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Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

scientificamerican.com

91–100 of 110 posts

Re: Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

#91
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the mean time, landowners pissed off about Keystone XL's successful use of eminent domain need to know where to get a supply of these beetles.

Paradox. If you could obtain more of them, they wouldn't be protected.

Get some regular beetles, some hobby paint, and make your own protected beetles.

(Don't do this.)

Re: Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

The 'opposing side' is the PR shills hired by the gas industry ( http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alyssa-carducci/2a/148/889 ) ( http://heartland.org/alyssa-carducci ) ( http://energyindepth.org/about/ ). "Government Relations" is a nice euphemism for propagandist. In 50 years when the Midwest is a toxic wasteland, many of those responsible might be able to move to Dubai, but our children and grandchildren are going to ha…

Number of deaths caused by contaminated groundwater due to fracking: ____?

Re: Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

#93
post #88

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...

There are over 500 chemicals used in the process, and I'm guessing many of them get into the ground water.

You would guess? You have to make decision based on more than guesses, at minimum you should analyze the physics behind the exact process going on.

Re: Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

#94

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.

This was on TV one day, I had no intention of watching anything that day. 2 hours later...I'm sitting there weeping for humanity. Not literally, but I definitely recommend this movie to those interested. I can't make any recommendation to credibility, but I assure you that you won't come away with any positive outlook on fracking.

Might I suggest you watch Fracknation.

Re: Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

#95
post #60

I have mixed feelings about fracking. It almost certainly pollutes areas, but lots of areas in not-United States get polluted currently from the oil industry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_the_Nig... In other words, what makes us special? Why are we okay with polluting other places but by golly we get mad when it happens in our own country?

> Why are we okay with polluting other places but by golly we get mad when it happens in our own country? Because we live here and not there?

So it's okay to use oil when it pollutes somewhere else?

I live in the northeast and I find it very interesting when someone has an anti-fracking bumper sticker on his or her car. It essentially says "oil is okay as long as there are no problems near me"

Re: Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fracking will end when the oil/gas is gone. It's inaccurate to group together hydraulic fracturing and traditional oil drilling in terms of environmental damage. The regulations and safety procedures for oil are leaps and bounds beyond those of hydraulic fracturing. My girlfriend is in charge for assessing the environmental impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline, and she recently spent two weeks rerouting KXL because sh…

>It's inaccurate to group together hydraulic fracturing and traditional oil drilling in terms of environmental damage. No it isn't, fracking is a technique that is used to increase the output of a 'traditional oil well' and actually, oil/gas drilling has been ruining surface water for a long time, too. In the past it tended to happen to people who owned the surface as well as the minerals, and who were often happy to…

I don't know about elsewhere, but in Australia CSG wells are often operated under a coal mining permit (vs oil/gas drilling permit) where the drilling operations, casing requirements, testing/audit trails etc. designed to protect aquifers (and well integrity) are nowhere near as strict as conventional oil & gas.

Hell, the crews drilling CSG don't even have basic understanding of well control theory (or enough instrumentation on the rig to detect problems) - hence the occasional uncontrolled blowouts, mitigated only by the fact that these CSG wells are slimhole vs conventional.

I'd much rather live next to a fracked conventional oil & gas well which has been cased & cemented according to the design of certified petroleum engineers, pressure-tested with all the results lodged properly with government authorities to depths far exceeding any of the local aquifers - than a dodgy CSG well cemented by amateurs who work to rough guidelines "appropriate for the area", who write more documentation on their invoicing than on any actual data collection...

Source: I worked with an oil & gas service company 2006-2008...

Re: Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

#97
post #74
post #15

Nothing will stop the fraking. It's simply too profitable for Congress to do something about it (one of the few bright areas in a dismal economy), and the courts have gutted the environmental laws too much for the courts to do anything about it. It's an intrinsically attractive business: the product is something (energy) that's extremely valuable and has exploding demand, and many of the inherent costs of creating th…

Fracking will end when the gas is gone, the planet is uninhabitable, and we're all dead or living underground.

That is the ultimate end-game for earth regardless of fracking or anything else.

Re: Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

#98

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...

The safety of methane does not matter nearly as much as what that says about the industry.

They lied.

They claimed there would be no contamination to the groundwater. Now we see there is. What chemical is next? We don't know.

Re: Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

#100
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's inaccurate to group together hydraulic fracturing and traditional oil drilling in terms of environmental damage. No it isn't, fracking is a technique that is used to increase the output of a 'traditional oil well' and actually, oil/gas drilling has been ruining surface water for a long time, too. In the past it tended to happen to people who owned the surface as well as the minerals, and who were often happy to…

The wins, unfortunately, tend to be random, as a result of the sorry state of our environmental law. The people at the EPA don't target oil pipelines for rerouting due to beetles instead of focusing on whether fracking is polluting groundwater because they care so much about beetles, or because they've already won on everything more important. Industry takes examples like this to show "look at how out of control the…

This may be, but there is still something that seems to ring true about Clark and Dawe's take: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClvLp4vXJ5I
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