Chamber of Commerce’s Guith on Fracking Jobs

Our streets can be paved with gold! Or so, the frackers tell us.

I find it very telling that I could download all sections of this study without any problems…except for the METHODOLOGY section. For that I had to give all kinds of (fabricated, of course) information about my name, address, phone number, what industry I worked in and (I think) my shoe size! God forbid, anybody should understand how the Chamber of Commerce derived their cockamamie report. Not to worry! The methodology chapter was pretty vague, too.

All their “methodology” information reveals is that the consulting firm built the “mother of all input-output models” to do the Chamber’s report. Big deal. These models ALL estimate only the gains from something (jobs, revenues) and ignore the costs, particularly the exhorbitant EXTERNAL costs (aquifer pollution, health problems etc.) that will be dumped on society from fracking.

My favorite part of the interview was when Guith said that the reputation of the consulting firm putting out the report was unimpeachable. Why? Because the guy who founded the firm is a Nobel Prize winner!!!

Huh? Guith is talking about the founder of IHS CERA — Daniel Yergin. CERA stands for Cambridge Energy
Research Associates. IHS, one of a million consulting firms, must have paid Yergin to merge with them. Which is all perfectly fine. More power to Yergin for cutting a good deal.

http://danielyerginDOTcom/the-author/

However, Yergin isn’t a numbers guy. He’s not a science guy either. He didn’t win the NOBEL PRIZE in economics…or math…or anything related to estimating the gains OR COSTS to a state (like New York) from fracking. He has a Ph.D. in INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. The closest he comes to a degree in geology or engineering or economics is an HONORARY doctoral degree from Colorado School of Mines.

http://en.wikipediaDOTorg/wiki/Daniel_Yergin

Plus, Dr. Yergin didn’t win a NOBEL PRIZE in anything. He won a PULITZER PRIZE for general non-fiction in 1992 for one of his books.

Dr. Yergin is no doubt an interesting guy and an expert on the geopolitics of energy. That’s got nothing do with estimating the gains and/or costs of hydrofracking. It certainly doesn’t make anything done by IHS CERA unimpeachable. Guith is full of baloney.

IHS CERA gave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce what they paid for — some kind of a pretty report capable of providing a few good blurbs for fracking advocates.

If anybody, other than the people who wrote the report, can decipher and verify what IHS CERA did, they deserve a prize. Not the Nobel Prize. Something more like a case of beer.