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Fracking yay og nay? (including David Letterman rant)

Anytime you push that many harmful chemicals straight into the earth, you're obviously doing everything you can to protect the environment. Ground water will be even better!
 
How many harmful chemicals are being pushed in?

You are trying to generate the equivalent of an explosion to release the oil trapped in the rock; creating fractures.

There is no other feasible way to bust the rock apart.

Environmentalists are going to complain on anything that is done to extract the oil.

Even England which was against it has reversed it's course; setting up serious oversight instead.
 
With enough oversight and testing it could be OK, but only if the oil companies don't then whine about "burdensome regulations" and cripple that oversight by bribing our congress critters.
 
DaveSimmons said:
With enough oversight and testing it could be OK, but only if the oil companies don't then whine about "burdensome regulations" and cripple that oversight by bribing our congress critters.
Click to expand...

Who has the knowledge at this point to write the regulations?

It is a learn as you go process.
 
fracking pumps tons upon tons upon tons of toxic and carcinogenic and neurotoxic chemicals into the water supply.

acrylamide -- a neurotoxin (when polymerized into a polymer it is known as polyacrylamide which is listed on that list). unfortunately THERE IS NO WAY to polymerize all of the acrylamide monomers... meaning that neurotoxin is being pumped into the ground water.

there is no safe amount of this shit to be exposed to
there is no excuse for defending fracking
you cannot purify every glass of water out of a well to remove all of these chemicals... especially when many of these chemicals are secrets... you cannot purify unknowns out of the water.

once you contaminate a water table with this stuff you have destroyed it forever.
 
EagleKeeper said:
Who has the knowledge at this point to write the regulations?

It is a learn as you go process.
Click to expand...
ahh I see.

so first you permanently destory the water table. then you write a regulation to ban drinking of the water... learn as you go.

you cannot remove these contaminants from the water table underneath the ground.

I'm sorry to say that when you are completely ignorant regarding basic geology, chemistry, biology and the dangers of the chemicals being irreversibly pumped into the ground water you should not comment on a topic. Especially one that threatens to destroy water tables all over the planet (yes fracking is an issue both in and out of the US).
 
DaveSimmons said:
With enough oversight and testing it could be OK, but only if the oil companies don't then whine about "burdensome regulations" and cripple that oversight by bribing our congress critters.
Click to expand...

it can NEVER be "OK" when you permanently contaminate water tables with carcinogens and potent neurotoxins.
 
colonelciller said:
it can NEVER be "OK" when you permanently contaminate water tables with carcinogens and potent neurotoxins.
Click to expand...

This brings to mind a blog debunking the hysteria over food and feed additives:
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/06/21/eight_toxic_foods_a_little_chemical_education.php

I'm not a geologist, and I'm cynical enough not to accept "trust us, it's safe" blindly. But I'm also not alarmist enough to accept anti-fracking propaganda at face value.
 
But speaking of crippled oversight, letting states decide the safety instead of the EPA doesn't seem like a good idea -- it's easier (or at least cheaper) to bribe locals to look the other way than the feds:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/06/epa-steps-away-from-fracking-investigation-in-wyoming/

States can be under too much pressure to get the jobs and tax revenue to make sound judgments about health and safety, especially if the people involved can get paid and be gone before the health and safety problems become noticeable.
 
Fracfocus.org is mostly propaganda for the industry.

Many point out that fracking is done away from aquifers and too deeply to affect them, but if there's a containment breach we've all seen what happens. You basically have to declare the area a Superfund site.

And I question whether they can get all the fluid back out. Plus as someone mentioned, there's what to do with all the waste fluid.

The question is, is cheap energy worth the price?

I need my eight PC's! ;-)
 
I think there is a good chance it will come back and bite us in the ass. There are safe ways to do fracking but given the gold rush mentality of the drillers and areas they're operating in without sufficient oversight I'm very skeptical they are being adhered to. Casing failure is a particularly troubling trend which poses serious risks to groundwater.
 
EagleKeeper said:
Who has the knowledge at this point to write the regulations?

It is a learn as you go process.
Click to expand...

Which argues for going slowly with an excess of regulation and oversight, then backing off on both once we know what's safe.

In a gold rush mentality the idea seems to be: as long as we aren't obviously killing anyone right away, it's probably safe.

so first you permanently destroy the water table. then you write a regulation to ban drinking of the water... learn as you go.
Click to expand...

I don't agree completely, but there's an element of truth there. We need both oil and clean water. Based on past history we can't trust oil companies to do the right thing unless we keep a close watch on them and levy heavy fines when they mess up.
 
No argument here with Dave's points.

To keep us over the barrel due to fear is not wise.

What does England know that our fearmongers do not?
 
Seems like it has potential. I do not know a lot about it, but my impression is that if it's done cautiously and reasonably then the risk is low. Good oversight and safeguards would have to be key.
 
EagleKeeper said:
Who has the knowledge at this point to write the regulations?

It is a learn as you go process.
Click to expand...
this was done several times in the past and before you learn somebody gets killed, see eternit.
At this point maybe a preventive approach should be taken?
Keep it slow with heavy oversight, do studies etc. to explore the consequences and let the technology mature, and restrict it to non-inhabited areas.
 
DaveSimmons said:
This brings to mind a blog debunking the hysteria over food and feed additives:
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/06/21/eight_toxic_foods_a_little_chemical_education.php

I'm not a geologist, and I'm cynical enough not to accept "trust us, it's safe" blindly. But I'm also not alarmist enough to accept anti-fracking propaganda at face value.
Click to expand...

nice straw man argument with the completely irrelevant comparison to food additives.

as for your "not alarmist enough to accept anti-fracking propaganda"... again being ignorant is not carte blanche to label facts as "propaganda"... althoug doing so paints crystal clear the pre-concieved notions you're bringing to the table.

look up the MSDS on acrylamide. it is a NEUROTOXIN. saying it is OK to pump tons of neurotoxin and known carcinogens into the ground where it WILL and DOES leak into the water supply is plainly ignorant and stupid.

There is no way to extract acryalmide, formaldehyde, benzene from a water table. it cannot be done. once you poison a water table with fracking fluid it is permanently irrevokably destroyed.
 
EagleKeeper said:
No argument here with Dave's points.

To keep us over the barrel due to fear is not wise.

What does England know that our fearmongers do not?
Click to expand...

yet another straw man brought forth by those without factual backing.


the chemicals being pumped into water tables have known carcinogenic, neurotoxic and acutely poisonous effects. those are FACTS, not fear.

not surprising that the pro-fracking types have nothing but straw-man PR tactics on their side...
 
colonelciller said:
nice straw man argument with the completely irrelevant comparison to food additives.

as for your "not alarmist enough to accept anti-fracking propaganda"... again being ignorant is not carte blanche to label facts as "propaganda"... althoug doing so paints crystal clear the pre-concieved notions you're bringing to the table.

look up the MSDS on acrylamide. it is a NEUROTOXIN. saying it is OK to pump tons of neurotoxin and known carcinogens into the ground where it WILL and DOES leak into the water supply is plainly ignorant and stupid.

There is no way to extract acryalmide, formaldehyde, benzene from a water table. it cannot be done. once you poison a water table with fracking fluid it is permanently irrevokably destroyed.
Click to expand...

Calm down. Fracking is probably one of the safer parts of the process as its done at least a mile beneath the surface and your water table would not be harmed as the water that would eventually come up would be filtered through a mile plus of bedrock. I would be more concerned with the pipelines or the casing of the wells failing over time. There needs to be more stringent testing of the integrity of wells and pipelines IMO or a flat out replacement after a certain amount of time has passed.
 
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It's quite a hot issue here in the Netherlands as well.
The biggest opponents are actually the water companies and the brewers (think heineken etc.) and they have quite a bit of influence.
 
We're also talking about doing here in Denmark. From what I've learned during my studies of microbiology and eco toxicology, it seems that once you've polluted the soil, there's nothing you can do to clean it. So while there's lots of positives about it, I would prefer at least 5 years of research into more eco friendly methods and gathering of experience.
 
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