Tom Nelson pointed this out this morning.
This year, for the first time, U.S. online searches for the term “fracking” became more popular than “climate change,” Google data showed. Fracking has doubled on Google’s popularity index since last year, and while “global warming” still draws more hits, the gap is narrowing.
Only one problem with this: much like many claims made by the media these days related to climate, the actual data doesn’t support the claim. It took me less than a minute to locate the most recent Google trend data and see that the claim made by By Joshua Schneyer and Edward McAllister, Reuters (republished in the Dickenson Press) isn’t true. See for yourself:
The two terms are six points apart (in global data) as of this month, and show no history of intersection.
Source: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=fracking,%22climate%20change%22
The data shows “climate change” trending up from 2004, that we hit peak “climate change” right after Climategate, and it has never recovered.
They may intersect in the not too distant future, but unless Reuters has some inside track to Google data that others do not, the claim isn’t supported.
Note that “fracking” is also not as popular as “global warming” though both “global warming” and “Climate change are falling while “fracking” is on the rise.
“Fracking” is in blue, “climate change” is in reddish orange, and “global warming” is yellowish. Source: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=fracking,%22climate%20change%22,%22global%20warming%22
Noting the time when “fracking” first came on the scene, one wonders that in the wake of “climategate” on November 19th 2009, if the environmental movement may have decided that “climate change” was a dying issue and moved onto “fracking” as the next exploitable call to action. The data certainly suggests it.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=fracking,climategate
All graphs from Google, and you can replicate them yourself here: http://www.google.com/trends/explore
UPDATE: My initial claim wasn’t fully correct. The Global data doesn’t support the claim, the USA data does:
Source: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=fracking%2C%20%22climate%20change%22&geo=US&cmpt=q
I’ve updated the headline to reflect this data difference. Thanks to Roger Knights for pointing out the distinction in the story. – Anthony
And that’s what I like about you and your site Anthony. You are man enough to admit a mistake, you publicly correct it and your integrity is intact. Too bad a certain Mann is not man enough to admit his flaws. This is of course a mole hill compared to the mountain of a hockey stick….
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, & never forget we common folk really appreciate the great info your site brings to the world.
Keep up the good fight.
Astute observation – even though the amount of fracking clicks is not as many as climate change – the trend upward is important.
The why is more important after all why would the greens and UN faceless men and women fund the activists to shift to attacking fracking or cheap energy? The very thing that could pull the USA out of its financial problems! The answer to that is pretty obvious – keep as many on welfare as you can to maintain the voter base and keep the status quo. They also have more excuses for higher taxes on those nasty capitalists to pay off the faithful, whilst claiming to need it for welfare.
Sound familiar? Its already happened in Australia – the Gillard government pilot project to raise energy prices (using the global warming Trojan horse) has succeeded. They blame the suppliers etc, but everyone forgets, the higher the cost of energy, the more taxes (GST) go to the government – That’s in addition to their new petroleum rent tax and fuel tax on primary producers.
All skeptics should be paying attention to these trend lines as it is something that could have real impact on everyone’s lives, in the form of more expensive fuels if the anti-fracking forces have their way.
As someone who has been in the exploration business for over 2 decades , the anti-fracking crowd’s ideas have even less scientific support than ideas of the CAGW crowd. The fact it has gained as much traction as it has , has left most in industry dumbfounded, as fracking in one form or another has been going on since the early days of the industry, almost without incident or problem. The refinement of the engineering of fracs over the last decade has led to a revolution in well productivity & resulted in drastically lower natural gas prices (and locally lower oil prices). As usual, the petroleum industry is good at finding & producing hydrocarbons, but not so much at PR. When criticism started to emerge on fracking from environmental groups, everyone just laughed because there is absolutely no real data to support their claims. By the time the industry realized this anti-fracking message was getting traction, it was too late & the public was already “drinking the anti-fracking kool-aid”, as evidenced by the trend in the presented graphs.
WUWT is absolutely a logic place to start fighting this “skeptics” battle on fracking. I know we have industry readers of this blog. If we had some engineers that could present data on fracking, how the process work, how we isolate the petroleum reservoirs from aquifers, data on # of fracs & lack of aquifer contamination, comparison to safety & environmental issues in other industries, the current regulatory environment we operate in, the societal costs vs societal benefits, etc, WUWT would be a good place to start de-bunking the “fracking is bad for the environment” myth, just as the CAGW myth has been de-bunked here for years. This is fundamentally an issue of science (and engineering). Just as CAGW, and as the trend lines in the graphs indicate, fracking may become the skeptical battle which needs to be fought for society’s benefit.
Anti-fracking rhetoric , just like CAGW rhetoric, is always made to seem as if it is a matter of science, The reality is that it is a purely political agenda, with those supporting these positions bastardizing the science in attempt to support their unsupportable position.
At the end of the day, it is society that loses – because they don’t trust science or scientists any more (nor should they, given the compromises made) and they lose economically, by the law makers making decision that hurt the economy on baseless science which they have promoted.
The irony of all of this is that cheap nat gas , due to fracking, is displacing coal as a source of electrical power gen in the US & helping the US be one of the only countries hitting Kyoto carbon reduction goals, despite not signing the treaty. I am sure that drives the environuts crazy !
Also, the first mention I ever heard of the word “fracking” was not connected to the oil industry, but rather to the television show Battlestar Galactica, where the word was used in exchange for an expletive. BSG aired from 2004-09, and started to develop an audience outside the normal science fiction community as the Google numbers start to appear for the term. So there is more than one possible source for the fracking increase.
I remember fracking from ~30 years ago (while working for a CO2 producer, Liquid Carbonic).
Keith W. says: December 26, 2012 at 10:39 pm
“BSG aired from 2004-09…”
– – –
The original series ran for one season in 1978–79.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(1978_TV_series)
Reuters is just being a good global alarmist soldier. How amny times do you deniers have to be told that it is the rate of change that matters (just as in the debunking of solar warming as an explanation)
REPLY ; uh, John Sully, apparently you
missedjust saw my update . AnthonyThere, fixed it for you.
Dear Anthony
This is just not fair what you have done is superimposed Mann’s Hokey Cokey Stick on Global Temperatures for the last million years? You didn’t think we’d notice:-)
Fracking.
I’ve stayed very much in the background here in recent months, as my journeys of discovery have led me to issues I now consider to be even deeper than the deep corruption of climate science. If you look at the video “Thrive” you can see a lot of this including the climate science scam – but even this video has a couple characters whom I distrust though they look like sheep. It does however show the “follow the money” trail, and this includes not only the suppression of bona fide cancer cures, but also the suppression of the real energy solutions which would make wind, fracking, and nuclear-as-is totally redundant. There is a history of bumping people off who found out too much about alternative energies. Yet such energies are already being used – read Dr Judy Wood “Where did the towers go?” on “dustification” using magnetic processes. This is just an info notice, so please don’t start any comments here.
The challenge is to bring these topics up to awareness in a positive way. There is a growing realization, which I saw in pretty well every presentation and attender at the recent Breakthrough Energy Movement conference, that all this is a spiritual challenge, in which awakening, keeping integrity in one’s soul, and “nullius in verba” are three key aspects. Watch “Thrive” but don’t just “believe” it. Read the book “Breakthrough Power”. Happy surfing.
Let me see now, if I were dependent on the gravy train and here were a technology which would sharply reduce the amount of money flowing to “mitigate the effects of increasing CO2”, would I
1. Acknowledge to the world that the increased use of natural gas would make my predictions moot or at least buy centuries of time.
2. Attack the technology used to produce the hydrocarbon to keep the gravy train running.
I vote for #2.
IMO, “sustainability” will be the new CAGW replacement, itself a replacement for communist & fascist totalitarianisms, now that “climate change” (which captured environmentalism) has been added to the list of failed secular gods requiring child sacrifice.
For those who don’t know anything about the fracking story, here’s a quick primer. Hydraulic fracturing has been used for half a century. In the industry we call it a frack job, or fracking. The “new technology” was combining the old tech of fracking with horizontal drilling. Also, the ability to frack in multiple zones. So instead of a 40 ft. pay zone, you can have 3,000 ft. producing. Anyhow, the reporters glommed on to the slickster term “fracking” when reporting on the new developments in shale producing areas. Now the chuckleheads are running around complaining against this “new” fracking thing. It is somewhat humurous, though if they shut it down, it won’t be so funny. To put it in perspective, stack at least 5 empire state buildings on top of each other. At that depth is where the fracking takes place. It has absolutely no impact on surface water or aquifers. Any problems there are ALWAYS due to a bad cement job.
Doug Proctor says:
December 26, 2012 at 11:34 am
…..If Congress and Obama push through legislation on climate change, though, it won’t mean the American people are on their side, but that the political powers believe that the RESULT of climate change legislation are in the COMBINED economic, moral and political interests of individuals AND the nation……
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Where ever did you ever get that “Disneyland” view of Congress and politics?
Congress is interested in THEIR OWN welfare and not that of the USA. As one Senator finally admitted Congress is bought and paid for.
One site commented “Congresswoman Maxine Waters is also known to have admitted that the banks “own the place” I can’t find the origin of the quote but she is now in a fight with the bankers link and link
Maxine Waters also lets slip the plans by the democrats to nationalize the oil companies prior to the election of Obama in 2008.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/waters.asp
SC-SlyWolf says:
December 26, 2012 at 11:54 am
Many people in the U.S. (myself included) just want to know more about fracking and associated industries.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
First patent was right after the Civil War. It is OLD technology with up-dates. Shooters – A “Fracking” History
DirkH says:
December 26, 2012 at 3:56 pm
Betapug says:
December 26, 2012 at 2:51 pm
“Well “fracking” has the hot new movie…with Gasland ll soon to be released.”
Matt Damon, The Promised Land, financed by the UEA, to be specific.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promised_Land_%282012_film%29#Film_financing
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Just to avoid confusion, this is not the UEA (University of East Anglia), it should read UAE -United Arab Emirates.
Steve T
Steve Thatcher says:
December 27, 2012 at 2:25 pm
“Just to avoid confusion, this is not the UEA (University of East Anglia), it should read UAE -United Arab Emirates.”
Thanks!I noticed my typo but didn’t associate it with the University of East Anglia – psychomotoric memory probably. 🙂
Well, in fact, to be seriously considered, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as does CO2 — and it must offer some mechanism that counteracts the well-known warming effect of CO2. Not bloody likely.
silver;
Throwing rice up in the air and observing how it lands would fit the data as well as CO2-the-forcing-warming-variable. Once you get past primitive glass jar experiments, the real world interactions of CO2, the climate, and the biosphere have zero correlation to the projected trends, to several decimal places.