Regarding the column “Shale revolution means cleaner air” by Dave Spigelmyer in the Earth Day weekend edition (April 23):

Spigelmyer’s job as president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition is to be a spokesman for the shale gas industry, and therefore he does his best to tell the public what said industry wants the public to hear about shale gas.

It should also be noted that time and again the Butler Eagle has shown itself to be exceedingly friendly to the shale gas industry, and thus is a fitting megaphone for this mouthpiece of the industry to utilize.

Anyone who lives near a frack site or compressor station knows how terrible the air at such sites can be, ranging from simply nauseating to illness-inducing. Fracking and compression are integral parts of the natural gas production process, and with much more fracking proposed for Butler County, how clean will our air be?

It is also known that the fracking process can and has contaminated groundwater sources. Even the federal Environmental Protection Agency reluctantly admitted that, before it was totally taken over by the legion of science deniers under Trump.

Even the most casual reading of scientific literature on the matter reveals that methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a powerful greenhouse gas which, in the short term (20 to 50 years) is more destructive to the earth’s atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Research also shows that methane leaking, sometimes copiously, into the atmosphere is present at every step in the natural gas production process.

Ultimately, the only truly “clean” sources of energy are sustainable and renewable sources such as sun, wind, hydropower and geothermal.

Spigelmyer mentions none of this. Of course not. These facts would make the industry he speaks for look bad. I’m sure that’s not in his job description.