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Fracking for natural gas is safe?
hermitwin
Veteran
I just realised that there is a big debate about this.
What are your opinions?
What are your opinions?
0
Comments
So yes. Sorry about ranting, but it needs to be said, and people need to know. I'm glad that this is an international forum. please tell your friends about this assault on the earth.
So no, fracking is in no way, shape or form safe for people or the environment. However, it is probably inevitable as a part of the process that always happens as a population outgrows its available resources. First the easiest to access and most desirable resource is mined or fished or hunted. When that is gone, then we move to other resources that have a greater cost in environmental or personal damage. And so on. And as we move down the line, we can even temporarily improve our standard of living as the resource stream begins gushing again. But eventually even the trash fish are gone, the meat factories can't keep up with the demand and there's no crops to feed them anyway, there's no more dirty coal or natural gas to be fracked, and the population finally crashes.
And since people have an infinite capacity to ignore inconvenient facts and justify their own behavior, about all we can hope for is that we slow the process down a bit.
most of the videos say it is safe.
looks like the oil giants are determined
to convince the public that it is safe.
how do these company executives sleep at night?
This is how safe it is. Especially good for toasting marshmallows
I absolutely don't support fracking, and even mining in general. Just another way huge, huge companies get filthy rich while creating generations-long consequences for other people with no pause. My community is going through this right now with sulfide mining for precious metals. Our area is sitting on one of the biggest deposits in the world and there are no houses or anything there. Because it's on the edge of a federally protected area, much of which is fed by one larger river that winds through the whole area and into Canada, and the mining will take place right on the river, and if (when) the water is contaminated it'll spread to many of the lakes. The company has exactly zero history in the whole world of not contaminating the water supply, not just that but they use huge, huge amounts of fresh water. Ridiculous.
But, on the flip side. Every one of us who dislikes it, how many of us have given up our cars? tv? cell phones? computers? Want to give up natural gas for heat in favor of solar? The parts for that all require mining, too. It's being stuck between a rock and a hard place, basically. Because we all use and mostly need a lot of these things that mining produces. So, we're immediately to blame for the mining because of our drive and hunger for all these items. I try to be more responsible with it, but the fact is so few of us that care make little impact right now when everyone else wants 3 new cell phones every year. I got involved in a fresh water coalition locally to help spread information about the other side of our local mining debate. But it's a huge, huge uphill battle. The mines here, even with their high risks, have almost 90% of the public's support.
That's 5 million each well. How many wells are slated to go into your drought strikened land?
so that big companies can make huge profits.
who cares if the water is poisoned?
who cares if future generations dont have clean water?
http://news.discovery.com/space/asteroids-meteors-meteorites/could-asteroid-mining-drive-21st-century-space-industry-130204.htm
Group 1 is big business and its supporters. They put out there position as fact.
Group 2 buys into the position of big business, realizes there are risks, but believes that the risks are controllable and are balanced out by the need we have for energy. Whether they really believe the risks are controllable is questionable.
Group 3 is very wary, feels there are risks, but looks the other way because (as Karasti points out) they don't really care because it isn't directly affecting them and they benefit from the process.
Group 4 are (or are related to) the environmentalists, who put out their positions as fact, and are on the opposite end of the spectrum from big business.
Do you know which group I trust the most? None of them. Every one of those groups either lies to the public or lies to themselves. None of those groups takes a balanced position, but rather goes to extremes.
I am reminded very much of the factory workers back in my home town -- including several relatives of mine -- who worked at a then leading company that produced gaskets and seals in the 1940s and 1950s. Depending on which department they worked in, a lot of them were coughing and hacking, and they'd talk about the graphite (and other substances) in the air in the manufacturing divisions. They'd laugh and say things like, "Those of us down in the mill and calender (whatever that meant) will probably die from all that stuff in the air." So they knew...but they ignored what they knew. And sure enough, there were way too many cases of emphysema and lung cancer among those guys.
The fact that big business lies to the American people is almost irrelevant in this type of case. Because the American people know. In fact, for every article in the media about how we will benefit from fracking, there are two or three articles about the great risks of fracking. If the American people are being fooled about the issue, it's because we allow ourselves to be fooled about the issue.
Demand is up and that is what fuels these types of projects. I can't even get my friends to stop shopping at Walmart, despite their horrible business practices and the fact that they actually demand that companies move their operations overseas.
I was just visiting my family up in northern Michigan where they installed a bunch of wind turbines and my grandmother told me about how people fought tooth and nail to oppose these 'monstrosities'... typically based on misinformation or just simply because people don't like the look of them.
It's a real double edged sword for me personally. I think the best thing we can do is to try and support stringent laws that the companies must adhere to in terms of environmental safety.
Here is an interview titled Better Fracking from NPR that really does a great job of explaining all of the processes and describing what they are trying to do to make it better. (If anyone is interested and has 45 mins to spare, that is.)
back to get the truth out.
If we want a better world, and a sustainable, healthy, livable world in the future, we have to accept relatively minor (imo) sacrifices, like the "convenience" of a car. How convenient is it, anyway, if it results in wars (!!) and trashing the planet?
The root of the intransigence on these issues, I think, isn't our individual commitment so much as it is the control that corporations have over politics and economics.
On FB I find a balancing point between talking about issues but not watching 'chainletter-mail' where you have to refer 5 people to your cause. And that would multiply to a lot of letters getting wrote, I guess?? But money talks and you know the rest. Maybe I'll join the chain-causes people and refer to 5 other people next issue that comes up. Because? I realize even if it is awkward socially there are a lot of good causes.
however, our cars are extremely inefficient.
there is insufficient demand for efficient cars.
the problem is education n information.
at the moment, big corporations are winning the information
'war'.
And I do write our politicians, but the lobby for good paying, benefited jobs, is very heavy here. When you have people who are 50-60-70 and working 3 or 4 jobs as cashiers and clerks around town just to pay the mortgage, it's hard to fit against companies who will bring better jobs. It's extremely divisive and that part for sure I find sad. I don't want people to suffer without full time, year round jobs. But I don't want everyone to suffer when it comes to trusting a company that has had 0% success in not contaminating water, either. It came up over dinner yesterday at my mom's birthday, and I just don't even discuss it. It gets too ugly, too fast. My stepsister is best friends with the daughter of a man who is fighting the mining here, and she (stepsister) has a hard time with that because her (stepsister) family hates her best friends family for what they are doing. Sigh. It's just ugly. I wish there were easier answers.
We can also see from the example of Peabody Coal on the Navajo/Hopi reservations, that private companies are not at all good stewards of water. They use the highest quality water to slurry coal, leaving unhealthy aquifers for potable use. They're using all the water they can for as long as it lasts to slurry coal, then they'll leave the reservations literally high and dry when the pure water runs out.
There is a notion called tragedy of the commons where if a resource is open to access then anyone can use whatever they want and when many do this and no one is responsible for maintaining the resource it becomes depleted.
IMO better public regulation of our water resources would be the better way to go, but government is clearly failing us on this issue at present. For all its downsides privatization of water would probably help in regards to fracking.
@Dakini in some places in the US, it is illegal (I think city ordinance but I could be wrong, I'll have to double check) to have rain barrels.
This article touches on it:
http://www.naturalnews.com/029286_rainwater_collection_water.html
I think this issue is different from when water was privatized in Bolivia, and someone was making a lot of money by selling it for profit. In the arid West, it's about how best to ensure a water supply for agriculture and personal use in times of drought. I don't know why Washington State is against water catchment, though. I haven't read the whole article yet. Maybe it's more relevant to the dry eastern part of the state.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20111104/gasfrac-propane-natural-gas-drilling-hydraulic-fracturing-fracking-drinking-water-marcellus-shale-new-york
But the real solution lies on the demand side. Is your home insulated to DOE guidelines? Is your roof white? Do you have a maximally fuel efficient vehicle? All LED lighting? Do you take showers of reasonable length? The list goes on and on. This is where the real solution is. Arguing about fracking misses the point. Nonrenewable supplies are polluters. Renewable supplies help, but dollar for dollar efficiency is generally a better buy than renewable supply; that is, you can save more fossil fuel BTUs.
They had some nasty flash flooding last week due to last year's fire.
Did you by any chance go to the Buddhist temple (Theravada) just NE of Colorado Springs?