The Economist published a special report on natural gas earlier this month. Johnathan Zasloff is critical of the report's article on shale gas development in Europe. His first gripe is that the report only spent a single paragraph discussing methane emissions from shale gas operations, and that even in this space the authors came to no meaningful conclusion.
Zasloff is right to draw attention to this issue - if fugitive methane emissions are large, there's little or no benefit to natural gas relative to coal, at least from a climate point of view. But the Economist does discuss it, citing a range of studies. While it's frustrating that the report doesn't make a call on whether fugitive methane is a big problem, they're limited by the source material. We just don't know - yet - how much methane is being emitted. Blame the state of the science, if you must, but don't blame the newspaper for reporting uncertainty. The alternative - reporting certainty when it does not exist - is worse.
Zasloff's second criticism hits the mark, though. Quoting the article, he notes:
It actually gets worse than that. In the very next paragraph, it reports:
The European Commission, in a rare display of good sense, has concluded that no new laws are needed to cover shale gas beyond those already in p[l]ace for the extractive industries. The IEA says that if the industry wants to gain public acceptance there will have to be more disclosures, engagement with local communities, effective monitoring of wells, tough rules on well design, fracking and surface spills, careful water management and a stop on methane emissions.
WTF? The report lauds the European Commission for not imposing new rules, and then reports that the IEA says that in order to make fracking acceptable, it will require — more and tougher rules.
This passage leapt out to me when I read the report as well. At best, its confusing and poorly edited. At worst, its biased reporting. Why is the EC's decision not to support new regulation a good thing? Is the "rare display of good sense" clause a product of reflexive Euroscepticism, uncritical opposition to regulation, or a failed attempt at humor? In any case, it's an unsupported, throwaway comment. We aren't even given any context about the current state of regulation in Europe (at least in this part of the report) on which to base our own conclusion. The summary of IEA's report is fair, but Zasloff is correct that it's a non-sequitur.
It'd be fine if the magazine presented both sides and left the reader to decide whether more regulation is needed. Carefully done, it'd also be OK if it reported that regulations were too excessive or too lax. Making judgment calls like this is part of journalism. But as is, the piece makes a judgment without support, then immediately contradicts itself. That's profoundly unhelpful.
Unlike Zasloff, I like the Economist and remain a subscriber. I also think there were good, informative parts of the natural gas report, though I wouldn't rank it among the magazine's better pieces. It's a bit troubling, though, that the parts of the report I liked best were those covering the things I know least about.
