In the frame of energy/heat production from underground by new and enhanced technologies, including geogas storage (CH4, CO2), the paper considers the Italian ICHESE Commission's case history as an international Commission involved with the local policy of the Emilia Romagna Region to answer two questions dealing with the role of industry underground activities in generating the long 2012 seismic sequence, destroying part of the Emilia-Romagna Region. In particular, the first question - if an un-existent natural gas storage was responsible for the "triggered" seismic sequence, being that the reservoir is studied only in books - was completely without rational consideration, namely a "political question" rather than a "scientific question" delivered as a paradox to experts, coming from abroad too!
The paper will rework any step - in science and communication - of this "dark side of the moon" of the complex relationships between stakeholders, policymakers, journalists and scientists, despite the early and fruitful cooperation between industry and Academic/Research Centers, in the frame of the growing needs of a public debate. This complex and motley stakeholders community, made by scientific-industry-institutions is involved in the difficult task to study and accept (or refuse) subsurface reservoir-handling projects, strongly impacting the live territory & the underground, in densely populated countries such as Italy, in terms of appropriate public communication and sound deontological behaviour (namely: geo-ethics in the AAPG meaning). These facts are creating a lot of issues to the industry and to the correct researchers and professors.
Next, the paper recalls and reviews years of "scientific" communication within the mass-media in this field - underground management to produce energy, storage and heat - highlighting the positive and negative messages, in comparison to the true and objective scientific experimental data, gathered by the real scientific work, as perceived by citizens of middle class scholastic culture, which do not delve in to the geologic disciplines, but receive simply the journalistic front-end, very often as a sensationalist scoop. This path progressively gets tangled as a consequence of the complex conflicting use of the underground to produce energy (hydrocarbons, heat, as well as geogas storage, geothermal reserves, unconventional gas exploitation, REE mining). The "Sblocca Italia" subsurface infrastructures are now therefore not accepted by Italian citizens.
