Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

Post by rayiner » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 7:44 PM UTC

thatswrong0 wrote: post #33

Pxtl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the "opposing side" (the heartland institute) also deny the existence of global warming and second-hand smoke, I think your choice of references does more to harm that viewpoint than support it.

It was a news article. I just grabbed the first relevant link pertaining to "gasland tap water fire". Because I apparently was using the wrong keywords: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasland#Negative > In an article for Forbes magazine, Dr. Michael Economides, a professor of engineering at the University of Houston, commented on the Gasland scene of "a man lighting his faucet water on fire and making the ridiculous cl…

Post by davidw » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 7:46 PM UTC

zzzeek wrote: post #16

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #12

There's a ton of context that's not included here. For starters: 1) How common was this in PA before fracking started? 2) Are these wells unusable? 3) Is the situation getting better or worse? 4) Is the gas linked to the fracking (the only interesting question that was mentioned in the article, and the answer is "we don't know") 5) What about other places fracking is occurring? It's not like we're going to stop frack…

hacker news is a community of highly technical and/or scientifically inclined people. Certainly a Scientific American article that discusses ongoing research, and is very specific in noting the preliminary nature of it, is something the community is capable of ingesting and discussing in a reasonable way. I found the article interesting because I recall just a couple of years ago, discussing the idea that fracking co…

Post by falk » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 7:53 PM UTC

thatswrong0 wrote: post #14

bitteralmond wrote: post #10

For anyone interested, I'd recommend Gasland. http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/ This "new" evidence of contamination will not end it. People will be paid in quiet settlements, sell their houses at a fraction of what they paid for them, and move somewhere else. This will probably continue until the oil/bitumen/gas is gone.

I would not. If you're going to watch Gasland, then you also need to read the opposing side. There are some parts of it that are incredibly misleading, such as the tap water on fire. http://energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Debunkin... http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2011/08/01/gasla... Edit: Admittedly, these sources suck. Here's a NYTimes article that should hopefully be more palatable: http:…

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 8:04 PM UTC

johnward wrote: post #42

ssharp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prophetically, and maybe ironically, fracking service infrastructure in my hometown, Youngstown, Ohio, is being built on the same land that the steel mills sat abandoned for decades.

I'm on the Ohio border near Pittsburgh. Most of our infrastructure isn't reusing steel mill but some of it is. The thing I worry about more than the ground pollution are explosions. We've already seen a few but I don't think anything like that fertilizer plant yet. I have a pipeline being put in probably 300 yards from my house and those things scare the shit out of me.

Post by protomyth » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 8:13 PM UTC

patmcguire wrote: post #29

But methane isn't harmful. Also the article doesn't mention the quantities, but another does. [1] It seems that the most that's been found is about 70mg/L, which is not a lot. [1] http://realclearscience.com/blog/2013/06/theres-methane-in-y...