Someone alert the media, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo! A study funded in part by environmentalists finds that fracking is safe. You would think good news like this would be spread far and wide. Aren’t we trying to become energy independent? Oh well, we can always hope.

A new study shows that little methane, a strong greenhouse gas that occurs naturally in ground water, is released into the atmosphere during hydraulic fracturing.

So it must be OK to frack now.

In the first “Gasland” movie, environmental activist Josh Fox trumpeted flaming water taps in a Colorado town as evidence of fracking-induced water contamination. In fact, the areas in question had reported naturally occurring methane in their water for decades.

Whether naturally occurring or not, environmentalists claim that fracking would release huge amounts of what they consider the most potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas, far outweighing the value of producing huge quantities of clean-burning natural gas.

Now comes a study, conducted by scientists at the University of Texas and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — and co-financed by one of the highest-profile environmentalists in the country — that shows much smaller amounts of methane emissions associated with fracking, far less than environmentalists and the Environmental Protection Agency have contended.

Maybe we have more to fear from flatulent cows and other animals, which produced an estimated 137 million metric tons of methane in 2011.

Read the whole thing. Unfortunately, movies like Gasland, and the endless propaganda being spread by the anti-fracking zealots, really seem to have poisoned the well. Which is why we need to highlight news like this every chance we get.