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Something from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/10/17/shale-fra...
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 fracking everywhere: this is a maturing technology. It'll be used all over the planet. What's happening elsewhere?
6) Any other studies being done?
7) What's the measured impact on health in the area?
8) Let's not even start on corrleation and causation -- but it needs to be mentioned, and it's the reason all these other questions are germane.
I'm not trying to be an apologist. These are just sincere questions of import when reading about fracking news. They're germane to any reporting on the matter, and they weren't included. If "more details to come" means more random pieces of trivia that we are then supposed to knit up into our own version of a drama, filled in by whatever personal biases we have, then this isn't very useful from a scientific standpoint.
The OP is a kind of shallow summation of the details here...first of all, the study was published in June. Second, it's not the "first step" in determining the link between fracking in the Marcellus Shale and water contamination...a previous study by Duke, which the OP references later, documented "systematic evidence" of such a link. 2013: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/06/19/1221635110.full... 2011: http://…
To the author's credit, at least he pulled back and didn't do the entire ranting, hand-waving ritual. I believe that job is being left for online commenters to complete :)
The funny thing is, without the overriding emotional narrative many people have, if you just explained what the study says using other terms, most folks would realize how tenuous and superficial the reporting is. Correlative research is great, but geesh, it's a tiny, almost minuscule part of actually accomplishing anything. Most of the time, it's a waste of time. Medical research, for instance, is full of correlative research that never amounted to a hill of beans.
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.
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://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/02/24/24greenwire-groundtr...
Fracking will end when the oil/gas is gone. In its wake it will leave behind the mess the energy and chemical industries have left all over the country: polluted, barely usable land in economically devastated regions (which is what happens after the oil is gone and the companies leave) that must be cleaned up at enormous public expense: http://www.epa.gov/superfund.[1]
Every story is some form of the same thing (plug: http://cleanupdepue.org). Company moves into little town. Residents rejoice in the new jobs. Company leaves when the land is polluted and used up. Property values plummet, and the town is left with no jobs and no ability to sell their houses and move out. The western midwest is in the first part of that story right now, hopefully they'll be smart enough and not have to see what the second part looks like 30-50 years from now.
[1] Incidentally, I think one of the great weaknesses of our country is that Congress sits in D.C., a city that is insulated from pretty much every substantial problem present in the rest of the country. In this particular context, it's a city that has never seen much industrialization and which has historically been surrounded by low-intensity agriculture in every direction (now: vast swaths of suburbia). I think we'd see a different attention to environmental issues if we relocated Congress to say the industrial New Jersey/Delaware/Pennsylvania coast...
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…
Now if we were talking about an article that's discussing philosophy, religion, or other subjects within the humanities, there's a much higher chance the HN community will totally misinterpret and butcher the crap out of that, sure.
Why isn't there a way to track without toxic chemicals?
I believe they need to use a fluid that is viscous enough to stay in place after being pumped into the rock, so that the fissures do not immediately close when pressure is released. Edit: source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proppants_and_fracking_fluids
Side-note: Before today I didn't realize how lax the laws on natural gas companies are. The New York Times has a great graphic on the subject.
"The natural gas industry has exemptions or exclusions from key parts of at least 7 of the 15 major federal environmental laws designed to protect air and water from radioactive and hazardous chemicals. Below are the seven laws listed in the order they were passed."
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/03/us/20110303-na...
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe they need to use a fluid that is viscous enough to stay in place after being pumped into the rock, so that the fissures do not immediately close when pressure is released. Edit: source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proppants_and_fracking_fluids
If you read the article, you will find that the contamination is methane. That is the has they are extracting. It's not the fracking fluid.
They apparently don't just use water, like some people might expect they could, because it doesn't work. Many people are concerned about contamination from the fracking fluid, correctly or not.