Suppose I told you there was a form of energy so plentiful it could encourage huge economic growth, a source so plentiful here in the United States that it could truly make America energy independent and vastly enhance our global political influence. That would be good news, right?
But suppose I also told you that capturing this energy source means drilling, and smashing the underground rocks with a pressurized mix of water and sand and industrial chemicals, and that the liquid that returns to the surface from this process sometimes contains low doses of toxic chemicals and even radioactivity, and that breaking up all that underground rock could cause earthquakes and let potentially dangerous gasses leak up to the surface, and there would be a lot of air pollution from all the heavy equipment needed to get the drilling going in the first place. And this process will make oil companies even richer. Sounds a little different now, right?
Welcome to the fracking debate, which is producing a lot of natural gas, and a growing amount of hot air about whether fracking is a good thing or a bad thing, opinions that have less to do with the facts than with how those facts are framed, and what frame of mind people are in as they form those opinions. Fracking is yet another example of the subjective, instinctive, affective way human cognition deals with risks, and it offers sobering lessons about the limits on our ability to reason about complex modern issues like this.
As an Independent voter, I try to see both sides of this issue. It is a complex topic and how the information is portrayed makes a huge amount of difference as you said. From where I sit, I see a debate heavily tilted toward the Oil/ gas developer side who make a huge profit from the exercise. Yet, the process is not safe as often portrayed because nothing is 100% safe. So, I want to know more. There has been causal data proven in Arkansas and Great Britain on the deep-in-ground disposal of the fracking water causing earthquakes. There is a lot of correlated data and anecdotal evidence of polluted water and air in the vicinity of fracking wells per a University of Texas study and other sources. And, a community needs to understand fully about the impact on their infrastructure to abet the fracking efforts. Yet, a another concern as raised in the UofT study is the average fracking well takes 4 to 6 million gallons of water per well. As water is the new oil and is very dear, the question I have is that where we want to use our water. With global warming upon us and impacting drought areas more than others, we need to be ever vigilant about how we use our water. Both NASA (Hansen said last week it is worse than predicted), NOAA and a global study by Mercer Investment Consulting sanctioned by large investors have said that many of the drought conditions we are seeing are the result of global warming. Seeing some of your other tags, this may not be what you want me to say, but from where I sit the data is pretty overwhelming.Thanks for letting me offer my comments.