Response to reader's claims

I would like to address Thomas P. Murray’s letter from this week’s Independent titled Reject junk science on fracking. The opening line of his letter was “Now that the American public has rejected the fallacy of global warming, the environmental socialists have latched on to the fracking process involved in drilling for natural gas. I must have missed the memo that went out to every American because I wasn’t aware the global warming had been dismissed by the entire country. I will address this later, but back to the fracking issue at hand. The largest risk associated with fracking near the Delaware River is contamination of drinking water for literally millions of New Jersey residents. Ask the people of Pennsylvania who can’t drink their water due to fracking, and who have witnessed a massive fish kill in Dunkard Creek along with PA/WV border. Natural gas may be part of the energy solution for our future, but we need to consider the risks associated with it, and to dismiss them completely is irresponsible. Mr. Murray has the gall to include a gas and oil industry Web site as a resource in his article? That’s akin to submitting a pro-smoking letter and including the Web site for RJ Reynolds. Scientists by their nature are skeptics, and the only real debate about global warming is how soon and how bad will certain areas of our planet be affected. Whether occurring naturally or by man-made means we should be doing whatever we can to help slow down that process. I would suggest Mr. Murray take a look at http://www.extremeicesurvey.org/ to see for himself how global warming is in full effect. Pictures and video don’t lie. In the meantime, Mr. Murray should be happy to know that I plan to recycle the paper in which his letter first appeared, but for now it is face-up on the bottom of my birdcage. Marc Ziccardi Sparta