EPA & Fracking / EPA documents show decades-long concealment of dangers

This is quite an important story in states such as New York and Pennsylvania, especially as fracking (hydraulic fracturing) is being promoted by energy entrepreneurs and politicians, and resisted by residents and people concerned about health.

From Democracy Now --with video, as published in CommonDreams, March 4, 2011:
Leaked EPA Documents Expose Decades-Old Effort To Hide Dangers of Natural Gas Extraction

Efforts by lawmakers and regulators to force the federal government to better police the natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" have been thwarted for the past 25 years, according to an expose in the New York Times. Studies by scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on fracking have been repeatedly narrowed in scope by superiors and important findings have been removed under pressure from the industry. The news comes as the EPA is conducting a broad study of the risks of natural gas drilling with preliminary results scheduled to be delivered next year.

Detailed map project funded by NASA, US DOE about CO2 emissions

The National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) and the United States Department of Energy (DOE) have funded a project that has presented a video of carbon dioxide levels in the continental United States (the "lower 48 states").

The agencies have cooperated in funding Vulcan Project. The project has created and uploaded a video which shows a map of US carbon dioxide (CO2) levels.

Why should we be concerned with carbon dioxide? After all, we learn in school that we breathe in oxygen and we release carbon dioxide.

Actually, as a quick survey of the wikipedia carbon dioxide article will show us, fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide. The intake, by skin or by the air, of moderate amounts of carbon dioxide has many negative health effects.

Click on the right for the video on continental US carbon dioxide levels, in a map presentation. Bear with the long introduction, prior to the presentation of the maps.