Gasland is a 107-minute-long video purporting to demonstrate that fracking is dangerous. It received wide viewing in the United States and Europe. Viewers were aghast at water being set on fire.
Now, the video Truthland has been produced to demonstrate that nearly everything in Gasland is wrong or deliberately misleading.
Truthland can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTJaaeiuzSU
Truthland is centered on a family in Montrose, Pennsylvania, seeking answers to whether fracking is dangerous. The setting is obviously contrived, but the family and its search for truth are real.
One of the more interesting scenes in the movie comes within the first two minutes of the 35-minute video.
It shows a babbling brook that contains natural gas in the water naturally, flowing down a hillside with a person lighting the gas at the surface of the water. The scene demonstrated that the show stopper in the Gasland movie, where gas from a water faucet is set on fire, could be a natural event unrelated to fracking.
Truthland has another scene showing a homeowner in Colorado, where there has been no drilling, also lighting the natural gas coming from his water faucet. To add some humor, the owner mentions that the real estate agent had told him not to light a cigarette in the shower.
The movie has interviews with various experts, including environmentalists, where each expert explains why Gasland is either wrong or misleading.
Truthland contains a demonstration showing the integrity of well construction.
Truthland also highlights the errors made by the EPA in Pavillion, Wyoming, where the media claimed the EPA had proven that fracking caused contamination of water wells.
The March 2, 2012 article, Fracking Indictment has details of the Pavillion situation.
There is a scene in Truthland where Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA, admits that fracking has not contaminated water wells.
It’s amazing that Gasland is called a documentary when it contains so many errors and misleading scenes. Gasland also received the Sundance Film Festival, Special Jury Prize – U.S. Documentary, which may say more about the Sundance Film Festival than the movie.
It will be interesting to see whether the film industry gives an award to Truthland.
Truthland is not very exciting, but facts often aren’t as exciting as fiction.
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