We wrote about U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s visit to Colorado earlier this week, and added this tweet at the bottom of the story without comment.
I’m in Colorado w/ @JoeNeguse visiting communities whose air is being poisoned by fracking.
What we’re seeing is appalling. Companies are building fracking sites on public lands, across the street from schools + homes.
Their toxic emissions are invisible. This camera sees them. pic.twitter.com/Kem0MT1lMj
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 21, 2019
We had no way of knowing at the time, we were just hoping it would turn out to be completely bogus.
So, guess what?
There was no actual fracking occurring at this site.
It turns out that AOC burned up precious jet fuel to fly across the U.S. to capture scary fracking video for her twitter followers, only to be led by the nose to a non-active site and handed an infrared camera to make a complete and total a$$ of herself going on about “toxic emissions.”
The Colorado Oil and Gas Association confirmed that no fracking was occurring at this site.
Energy In Depth has the scoop:
The forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera being used in the video isn’t detecting “toxic emissions” as claimed in the tweet but is simply detecting a heat signature caused by high temperature drilling mud circling up to the surface and meeting the cooler fall air.
Energy In Depth goes on to explain the only thing these images are good for is to scare the public about methane emissions, because the cameras “are not supported by scientific analysis.”
The problem is that these cameras can show images that look like an emissions plume, but doesn’t tell us the first thing of what is causing that image—whether it be benign emissions, steam, vapor, or in the case of Broomfield, heat. Of course, anti-fossil fuel activists are quick to deem each of these images harmful without conducting air sampling.
Way to go AOC!
When you’re back in your home state of New York, why don’t you make that camera useful and take it to 55 Central Park West to see if the ghostbusters cleared out all those slimers and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.