Conventional nonsense about unconventional fuels

Among the findings released last week of a long-awaited report from the national Strategic Unconventional Fuels Task Force, is this:
But for those of us who live near the epicenter of potential oil shale development, those are enormous concerns, and the report made public last week only hints at the havoc that a commercial oil shale industry could wreak on the environment, the water and the communities of western Colorado.

The purpose of the task force, which was authorized in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, was not to undertake an in-depth examination of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the development of oil shale, tar sands or other unconventional fuel sources in the United States. It was, the report says,