Kids! Are you worried about natural gas companies pumping mysterious chemicals into the rocks near your house, leaking methane gas, poisoning cattle, and making your water flammable? Well, don't be! A coloring book from Talisman Energy says everything will be fine, and afterwards there will be deer and rainbows.
The book is written in Comic Sans and narrated by Terry the Fracosaurus, a hard-hat-wearing dinosaur/Fraggle hybrid who wants you to know that natural gas is "one of the cleanest, safest, and most useful of all energy sources." Terry mentions that fossil fuels are made from "organic materials," and kids can color in an illustration of a stegosaurus coquettishly dipping its toe into a pool of water or possibly tar, but the book stops short of drawing the connections. ("Hi kids! I'm Terry the dinosaur, and natural gas is great! I know, because it's derived from my rotting corpse!")
To sum up:
- Coal company-sponsored site with kids' games and Dora the Explorer inhalers: Hoax.
- Natural gas company-sponsored coloring book with dinosaur explaining fracking: Real.
Irony truly is dead.
