative

VICTORIA FRIEDMAN 19 Feb 2020

…

Chairman of the Police Federation, which represents the concerns of rank-and-file officers, John Apter said that members across the country had expressed concern that if they attempted to arrest the protesters that they would be sued and face financial penalties.

The concerns arose after the High Court ruled against the Metropolitan Police force’s order banning the crippling XR protests in London, with green advocates claiming that they could sue the force for retroactive wrongful arrests.

“We’re damned whatever we do,” Mr Apter said in comments reported by The Times.

The Police Federation chief said officers were “clearly very mindful of potential legal action. The government has promised we will get the support that we need [but] it’s going to be on the minds of senior officers who will not want to fall on the wrong side of a previous judgment.”

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Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/19/police-fear-arresting-extinction-rebellion-vandals-fear-legal-reprisals/

There has already been at least one well documented instance of ordinary people fed up with Extinction Rebellion taking the law into their own hands, beating up climate protestors.

If the police feel unable to restore order, and I’m deeply sympathetic to the problems the police are facing, this will further exacerbate the risk of violent confrontation between climate protestors and their victims.

Guest “I couldn’t make this schist up, if I was trying” by David Middleton

Activists Demand National Grid Halt Project To Extend A Fracked Gas Pipeline Through North Brooklyn
BY SYDNEY PEREIRA
FEB. 18, 2020

A coalition of North Brooklyn residents and environmental groups are fighting to stop National Grid’s plan to extend a natural gas pipeline through Bushwick, Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

The gas company broke ground on a seven mile pipeline, starting in Brownsville, back in 2018. But since last fall, several blocks in North Brooklyn have been ripped up to make way for the final two phases of the pipeline, which National Grid wants to extend to its Greenpoint depot.

“We don’t want this pipeline,” Kevin LaCherra, of Greenpoint, told a crowd of some 60 people rallying at National Grid’s construction site Saturday morning. “We want renewables now.”

Residents and environmental groups, including Sane Energy Project, North Brooklyn Extinction Rebellion, Sunrise NYC, Assemblymember Joe Lentol and State Senator Julia Salazar’s office, rallied in 20-degree weather Saturday morning…

[…]

“People are frustrated because it’s 2020. We need to be getting off fossil fuels and here is National Grid wanting to raise our monthly bills to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a new fracked gas pipeline,” Zieshe said. “That’s just insanity.”

In 2014, New York banned hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting natural gas by injecting liquids below ground, known to impact water and air quality near wells; lower babies’ birth weight for children who live close to fracking wells; and emit methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. The fracked gas under National Grid’s plans would be sourced from Pennsylvania, where fracking is legal.

“If you know anything about this gas, they call it natural, but there’s nothing natural about it,” said Roberto Rodriguez, a Bushwick resident of the United Neighborhood Organization. 

[…]

Gothamist

I honestly can’t tell who is more fracking retarded… The fractivists or the fracking idiot “journalist” who authored this article. With a 2017 NYU B.A. in Journalism & Global Public Health and Anthropology, Sydney Pereira the “journalist” is clearly qualified to report on almost nothing. Her source for the claim that frac’ing impacts water quality is a 2016 Scientific American article about an ex-EPA employee who claimed that frac’ing had polluted groundwater in Wyoming. This “study” has been repeatedly debunked.

The fractivists are just dumber than schist…

There’s no evidence at all that frac’ing affects the air, the water or anything else any more or less than conventional natural gas production. Here is a comprehensive list of all of the differences between conventional and unconventional (frac’ed) natural gas:

Despite all the blather about renewables, New Yorkers are heavily dependent on natural gas to avoid freezing in the dark…

70% of New York’s 2017 energy consumption was from fossil fuels. 72% of the state’s electricity is generated by fossil fuels and nuclear power; while only 5% comes from non-hydroelectric renewables .

Thanks to idiots like Governor Fredo, New York has the 9th highest average residential electricity rate in the nation, 7th highest among the Lower 48. At 18¢/kWh, New Yorkers pay 38% more for electricity than the national average, 28% more than Pennsylvanians and 50% than Ohioans.

Pennsylvania and Ohio were both smart enough to realize that the natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica formations actually had no value at all, if they left it in the ground.

Despite having one of the most prolific natural gas reservoirs within its state boundaries, New York isn’t on this list:

Top Five Natural Gas Producing States in 2018 (EIA)

1. Texas—6.84 Tcf—22.3%
2. Pennsylvania—6.12 Tcf—20.0%
3.  Louisiana—2.78 Tcf—9.1%
4. Oklahoma—2.70 Tcf—8.8%
5. Ohio—2.35 Tcf—7.7%

Tcf = Trillion cubic feet

In 2017, New York’s natural gas production amounted 11 Bcf (billion cubic feet). Texas produces nearly twice as much natural gas per day (21.5 Bcf) as New York does in a year.

Sydney Pereira and the Brooklyn fractards earn a Ron White lifetime achievement award.