Is Senate hopeful Rep. Ed Markey (D-Ma) abandoning key support for greenhouse gas reductions as political payback to Dow? Is he anti-shale gas regardless of its economic and environmental benefits?

Displaying little of the contextualized reporting that the paper, at its best, is renowned for, the Times has run numerous articles in its “Drilling Down” series and elsewhere, simplistically framing shale gas extraction as an environmental disaster-in-progress.

If there is one conclusion that should be drawn from the boom in U.S. natural gas production, it is that supplies are so abundant that it makes economic sense to export some of our gas to countries overseas.

New York Times natural-gas reporter Ian Urbina last week launched another salvo in his crusade against the shale-gas industry, and demonstrated once more why there is little trust of him at USDA.

There are new twists to in the ever-entertaining faux debate over the dangers of shale gas. The New York Times, which turned obscure Cornell University marine ecologist Robert Howarth into an anti-fracking rock star in its questionable spring series on shale gas, and got hammered for it by its own public editor—I‘ll take some of the credit—is finally getting on the science bandwagon.

Please join AEI and the Institute for Energy Research for a lively discussion of America’s history of gas regulation and thoughts about our natural gas future.

Howarth doesn’t have to convince anyone he’s right to devastate New York’s budding shale industry and put tens of thousands of jobs into question. He wins if he muddies the waters enough to give cautious Albany bureaucrats reason to stall.

Not long ago, environmental groups were heralding natural gas as a “bridge fuel to a more climate-friendly energy supply.” Today, New York “progressives” are leading the charge to demonize it as a “bridge to nowhere” — producing “water contamination, air pollution, global warming and fractured communities.” Why the flip-flop?

With the shale boom radically altering the energy chessboard, panicked ideologues are resorting to a tired ploy: pitting natural gas against alternative sources as if generating energy is a zero-sum game.