Fracking

[Berzerker]

Maybe we could set off the Yellowstone caldera

We pump waste water (dont we need that?) and a likely toxic brew of god only knows what into the ground to fracture rock and we're creating earthquakes. The earth "settles" and we shake and they tell us its a coincidence. What if these people fracture loose a slumbering fault and a bunch of people get killed?

I imagine the New Madrid fault is connected to smaller fault lines up and down the Mississippi region like the branches of a tree. What if St Louis is leveled by an 8.8 quake? What if they fracture rock keeping a magma bubble sealed up and cause an eruption? I'm not sold on the wisdom of removing stuff below our feet. I keep expecting huge chunks of the Middle East to start falling into massive sink holes created by the extraction of oil.

And then there's the problem of contaminating water supplies!

Why did Canada agree to send their oily giggity goo down to Texas? So they/we can sell it on the world market? "We" need that oil doesn't mean Canadians and Americans, it means oil companies and their international consumers.

Eh, I just saw Rachel Maddow and MSNBC tell us the Iraq War was for oil

duh

 

[Narz]

Raping the Earth for short term comfort is the American way.

 

[luiz]

If there's any interest I can post some technical research by non-oil industry sources demonstrating that there's no evidence whatsoever that fracking is harmful when properly done (or rather, when the drilling, cementing and other completion tasks prior to fracking were properly done).

When improperly done it can cause serious harm, just like anything.

If there's no interest, well, bring on the pitchforks.

 

[metatron]

If there's any interest I can post some technical research by non-oil industry sources demonstrating that there's no evidence whatsoever that fracking is harmful when properly done (or rather, when the drilling, cementing and other completion tasks prior to fracking were properly done).

When improperly done it can cause serious harm, just like anything.

If there's no interest, well, bring on the pitchforks.

Yeah, i suppose the problem is that the oil industry (at least in the US if not globaly) has a pretty consistant track record on not being able (or willing) to do anything properly.

So the real question is: What do you want to allow them to do their usual improper ways?

 

[bhsup]

What if the New Madrid fault goes again and it had nothing to do with fracking, but companies get sued anyway and lose billions and have to lay off tens of thousands of people?

 

[KmDubya]

I find the whole liberals are for science thing except if it produces something useful and needed both highly amusing and highly hypocritical.

 

[Berzerker]

If there's any interest I can post some technical research by non-oil industry sources demonstrating that there's no evidence whatsoever that fracking is harmful when properly done (or rather, when the drilling, cementing and other completion tasks prior to fracking were properly done).

When improperly done it can cause serious harm, just like anything.

If there's no interest, well, bring on the pitchforks.

I guess we'll find out if they're doing it properly when the ground doesn't shake. What happens to the liquid brew they pump into the ground?

What if the New Madrid fault goes again and it had nothing to do with fracking, but companies get sued anyway and lose billions and have to lay off tens of thousands of people?

Uncle Sam will bail them out or dis-allow lawsuits regardless of the merits

 

[Kyriakos]

What if the New Madrid fault goes again and it had nothing to do with fracking, but companies get sued anyway and lose billions and have to lay off tens of thousands of people?

At least they tried. Laying thousands of people off is better than minimizing the millions the top executives are paid. I mean those are more people than the plebs

 

[metatron]

I find the whole liberals are for science thing except if it produces something useful and needed both highly amusing and highly hypocritical.

Well, it has been a while since looking into the nature and purpose of female orgasms (to stick with a particularly "liberal" subject) has poisononed aquifers.

And it's actually the conservatives who are limitlessly hypocritical on this. Like, they obsess to no end about whether their great-grandchildren inherit a completely fictive debt to China made out in fiat currency, but care very little about whether their great-grandchildren inherit air and water that, you know, doesn't kill you.

Instead they make up bs strawmen when they talk to or about environmentalists.
Like i - an attrociously liberal person - could possibly be arsed to care about goddamn snowy owls.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I find the whole liberals are for science thing except if it produces something useful and needed both highly amusing and highly hypocritical.

Like renewable energy ? or climate science ? or stem cell research ?

 

[Hygro]

I find the whole liberals are for science thing except if it produces something useful and needed both highly amusing and highly hypocritical.

Let the games begin!



P.S. I'm with you Berzerker. Also, bhsup, good point, what if there is a big coincidence and people get wrongly sued. Even better reason why we should be proceeding with more caution.

 

[Narz]

I find the whole liberals are for science thing except if it produces something useful and needed both highly amusing and highly hypocritical.

It's not needed. What's needed is to transition beyond carbon based fuels come hell or high water. And in the meantime we can wear a goddamn sweater like Jimmy Carter. No, can't have that, damn our grandchildren, lets inject a billion gallons of poison into our mother's veins so we can crank our A/C a little higher to block out the cries of the last bald eagle as it falls to Earth.

 

[Hygro]

It's not needed. What's needed is to transition beyond carbon based fuels come hell or high water. And in the meantime we can wear a goddamn sweater like Jimmy Carter. No, can't have that, damn our grandchildren, lets inject a billion gallons of poison into our mother's veins so we can crank our A/C a little higher to block out the cries of the last bald eagle as it falls to Earth.

Daaaaaayum. You went there.

 

[KmDubya]

It's not needed. What's needed is to transition beyond carbon based fuels come hell or high water. And in the meantime we can wear a goddamn sweater like Jimmy Carter. No, can't have that, damn our grandchildren, lets inject a billion gallons of poison into our mother's veins so we can crank our A/C a little higher to block out the cries of the last bald eagle as it falls to Earth.

Wow you sound like some sort of pagan dirt worshiper

Here on planet Earth the best form of energy we have is carbon based fossil fuel. Maybe someday technology will come up with something better but for now it is king. better to use our own national sources instead of supporting regimes that do not like us.

Massive government subsides for alternative energy do not change the fact that they are just not as efficient or as inexpensive as fossil fuels. The technology just isn't there yet to support it. Maybe someday we will have Star trek energy but for now we don't.

 

[Hygro]

Wow you sound like some sort of pagan dirt worshiper

Here on planet Earth the best form of energy we have is carbon based fossil fuel. Maybe someday technology will come up with something better but for now it is king. better to use our own national sources instead of supporting regimes that do not like us.

Massive government subsides for alternative energy do not change the fact that they are just not as efficient or as inexpensive as fossil fuels. The technology just isn't there yet to support it. Maybe someday we will have Star trek energy but for now we don't.

It's not a tech problem it's an infrastructure problem, but once you price in externalities, clean electricity is not more expensive.

And how do you think we get the technology, by waiting for it?

 

[luiz]

I guess we'll find out if they're doing it properly when the ground doesn't shake. What happens to the liquid brew they pump into the ground?

It's circulated up, filtered, stored in tanks and usually re-used (sometimes it may be discarded, on the more primitive rigs). But it's not left on the ground. Same with regular drilling fluids.

Also, a big purpose of cementing and casing is exactly to prevent contamination of aquifers.

 

[luiz]

It's not a tech problem it's an infrastructure problem, but once you price in externalities, clean electricity is not more expensive.

And how do you think we get the technology, by waiting for it?

By investing billions in it, just as we already do. And being able to economically exploit tight oil is one of the results of such massive investment.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, we can only safely burn a fraction of our remaining hydrocarbon reserves. Natural gas or coal? Might not really matter. I doubt coal is going to be 'cleaner' to produce than natural gas, though NG clearly needs the right set of regulations to induce the proper incentives in the executives.

Like I said, we only have portion of our hydrocarbons to burn. We have an obligation to produce that bit as cheaply as possible and then to squeeze as much economic prosperity as possible from each calorie.

 

[peter grimes]

If there's any interest I can post some technical research by non-oil industry sources demonstrating that there's no evidence whatsoever that fracking is harmful when properly done (or rather, when the drilling, cementing and other completion tasks prior to fracking were properly done).

When improperly done it can cause serious harm, just like anything.

If there's no interest, well, bring on the pitchforks.

I find the whole liberals are for science thing except if it produces something useful and needed both highly amusing and highly hypocritical.

I'm quite liberal but I'm not against any and all fracking.

I'm against fracking the way it's currently done.

I'd be interested, luiz, in seeing your stuff. I don't doubt that it can be done safely (almost anything can be done safely), but the way the companies in the US are operating is not OK.

But even if fracking wells have no adverse impacts there's still the problem if the CO2 produced when the natural gas is burned. And we need to be moving away from a carbon-based energy economy towards a nuclear & hydrogen-based system.

Yes, I'm very liberal and I support Nuclear power. The major problem with Nuclear is how to handle the waste. I thought the Yucca mountain plan was the least bad option, but I don't think there's any hope for that project anymore.

How many people here have seen Gasland?

 

[Gucumatz]

I am all for fracking and think we need more of it. There is an energy bonanza waiting to be tapped - but that said, really I blame the energy companies that refuse to disclose any of the substances used in fracking and any attempts at preventing regulatory guidance - as the main reasons the public is so anti-fracking. Sure some of the substances would probably create some temporary backlash, but if managed in a responsible way these companies could have expanded fracking three-fold as much as they are now.