>> Let me start by saying how sincerely grateful I am

for the amount of long, hard hours that the students here

at Penn State have put in in producing TEDx.

Without their efforts, this would not be possible.

In fact, some of these students may have had me

in class and, if so, they know that my passion is the study

of how the Earth rips, tears, splits,

and rends asunder rock, a process that I'll describe

as natural fracking.

Starting in the 1970s, Federal grants allowed me

to study natural fracking in gas shales.

During that period of time,

I learned how the fracking process occurred with the help

of one of the world's most unsophisticated scientific

instruments: a simple piece of chalk.

From this chalk I was able to learn how

to read these natural fractures by rubbing their surfaces,

much like people rub tombstones to read inscriptions.

An international company followed my progress,

the progress of my research, and during that period of time,

that company decided to support a student of mine working

on the Antrim, a gas shale in Michigan.

This was one of the first gas shale plays in North America.

My research continued for three decades

after which Jefferies, a Madison Avenue investment bank,

called up and asked me to assess the Marcellus

for its potential as a gas shale.

The conference call was scheduled to last 30 minutes

and went on for well over an hour.

A hundred investment bankers representing billions

of dollars of investment capital listened in.

During that talk, someone asked how much I expected

Marcellus to yield in terms of natural gas.

I didn't know, but I immediately came back to my office

and set about doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation,

and that back of the envelope calculation showed

that there was 25 times as much natural gas

as the previously published results.

This was staggering.

When scientists differ by this much, someone has it wrong.

So I immediately called my colleague at SUNY Fredonia,

Gary Lash, and asked him to double-check my calculations.

When Lash affirmed my calculations,

the first salvo of the fracking debate rattled

around in my head.

What if I were wrong?

Billions of investment capital would be lost

over some professor's quick calculation.

What if I were right?

The immediate accessibility of a large quantity

of hydrocarbon fuel would surely delay America's search

for sustainable green future.

It's a huge burden to have that much sway over the future

of America, America's energy, America's environment.

This is your future that I held sway over.

What I did next was based on the knowledge

that natural systems, all natural systems,

including the human economy, can only grow and thrive

with access to energy, and it grows in proportional

to that particular access.

So with Lash's affirmation,

I felt that it was very important

that the world understood the relative importance

of fracking gas shale.

One evening in 2007, I drove home from my office,

which is right over here on campus,

thinking "Merry Christmas, America.

Look at the economic opportunity you have."

There was also an environmental opportunity for America,

but that was not fully revealed for another five years.

During the summer of 2012,

the US Energy Information Agency published CO2 emissions

trends for the United States.

It showed that since 2007,

the beginning of the fracking debate,

U.S. CO2 emissions had decreased for the first time

in a long, long time.

This decrease was the product of two trends

in the American energy portfolio.

First was the exchange of coal for natural gas

in generating electricity.

The other was the construction

of windmills during this period of time.

Now, this is the graph that actually shows that.

Notice where the fracking debate starts.

Those windmill farms had been constructed,

my sister had constructed some of them,

and you can read about it right here.

Now, the United States failed to assign

or approve the Kyoto Accords in 1997; however,

it was cost-driven capital market decisions concerning

natural gas, not government regulation,

that led to America becoming almost compliant with Kyoto.

This was the environmental gift that America unwrapped

when investigating the 2007 Christmas present

that was rattling around in my head.

Since that time, inexpensive natural gas has played a

tremendous role in saving Americans millions

and millions of dollars.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that there is a very large footprint,

and there are risks that come with this large footprint.

Those risks first emerged from a little town

in Pennsylvania called Dimock, like so much dark smoke.

Immediately the fracking debate devolved into one

of the most contentious, divisive,

polarizing discussions that America has ever had.

Never mind the fact that neither the US Environmental

Protection Agency nor the Pennsylvania Department

of Environmental Protection found one shred of evidence

that fracking was somehow

or another contaminating groundwater with fracking fluids.

Now, it is true that there are large water

management issues.

It's true there are air quality issues.

And it's true that there are a lot

of other very important questions that need

to be answered about fracking.

However, the term "toxic" has become one of the most used,

overused, terms in the fracking debate.

Wo overused that Pennsylvania author Shamus McGraw claims

that the two most toxic chemicals in the fracking debate --

do you know what those two most toxic chemicals are?

Adrenaline and testosterone.

And in fact it is with some pride

that I've watched Penn State students join the

fracking debate.

Some of you students have pointed out the very importance

of the CO2 reduction that's happened

since it kicked off in my head.

Others have taken the point of view

that there is a significant risk

to achieving this particular Herculean feat

in the first place.

I was the one that kicked off the fracking debate,

and I immediately became known

as the Doctor Strangelove of that debate.

When the Sierra Club came out in favor of fracking,

its president, Harold Pope,

was treated as a pariah, just like me.

The fracking debate continued onward to the point

where the debate was less about gas

and more about what the facts were.

Let me illustrate this for you.

It's true that there are a bunch of Hollywood celebrities,

Hollywood movie stars, that are out there screaming

at the top of their lungs, "Fracking kills."

And this has distracted the public to the point

where they can't tell the difference

between fact and fiction.

In fact, one of the most important facts --

I'll tell you what it is.

It's methane emission into the atmosphere.

Why is that?

Because methane is a greenhouse gas; however,

the half-life of methane is so short that it is CO2 loading

of the atmosphere that is most important

in this particular fracking debate.

Now, what we can see right here is the projection

of the atmospheric loading

as it's driving temperature increase,

and these are climate models.

Now, I should point out that by fixing leaks,

green completions and whatnot,

that can take care of the methane leaking

into the atmosphere.

However, if we get distracted by methane leaking

into the atmosphere, if we stop fracking, this is the trend.

And you can see by 2080, this trend is roaring forward

with an incredible amount of speed.

However, with bridge fuel of methane leading us

into a sustainable future, you can see that it's possible

to slow this trend by 2040 or 2050.

Now, the reality is I don't want you to wake up one morning

and say, when you're 60,

most of you are 20 now, so that's 40 years.

I don't want you to wake up and say, "My God,

how could I possibly have let the fracking debate take my

eyes off the real driver of a very, very important issue:

global climate warming?"

Now, we might ask, "Why not make laws

that move America directly

into a sustainable future of wind and solar?"

Well, I wish it were that easy, but America doesn't want

to live under the threat of brownouts

into the foreseeable future.

The reality is that natural gas

in gas turbines will offer the only solution,

at least right now, to taking full advantage of wind energy,

moving into this green future.

I should point out, too, that in this plan,

wind energy is highly subsidized.

The same is true for highly-subsidized solar energy.

In the Czech Republic where villages were fitted

with subsidized solar electricity,

the government had to ban further construction largely

because the sudden voltage shock

from the sun appearing was capable of blowing

out local parts of local transmission systems.

My colleagues in the Czech Republic tell me

that the US transmission grid is subject even more so,

more vulnerable, to the same solar shock.

So we all want to move

into the sustainable future, we know that.

However, the fracking debate has been such a distraction

to this particular sustainable future.

In fact, fracking for natural gas has offered America the

opportunity to be a leader

in decreasing global climate warming while maintaining an

economy that benefits us all.

I thank you very much for your time.

[ Applause ]