Study Says Fracking is Safe In Theory But Often Not In Practice

First time accepted submitter chadenright writes "A university study asserts that the problems caused by the gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking,' arise because drilling operations aren't doing it right. The process itself isn't to blame, according to the study, released today by the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin."

Comments

This story prompted me too...

[Anonymous Coward]

... start watching battlestar again.

Re:This story prompted me too...

[Anonymous Coward]

fscking is safe in theory
but not often in practice

Frak!

[owenferguson]

Damn those cylons!

Re:Frak!

[owenferguson]

In all seriousness, though, "safe in theory but not necessarily in practice" suggests that maybe the theory is wrong...

Re:Frak!

[ColdWetDog]

In all seriousness, though, "safe in theory but not necessarily in practice" suggests that maybe the theory is wrong...

Or, horror of horrors, government isn't stepping up to the plate. This sort of thing is the poster child for why pure Libertarianism don't work. Over at the Oil Drum there are many discussions on fracking - and from the couple of folks actually doing it, they would agree with TFA - it can be done safely, but often isn't.

Apparently Texas, who has been regulating fracking since the 1950's does a reasonable job of it. Significant fines for dumping wastewater, regulators that know what they're looking for. It shouldn't be rocket science to hire a couple of oil field guys (or some ex - Texas regulators) and come up with a best practices document.

Hell, the EPA might even be able to do it. But this is what really frosts me about the current state of affairs. Even if industry and government should have similar goals (keeping the screw ups and cheaters out of the game), they can't seem to get together and put up some fairly simple regulatory frameworks.

Maybe this is what Tainter means by too much complexity causing our eventual downfall. Humans are just too stupid sometimes.

Re:Frak!

[owenferguson]

"Humans are just too stupid sometimes." Indeed. That's why the frakking cylons will see us to our early graves...

Re:Frak!

[pavon]

The article stated that one of the main problems was bad cementing jobs, but from what I've gathered from reading and talking is that it is really hard to get a good cement job. There are things you can do to screw it up, but even if you do everything by the book, you can still end up with an imperfect seal. According to the US U.S. Minerals Management Service, cementing problems were associated with 18 of 39 blowouts between 1992 and 2006.

So, if doing fraking "right" requires you to have perfect cement jobs everytime, then it isn't possible to do fraking right.

Re:Frak!

[mosb1000]

Maybe this is what Tainter means by too much complexity causing our eventual downfall.

It is really disturbing to me that you seem to know who Tainter is, and to agree somewhat with what he's said. But you seem to be claiming that regulatory frameworks are somehow in need of expansion. One would think that you might be more concerned with stemming the tide of ever increasing government bureaucracy rather than expanding it. Perhaps it may be better to ask why the existing framework isn't accomplishing what it's supposed to, and looking for ways to improve it, rather than simply saying "lets draft yet another document and add it to our already absurd collection of government documents." But that's just me.

Re:Frak!

[z0idberg]

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. **Attributed to Yogi B and others.

Re:Frak!

[im_thatoneguy]

We run into this ALL the time here at work. Since we're working with cutting edge software that even the developers don't entirely understand we can often say "It'll take an hour" and then it winds up taking 2 days. Or we'll say it'll take 2 days and we're done in an hour. Until something has been done for decades and experience is developed you find yourself constantly solving problems you didn't even know could exist.

If Plan A always worked perfectly everything would be done 8x faster. It's only through years of mistakes that I've learned to readjust my pride from "how long it would take if I made no 'mistakes'" to how long it'll take in the real world. I imagine without regulation there is a lot of that in the drilling industry. Pride or economic incentive pushes people to be optimistic about how perfectly any plan can be executed and then in order to meet their plan mistakes go uncorrected.

Re:Frak!

[mosb1000]

You can do everything right and still get a bad seal. If you rush the job and ignore warning signs, you are pretty much guaranteed to get a bad seal. Which do you suppose causes more problems?

So, if doing fraking "right" requires you to have perfect cement jobs everytime, then it isn't possible to do fraking right.

You could say the same of any drilling. If you don't have a good seal, you haven't done it right. It is possible to check this kind of thing afterwards. Maybe they should.

Re:Frak!

[steveha]

This sort of thing is the poster child for why pure Libertarianism don't work.

Pure libertarianism: somebody owns that underground water. Somebody else starts fracking and chemicals get into the water. The owner of the water then sues the fracker and 0wns him in court. (Possibly literally; if the damages are high enough, the fracker might wind up indentured to the party he wronged.)

Alternative scenario. The fracker and the water owner are the same person. Now he can eat the cost of the fracking (can't sell the water anymore; it's polluted); or he can keep selling the water to his customers, in which case his customers sue him for selling tainted water, and they 0wn him in court.

Now, if you are talking about not just a libertarian society but an anarchocapitalist one, then yeah I think you have found an example that probably won't work in practice. I'm told that even with no government to force people to go to court, that they will voluntarily show up for arbitrations and there is no need for government. I doubt you buy that; I don't either.

The role of government here is supposed to be that government imposes regulations, the industry follows the regulations, and then nobody sues anybody as long as everyone was following the regulations. Or if you are really a believer in big government, you might think that government inspectors prevent accidents. That works until it doesn't; BP leaked a bunch of oil into the gulf, and government inspectors didn't prevent it.

The libertarian alternative is you can do whatever you want, without permission, but as soon as you harm someone you are in big trouble. (Government currently provides lots of ways to diffuse the trouble; you don't hear of a CEO being held personally responsible for the company he/she heads, due to limited liability of corporation.)

Maybe you meant to say "anarchy" instead of "Libertarianism"?

steveha

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

How does someone "own ground water" in a libertarian society? I thought you had to improve land with labour to stake a claim to it.

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure libertarianism: a rancher, town, or some other small business or public organization owns that underground water. A large corporation starts fracking and chemicals get into the water. The owner of the water then sues the fracker and gets outspent 100-1 in court. (Possibly, if the damage is bad enough and there's significant public interest, the fracker might wind actually paying the party he wronged a small fraction of his profits a decade or two later.) Alternative scenario. The fracker and the water owner are the same corporation. Now it can hide the cost of the fracking (unless it actually does cause earthquakes; they're harder to hide than pollution); or he can keep letting the water contaminate to his neighbors, in which case his customers sue him for selling tainted water, and get outspent 100-1 in court. Maybe there will actually be some sort of state payout to those damaged a generation or two later. FIFY

Re:Frak!

[tomhath]

So, if doing fraking "right" requires you to have perfect cement jobs everytime, then it isn't possible to do fraking right.

That's a pretty big "if". You could also say that the vast majority of gas wells are done perfectly, and a few had problems which needed to be fixed

Keep in mind that natural gas in water wells is very common throughout the Appalachians

Re:Frak!

[PeanutButterBreath]

We run into this ALL the time here at work. Since we're working with cutting edge software that even the developers don't entirely understand we can often say "It'll take an hour" and then it winds up taking 2 days. Or we'll say it'll take 2 days and we're done in an hour.

These problems are typical of software development and just about any other job I have had that didn't involve rote repetition.

I don't think this is the problem with fracking. They have dropped thousands of these wells, so the process is not "cutting edge". Granted, they are dealing with highly variable conditions, but again, there is plenty of history to go on.

The problems with fracking (two of them, anyway) are a) doing things incompetently that could theoretically be done in a safe manor and b) doing things that are so difficult that likely to result in failure even when done competently.

Re:Frak!

[marnues]

It is just you as he clearly states that a simple regulation is achievable.

Re:Frak!

[anubi]

Nah, we are not stupid.

We are greedy. Pure and simple, selfish greedy.

The ones in control are happy as long as they can privatize the gains and socialize the loss.

A handsome profit, and a mess, is made in the fracking process.

One wants the profit, but wants to leave the mess to the other.

The four boxes of liberty are dusted off for use.

Nah, not stupidity. Greed.

Its been going on longer than we have recorded history.

Its in our nature.

The Bible is full of it.

I am not proud of it. But its in all of us. Me included.

Re:Frak!

[Kagato]

Water contamination and geological instability is thought to be an artifact of pumping the waste water back in the ground after the fraking is complete. Which doesn't have to happen, but is expensive to treat.

Re:Frak!

[ozborn]

Even if industry and government should have similar goals (keeping the screw ups and cheaters out of the game), they can't seem to get together and put up some fairly simple regulatory frameworks.

You're somewhat confused about what the "similar goals" are between industry and government actually are. It has nothing to do with stupidity and much more to do with corruption and money. Industry (including and particularly cheaters) pay people in government through campaign contributions plus the age old promise of high paying jobs in industry once their political career is over to produce a "favorable" business climate. This can mean passing favorable legislation or removing regulatory pressure. If that isn't possible the regulators can simply be de-funded, the options are endless. The politicians love it, they get campaign contributions, connections to powerful people in industry and maybe even a cushy jobs on the Board of Directors when they are done. Where I'm living (Alabama) this sadly explains the majority of political practice here, from both parties.

Maybe this is what Tainter means by too much complexity causing our eventual downfall. Humans are just too stupid sometimes.

One possibility is that politicians are too stupid to establish a functional regulatory framework. However they somehow manage to construct a complicated taxation framework to collect trillions in taxes, build a massively complicated military and defense structure... I think a more reasonable explanation is that many (not all) politicians have no interest in building such a structure. The constituents are too diffuse and disorganized to make it worth their while except during election time, when they are at least give it lip service.

Re:Frak!

[Raenex]

Lawsuits are too late when people have been poisoned.

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawsuits are too late when people have been poisoned.

Current system: big company poisons people, lawyers wage a class-action lawsuit, company goes out of business, executives of company move on to new jobs.

Libertarian system: big company poisons people, executives are held personally liable and all their possessions are confiscated as part of the settlement.

Pure libertarianism may have problems (pure anything is likely to have problems) but I think the executives would be more careful in such a system than in the limited liability corporation system.

Re:Frak!

[viperidaenz]

The Cylons are long gone... They arrived on earth 120,000 years ago.

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

More accurately when people don't adhere to the theory exactly including all the assumptions like how one contains and disposes of fluids the conclusions of the theory don't hold. Safe in theory not in practice most likely means the execution of the theory is flawed not the theory itself. Of course a flawed theory is a possibility if when executed properly and in accordance with all the assumptions the conclusions don't hold true of if the assumptions can not be satisfied in a practical real world environment. But again the more likely scenario is a flawed execution.

Re:Frak!

[TubeSteak]

The role of government here is supposed to be that government imposes regulations, the industry follows the regulations, and then nobody sues anybody as long as everyone was following the regulations.

Wrong. Regulations exist to try and minimize harm, not indemnify the regulated.
Following regulations is never a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Or if you are really a believer in big government, you might think that government inspectors prevent accidents.

I can't think of any historical examples where we've ever had enough Government inspectors to really provide a baseline.
historically, we've had no inspections, but never really gone to the other extreme of full inspections.

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

The bad guy can outspend the victims 100:1 in court, but how can he change the facts? If the facts are that he put poison in the water, how does outspending by 100:1 save him?

A libertarian society will have problems, as any society has problems. But it will also have fewer legal loopholes behind which a bad guy can hide.

I don't know if you have noticed, but even in non-libertarian America, juries often rule against the giant deep-pocketed company and in favor of the little guy. In fact, from reading news stories, I have an idea that juries sort of view large deep-pockets companies as a resource to be tapped. "They might or might not be guilty, but this guy is hurting, they have money, they might as well give him some."

Re:Frak!

[steveha]

Regulations exist to try and minimize harm, not indemnify the regulated.
Following regulations is never a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Hmm, I think that's fair. I overstated the case and I stand corrected.

I can't think of any historical examples where we've ever had enough Government inspectors to really provide a baseline.

That's an interesting perspective, and not the one I usually get when I discuss libertarian issues with people. A common complaint I get is that without all the government inspectors, people will come to harm in a libertarian society. If we don't have government restaurant inspectors, restaurants will serve poisonous food; if we don't have government elevator inspectors, elevators will never be maintained and will be ramshackle and dangerous; etc. etc.

I do actually believe that a fully libertarian society could sort out the issues of restaurant food safety and elevator safety. And, fracking safety. But many people I talk to have tremendous faith in the power of government, and only government, to keep us safe.

steveha

Re:Frak!

[smellotron]

The role of government here is supposed to be that government imposes regulations, the industry follows the regulations, and then nobody sues anybody as long as everyone was following the regulations. Or if you are really a believer in big government, you might think that government inspectors prevent accidents. That works until it doesn't; BP leaked a bunch of oil into the gulf, and government inspectors didn't prevent it.

Even believers in big goverment must acknowledge that regulatory inspection can never achieve 100% coverage. The presence of regulation also provides a framework for punishment after a failure. Search for "BP gross negligence" to see this in action (I don't want to link to any one particular article, there are many).

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

How does someone "own ground water" in a libertarian society? I thought you had to improve land with labour to stake a claim to it.

Having never lived in a fully libertarian society, I cannot speak from first-hand experience.

I'll give you a two-fold answer:

0) In a settled society, like modern America, you buy the water rights from whomever currently is holding them.

1) In a pioneer society, you get the water rights along with the land, and you get the land by improving it or something.

I have read libertarian fiction where somebody walked the boundaries of a plot of land, updating signs there, writing the date and time and writing "I am renewing my claim to this land."

In a minarchist society, like I advocate, I guess you just file a claim with the government land office, as was done in the pioneer days in America.

The word "libertarian" means certain principles, but there is widespread disagreement among libertarians over just how much government is needed to secure those principles. The anarchocapitalists say no government at all is needed; other libertarians say we need government to do certain things for us that we can't really do for ourselves. One of those things, IMHO, is to run the police and courts; I don't really believe that everyone will voluntarily walk into arbitration anytime it is needed. Some people are just evil, and it is proper for government to protect us from them.

Re:Frak!

[Will.Woodhull]

I'm guessing that the theory is probably right. We've seen this kind of problem in poorly implementing good theory before.

The most obvious example I am aware of is the nuclear power industry. In theory, we should be able to build and operate plants that use fission power in an entirely safe manner. In practice, we have found that the human beings involved in any such endeavor are seriously flawed and will screw it up. For instance, we now have about half a century of experience with this, and we still do not have any permanent safe process for storing the waste; the best we have come up with are better efficiencies in stacking the caskets that remain in temporary storage.

Fracking might well be like this: safe in theory, but you need a better breed of human to ensure that the actual process is done in good accord with the theory. Fat chance that you are going to be able to get any of the theoreticians to do the daily management of the drilling rigs.

Re:Frak!

[mbkennel]

"The bad guy can outspend the victims 100:1 in court, but how can he change the facts? If the facts are that he put poison in the water, how does outspending by 100:1 save him?"

Facts are irrelevant. Testimony matters.

Re:Frak!

[mbkennel]

"Libertarian system: big company poisons people, executives are held personally liable and all their possessions are confiscated as part of the settlement.

Pure libertarianism may have problems (pure anything is likely to have problems) but I think the executives would be more careful in such a system than in the limited liability corporation system."

Correct. They would act deceptively through anonymous proxies and not be identifiable for prosecution.

Re:Frak!

[Rei]

So what sort of legal framework is there that gives the libertarian water-rights owner the right to sue the fracker? "Suing" is a legal construct, and requires "legal basis" for the suit to be brought. Aka, the fracker has violated some sort of law. So in this libertarian world, we have laws about water discharge chemical levels? I thought that was the sort of stuff that libertarians hated -- laws that say what they can't dump into the land, what they can't dump into the water, what they can't dump into the air, etc.

Re:Frak!

[sustik]

> Hell, the EPA might even be able to do it. But this is what really frosts me about the current state of affairs. Even if industry and government should have similar goals (keeping the screw ups and cheaters out of the game), they can't seem to get together and put up some fairly simple regulatory frameworks.

As I understand, a large part of the problem is that regulatory bodies are often underfunded to the point of dysfunction. It is done intentionally, under the heading of "starving/shrinking the government", arguing that the government would be (is) inefficient anyway. The second related major issue is that nominees heading agencies are often cannot be confirmed due to (even) a single senator holding up the vote.

Re:Frak!

[dbIII]

The owner of the water then sues the fracker and 0wns him in court

Where's the court? Isn't the Government too small to be able to provide it because it's not getting any taxes from those Libertarians?

Maybe you meant to say "anarchy" instead of "Libertarianism"

While some are undoubtedly anarchists wrapped in a flag as camoflage others are far worse. Consider what removing the authority of government and instead having a nation led purely by the wealthy and their descendants does after a generation or two. If you have trouble imagining it then consider what Washington fought against. Of course "Libertarian" really is nothing but a meaningless self applied title for those that don't want to be labelled for what they really are, no matter what portion of the political spectrum they sit on. That means any criticism hits the "real Scotsman" problem, where for instance a criticism of Koch and his latest astroturf games results in cries that he not a "real" libertarian.
So yes, since it's such a broad target the above poster is correct in saying libertarian equals anarchist for many libertatians, just as I would be correct in saying many want to be aristocrats that are part of a new royalty, and just as you may be correct if you say you vehemently oppose both viewpoints.
It's a very wide range of people sitting under a sign and wrapped up in a flag to hide what they really are. Of course people are going to react to the loudest noises coming from under that sign.

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't anything inherent in government that people are trusting; it's that they wouldn't have a conflict of interest. If the restaurant finds out that they poisoned people (we assume it was accidental) then the best thing for them to do is fix the problem silently and say nothing. If you have a society where the restaurant polices itself, those people stay sick and don't know why. If you have a society where the restaurant pays a third party, it is still in the third party's interest that the restaurant stay in business. But if the government gets involved, their livelihood isn't on the line, so they can be expected to expose the poisoning and the patrons seek treatment. You never want to depend on people to choose to act against their own self-interest, which is what most proposed implementations of Libertarianism would require.

Re:Frak!

[steveha]

I thought that was the sort of stuff that libertarians hated -- laws that say what they can't dump into the land, what they can't dump into the water, what they can't dump into the air, etc.

Most libertarians, when discussing pollution, bring up the Tragedy of the Commons. If nobody owns a resource, everyone feels they can dump stuff on it or into it.

If someone owns the water rights, and I dump poison into their water, they can sue me for putting poison in their water. If we are living on a river, and he's downstream of me, his river water rights probably give him standing to sue me for dumping junk in the water.

The other tine of the fork is the option to sue for harm. If I sell tainted water, my customers can sue me for the potential or actual harm suffered.

But actually, you might have noticed that I never said that I personally believe that the pure libertarian society is perfect and likely to be problem-free. I just was bothered by the conflating of "libertarianism" with "desire for total anarchy".

I personally have conservative tendencies. If something has never actually been tried, I'm suspicious of it; that's one reason I don't really believe in anarchocapitalism. And I do not believe that the pure libertarian model can really solve everything; for example, I'm not sure that private roads are really as practical as government-owned roads. I do see a role for government in enforcing air quality standards; I am not a pure enough libertarian to think that somebody should own the air, or that people will always voluntarily do the right thing. ("People will shun you if you pollute" or whatever. Eh, ask an anarchocapitalist how that would work; since I don't believe in it, it isn't fair for me to try to explain it.)

An example I like to bring up: 19th-century technology proved sufficient for hunting some species of whales to extinction. 20th-century technology is sufficient for overfishing some species of fish to extinction. I personally believe government should regulate fishing to prevent this, and I am suspicious of libertarian daydreams that say the free market can solve that problem. (And if we just agree that Bill Gates owns all the oceans or something, he might prevent the overfishing but I'm not sure we would be better off.)

The government of the USA used to be a whole lot smaller and do a whole lot less. I personally believe that we could drastically slash the size and scope of government and net be better off, but I don't believe we can do away with government completely.

steveha

Re:Frak!

[ATMAvatar]

The real problem is that we have seen a number of examples of little or un- regulated markets, and nearly every time they cause some problem or another. The most recent example is the banking industry which put is in the current recession. The reason the invisible hand is invisible is because it doesn't exist.

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Texas and Oklahoma oilmen don't know shit about drilling in the mountains. Just look at the well they blew up a few miles from my house.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2010/06/natural_gas_well_explosion_bur.html

Oh shit, there's an abandoned coal mine there. Oh shit it's full of methane. Oh shit we just lit it, and now 7 men are burned.

There are unique challenges here, and they should be looking to local miner/geologists instead of bringing in out of state companies who don't know WTF they are doing.

Re:Frak!

[element-o.p.]

Aka, the fracker has violated some sort of law. So in this libertarian world, we have laws about water discharge chemical levels?

It sounds like you are probably trolling, but I'll bite anyway.

Civil law != criminal law, even in a Libertarian Utopia. Civil law allows for people harmed by the negligence of others to attempt to have their grievances made right. Criminal law allows for government to arrest people who are suitably dangerous to society. In my understanding of Libertarianism, the idea is that laws should not be overly restrictive -- that is, there should be just enough legal framework to take action when necessary to keep people from violating each others' freedoms, but neither civil nor criminal law should punish "victimless crimes" because to a Libertarian, there is no such thing. If there's no victim, then how could there possibly be a crime?

As applied to fracking: if you own the mineral rights, then you get to do what you want with the minerals... UNTIL what you are doing with the minerals causes harm to someone else. If you can get oil out of your property by fracking, more power to you. However, if by doing so, you are polluting your neighbors' drinking water, then you've gotta stop, because at that point, you are causing harm to your neighbors.

Re:Frak!

[dryeo]

Sounds like libertarianism is a lawyers paradise and if you can't afford one then you drink tainted water.

Re:Frak!

[MightyMartian]

Are Libertarian courts going to magically work differently than other courts? You get hauled into court for poisoning your neighbor's water supply, you hire kick-ass legal team and sufficient "researchers" to con a judge and/or jury into believing your neighbor is a whining asshole, and regardless of whether it's a Libertarian state or not, you win. Your neighbor's water is still poisoned, he has insufficient resources to continue the battle, and the tiny, impotent state is utterly incapable of evening the playing field even a little bit. In other words, he's just fucked, you make lots of money, which allows you to build even more kick-ass legal teams and hire even more "researchers".

At least with regulations there is some sort of baseline, as opposed to putting your faith utterly and completely in a political ideology that no more seems to be able to stop abuse of process than existing political systems. Things always sound lovely in theory. In theory Communism creates a wonderfully fair system that sees much more even distribution of wealth. In reality it's been a failure, and I suspect a pure Libertarian state would do no better. At the end of the day, you have to have a certain degree of flexibility and pragmatism in your political and economic system, otherwise you will end up riding your ideology into the gutter sooner or later.

Re:Frak!

[Garridan]

Check, fine. How 'bout fix?

Re:Frak!

[Neil Boekend]

Libertarian system: big company poisons people, executives are held personally liable and all their possessions are confiscated as part of the settlement.

It just happens to be each executive is a dumb fuck with a quite fat paycheck (fat for the fact that he doesn't have to do anything, just sign the orders his realy rich "advisors" give him). Firing him will only force the "advisors" to get a new executive. Confiscate all his posessions is not such a big deal.

Re:Frak!

[Uberbah]

Third is Regulatory Capture, aka "the revolving door", where government officials retire to work for the very industries they were in charge of regulating, and sometimes back to public service for another round.

And what's going to make for a more lucrative career: serving the public, or serving monied interests that can make you a millionaire your first year out of office?

Re:Frak!

[khallow]

This sort of thing is the poster child for why pure Libertarianism don't work.

Except it's not an example of pure Libertarianism. You have heavy regulation and a legal system ("complex" in the sense of Tainter, I might add), both which are far from Libertarian.

The poster child for why pure libertarianism doesn't work are countries where criminal gangs took over (such as supposedly happened in parts of the former Eastern Bloc). Pure libertarianism requires a population that will fight, often proactively, threats to liberty. When that doesn't happen and it usually doesn't, then you can't have libertarianism.

As to Joseph Tainter's theories, I don't see anything about political and economic parasitism in the form of rent-seeking. Complexity in itself doesn't damn a society. What it does do is conceal conflicts of interest between the society and the groups controlling that society as well as subsequent acts of rent-seeking.

For example, the well-known example of the Roman Empire had two well known examples of this. First, the consolidation of land ownership (the primary means for investing wealth prior to the Industrial Revolution) in the hands of wealthy families and second, the devolving of the Praetorian Guard from elite defenders of Rome to selfish kingmakers who helped hasten the demise of the western part of the Roman Empire.

Finally, one shouldn't confuse stupidity with conflict of interest. A collapse of society might indeed serve my interests. Even in cases where stupidity is a factor, it's usually a case of someone pursuing a strategy to further their interests, but they just don't realize in time that their actions are counterproductive (such as brinksmanship against another player using the very same strategy).

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

It sort of depends upon what's meant by a "bad cement job". Yes, it isn't possible to get it perfect every time, just like any other engineering situation. There's always a defect rate. But if you're smart and care about the outcome of the process, you do quality testing and make sure those bad products don't go out the door of the factory. Same for cement jobs. There are tests. The regulations should require (and do require) that those tests are done, and that if any of them fail, you either re-do the cement job to address the problem or in the worst case (no fixable) plug and abandon the well and try again. But as we all know, even with quality control an engineering process isn't infallible. Worse, if you didn't care, or if money was the issue, you could scrimp on the tests and the followup repairs if something was amiss. The only thing preventing that kind of irresponsible behaviour is strict regulations and enforcement.

In principle, flying an aircraft is never 100% safe. Neither is fracking. Things can fail in a mechanical sense or in a human system sense. The question is, should the existence of some level of risk prevent you from doing it at all? That all depends on what the level of risk is, and what the implications are when the system fails. Despite the risk, most people still fly because the industry is very safety concious and has invested enormous amounts of money and effort into it. Petroleum companies need to do the same thing for drilling and fracking. There are areas that can be improved.

People could always decide not to do it at all, but if the choice is between doing without natural gas eventually (as conventional supplies dwindle) or accepting a modest amount of carefully-regulated and managed risk, I think most people would say that we should simply make regulations, enforcement, and financial incentives as tough as possible to ensure that if it is done at all, it is done safely. And if anything does go wrong, companies should financially bear all the costs, and put up a bond or some other financial instrument to ensure that even if the company doesn't exist anymore, there will be compensation if a problem is detected years later.

Re:Frak!

[hairyfeet]

Well I can tell you a friend was hired to make models for the wildcatters and what he learned and showed me was quite disturbing. he was handed pretty much all the data on the area so he could make his models of the geology they would be working with and when he laid a copy of the map the local college had of earthquakes and the map he got from the wildcatters he could overlay them and it was a perfect match, one for one with the wells. Also this is an area with tons of bedrock, and the highest quake measure by the local college since they started setting up stations and taking readings right after WWII was in the 1.9 range with one 3 every twenty years or so, after the wildcatters it was tons of 3s and some 4s and the machines are registering tons of hits so this fracking is really causing some slippage down below.

The final problem which my friend was bit in the ass by and which is REALLY SCARY is that these groups have already set up a way to avoid paying damages if they cause an environmental disaster which means not only do they have ZERO reason to give a fuck about environmental safety but that they are already expecting shit to go bad and are prepped for it. How did they pull this off you ask? Simple they have set up shell corps that own ALL the assets, from the mineral rights and drilling equipment down to the office furniture and then the drilling "company" which is just a front leases the equipment from the shell. As my friend found out when this bunch ran up a couple of bills and people starting trying to sue they simply burn the front company and are back in business the next day with a new front company!

Mark my words at best we are looking at future superfund sites that We, The People will get stuck with while the money men laugh their asses off while walking away counting the cash and at worst we are gonna have our very own Bhopal when these guys set off a major quake or poison all the water for an entire area for decades to come. Thanks to the far right gutting regulations left and right and dodges like the above there simply is NO incentive for them to give a flying fuck. I'm all for increasing domestic production but I don't want us to become another China, with land poisoned and water that you can light on fire. We HAVE to have the regulations in place to make those that drill responsible for any messes they make WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS or they will simply not give a fuck.

Re:Frak!

[Attila Dimedici]

I'm sorry, but your argument does not logically lead to your conclusion. Your argument is basically, "Why do you think that people would be any less corrupt in a Libertarian society than they are in our society? See, government intervention protects you better than the libertarian theory would." You grant that in the current system those with more financial resources are able to use those resources to avoid suffering the consequences for thies actions. Then you postulate (reasonably) that courts in a libertarian society would be just as corrupt (using the word loosely). Finally you conclude that our current system is better. You start by postulating that a flaw that exists in our current system would also exist in a libertarian system (a reasonable postulate), but then you conclude that our current system is better because of this flaw that would exist in the libertarian system.

Re:Frak!

[Attila Dimedici]

The real problem is that we have seen a number of examples of little or un- regulated markets, and nearly every time they cause some problem or another. The most recent example is the banking industry which put is in the current recession. The reason the invisible hand is invisible is because it doesn't exist.

Except that your "most recent example" is no such thing. The banking industry is a highly regulated industry and was during the time leading up to the crash. As a matter of fact, those regulations were one of the factors that led to the crash.

Re:Frak!

[denzo]

It may be difficult to achieve a perfect cement job in a High-Pressure/High-Temperature environment and in horizontal wellbores in hydrocarbon-bearing zones, but it isn't all that hard to get a good cement job in vertical boreholes at shallow depths (where our freshwater aquifers are). Many state regulatory agencies are the most strict about the "surface casing" that protects freshwater aquifers, such as requiring cement all the way back up to surface (and topped off if necessary), specific cement mechanical properties, and pressure testing the casing shoe after the cement is allowed to set prior to proceeding with drilling.

By the time the production casing is set and cemented, there are usually around 3 layers of casing lining the wellbore at the shallow depths. Deep offshore wells have many more layers than this (due to the complexity of the pore pressure and fracture pressure gradient profiles), and the hazards that results from blowouts from bad cement jobs are a hazard to the surface (crew, environment, etc.) but do not pose a danger to any rock layers behind the casing layers in previous intervals.

Re:Frak!

[trongey]

Checking and fixing are both routinely done.
Checking is known as a Cement Bond Log. It's required in every state where I've worked, and a copy must be sumitted to the state regulatory agency.
Fixing is known as a Squeeze Job. The casing is perforated in the interval with the bad cement, and new cement is pumped in under moderate pressure to fill the gaps.

Re:Frak!

[sourcerror]

It's simply the the "ceteris paribus" principle. So the burden of proof that a libertarian legal system would be less corrupt lies on the libertarians.

Re:Frak!

[Attila Dimedici]

However, the OP's argument is that a libertarian legal system would be worse than the current system because it is not less corrupt. The libertarian argument is that there are fewer opportunities for corruption in a libertarian system, therefore the negative impact of corruption would be reduced. Whether or not the libertarian argument is valid is an argument that the OP never made.

Re:Frak!

[LoyalOpposition]

**Attributed to Yogi B and others.

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. - Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

You can probably see why it's so difficult to get the attribution right.

~Loyal

Re:Frak!

[geoskd]

The article stated that one of the main problems was bad cementing jobs, but from what I've gathered from reading and talking is that it is really hard to get a good cement job. There are things you can do to screw it up, but even if you do everything by the book, you can still end up with an imperfect seal. According to the US U.S. Minerals Management Service, cementing problems were associated with 18 of 39 blowouts between 1992 and 2006.

So, if doing fraking "right" requires you to have perfect cement jobs everytime, then it isn't possible to do fraking right.

To do the process right, you test the cement job when it is done, and if it doesn't pass, you seal the well and start over. This is expensive, and companies are loathe to do it. Thats how we got the deepwater horizon mess. The regulation needs to be in place. The person who makes the decision to go ahead with a well needs to be in a position of having little to gain from letting a well go ahead, but everything to loose form approving an imperfect well.

-=Geoskd

Re:Frak!

[geoskd]

In theory, we should be able to build and operate plants that use fission power in an entirely safe manner.

Actually, no. In theory, it is impossible to reduce all nuclear accidents to zero. Theory states quite simply that it is a game of chance, and that we can alter the odds, but cannot render them all the way to zero. We simply have to pay our money and make our bet.

Competently done, engineering will always improve the odds, making things safer, but perfect safety is theoretically impossible.

-=Geoskd

Re:Frak!

[kilfarsnar]

Pure libertarianism: somebody owns that underground water. Somebody else starts fracking and chemicals get into the water. The owner of the water then sues the fracker and 0wns him in court. (Possibly literally; if the damages are high enough, the fracker might wind up indentured to the party he wronged.)

Alternative scenario. The fracker and the water owner are the same person. Now he can eat the cost of the fracking (can't sell the water anymore; it's polluted); or he can keep selling the water to his customers, in which case his customers sue him for selling tainted water, and they 0wn him in court.

This sounds okay, except for one thing: Where does one get the resources to sue, and what if the offending fracker has $Texas. We have seen many instances of deep pocketed corporations winning cases by attrition. I don't mind the idea of everyone being free until someone sues. But we would have to level the field somehow or the richest would usually win, just like now.

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

no such proof is needed.

our current system is going away.

overlaying the changes that are coming, will be the choice for more centralization, or less centralization.

centralization is showing a hard wall of diminishing returns.

thus it is the current system, and it's push for more centralization, the blend moving decidedly toward less libertarianism, which is embraced by the batshit crazy segments that makeup the majority of both the democratic and republican parties, that is ultimately going to drive the current model into the ground.

self correcting.

i need not sell you any ideas.

i already live mine.

people like me, are not elite, we fly under the radar, we have no debt, modest but real resources, highly adaptable, and mobile.

we'll leave this fucking country in a heartbeat.

and you and the rest of the suckers can stay, a country of middle management, and paper pushers.

leave you to support tens of millions of adults on the government dole.

Re:Frak!

[element-o.p.]

That's a fair question, and a reasonable point -- no, courts in a Libertarian society probably won't any better than the courts we have now. The difference, IMHO, is that while we will still face all of the problems with corruption and the unfair advantage of power that comes with wealth, we will at least not have a government built on the ideal that grown adults are children who need a mommy and daddy to take care of them. And you are totally right that "you have to have a certain degree of flexibility and pragmatism..."

You can look at it this way: suppose FOSS was Libertarianism. There are those in the Libertarian community who are hard-core, all or nothing, like RMS is about FOSS. And there are those who take a more pragmatic, "here's the ideal, but we might have to tweak it a bit to make it really workable" view of Libertarianism, like Linus' view of FOSS. I'm a Linus ;)

Re:Frak!

[roman_mir]

Never mind the story on /., you are arguing that the banking industry was not regulated and that is what caused the recession? (Depression at this point).

And you get +5 something for this nonsense?

Banking is some of the most regulated industry in the world, there are tens of thousands of regulations in banking. Banking hasn't been a 'free market' ever since 1913 and especially since FDIC and then the money was destroyed in 1971 so there was no competition either in money, nor in money prices (interest rates) no in actual banking (thanks FDIC).

The reason why people were able to PREDICT the crisis was because they saw how banking became perverted with government regulations to take more and more risk that banks would not have taken otherwise and market wouldn't have let them.

From Fed and FDIC to default on the money in 1971 and fixing of money prices (interest rates) to all of the "affordable housing" nonsense, F&F and now FHA (Freddie and Fannie are only insuring 5% of mortgages now, it's FHA that will cause the next housing market collapse, they "insure" over 1Trillion USD of mortgages with only 5Billion collateral) have caused the recessions and current depression.

The next big implosion will be the US dollar and bond debt, all of it is pending the wars that USA can still use to delay the inevitable, but with ever new conflict the amount of government intervention that it takes to stave off the final outcome is growing, becoming bigger and amount of 'stimulus' (fake money) that it takes to prevent a total economic collapse of USA is getting bigger, the economy is developing tolerance to this stimulus and bailout money.

Eventually there will be a sharp fall for the dollar denominated papers, the interest rates will hit the ceiling and that will be that.

Re:Frak!

[MightyMartian]

As I pointed out, in the situation where Evil Oil Company fouls up your water supply, you won't have a state that can do anything for you at all. It will be so small, so minimal, so absolutely useless because it is forbidden in any substantative or qualitative way the actions of Evil Oil Company on its own land, and with courts no better than current courts, the screwed citizen has absolutely nowhere to go. He can't go plead to his representatives in his legislature, because, well, even if they were sympathetic, you now have state that is basically forbidden from acting.

Libertarianism would deliver any jurisdiction being run by it into the hands of the uber-wealthy more quickly than probably any other political system ever developed. It's underlying philosophy is state non-interference, so even if you have a legislature that sees Evil Oil Company fouling water, because a court has been convinced that it isn't happening due to the ever-present vulnerabilities of legal systems, their hands are tied.

Keep your Libertarian state. It's as unreasonable, unworkable and would be ultimate as repugnant as a Communist state. There are lesser evils and greater evils, and the current system, while no doubt flawed and at times even outright malicious, is a lesser evil compared to a Libertarian state which would have absolutely no capacity to protect citizens from this sort of abuse of process.

Re:Frak!

[MightyMartian]

Our system is better because at least there is some other safety valve; the legislative branch, which can, even if it is often a broad brush and ends up like a bull in a china shop, impose some sort of legislative solution. A pure Libertarian state would have an impotent legislature, specifically banned from getting involved in such disputes.

It's not that our system is any damned good. It's just that a Libertarian system would be orders of a magnitude worse.

Re:Frak!

[MightyMartian]

No, that's not my argument at all. My argument is that it would likely be the same, but you would no longer have any other branch of government with the power to step in. Once the neighbor had lost his court case against the big evil oil company that was poisoning his well, where exactly does he go? He can't plead with his elected representatives, because even if they wanted to help him, well, it's a private property dispute and the legislature has no business in that.

The problem with Libertarianism isn't the courts, the problem is that every other check and balance against such abuses has been removed.

Re:Frak!

[Attila Dimedici]

Of course, the legislature is, also, a place where the big corporation can buy laws that tell the courts that they should side with the corporation. Or laws that say that no one is to be held accountable if the corporation poisons his well.
In a libertarian system, if the guy loses his court case because of shenanigans, he can turn to the legislature to fix the shenanigans. In our system, if the legislature passes a law saying that the corporation can poison your water, where do you turn?
You seem to be comparing what you expect the "real world" of the libertarian system to the ideal implementation of our system. I do not believe that the libertarian system would be better. However, the U.S. was originally conceived as being a compromise between that and a government that has the power to do whatever it thinks necessary. I think we have moved to far towards the powerful government and would be best served by moving back towards the libertarian model. I would like to see this be a somewhat gradual move, although with very large jumps at the federal level and, perhaps, a slight loosening of what the state governments can legislate (especially in areas where the federal government is pulling back).
One of the original strengths of the U.S. was that the states were able to try varied approaches to most types of government intervention and people could not only vote in the voting booth, but with their feet and their wallets.

Re:Frak!

[s73v3r]

Pure libertarianism: somebody owns that underground water. Somebody else starts fracking and chemicals get into the water. The owner of the water then sues the fracker and 0wns him in court. (Possibly literally; if the damages are high enough, the fracker might wind up indentured to the party he wronged.)

No, I'm sorry, but there's nothing backing this up whatsoever. Odds are those doing the frakking have better lawyers, and it's very, very hard to prove such things in court.

Alternative scenario. The fracker and the water owner are the same person. Now he can eat the cost of the fracking (can't sell the water anymore; it's polluted); or he can keep selling the water to his customers, in which case his customers sue him for selling tainted water, and they 0wn him in court.

Again, you're making assumptions. You're assuming that those being wronged can actually afford decent legal representation; that the frakker doesn't have better representation, and that the harm from the poison can be directly proven.

Or if you are really a believer in big government, you might think that government inspectors prevent accidents. That works until it doesn't; BP leaked a bunch of oil into the gulf, and government inspectors didn't prevent it.

Ahh yes, blame government for something that BP themselves did.

The libertarian alternative is you can do whatever you want, without permission, but as soon as you harm someone you are in big trouble.

Or in no trouble at all. Or the harm you caused is able to get you more profit than the costs of litigation.

The parent poster DEFINITELY meant libertarianism.

Re:Frak!

[s73v3r]

No, he concludes that the current system is better because the current system has better controls to limit the corruption. Libertarian society would have none.

And in any means, you've just said that libertarian society would be no better. So why switch?

Re:Frak!

[s73v3r]

we will at least not have a government built on the ideal that grown adults are children who need a mommy and daddy to take care of them

Oh goodie! Not only will we have nothing better to redress the causing of harm, but we're now going to have even less because "adults aren't children, and therefore don't need to be told how much toxic chemicals need to be spewed in the river!" Next you're gonna tell me, "Adults aren't children, and therefore don't need to be told how much safety they need to exercise when coal mining!"

Re:Frak!

[s73v3r]

The libertarian argument is that there are fewer opportunities for corruption in a libertarian system

Such an argument has never been proven, by the way.

Re:Frak!

[s73v3r]

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about, do you?

Sadly, the bad guys being able to outspend 100:1 means they can hire "experts" to testify on their behalf that the plaintiff is wrong, and therefore muddying the waters enough to where the jury isn't sure, and therefore needs to vote for the defendant.

Re:Frak!

[MightyMartian]

And how is a legislature under a Libertarian system going to be able to fix shenanigans of this kind? Since it would largely be blocked from involving itself in private property disputes, about the only thing it could do is to seek the removal of the judge in question. If a court has decided that Evil Oil Company did not poison groundwater, that's pretty much the end of the show (disregarding an appellate process, of course).

I get the feeling that you're probably a bit of a pragmatist and you don't see a pure Libertarian state at all.

Re:Frak!

[s73v3r]

I do actually believe that a fully libertarian society could sort out the issues of restaurant food safety and elevator safety. And, fracking safety. But many people I talk to have tremendous faith in the power of government, and only government, to keep us safe.

As opposed to your faith that the "free market" will keep us safe. That the private sector will have their own inspectors, and private inspectors will take over the role of government inspectors, and everything will be peachy.

Except it won't. Take the recent case of mortgage backed securities. All of the ratings agencies were giving these pieces of shit obscenely high ratings, up until well after it was discovered they were toxic. And why were they doing that? Because of the free market rating system. If the ratings agencies didn't give them inflated ratings, the bond holders would simply take their business to someone who would. You can see the same thing with Orange County debt and one of the ratings agencies. After Orange County declared bankruptcy, and the bonds (which were rated very high) were discharged, people sued the ratings agency. The ratings agency was found not to be liable simply because they "offer advice".

Are you honestly going to tell me that the exact same fucking thing won't happen when private inspectors take over safety? Or food?

Re:Frak!

[s73v3r]

WRONG. You forget that the banking industry had many of their regulations relaxed, and it was the relaxing of those regulations that caused the crash. Not any of their regulations that were still in force.

Re:Frak!

[MightyMartian]

I think that's the general idea behind getting rid of the EPA, or indeed any kind of publicly funded monitoring and research. That Libertarian ideals of the perfect state always seem to line up so well with the wet dreams of big polluters is sheer coincidence, of course.

Re:Frak!

[s73v3r]

Being "heavily regulated" has absolutely nothing to do with it if the needed regulations aren't in place. There was absolutely no regulations in place that caused the crisis, and those that would have prevented it were relaxed or repealed several years prior.

Re:Frak!

[MightyMartian]

The slaves certainly enjoyed the benefits of states rights.

Re:Frak!

[element-o.p.]

I understand the point you are making, and I'm old enough and cynical enough to suspect that there is more than just a grain of truth in your argument. Like I said above, I tend to be idealistic although I recognize that when actually putting something in place, it is rare indeed when you can actually implement an ideal -- you've got to be pragmatic and realistic enough to allow for how things work in the real world, so I agree that a pure Libertarian state would probably not work out real well. We are going to need some level of government interference to make a workable society.

However, I disagree that a reasonably Libertarian society is unworkable. What we have NOW is unworkable. Those with money and power already trample the rights of everyone else. Regulation isn't a cure-all in our current situation because those with money and power already buy off the regulators (go look up how Merck, IIRC, lobbied the FDA to fast-track the HPV vaccine for a good example of that) and out-spend the little guy in court.

My view of a Libertarian ideal is pretty simple, really. A friend and coworker expressed it best: "Democrats want to be your mommy. Republicans want to be your daddy. I just want them all to treat me like an adult." This same guy forwarded a YouTube video that explains it in a little more detail: The Philosophy of Liberty. In other words, enough government to create a stable society and no more. I'm not arguing for anarchy, and I'm not saying that the government should never interfere, but I am saying that the level of government interference should be orders of magnitude less than what it is now, particularly on social issues like drug usage, same-sex marriage, polygamy, etc. despite the fact that I am strictly monogamous, straight and have never used any recreational drug stronger than alcohol (sparingly) or caffeine (not so sparingly).

Re:Frak!

[element-o.p.]

Overreact much? By reading comments here, you would almost think that /. selects for commenters who fail in critical thinking and analysis or are just incapable of arguing a point without going for other-the-top sensationalism (sigh). </rant>

Okay, here goes...you are confusing Libertarianism with anarchy. They are not the same thing. There may very well be some overlap between people who claim a Libertarian philosophy of government and those who dream about anarchy, but IMHO, those people are idiots ;) My view of how Libertarian government should work is this: enough regulation to provide for the common good, and no more. If you aren't hurting anyone, then government should leave you the **** alone. However, if you are hurting someone, then yes, perhaps there is a need for government to step in.

Re:Frak!

[MightyMartian]

I'm not arguing for lots of state intrusion into our lives. What I'm saying is that a pure Libertarian society would be as horrific as a purely Communistic or Anarchist society. There's this whole notion, put forward by Ron Paul's supporters in particular, that the baby needs to be thrown out with the bathwater. Look at notions like getting rid of NOAA or the USGS. Do you think being an adult means you can predict when the next hurricane is coming, or gives you some ability to monitor fault lines or volcanic activity?

As to the topic at hand, we know that a Libertarian court system is going to be as vulnerable as any other court system (would it in fact be the least bit different than what exists now?) to well-funded legal attacks. Since the average landowner is likely to have resources far far less than a company doing fracking, thinking that the civil courts alone will have the capacity to deliver justice, while cutting the legislative and executive branches off at the knees means you're basically delivering things even moreso into the hands of the wealthier interests.

Regulation isn't all bad, even if it often enters the realm of unintended consequences.

Re:Frak!

[MobyDisk]

Wrong. Regulations exist to try and minimize harm, not indemnify the regulated.
Following regulations is never a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Legal precedent says otherwise. There are many many cases where following the regulations indemnifies you. For example, a pontoon boat overturned in Baltimore harbor a few years ago, while ferrying a few dozen passengers. A nearby coast guard boat responded immediately but several people died. They sued the captain, who sued the taxi company, who sued the coast guard. Final result: since the boat was carrying the proper number of passengers and was current in its coast guard inspection, the coast guard was not liable. And the stack unwinds: the taxi company was this not liable, and the captain was thus not liable, and the defendents were innocent.

This same thing happens to pharma companies all the time. If the drug was unsafe, but it was shown to be safe in the FDA trials, the only way the company will be liable for damages is if you can prove that either the FDA knew it was unsafe, or the phramaceutical company lied or withheld information in their FDA filing.

This also happens with EPA regulations and there was a recent case that was on Slashdot about it. The company did damage the waterway, but it was okay because it was within EPA regs. Oh yeah! And another case like this involving a recycling plant that had some enormously bad outputs - the problem was that the plant was too big. But the ratio of nasty outputs to inputs was within the specs, so the soot-covered town lost their case. I heard this one on NPR but I forget what kind of recycling it was. Not like paper/plastic - something industrial like they produced concrete from other companies waste.

Re:Frak!

[Attila Dimedici]

How is a legislature going to fix it in our system? Unless you are going to allow them to write retroactive laws? In our system what recourse do you have if a court has decided that Evil Oil Company did not poison groundwater? How is that not just as much the end of the show in our current system (disregarding the appellate process)?
The legislative process has no more real ability to change things in our system once the courts have ruled against you than they would in the Libertarian system. I believe there are flaws in the libertarian system, but they are no greater than those that exist in our current system. Now, are the flaws in the libertarian system greater than the system that ours was originally designed to be? I believe the answer to that is yes. However, in order to get back to that system we need to move towards the libertarian system. In particular, we need to tighten the limits on government power.

Re:Frak!

[element-o.p.]

I pretty much agree with everything you say here. I tend towards a Libertarian philosophy -- small government, minimal intrusion, "that government governs best which governs least" and all that -- but that doesn't mean I want NO government and NO regulation. There is the ideal, and there is practical reality. Understanding that the pure ideal probably won't work (for all the reasons that you've pointed out above), the trick is to find a way to balance the ideals with real life so that you have a government that is minimally intrusive, yet still stable and workable.

Re:Frak!

[Attila Dimedici]

That is a specious argument, since when the country was founded slavery was legal in the majority of states. If our current system had been in place then, it would have been legal in every state because the slave states had sufficient power to get such federal laws enacted. It was exactly what I was talking about that led to the eradication of slavery. The fact of the matter is that the slave states seceeded in part because they knew that in order for slavery to continue as a viable economic system it needed to expand into new geographic areas. If the Civil War had not occurred and the abolitionists had continued to be able to severely limit the ability of slave owners to expand the areas that permitted slavery, it is probable that slavery would have died out as an institution by the 1880s anyway. If it was not for Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, slavery would have died out before the Civil War.
Yes, slaves did allow the benefits of states rights because when they fled their "masters" to free states, they were free (until the federal government started interfering to require free states to allow the capture and return of escaped slaves). States rights did not permit the rise of slavery, states rights permitted a movement to arise which led to the abolition of slavery..

Re:Frak!

[steveha]

If you have a society where the restaurant pays a third party, it is still in the third party's interest that the restaurant stay in business.

No.

It is in the third party's interest that the people continue to trust that third party to review restaurants. "Hey let's eat at Acme Restaurant." "No way, their sticker is from XYZ Ratings, and I just read on Huffington Post that XYZ Ratings takes kickbacks from dirty restaurants." If this happened, what restaurants would pay XYZ Ratings for the inspection service? An endorsement by XYZ would be valueless and XYZ would go out of business. Of course, during the time when XYZ starts taking kickbacks and before they get exposed, there is a chance for people to get sick, thus proving that no system is perfect. (Unless you want to claim that nobody ever gets sick eating at a restaurant in the USA today, thanks to the government inspections?)

But why am I confident that this could work?

Did you know that there is no USA federal agency that tests the safety of small electric appliances? It's handled by a third party organization called Underwriters Laboratories. It is a quirk of history that in the USA, the government tests restaurants for food safety but doesn't test electrical appliances. I personally believe that the UL model could work for evaluating food safety in restaurants. And if history had gone differently, maybe we would have "Food Labs" evaluating restaurants and a government agency rating the safety of toasters and such.

Plus, just as in the USA today, if you give food poisoning to customers they are likely to tell people about it.

But if the government gets involved, their livelihood isn't on the line, so they can be expected to expose the poisoning and the patrons seek treatment.

Now here's a question for you. When I was in high school there was a scandal where a fast-food restaurant chain served some hamburgers made with tainted meat. Several customers got really sick and I think about two people actually died. My question: How many government food inspectors were fired for approving that meat? I'm pretty sure the correct answer is: zero. Maybe they had a stern note put in their personnel files or something.

The fact that government is disinterested has negatives as well as positives. I'd rather have two or three independent "Food Labs" sort of places in operation rather than one government inspection infrastructure.

One last question for you: do you think that turning airport safety inspections into a government agency (the TSA) improved our safety in any meaningful way?

steveha

Re:Frak!

[steveha]

Where's the court? Isn't the Government too small to be able to provide it because it's not getting any taxes from those Libertarians?

In the days before the Income Tax was passed into law, I believe that the US government got most of its revenue from import duties from international shipping. They had enough money to hire judges.

Some libertarians claim no government is needed at all. Others want a government, just a smaller one. So take it up with the former group to find out how society will function with no courts at all; I think that's a fantasy, personally.

Consider what removing the authority of government and instead having a nation led purely by the wealthy and their descendants does after a generation or two.

Okay, I considered it. Now you consider that your little scenario has nothing to do with libertarianism, which does not mean "rule by the wealthy". Perhaps it is your opinion that the one will lead to the other, but it is not a self-evident fact you can just assume.

Of course "Libertarian" really is nothing but a meaningless self applied title for those that don't want to be labelled for what they really are, no matter what portion of the political spectrum they sit on.

I don't even see any evidence that you actually know what the word means. Seems like you are painting all libertarians with a pretty broad brush here.

If you would like to know what libertarianism is actually all about, here's a short intro:

Key Concepts of Libertarianism by David Boaz

And if you are willing to read something long and detailed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

That means any criticism hits the "real Scotsman" problem

Tell you what, you read the links I provided, figure out what "libertarian" actually means, and then you can decide for yourself whether someone is really a libertarian or is just a selfish person wrapping himself in some sort of metaphorical flag.

steveha

Re:Frak!

[pnutjam]

Libertarians believe that everything can be worked out with backroom deals and lawsuits. In reality, a system described above would lead to the rich guy poisoning the little guys water, who would be forced to take it. There would be no upward mobility, because the wealthy would have no check on anything they do. Generations of children would live and die in poverty and ignorance.

OR, someone would string the water poisoner up while the community cheered and society would degrade to rule by force (instead of wealth).
Either way, I like regulations that (in theory) treat everyone the same.

Re:Frak!

[roman_mir]

Absolutely true.

Only the statement that you made is absolutely true but not for the reasons that you imply - you imply that government is able and willing and in principle can do this type of regulations, and that is absolutely false.

The only real regulation that is sustainable in the long run is sound money.

There is no risky loans when it's sound money, when it's your money, when it's your savings on the line.

There are risky loans when it's fake money, when it's not your money and when it's nobody's savings, but instead counterfeit currency compounded by the 'do-gooders' that pass sounding good legislation to create risky loans in the first place.

The government didn't "fail" to create regulations that would have prevented the crisis, the government actively caused the crisis by its actions and whether it was intended consequence or unintended one matters little, the only thing that matters is that it is what happened regardless of anybody's "intentions".

The only real regulation is what government was set on destroying all these years - real actual money, real actual savings, real actual interest rates, real actual economy.

Re:Frak!

[cusco]

The conclusion is that if there is a regulatory framework in place that sets allowable levels of specific contaminants there's a lot less wiggle room for the judge and the expensive lawyers to work against the neighbor.

It's bizarre to me that libertarians believe that courtrooms full of dueling lawyers will cure all ills. How is substituting herds of lawyers in place of elected representatives and scientists going to improve the situation? I really don't get it. We'll have to convert every office in the land currently occupied with bureaucrats into courtrooms occupied by judges. In what way is this an improvement?

At least today if Al's Drycleaning dumps waste chemicals out the back door there is a framework in place that says "No one is allowed to contaminate ground water above X-many parts per million." Over the allowable limit? A fine and you pay for cleanup, end of story. Under Libertarianism if Judge Joe grew up sucking down malathion spray on the cherry farm he may well conclude that as long as the water's the right color it's still safe, while Judge Fred's mom died of cancer from BPA exposure and may think that any measurable residue at all should entitle the plaintiff to massive damages. Soon you'd have every polluter trying to steer cases to Judge Joe, and every plaintiff lining up for Judge Fred. This is somehow supposed to be an improvement?

It's not hard to see why people call it "Libertardianism".

Re:Frak!

[Attila Dimedici]

Right, because we've never seen a situation where the regulations are written so that if Al's Dry Cleaning dumps waste chemicals out the back door the allowable limit is X ppm, but if Uncle Bob's* Dry Cleaning does the the allowable limit is 10x ppm (*where that's the regulator's Uncle Bob). Or where it turns out that the inspectors who determine if a corporation is in compliance used to work for that corporation AND it seems that after working as inspectors for 5 years they go back to work for the corporation at a much higher salary. I'm sorry, I don't see how the libertarian system you postulate is any worse than the one we have.
I am not a libertarian, but our current system is broken and the fix is to move in the direction of libertarianism.

Re:Frak!

[s73v3r]

Okay, here goes...you are confusing Libertarianism with anarchy.

No, I'm not. The idea behind libertarianism is that there isn't the needed government oversight.

My view of how Libertarian government should work is this: enough regulation to provide for the common good, and no more. If you aren't hurting anyone, then government should leave you the **** alone. However, if you are hurting someone, then yes, perhaps there is a need for government to step in.

And just about all Libertarians would disagree with you.

Re:Frak!

[s73v3r]

you imply that government is able and willing and in principle can do this type of regulations, and that is absolutely false.

No, it's not. Further, you imply that the private sector is willing to provide these regulations, which is even more false.

The only real regulation is what government was set on destroying all these years - real actual money, real actual savings, real actual interest rates, real actual economy.

Maybe you should loosen your tinfoil hat up a bit. It's cutting off circulation to your brain.

Re:Frak!

[roman_mir]

No, it's not. Further, you imply that the private sector is willing to provide these regulations, which is even more false.

- it doesn't matter what private sector is willing or unwilling to do, it's not something it has a choice over if there is no government force with guns overpowering the market with its own idea on what money is.

Private sector cannot force private individuals to accept valueless money, only government can do it long enough to cause economic disaster.

Maybe you should loosen your tinfoil hat up a bit. It's cutting off circulation to your brain.

- that's the gist of your argument - when presented with a fact, attack the messenger.

If it's your money, your savings and your risk, would you be taking it irresponsibly as if there was government standing behind you with a printing press? If government wasn't giving you the means, the motive and the opportunity to use fake money and give out extremely bad loans as long as you made your bonuses, would you pass on that opportunity?

Well, you could do it without government, but you'd be out of business - that's free market regulation, banks like that would go bankrupt (that's why they weren't doing it before they got gov't to print money and remove risk with gov't "insurance"), something government prevents from happening but by doing so it eventually destroys the entire economy.

I don't have a tin foil hat, but you don't have any blood in your head at all.

Re:Frak!

[cusco]

Actually I think that the reason that it's broken **IS** the move towards libertarianism and decentralization. Uncle Bob's Dry Cleaning is likely to get the advantage in decentralized situations, where manipulation can be personal. It's an order of magnitude cheaper to buy an entire county board of directors than it is to purchase a single senator, this is why the mega-corps LOVE the "state's rights" groups. If they only have to control the local governments where they operate rather than the entire Federal infrastructure they're practically home free. A properly-corrupted county commissioner will agree to the damnedest things, things that would embarrass even a state senator into resignation. Besides, why would a corporation want to have to buy off the congressment from Alaska or Arizona when they only operate on the East Coast?

I agree that we're doing it wrong now, but I don't think that the answer is to do it even more extremely wrong.

Re:Frak!

[Attila Dimedici]

Mega corps much prefer the Federal structure because they only have to buy 100 Senators to cover the entire country. Rather than negotiate terms with members of every one of 50 state legislatures, some of whom may have terms that are harder to figure out. Remember it is not as simple as outright buying a politician in most cases. You have to figure out what they want and how to make giving you what you want at least seem like it satisfies their desire for what they want. It is much easier to only have to deal with one set of rules makers than it is to deal with 50 sets. Remember mega corps do business in most, if not all, of the states.
As the federal government has become more powerful relative to the states, corporations have gotten bigger and small companies have found it more difficult to get started.

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire point of this whole thread is that "libertarian" != "anarchy". But I guess you aren't paying attention or don't care.

The anarchocapitalists would tell you that even in a pure anarchy, all these problems would be solved. You disagree, but I haven't seen even one anarchocaptialist arguing in this thread, so you can give it a rest already.

Other libertarians would say we still need a government. So, if we still need a government, there would still be controls to limit the corruption, in which case your assertion is wasting our time.

And in any means, you've just said that libertarian society would be no better. So why switch?

Disingenuous much?

libertarians can believe that their principles are good and correct without necessarily believing that a libertarian government is better in every single detail. This thread wasn't started on the idea that a libertarian government is better at solving pollution; it was started to refute the idea that a libertarian government has no ability to solve pollution because libertarian == anarchy. But yeah, a libertarian society would be significantly better in numerous ways than our current society. (It wouldn't be perfect. Nothing is perfect. But it would be better.)

"libertarian" basically means "respecting the rights of the individual as much as possible". It is possible to have a representative republic that is libertarian in nature.

And to flog that dead horse one last time, the anarchocapitalists claim that if we abolish government completely that the free market will solve all our problems. Nobody here has spoken up in support of this position. And anyway, while all anarchocapitalists are libertarians, not all libertarians are anarchists so give it a rest.

Re:Frak!

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea behind libertarianism is that there isn't the needed government oversight.

No, see, you are confusing "libertarianism" with "no-government-oversight-ism". It's a common mistake, and lots of idiots can read an entire thread about the idea that "libertarian" != "anarchy" and still be 100% confident that "libertarian" == "anarchy", so you aren't alone.

If anyone reading this is actually interested in what libertarianism actually is or isn't, the Wikipedia page is pretty good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchocapitalism

And just about all Libertarians would disagree with you.

And yet once again, you are pushing this idea that "libertarian" == "anarchist". You aren't paying attention, you're an idiot, or you are dishonest.

See the Wikipedia page to see what "libertarianism" is really all about, and be sure to pay attention to the parts where it discusses how not all libertarians agree on how much government is needed.

Re:Frak!

[anubi]

OK, so that did not go over too well.

I was kicking back up something an old professor told me... about people's primary motivations being fear and greed.

Marketing will either play to your fear ( especially insurance companies, and religions selling "fire insurance" ) or greed ( especially investment advisors and real estate brokers ) .

I indicated it was in me too. Yes, I invested a lot of my resources in oil a couple of years ago, as I was convinced "peak oil" was here, and I thought few other people were aware of it. I felt with my understanding of M. King Hubbert's work with the Logistic equation and the stints I served in the oil patch where I had observed depleting oilfields first hand, I felt I had a better understanding of the gravity of the situation. I am very aware of the Logistic Equation and its implications. The exponential rate of our reproduction... 6.5 billion of us now... and energy demand now exceeding 500 exajoules/year , most coming from ancient sunlight stored in fossil fuels.

I honestly thought there was hell to pay. Soon. and I would be able to profit from it.

That's not what happened. I lost my investments in solar power and alternative energy research. Now the talking heads are saying we have more oil than we know what to do with, we are going to become a net exporter, go buy your big car, and the party is going to go on. While everything inside of me says this is just marketing lies similar to those in the oilpatch by some to sell a well which struck a gas pocket to ignorant investors.

Meanwhile, I have family back in farming areas who tell me their wells no longer give good water. They tell me their water reeks of oil.

Now, in my limited knowledge of subsurface structures, I can just imagine fracturing the barriers that have been in place for eons separating water and oil-bearing strata. I can see some getting rich. Others having their water messed up.

How many drops of oil in the water tank make the whole tank undrinkable?

We studied this phenomena in economics..... its called "Tragedy of the Commons".

I was watching this in action last weekend as the local education board was meeting again trying to get more taxes passed as the ruptured economy caused by Bernake's hiking the federal funds rate after the government had put all sorts of incentives in place for poor people to invest their life savings in debt ( aka "Community Reinvestment Act - which forced banks to make subprime loans - then allowed banks to pawn off these toxic financial instruments onto investors ).

They just haven't got the message yet. A lot of us are losing their homes. A lot of us can no longer afford restaurant meals. A lot of us can no longer afford people in the school system which are not actively teaching a class. We can't solve this with yet more taxes. Yet, I see these people given their government-given power to lay and collect tax insulating them from the burden their wastefulness places on everyone else.

I wish we were all innocent artists - like the children the Bible refers to. But it doesn't quite work that way. Many make a fine living from gaming the system. And others work very hard to survive.

I did not think the Fed would hike rates after "helping" all those low income people get into homes with subprime adjustable rate mortgages, making all those people they had "helped" lose not only their homes, their life savings, and what little credit rating they had. They did.

I am watching the way this whole affair plays out and it makes me sick.

Re:Frak!

[RockDoctor]

To do the process right, you test the cement job when it is done, and if it doesn't pass, you seal the well and start over.

Generally, when a below-requirement cement job is detected (normally by performing "functional" tests such as the Leak-Off Test or Formation Integrity Test between drilling phases), additional cement will be pumped into the sub-standard areas before continuing with the well. Similarly, if I mis-cut some woodwork while decorating my house, I don't burn the building to the ground and start digging new foundations, but I repair the problem until has adequate strength to do the job required of it.

Re:Frak!

[s73v3r]

when presented with a fact

You don't have any facts, period. You have this incredibly religious faith that somehow the private sector will actually make life better for us. It won't. Your rants against "fake money" are not legitimate in the least. And the term "Free market regulation" is an oxymoron: there is no such thing, and therefore absolutely nothing stopping someone from selling you tainted meat, and if you're like most people, you're not going to have the means to do anything about it.

BSG

[kopo]

Study Says Fracking is Safe In Theory But Often Not In Practice

Medical expert Doc. Cottle agrees.

Re:BSG

[msauve]

"Fracking is Safe In Theory But Often Not In Practice"

The solution is obvious. Only do theoretical fracking.

Re:BSG

[c0lo]

Study Says Fracking is Safe In Theory But Often Not In Practice

Medical expert Doc. Cottle agrees.

Hey, communism and "True Scotsmen" are safe too! (and I'm inclined to include the "free market" as well).

Re:BSG

[RockDoctor]

"Fracking is Safe In Theory But Often Not In Practice"

The solution is obvious. Only do theoretical fracking.

Feel free to only do theoretical switching on of the lights and only theoretically stop shivering.

Study in texas....

[santax]

So, who payed for it? Are there any ties with the oil-industry? Via-via-ties do count. I ask this because every other investigation I have seen all have the same thing in common: Putting about 3000 different chemicals (mostly very toxic) into the ground is a mayor threat to drinkingwater and should never ever be repeated again. Except in Texas apparently. Only that is reason enough to just not continue this. The cost don't weight up to the benefits. (Not even on an economical scale)

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

So, who payed for it?

Irrelevant, begone with your ad-hominem attacks.

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

I am on a different side of it.

It *sounds* bad to be putting 3000 different chemicals into the ground until you actually start taking geology into account. Having been on-site and spoken with engineers, I am *EXTREMELY* dubious that when fraccing zones more than 10,000 feet underground that it can affect the water table thousands of feet above it.

Especially Texas where most of the wells I am aware of are deep wells.

Plus, fraccing is required when the permeability of your zone is low. That means, by definition, it would not be a water table or any other kind of zone in which those chemicals could be moving around. If it is that permeable already and connected to a water table you would be tasting the natural hydrocarbons already.

I have always brought this up when these types of articles appear that the very definition of the technology would seem to preclude these types of interactions with water tables.

This study only seems to confirm what I was already saying. Only wells that are improperly fracced have these kinds of results.

Now I can certainly see that horizontal shallow drilling accompanied by fraccing could possibly introduce the natural hydrocarbons (that were trapped in various formations) into water tables along with the fraccing fluid.

The mistake people make is thinking that the ground is the same the whole way down. Far from it. It's more complicated than that. If water tables are being affected it is because the engineers are idiots and not doing it right.

The study is entirely plausible. It says it works in theory (which it most certainly does) but in practice you can fuck up and contaminate the water tables. Doesn't tell me something I did not already know intuitively.

Re:Study in texas....

[santax]

Hmmm, ok, maybe you should download or rent the docu Gasland. Without a lot of words it shows us what all those other studies except this 1 (in texas, done under supervision by a guy who has on his cv: and my experience in private firms......) have to say. Until proven (!) in practice... like it should be... I will stay with my current and correct opinion. This method is not only dangerous, it's a scorched earth tactic. As all the wells that are currently in existence have proven. So now it's up those guys who did this research to provide us with proof they are right.Let us now hope they won't start a 'proof pit' near anyone you or me, loves.

Re:Study in texas....

[phrostie]

+1 for being educated on the subject.

it's rare here on /.

Re:Study in texas....

[PopeRatzo]

It *sounds* bad to be putting 3000 different chemicals into the ground...

Yep, it does.

Having been on-site and spoken with engineers...

Who all owed their livings to the energy industry.

If water tables are being affected it is because the engineers are idiots and not doing it right.

Well, then the solution is simple: keep all the engineers away.

The study is entirely plausible. It says it works in theory (which it most certainly does) but in practice you can fuck up and contaminate the water tables.

So here's my idea: Let's only do fracking in theory. In practice, let's be more serious about looking for alternatives.

Re:Study in texas....

[jmeboi]

If that's the argument then I'm down with suspending this practice until such time as it has been "idiotproofed" and no longer poses serious risks to the environment and water tables.

Re:Study in texas....

[PopeRatzo]

Hmmm, ok, maybe you should download or rent the docu Gasland.

OMG! Gasland was made by a liberal! It's accurate of course, but the fact that it was made by a liberal means it should be ignored completely.

Seriously, Gasland was one of the best documentaries I watched last year. Whenever I hear a politician or a shill on TV talking about how great fracking is, I think about that movie.

It's really funny how the energy industry is spending hundreds of times what Gasland cost to make to try to discredit it. Plus, they just had the director of Gasland arrested for trying to film a public congressional hearing that he had all the proper credentials to be filming. The lobbyists had the Republicans on the committee make up a new rule on the spot about filming public hearings just for him. The entire arrest and the lobbyists telling the GOP congressmen what to do is all on video, by the way. That's how scared they are of this one guy with a camera. He's the first journalist ever to be arrested for openly filming a public congressional hearing. They really don't want you to know about fracking.

Re:Study in texas....

[Mashiki]

Would that be the same docu-drama which conveniently committed the fact that 'burning tap water' had been an on-going issue for nearly a century?

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

Would that be the same docu-drama which conveniently committed the fact that 'burning tap water' had been an on-going issue for nearly a century?

Yes sir, that's the one.

Re:Study in texas....

[Gideon Wells]

I live in PA, but haven't watched it yet. We have local fracking wells up near our reservoir. W've had companies run their wells at high enough pressure to break the containment shells and keep running for three months till busted. Not one of those reservor wells, though. Oh, and truckers busted driving away from the site with the release valve on the tanks "accidentally" leaking.

I don't need to see Gasland. I can read the news. I see how the industry here is in full come in, drill and move on locust mode. The drilling could be safe if done with geology in mind and within standards. I just have no faith this will be done 100% of the time. Not that what I say or believe matters.

I can also look up our history. Pennsylvania was deforested in the lumber booms about a century ago, and only has its current forests thanks to FDR, the New Deal and the Civilian Conservation Corps. A large part of our economy is dependent on forest tourism. A third of all of our water is already contaminated from acid mine drainage from the coal booms.

Even if it were 100% no matter what, I'd still be leery based off of my state's track record.

Re:Study in texas....

[Trax3001BBS]

Study in Texas is the first thing that caught my attention.
It's not fracking's fault they claim, then the disclaimer of them lacking of any baseline information.

My Dad being in the Air Force and liking to travel; I spent a lot of my life overseas.
I'm used to not drinking the local water always having potable water brought home to drink.
But never have I been worried about bursting into flames while showering.

No, something is very wrong. and I imagine if they quit fracking tomorrow the problems
it created will still be around for generations.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

"It *sounds* bad to be putting 3000 different chemicals into the ground until you actually start taking geology into account."

That sound great, until you realise that by frac'ing and drilling into the rock, they've changed the permeability of the rock (ie: the point of frac'ing).

Many of the chemicals are water soluble and/or are lighter than the ground water, why wouldn't the ground water seep down in the now permeable rock and mix with the chemicals?

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

stupid fucks like you won't be happy until we are all living in caves and paying massive taxes for the privilege.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've felt for a long time that the fraccing opponents might be on to something.

First of all, where are the systematic follow-up studies after a fraccing program? One that could prove or disprove a connection between well contamination and fraccing activity in the area? There has been no interest at all from the oil companies on this. Hmm, wonder why that would be?

Second, yeah, fraccing is done on impermeable rock formations. The whole point of fraccing is to make them permeable. And then to move the hydrocarbons to the surface, which incidentally means through any groundwater zones. Is every well perfect, with no cracks in the casing, no leaks in the pipe sections, including at the joints, and there is never any corrosion or any other flaw?

Making the tight gas mobile is the whole point. That's the reason for the pumping, the water, the additives, the sand and all the rest. And once the formation is shattered, there is nothing but "thousands of feet" of overlyning rock to stop it. And we all know rock never breaks, right? Oops, actually that happens all the time, and fraccing is designed to increase the effect by exploiting the tensile weakness of rock.

Re:Study in texas....

[tomhath]

The Energy Institute said its report was conducted using general university funds, rather than specific grants from energy-industry companies or environmental groups. However, the institute said the Environmental Defense Fund assisted in developing the scope of work and the methodology for the study.

Apparently the ties are to an environmental group which wasn't at all happy with the conclusion. This group appears to believe scientists who suggest global warming is man made, but doesn't want to believe scientists who say hydraulic fracturing is safe. Hmm...

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oohhh...come on!

Don't spoil a good environmental wacko wank fest!

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

So.. on-site all of these engineers were engaged in a massive conspiracy to lie to me about how fraccing works?

The solution is to do fraccing only where appropriate. This means proper surveys and considering how it might impact the environment. Which is exactly what the study says. It was improper in the areas that have had water tables affected. In some cases, it should have never been done in the first place, and I am the first to agree with that.

I have no reason to believe they are lying to me, and certainly not years and years before this became a big deal. Most people just have no idea how it actually works. If you did, you would know how absolutely ludicrous it is for a formation 15,000 feet below ground, that is trapping hydrocarbons, in a low permeability strata, to have any affect on a water table 10,000 feet or more above it.

It is not possible for large scale effects in such a situation. At most, if the well casing is damaged near the surface you might have some leakage into the water table. However, that will happen with or without fraccing. You can detect and repair that, which is in the best interests of the operators, regardless of environmental concerns.

There are no alternatives to fraccing whatsoever. The whole idea is to crack the formations apart, pump in proppant (sand like material), and remove the fluids to increase permeability. You cannot increase permeability any other way, which is what allows you to get the hydrocarbons out the ground fast enough to make it economically viable to produce.

You would be better off finding alternatives to fossil fuels. However, the only reasonable alternative at the moment for large scale power production is nuclear, but we can't have that either.

I just find it a little ridiculous to be railing against the technology, when it is impossible for the technology to cause the problems, when properly used.

It's not the technology. It's the people. Fraccing does not damage water tables every single time in every single case, which is what people love to say.

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

How can you be correct when you don't even know how fraccing works? How is the method inherently a scorched earth tactic?

Remember, what I am saying, is that low permeability strata (meaning water does not flow through it) is cracked apart and those chemicals are introduced as a medium to leave proppant behind. The fluids themselves are largely reclaimed. Not left down below.

Most often, especially in Texas, those wells are so deep that it is not possible for the water table to interact with those formations that are being fracced. That's why you are not correct and just have no idea what you are talking about.

Ask a geologist some time if it is possible for a water table to interact with a low permeability formation that is 10,000 feet below it. He will say it is not possible. Guess why? It it was possible, that would mean the water table was that deep to begin with.

The very definitions of the terms being used mean you are incorrect and have no understanding of the process.

None, none, of what I am saying is condoning shallow fraccing in other areas of the country where it could interact with a water table.

It's not the fraccing, it is the people doing it.

Re:Study in texas....

[Sarten-X]

At a recent convention, I attended a presentation by a man involved in fracking regulation (though I now forget his exact role, it was on the government side). He said it wasn't really the big drilling companies that caused the most severe problems with fracking, but rather the small mom-and-pop ones that aren't used to handling environmental concerns. The bigger companies have the benefit of scale, making the cost of compliance lower. They can process their waste water correctly, use higher-quality cement, and hire better nerds to do the job right. Of course that doesn't fit the conspiracy theory, so you won't find such statements in Gasland.

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

It does not have to be suspended completely though. That is an over reaction.

Fraccing does not occur everywhere under the ground. It is in fact a highly targeted and precise operation when done correctly.

As long as all the engineers can show that the water table could not interact with the fracced formation to a very high confidence, it should be allowed to proceed.

I said some of these fracced formations were more than 10,000 feet below the water table. Believe me when I tell you that there are thousands upon thousands of feet of low permeability strata that have prevented anything from mixing with that water table for geological time periods (tens of thousands or millions of years).

The energies required are enormous. Those cracks they create below ground get filled in with proppant (which is a type of sand and chemically inert) and don't travel all the way back up to surface. We are not talking about something that create a visible crack on the surface or cause an earth quake. Fraccing is just not that high energy.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, none of us will be happy until you are living in a cave and paying for the privilege.

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

That sound great, until you realise that by frac'ing and drilling into the rock, they've changed the permeability of the rock (ie: the point of frac'ing).

Drilling does not change the permeability of the surrounding rock. Keep in mind there is something called well casing which essentially protects the hole all the way to the surface.

If you drill a hole in concrete and fill it with water, did it make all of the concrete more permeable? Nope.

Many of the chemicals are water soluble and/or are lighter than the ground water, why wouldn't the ground water seep down in the now permeable rock and mix with the chemicals?

The ground water would not seep down because all of the rock formation did not have a uniform increase in permeability. It was like a bunch of cracks in a concrete wall that was further separated from the water table (we will just say a layer of dirt) by another layer of concrete that was unaffected by the frac.

Imagine this.

You have a mix of concrete in which you suspended bubbles of Coke. It is 100 feet thick. You then have a layer of normal concrete that is 1000 feet thick. On top of that you have a 100 foot layer of dirt that has a bunch of water in it.

The water table is only going to extend to the concrete itself, and not all the way to the bottom. That's the way they work, otherwise water could just fall all the way to the core of the Earth.

You then drill a hole through the whole thing. Before you frac, or do anything else after drilling the hole, you make a nice reinforced straw. That is called casing. All of the dirt does not directly interact with any fluid in the hole. It can't. The casing is there.

The water table is protected by the casing.

Now you perforate the casing all the way at the bottom with shaped explosives. This allows the Coke to flow into the hole under pressure and go to the surface. However, since the permeability is so low... you are not getting a lot. The Coke does not interact with the water table due to the casing.

That's where fraccing comes in. You create thousands of small fractures (hence the name) in the bottom layer with that nasty fluid everyone hates. Pump in proppant (which is like sand) and remove the fluid.

Now what you have is a bunch of fractures that allow the trapped Coke to travel to the hole faster. That's why it is done.

The fractures themselves extend out horizontally some distance, and vertically, but they they simply don't make it all the way through that 1000 foot thick layer of concrete to get to the water table above it.

That is why ground water does not seep into fractured formations thousands of feet below it. A path does not exist.

So now that you understand that, the only way the water table can be affected is with damaged casing (has nothing to do with fraccing) or a fraccing process that put the water table at risk because it was too close.

That's why the technology is perfectly fine in theory. Any dickhead that decides to do something like that too close to water table is the real problem.

Re:Study in texas....

[MightyMartian]

Does it matter at the end of the day if peoples' water supply is poisoned because water several thousand feet below is leaching to the surface, or whether it's screwy concrete closer to the surface, or it's just incompetent assholes spilling the chemicals on the ground. About the only thing that wouldn't be the company's fault would be naturally occurring natural gas in wells and aquifers, and maybe the sensible thing to do before developing a new natural gas field is to take six month's or a year's worth of samples. But other than the latter option, it boils down to fracking causing harm to water, and that being the case if a reasonable level of safety and security of groundwater cannot be guaranteed than they shouldn't be allowed to do it.

Either that, or the CEO, the board of directors and the chief engineers are forced to live with bombs strapped to their heads and as soon as evidence of contamination is seen, the townsfolk get to press the button. Methinks that would probably see an extraordinary decrease in contamination.

Re:Study in texas....

[MightyMartian]

Sociopathic fucks like you won't be happy to every aquifer in North America is poisoned so every last ounce of natural gas is extracted, while you live on some nice South Pacific island counting your ill-gotten gain.

Re:Study in texas....

[rtb61]

Fracking can never be done safe, at least not with today's technology. You are drilling russian roulette mode, sometimes it's safe but mostly it's not.

Companies are simply making guesstimates of what will happen when they pressurise formation and, where the fractures will go and how it will affect ground water at various depths.

Here's how it works for people looking for water. They drill down a bore into likely areas, and when water flows, they test the suitability of water derived from that formation, they keep drilling till they find a suitable formation to draw water from or the reach the depth level of the equipment or they run out of money or they give up and try at another location.

Eventually they mostly find a safe suitable source. Now along comes the fracking company, they purposefully introduce largely random (the lack the ability to 'accurately define where the fractures will occur) stress fractures in the rock, the purpose to specifically allow the mixing of fluid and gas materials to mix at various levels, basically turn rock formations into massive soda fountains. Will it affect nearby wells, they don't know and they don't give a fuck.

The law was written so that they could run off with the profits and tell those whose water they contaminate to piss off and laugh at their misery. The frackers rinse and repeat as long as governments allow them to do so. They know they are playing russian roulette with other peoples lives, seriously actual russian roulette people will get sick and die, there is absolutely no denying it. They paid their lobbyists to influence Darth Cheney to write laws to protect frackers from the frackers murderously greedy activities.

The reality is there is no technology currently available to forecast what will actually happen when you try to turn rock formations into massive soda fountains, none at all, it is a straight up guess. Pretty much a safe bet for the fracker they will likely get a big profit as for everyone else around that location, let's be honest, as far as the frackers are concerned luck of the draw 'Fuck Em'.

Re:Study in texas....

[marnues]

It's not the technology. It's the people. Fraccing does not damage water tables every single time in every single case, which is what people love to say.

You had such a reasonable argument until here. You can ignore the crazy enviro-types. I belong to several organizations filled with them. They have their story and they're sticking to it. Just go ahead and leave them out of the entire equation. Those of us who are skeptical of fracking need to know how it can be done responsibly and why it isn't. Hopefully this can end in oil for everyone AND bad engineers in jail.

Re:Study in texas....

[compro01]

Keep in mind there is something called well casing which essentially protects the hole all the way to the surface.

Which have this annoying habit of failing horribly according to the TFA.

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

Those of us who are skeptical of fracking need to know how it can be done responsibly and why it isn't.

I know the answers to both questions. Being done responsibly is easy. Just involve competent people and have the moral resolve to not frac the formation if there is more than a 1% chance it could affect the water table. The rest is quality control.

Why it isn't is very simple. Greed and quality control.

Hopefully this can end in oil for everyone AND bad engineers in jail.

That will be more effective than anything else by far. Send the fraccing engineers to jail along with the executives of the fraccing company if it is proved that any reasonable study would have shown it was dangerous.

Do that, and you don't need to worry about the executives pushing it. Those engineers will walk away.

Re:Study in texas....

[mug funky]

RTFA. it was funded entirely by the university (this was a deliberate attempt to avoid politics, it seems), however it received some non financial support from an environmental group. they stressed that that group had no editorial control.

the air you breathe has thousands of chemicals in it. the word "chemical" doesn't necessarily mean "bad".

look at the list of compounds in common foods and be horrified.

that said, like nuclear power, i support the concept, but i have little faith that it'll ever be done properly so long as there's money involved.

money, like power, corrupts.

Re:Study in texas....

[eldorel]

If you did, you would know how absolutely ludicrous it is for a formation 15,000 feet below ground, that is trapping hydrocarbons, in a low permeability strata, to have any affect on a water table 10,000 feet or more above it.

I would like to simple add a few thoughts to the discussion.

If the area they are frakking is 10,000 feet "Below" the water table, then they probably have to go through the water table in order to reach it.

So there is at least one path for contamination.

Additionally, frakking is the process of breaking geological formations in order to allow for the collection and extraction of liquid petroleum and gasses, AND a direct correlation has been show between frakking and increased geological activity.

So, they are intentionally breaking the layers of rock separating pockets of gas and oil, and causing small earthquakes.

Meanwhile you are arguing that "it is impossible for the technology to cause the problems", and that there is no way that during all of the intentional layer breaking they might cause something to change in the layers that are sitting on top of the work area

I'm not sure that "impossible" is the right term to use. I'd have chosen "marginally unlikely", but that's just me.

Re:Study in texas....

[eldorel]

Fraccing is just not that high energy

And a single straw doesn't weigh enough to cause any noticeable harm to a camel.

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

That's neat. I see what you did there.

Instead of a witty retort (it was rather witty) why don't you explain to me how I am wrong about the high energy part and that fractures really do reach thousands of feet above of them to the water table? I mean thousands of feet above the ceiling that was calculated?

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

Exactly.

Casing has nothing to do with fraccing. In a well that is never fracced, you still have casing.

The problem is not fraccing. It is quality control and proper engineering.

If you frac to close to the water table and use low quality cement for your casing, don't follow proper procedures, you have a lot of problems. Not just the water table either. You could lose the whole well.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

ad-hominem attacks.

You misspelled cui bono.

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

If the area they are frakking is 10,000 feet "Below" the water table, then they probably have to go through the water table in order to reach it.

So there is at least one path for contamination.

No. There is no path with proper well casing.

Additionally, frakking is the process of breaking geological formations in order to allow for the collection and extraction of liquid petroleum and gasses, AND a direct correlation has been show between frakking and increased geological activity.

So, they are intentionally breaking the layers of rock separating pockets of gas and oil, and causing small earthquakes.

Extremely small earth quakes. It is misleading to give it that term because it implies to most lay people that you could feel it long distances away. You can't. Unlike the vast majority of posters I have been less than 100 feet away from the well bore in a trailer when a large frac was performed. I did not fall down, and other than a light amount of vibration, it was just a big bang. Also keep in mind, that any release of energy that high would require some impressive engineering on the well bore and drilling rig.

I would like to see studies that show a direct correlation between fraccing and increased geological activity. "Correlation does not imply causation". While I don't wish to seem like I am resistant to the truth, the science behind fraccing does not, at a glance, support sustained increases in geological activity.

Citation please.

Meanwhile you are arguing that "it is impossible for the technology to cause the problems", and that there is no way that during all of the intentional layer breaking they might cause something to change in the layers that are sitting on top of the work area

They can't cause any large scale or meaningful changes in layers sitting on top of the work area. I am assuming that you mean that a frac conducted at 15k feet deep can change layers between a thousand feet and the surface. That would not happen.

In order for it to be true, the energies required would be impressive to say the least. The frac would not be limited to the production zone, but would result in fractures at the surface. Such energies would result in an earth quake comparable to a nuclear blast. You would feel that in major cities hundreds of miles away.

You simply cannot affect changes through that many thousands of feet of rock without the requisite increase in energy levels. It's not like they are bringing out portable nuclear power on site. It's diesel man.

Additionally, and so many people here overlook this, for every fracture that is created you need to pump proppant into it. This means you can tell how well your frac performed, in part, by looking at how much proppant was pumped into it. To have large scale effects at the water table, thousands of feet above your target, would require many many times the amount of proppant you estimated was required. You would know.

I'm not sure that "impossible" is the right term to use. I'd have chosen "marginally unlikely", but that's just me.

Impossible might have been over doing it. However "marginal" is over doing it as well. Highly unlikely would be a better way to say it. You have better chances of winning the lottery.

Re:Study in texas....

[eldorel]

I'm glad you liked it.

I think this article probably explains part of my concerns better than I could here.

As a small quick summary, frakking can and has caused increased geological activity.

To directly address your question:
While the actual amount of energy being added to the area during frakking is relatively small, the amount of energy that is released is anything but small.

The amount of energy released is enough to cause vibration that can be felt on the surface in many areas, sometimes even several miles away.

With that much energy being released, it's not very hard to imagine that there has to be at least SOME movement in the layers of earth between the working zone and the surface.
After all, by it's very design, frakking is more effective in areas with more natural pressure built up.

Now, I will acknowledge that there are probably parts of the world where this technique would be perfectly safe.
However, I would also suggest that those "safe" zones aren't going to be very profitable in comparison.

After all, why work an area that you have to frakk for a year before it starts producing when there are areas where a single crack will get the oil flowing?

Or to rephrase:
After all, Why use a whole bushel of hay to kill this camel, when that one over there only needs a single straw?

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Drilling does not change the permeability of the surrounding rock. Keep in mind there is something called well casing which essentially protects the hole all the way to the surface."

I'm sure those well casing are perfectly sealed against all predictable future problems, such as earthquakes, etc.

However even ignoring the drill hole. The point of frac'ing is to fracture the lower rock formation, there is no casing on the fractured rock, and it can fracture upwards to the point where a water path can form. The exact structure of the ground can be very hard to predict, and therefore is generally averaged. But you only need a small fracture to enable the chemicals to escape.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

"The problem is not fraccing. It is quality control and proper engineering."

Do you have any evidence that all well casing failures were caused by these problems? You seem to assume that these well casings were implemented in a sub-standard fashion, rather than there being a more fundamental problem with this solution.

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

I read that article and it does not have anything to do with the type of fraccing I have encountered.

That stuff is crazy. The ones I was witness to were anything but shallow, but at 15k feet instead. There was certainly not millions of gallons of fluid. Everything had to be trucked in.

Initially, all the fluid was reclaimed and trucked off site for disposal. That was not pumped back down into the ground to my knowledge at all. Any fluid remaining was extracted over time to a container on the site. I remember that for a few years a truck had to come by every so often to empty it. What I witnessed had practically no impact on the local environment at all. No ponds, fluids, etc. Just a well bore, casing, and a pipeline to take the natural gas to the refinery. That's it.

That article describes a completely different fraccing process. Not to mention none of these walls were horizontal, but vertical. Straight down to 15-20k feet deep.

I will fully admit that what that article talks about seems completely reckless and irresponsible.

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

I almost fogot...

The amount of energy released is enough to cause vibration that can be felt on the surface in many areas, sometimes even several miles away.

Not true. At least not with the ones I was witness to which were considered quite large. While I did feel vibrations on the surface, you could not feel them miles away. Not really. You had to being paying attention.

From what that article describes it is not the fraccing that is causing the sustained geological activity, but that craziness of pumping and leaving that much fluid in the ground. I can believe that can cause small quakes over time dependent on just how much you are doing.

No different than geothermal. That has been shown to cause increased seismic activity as well. That I would have expected since you are talking about extracting large amounts of energy.

Re:Study in texas....

[eldorel]

Hmm. Perhaps you are right, but there is something going on above and beyond the math.

Allow me to match your anecdote.
I have also been near one of these wells during a frakking operation, I have family members who are close enough to one to watch while they are pumping.

There are cracks in the foundation of the house that only formed after the well went live, and the tremors that i've personally felt were considerably more active than "Just a big bang".

For the record, I live in Southern Louisiana. The entire southern half of the state is on so much mud that most of our population isn't even aware that we had a 5.3 quake last year, or that we have had 74 earthquakes with magnitude greater than 3.0 in the last 10 years and 4 greater than a 4.0 in the last 2 years.

However, everyone in the parish (our version of a county) knows when they start frakking at any of the 4 wells in the area. (to the point of commenting about it to the workers when they go to the grocery store after work).

It's not a nuclear bomb, but there is definitely some noticeable vibration.

Perhaps you are in a less geologically active area, or perhaps the company working your area is more responsible than BP:Amoco, but it doesn't change the fact that thousands of people have stories just like mine

Perhaps someone should start a kickstarter to fund some impartial research into this, starting by correlating recorded activity and epicenter data with known start and stop dates of wells going into and out of production.

All of this data is already available via sites like http://neic.usgs.gov and sonris, we just need someone to sit down and correlate it.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume the chemicals make it safely down below the water table without leaking en route.

Experience clearly demonstrates your assumption fails at a shockingly high rate.

Maybe it's possible to reliably encase short-term fracking wells, but we haven't demonstrated that ability yet. The essentially libertarian approach we're undertaking now in Pennsylvania and other states is clearly faulty.

Re:Study in texas....

[eldorel]

I commented on another post further up, but I would like to clarify in thread.

There are several of these wells near where I live, and you can definitely tell when they are cracking.

I'm not talking about a minor vibration either. First a small quake, followed by aftershocks that can be felt for several miles.

These are the deepest land based wells in the state, and some of the deepest well the bp owns, so they aren't working close to the surface, either.

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

At this point I am convinced we are not talking about the same process. It has the same name, but is otherwise very different.

The article laid out a process that was flat out nuts and irresponsible. None of the wells I was at were anything like what you are describing. I have a feeling those engineers would not be a part of something that reckless either.

I believe what you are saying and it does not have anything to do with my experiences or understanding of the technology. It's amazing that these are deep wells and you can feel something that far away with sustained seismic activity afterwards. It must be continuous over time, which is not my experience at all. Not to mention much more powerful, which is again amazing, because the fracs I was at were considered within the top 5% of "powerful" fracs. You seem to indicate something at least an order higher in intensity.

There is no way I would support the type of processes you are experiencing where you live and whatever I posted does not seem to apply to your situation.

Re:Study in texas....

[EdIII]

The point of frac'ing is to fracture the lower rock formation, there is no casing on the fractured rock, and it can fracture upwards to the point where a water path can form.

Not with the type of fraccing I am talking about and have experienced. There is so much rock above the formation that it is effectively a "casing" and there is no point a water path can form.

Yes, if the casing fails, you can have water table contamination. I am assuming some competency and accountability on the part the operator here.

The exact structure of the ground can be very hard to predict, and therefore is generally averaged.

There is no prediction. This is precisely what 3D seismic is for. It images the ground just like a doctor would image your heart with sound waves. Costs a lot of money but it can tell with you a fair degree of certainty what the structure of the ground is like. That's how you make educated guesses on what formations you want to frac in the first place. You can't do the whole thing, so you need to make educated choices where you want to do it.

However, all that being said, from what other posters are saying and citing in articles, the fraccing I have been exposed to is nothing like the fraccing that is actually going on. Which is partly what I have been saying. That whatever is happening is not so much fraccing related, as it is just reckless engineering and greed.

Re:Study in texas....

[inviolet]

Reminds me of something we say in UI design meetings:

"If 3% of your users screw up, it's a user problem... but if 30% of your users screw up, it's a UI problem."

If the fracking process is not tolerant of hasty, underfunded, undertrained, fly-by-night drilling operations, then the process is not suitable for deployment here in the West.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the research to guide how fracking should be performed in order to be safe... for the next 100K years? If it's already clear the engineers aren't doing it right, then why isn't the industry regulated?

Who cares less for the U.S. of A. than Dick Cheney?

Watch Gasland. No, it isn't a perfect documentary, but it will (hopefully) wake you up to some major holes in how the fracking industry operates and how this mess came to be.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

The fluids themselves are only 50% reclaimed. Even if 99% reclaimed, I can't imagine it would be safe to drink if it contaminated ground water.
You forget/neglect that to reach the "low-permeability strata" something called a "well" is drilled, through the water table, followed by activities that bust up the strata.
Wells leak. Maybe not this year. Maybe not in 10 years. But eventually it may happen. Once it's done, it's DONE. No studies exist to prove otherwise.

We've a similar problem with the thousands of capped wells in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere.

Re:Study in texas....

[haruchai]

And which energy company do you trust to have the "moral resolve" to act like this? Are you aware that tobacco industry shills STILL claim there is no link to lung cancer?

Re:Study in texas....

[Uberbah]

So.. on-site all of these engineers were engaged in a massive conspiracy to lie to me about how fraccing works?

So...you're ignoring the issue of who's signing their paychecks? This is not a trivial distinction here. I'm sure the engineers that built mechanical meat separators told their bosses that they were all perfectly safe too - up until the industry got hit with Mad Cow and lost a couple billion dollars in profits.....

Re:Study in texas....

[Uberbah]

Omitting that that sounds like the sort of work from conservative hacktivists doing the usual feigned nitpicking.

conveniently committed the fact that 'burning tap water' had been an on-going issue for nearly a century?

Which is only a "gotcha" if the same faucet would have had the same flaming water before fracking commenced.

Re:Study in texas....

[khallow]

We've been drilling wells for about a century. If there was a fundamental problem with well casing, it would have shown up long before now.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

He said it wasn't really the big drilling companies that caused the most severe problems with fracking, but rather the small mom-and-pop ones that aren't used to handling environmental concerns.

Oh, just the small ones, that aren't used to handling environmental concerns, the way the big ones like BP handles it.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

[Quote]Ask a geologist some time if it is possible for a water table to interact with a low permeability formation that is 10,000 feet below it. He will say it is not possible. Guess why? It it was possible, that would mean the water table was that deep to begin with.[/Quote]

well then

AFter fracking it, it's not low permeability anymore is it?

Re:Study in texas....

[Mashiki]

Ah good old daily kos. About as reliable as media matters.

Re:Study in texas....

[Compaqt]

If the gas is at 10k ft, and the water is at 10k-X ft, the gas and chemicals have to pass through the water, right?

While the rock may be impermeable, geologists can't know exactly where a crevice might or might not be, can they?

Re:Study in texas....

[Reverse Gear]

> The reality is there is no technology currently available to forecast what will actually happen when you try to turn rock formations into massive soda fountains, none at all, it is a straight up guess.

I am not so sure about that, but it might be very costly to do these studies.
If you do have a big enough tight clay layer between the rock formation you are fracking and the ground water I would feel pretty sure that the two formations won't affect each other.
My job is working with geophysics, mostly for groundwater purposes and I know we are very good at finding those clay layers, there's lots of methods for doing that, but it does take quite a bit of work to gather the data and process them.

I don't know that much about the fracking that has been done around the world, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that there hasn't been done much work done to figure out if the ground water would be safe from the fracked formations in many cases and that the consequences have been really bad.
I'm just saying that I think it can be done safely on some wells and not in others and it is possible to figure out which ones are safe.

Of course there is always the problem of transporting chemicals to the drilling site and getting the chemicals safely down to the formation you want to do the fracking on. The transportation to site will always be a problem, getting the chemicals safely through the borehole should be possible if you do some thorough logging of the borehole to make sure that the casing is tight and intact.

Re:Study in texas....

[Stuarticus]

Amazing, it's gotten 5,000 feet deeper since your last comment! Is it still sinking?

Re:Study in texas....

[darkmeridian]

So in theory, BP should have done a great job with Deepwater Horizon, right? After all, they're huge, hired Halliburton, etc. The problem is that they're a profit-seeking enterprise. That made them rush the job, and to do stupid things in the name of increased profits. Let's not kid ourselves. Anyone will do bad stuff to get more money.

Re:Study in texas....

[Whibla]

Fracking can never be done safe, at least not with today's technology. You are drilling russian roulette mode, sometimes it's safe but mostly it's not.

A case in point. It's nice to know that companies can, literally, sweep the earth from under our feet, and there's nothing we can do about it...

Re:Study in texas....

[Whibla]

How can you be correct when you don't even know how fraccing works? How is the method inherently a scorched earth tactic?

I've linked this article elsewhere, but it does seem to directly answer your second question. Personally I'd call causing earthquakes somewhat of a scorched earth tactic...

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you have something to Occupy...like your mom's ass?

Re:Study in texas....

[bogjobber]

Bullshit! I went to high school near large natural gas deposits, and a certain multinational energy company was successfully sued for poisoning local wells due to lax standards with their waste water containment. Before that I lived in Northern Nevada, where a gold mine leaked a shitload (very technical term) of arsenic into a local creek because their leech pad was leaking, and it was a known problem that they just ignored until they were caught.

It's not exactly a conspiracy theory to say that multinationals play loose and fast with regulations. It's called paying attention. Remember this? How about this? Even it's a fact that mom-and-pop operations are more likely to mess up the multinationals do so constantly as well, and the scale of their mistakes tends to be a lot more dramatic to say the least.

Re:Study in texas....

[denzo]

Fracking can never be done safe, at least not with today's technology. You are drilling russian roulette mode, sometimes it's safe but mostly it's not.

When a company has drilled a few hundred wells in a field, with all the electric log analysis, reservoir simulations, and production decline analysis, I believe that it's safe to say that the oil company has a pretty darn good idea what's happening subsurface.

Companies are simply making guesstimates of what will happen when they pressurise formation and, where the fractures will go and how it will affect ground water at various depths.

Ever heard of microseismic monitoring? Oil companies want to maximize the contact of hydraulic fractures in the pay zone and minimize growth into zones directly above and below the pay zone (because the horsepower, water, and proppants end up getting wasted in non-productive zones). Microseismic monitoring has been performed on literally thousands of shale wells. There are other similar technologies, such as surface and subsurface tilt-meters that measure rock deformation (these tilt-meters are also used on some busy bridges to monitor strain on the steel beams, protecting vehicle traffic in high-population areas). Microseismic data has shown time and time again that shear events from hydraulic fracturing operations may be detected a few layers of rock, around 300-500 ft at most, above the pay zone. So a horizontal section of a well drilled at around 7,000-feet deep will not get nearly close to fracturing into an aquifer. Perhaps in a case where a drilled to 3,000 feet with an acquifer at 2,500 feet would it be possible to propagate a fracture to the aquifer, but that's not where any of the shale zones are at.

Will it affect nearby wells, they don't know and they don't give a fuck.

You don't drill a $7 million well and not care about how one well affects another, or whether your fractures are optimized in your pay zone.

They paid their lobbyists to influence Darth Cheney to write laws to protect frackers from the frackers murderously greedy activities.

The so-called "Halliburton loophole" was done to keep an over-reaching EPA from regulating apples and oranges cases. For decades, the EPA did not regulate hydraulic fracturing operations as "hazardous waste disposal", and rightly so. The purpose of hydraulic fracturing is to create fractures, not dispose of hazardous waste. At some point in the early 2000's, a bureaucratic at the EPA, not understanding the process, decided to treat hydraulic fracturing the same as waste disposal. These are not nearly the same things. But of course, the fact that Cheney helped reverse this error is interpreted by some people to be an act of greed.

The reality is there is no technology currently available to forecast what will actually happen when you try to turn rock formations into massive soda fountains, none at all, it is a straight up guess.

Totally, absolutely false. Sure, there is still some uncertainty to what *exactly* goes on subsurface. But there *is* a lot of technology out there that oil companies and the oil service industry employs to understand hydraulic fracturing. 2D hydraulic fracture equations were developed in the 60's, and 3D computer simulators in the 80's. Reservoir simulation software. Petrophysical analysis (electronic well logs and core sample analysis). Production decline analysis. Hydraulic fracture treatment pressure-matching, mini-frac analysis, etc. There are a *lot* of different techniques being employed to try to understand hydraulic fracture growth in hydrocarbon-bearing formations. There is also millions of research dollars being spent in universities to advance the science. There are a multitude of conferences every year where engineers and scientists in the industry go to peer-review each other's works and advance their understanding of fracture behavior

Re:Study in texas....

[denzo]

In order to get a fault to become active, you must increase the pore pressure within the fault to the point where you overcome the friction pressure within the fault. This requires a vast amount of water to do. Individual hydraulic fracturing operations do not inject enough fluid to a) reach most faults, and b) to pressurize said faults enough to lubricate them. Also, propped fractures add a small amount of stress in the rock due to rock deformation, but this stress drops off drastically the further you are from the fractures, just a few feet. So between fluid volumes and rock deformation, hydraulic fractures are negligible compared to natural tectonics.

Now water disposal wells, that's different thing entirely. When you're disposing millions of barrels of waste water a day (most of which comes from natural connate water production, with a small percentage from hydraulic fracturing "flowback"), it *is* possible to lubricate faults and increase seismicity in the area. This means that disposal wells will need to be regulated more closely, spread out volumes in larger areas, furthest away from known faults, etc.

Re:Study in texas....

[adeft]

I grew up in Lycoming County and read about that truck leaking from the valve. Not sure how true it is, but the number of gallons leaked was reportedly less than 10, but I heard the real number was swept under the rug. :( It's really scary to have friends and family still living in that area. When I go to visit, I don't even recognize it anymore. Where there was once beauty and simplicity, it's now all about industry. I went to breakfast a few weeks ago outside of Muncy, and a restaurant that previously served water in a cup gave me a bottle.

Re:Study in texas....

[Andy Dodd]

I believe that fracking can be done in a responsible and safe manner - AT LEAST from a technical standpoint.

However, from a regulatory, financial, and corporate culture standpoint - NONE of the companies that are using hydrofracturing have any reasonable safety track record. Cost-cutting and accidents run rampant throughout the industry. At this point, there is nothing short of a complete corporate overhaul that will make me trust any drilling company.

I'd rather have a nuclear plant a mile away than any hydrofracturing wells upstream from me along the Susquehanna, because at least the nuclear industry has a proven safety track record (The only civilian nuclear plant to release more than negligible contamination did so after a disaster that independently killed 25,000+ people in a matter of hours), and a track record of constantly improving safety designs.

Re:Study in texas....

[geoskd]

So here's my idea: Let's only do fracking in theory. In practice, let's be more serious about looking for alternatives.

Ok, lets do that, Lets look at the alternatives. (Notice I said look at, not look for. That's because we need a solution today, not some pie in the sky solution tomorrow.)

Option 1:) Oil. Wow, It's been a bad idea since it was conceived, and makes fracking look like the safest thing ever.

Option 2:) Coal. Yeah, that's real safe, and clean too

Option 3:) Nuclear. Probably wouldn't be so bad if someone could come up with a design that didn't require active safety measures. Truth be told, however, putting that much power in one place gets hairy. Mini reactors might be a better bet...

Option 4:) Fracking. Not terribly bad if done right. Pretty clean burning fuel. Needs massive regulatory oversight.

Option 5:) Solar. Short of discovering an unprecedented supply of raw materials for making solar panels and being prepared to cover 200,000 Square miles of land somewhere, this is a pipe dream.

Option 6:) Wind. There just isn't enough of it, except from the environmental lobby.

Option 7:) Breakthrough technology. This is probably what we'll end up with in a millennium or so, but breakthroughs are unpredictable, so don't count on it, or you'll be alone in the dark with your fingers crossed.

Seriously, for the immediate future, Gas Fracking is the least problematic option. Anything else has geopolitical or environmental ramifications that dwarf fracking in scale and nastiness. For the longer term future, some variation on nuclear is the smart pick. 20 years from now, the Germans are gonna regret closing all those nukes when they buy 90% of their power from France, and France decides they don't want to sell... Now all we have to do is keep the damn things from melting.

-=Geoskd

Re:Study in texas....

[Andy Dodd]

Well, they clearly did not tell you the whole truth. I mean, apply some critical thinking skills here - to get these fracturing fluids down to, say, 10k feet, they must somehow PASS THROUGH THE WATER TABLE. Considering that the plumbing required to do this is handling pressures intended to FRACTURE ROCK - If you think there is no chance of this plumbing failing underground and releasing its contents at a depth that wasn't supposed to be affected, you are seriously stupid or deluded. This seems to be the primary contamination mechanism in my opinion - underground blowouts, which the industry seems to be doing a piss-poor job of preventing.

"Fraccing does not damage water tables every single time in every single case, which is what people love to say." - No one has said that. It simply happens WAY TOO OFTEN. Even 1 in 100 wells having a casing rupture is unacceptable, because of the sheer number of wells and the amount of damage a single underground blowout can do.

Even if the technology can be safely applied, the corporate culture of those applying the technology leads to the whole thing being fundamentally unsafe. There is rampant evidence of poor safety practices, frequent accidents with severe environmental effects, and a culture of "nope, didn't happen, nothing went wrong and thus nothing will go wrong" as opposed to "shit, we fucked up, here's the list of things we're going to change so it doesn't happen again".

That is the fundamental problem. We are "here" - accidents are routine and environmental contamination is something to deny and ignore. We need to be "there" - accidents are rare, and when they do, are treated extremely seriously with remedial action taken to prevent it from happening again.

If the industry had a good roadmap for getting from "here" to "there", I'd be OK with fracking. The problem is, the industry is "here", but they insist to the public that they are "there" even though they clearly aren't, and thus have no roadmap.

Re:Study in texas....

[Andy Dodd]

"proper well casing" - Well, this assumes that the well casing job was done properly, instead of by a company that constantly values profit over everything, forget the environmental consequences.

That's the problem - in an ideal world, fracking can be done safely. However, the companies doing it have been showing a clear and ongoing track record of having an "i-don't-give-a-fuck-if-it-breaks-often" attitude, as long as they get their final product.

Re:Study in texas....

[ukemike]

It *sounds* bad to be putting 3000 different chemicals into the ground until you actually start taking geology into account. Having been on-site and spoken with engineers, I am *EXTREMELY* dubious that when fraccing zones more than 10,000 feet underground that it can affect the water table thousands of feet above it.

Remember that the hole they drill starts a ZERO feet underground and goes all the way down to your 10,000 feet. So this is not a process that is completely isolated at extreme depths.

Plus, fraccing is required when the permeability of your zone is low. That means, by definition, it would not be a water table or any other kind of zone in which those chemicals could be moving around. If it is that permeable already and connected to a water table you would be tasting the natural hydrocarbons already.

Once you start hydraulic fracturing the rock, the permeability CHANGES doesn't it. That's the whole point.

If water tables are being affected it is because the engineers are idiots and not doing it right.

If the engineers and idiots get it right 99% of the time, and a few hundred wells go into a new area, then goodby clean water table, hello cancer cluster.

Fracking does get us a cheap hydrocarbon fix just when supplies were getting tight. To me the widespread and completely unregulated adoption of the process proves that we are sick desperate petroleum junkies. We'll do anything to get our fix. We'll even lay waste to our home and ruin our water. It's so very sad to watch a junkie self-destruct. It's the worst tragedy ever when it happens to an entire species.

If all of the pro-fracking arguments are true, and it can be done safely, but there are sometimes mistakes, that is the best argument ever for REALLY STRICT REGULATION. Instead we have the opposite. The industry got an exemption from the clean water act during the Bush administration.

Re:Study in texas....

[geoskd]

The amount of energy released is enough to cause vibration that can be felt on the surface in many areas, sometimes even several miles away.

That doesn't necescarily require as much energy as you think. Those rock formations could easily provide natural waveguides for different frequency wave fronts, channeling the relatively small energy wave in specific directions. It is most likely a simple function of natural harmonics that some random place nearby will happen to shake when the fracking is done, At the higher frequency vibrations, the energy involved can be downright trivial. Remember, a 400 watt sub woofer can vibrate a man out of his skull at 10 Hz from 30 feet away. Imagine what a 2 magawatt diesel motor can do if all the energy happens to be channeled in one direction.

-=Geoskd

Re:Study in texas....

[Andy Dodd]

We've been drilling wells that only had to deal with the reservoir pressure of the gas/oil they were drilling.

Handling pressures required to FRACTURE ROCK is a bit of a different story. The engineering margins are going to be fundamentally narrower. Combine this with the fact that fracking wells tend to be far more numerous than oil wells, and the operations are being done by companies which now have a clear track record of "who cares if a few wells blow out?" and "no that contamination didn't happen", and you have a fundamental problem.

Re:Study in texas....

[Andy Dodd]

"I am assuming some competency and accountability on the part the operator here."

Given the industry's track record in locations like Dimock, PA, this is an utterly stupid assumption.

Re:Study in texas....

[geoskd]

We've been drilling wells for about a century. If there was a fundamental problem with well casing, it would have shown up long before now.

There is, and it has. Its called taking shortcuts to save time and money. It caused the deep water horizon screw up, and it will happen over and over without proper regulation.

-=Geoskd

Re:Study in texas....

[fermion]

There is probably nothing in oil extraction, refining, distribution, and use that cannot be done safely. The question is does the economics allow the process to be done safely. As another example, take coal. One gripe people have about coal is that it is transported in open containers and coal dust gets everywhere. One would think the cars would be covered, but they are not, presumable for economics reasons.

Fracking is similar. It is already a relatively expensive process. It may be safe, but likely cost pressures are going to minimize safety in an effort to provide cheap gas.

Re:Study in texas....

[eldorel]

I would agree with your harmonics theory, except for the local geographic details I outlined here.

To summarize, the area I'm referring to is in southern louisiana. The entire area is basically mud, and is rather geologically active.

We tend to have several Magnitude 3-5 quakes a year, but the mud absorbs so much of the vibration that we usually don't even notice.
If the local wells are somehow hitting the resonant frequency of our mud, it seems that it would be trivial to establish what that frequency is and adjust the procedure to avoid it.
Or am I missing something?

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

They know for a fact that it can effect drinking water because in Texas because it is documented to have done so at least twice. So you can be debuious all you want, but it doesn't change reality, that fracking has potential for very things to happen. We know this because it does and has happened. It would be foolish to assume it won't happen again.

Now then, did these things happen because someone screwed up or because that's just the risk of Fracking in general. Well, studies like this are supposed to point us in the right direction.

Re:Study in texas....

[MightyMartian]

I don't buy into the Occupy Movement either. Disorganized, without any central point, basically a bunch of homeless turds and kids trying to be like their hippy grandparents. That doesn't mean I think oil companies should get a free ride because of some bizarre idea that money is more important than the basic necessities of life. But if you think it is, I'm sure we kid all get together and start pumping crude through your taps instead of H2O.

Re:Study in texas....

[DeadCatX2]

I appreciate your honest approach to the issue. And you're probably right, done with proper regulations and safety precautions fracking can be safe...in theory. You only saw one piece of the puzzle, so here are some more pieces.

In practice, one thing you need to consider is what happens to the chemicals *after* they're pulled out of the ground. Sometimes they just dump it, like the case of Josh Foster.

If it can't possibly affect the water table, why do drilling companies end up shipping water to people such as Mr. Ira Haire, who live near their fracking sites?

Why are the horses and pets in Dimock, PA, losing their hair?

Why is the EPA detecting fracking chemicals in the aquifers Pavillion, Wyoming?

How about this Oklahoma Geological Survey report that suggests the recent uptick in earthquakes were caused by fracking?

What about waste treatment plants that fail to successfully reduce the levels of contaminants before discharging the water into a river?

How about the President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition admitting that fracking has contaminated the drinking water in PA?

Fracking can be done right. But it's expensive and requires the cooperation of many disparate companies and enforcement of regulations (or any regulations at all; I'm looking at you, Halliburton Loophole). And expensive is not profitable.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, you're totally right. For example, under me the Marcellus Shale is over 4000 feet down. My well is only 60 feet. So no problems. Oh wait...

Actually, if you watch Gasland, the issue comes in with the staging and recovery of the chemicals at the surface. For example, organic solvents in open air uncovered tanks in Louisiana, and who could possible have foreseen that a hurricane related flood would wipe our these tanks and wash them all over the landscape...

I work at an industrial facility. I think industrial processes can be done well - but we've got a health and human safety dedicated person. When the wells are all over a rural landscape, you've got to think that the operators are just REALLY GOOD PEOPLE to believe that all of these materials - millions of gallons - are going to be moved with no "spillage" at $4/gal diesel from all of these locations back to where they are supposed to be treated. Sooo... if you live in a world where major industrial actors always do things the way they say they will, I gotta say, I think based on my experience it's you who doesn't know what they're talking about, and I'd like to introduce you to northern New Jersey. Or really, anywhere in Perry's Texas.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/rick-perry-the-best-little-whore-in-texas-20111026?page=3

Ah Texas, making a more perfect desert.

Re:Study in texas....

[PopeRatzo]

So.. on-site all of these engineers were engaged in a massive conspiracy to lie to me about how fraccing works?

No, it doesn't take a "massive conspiracy" to get people who rely on an industry for their jobs to try to paint that industry in the best light

And we've got lots of examples of engineers who are hired to do a thing do that thing without noticing or questioning the hazards. Do you believe the energy companies task their engineers with, "Now if anything looks the least bit dangerous to the long-term viability of the ground water, I want you to shut it down and call the press".

More like, "If anything goes wrong, the company will declare bankruptcy and change their name and go do it somewhere else, and anyway, everybody's protected from any real liability because we've got us a corporation and right at the top of the list of reasons corporations are formed is that they absolve individuals from any real liability if they end up poisoning future generations.

The US has a history of industry passing externalities like pollution cleanups and disasters on to the rest of us. They've raised it to an art form.

Re:Study in texas....

[PopeRatzo]

You left off,

Option 8:) Conservation. Learn to do more with less. Drive smaller cars. Be more efficient. Stop pretending NASCAR is a sport and downplay the cult of the big, powerful car. Auto racing began in an attempt to raise awareness of the new mode of transportation, automobiles. Well, mission accomplished. Now let's raise awareness of the fact that everyone does not need a locomotive to get from here to the grocery store

Gas fracking is only the "least problematic option" if you're willing to ignore all the externalities. And options 1 through 4 that you list only exist because we've been trained to ignore the externalities.

I've never understood how people who are big fans of a space program and aerospace also believe that alternative energy is some pie-in-the-sky thing that must be generations away. That's only the case if we insist on pretending that a reliance on fossil fuels is in any way sustainable.

You know who's taking alternative fuels and green technologies very seriously? NASA and the Military. Something in their long and medium-term planning has told them that they better pick up the pace on this stuff. Yet the same people who are big fans of the space program and military technology are convinced that fossil fuels are the only option for the foreseeable future. Maybe your idea of foreseeable is a little too short-sighted.

And one question: Why is it that whenever someone who doesn't believe that alternative energies can be useful for the next fifty years, they always only evaluate the various alternative technologies independently? It's "Solar isn't good enough because it can't power everything", and "Wind isn't good enough because it can't power everything" and so on for every alternative technologies. Maybe our energy needs don't have to only rely on one technology at the exclusion of the others.

Re:Study in texas....

[Uberbah]

Good old conservative hacktivist....dodge the point while engaging in deflection. Lazy deflection at that, as Media Matters makes it a point to cite everything they post, and Dkos depends on who's writing the diary - and how much attention they pay to the facts. You, know, facts, things you can prove as opposed to pulling random assertions out of your butt....

Was that faucet producing flammable tap water before fracking, as you insinuate, or only after?

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize all those holes you're piping the chemicals down and bringing the gas up with go THROUGH that water table? Isn't it possible that there's leakage, especially if not done right?

Re:Study in texas....

[rtb61]

"When a company has drilled a few hundred wells in a field, with all the electric log analysis, reservoir simulations, and production decline analysis, I believe that it's safe to say that the oil company has a pretty darn good idea what's happening subsurface." Kinda fucken too late then, huh.

Re:Study in texas....

[rtb61]

I worked in construction, when it comes to bore logs, you only really know what will happen after it has happened. Bore logs are a random luck of the mill draw, they never find major layer intrusions, boulders et al the pass through many layers, long buried inactive faults that you miss every time. Everything is just plain luck, you either find those layer defects or your do not. Forget the idea of laid done by GOD perfect layers that go on forever. You wont really know what will happen until your finished it's all an 'educated' guess.

Now what happens when it goes wrong, ohh that's right the drilling company basically tries hold's up the victims case in court till they go bankrupt or die and or the sell of all the companies liabilities to some 2 dollar front so they can disappear with the profits.

That doesn't even touch where they straight up lie about site all together, it has gas and they know it will impact surrounding water sources they just straight lie about the results, knowing full well due to the random nature of testing they can claim pretty much anything.

Then of course it was us, it was that earthquake that did it now prove we caused that earth quake. I've worked with major corporations, lie cheat and steal, that's just how they deal. You have to on your toes and keep a sharp eye upon every contract clause. When your out of the loop not in control watch out.

Re:Study in texas....

[khallow]

Handling pressures required to FRACTURE ROCK is a bit of a different story.

That's been done for decades as well. For example, the Saudis have damaged the Ghawar oil deposit by overpumping water and other fluids through the field, fracturing the rock in the process, meaning that they get a lot more of the fluids they pump in than the oil they want.

Re:Study in texas....

[khallow]

and it will happen over and over without proper regulation.

It can still happen with proper regulation, if that regulation isn't enforced. As I imply, I see current regulation as sufficient, but only if the drillers are following those regulations.

Re:Study in texas....

[Reverse Gear]

I have to disagree that bore logs are random luck ... there exists various methods of logging and yeah if you only use one log, like a gamma log or something and think that your safe then ... sure it's random luck if you gamma log picks up the stuff your looking for.
On the other hand if you do 5 different types of logging (video, gamma, geoeletric, radar, sonic ... just to mention one way of mixing them, there are a lot other logging tools available of which I don't know all) then I would say you get a lot more information.
Sure logging can be done shitty, it often is, but if you do a good job and take your time with the logging and processing and interpretation of the results then I would say you have a very good idea of the state of the borehole. How much of this has been done in bore logs you have encountered I don't know, I just know what has been done in the logging my company (I am not the guy doing the logging, but we work together at times) in very deep wells for oil companies that we have done and I have to say I was very impressed with it. The wells in this option was not to be used for fracking but only investigative purposes, but I don't see why the same thing couldn't be done with a production well that you consider to do fracking on.
I know that often there isn't perfect layers around, but if you have an area over lets say 100 meters that show a resistance in the area of 10 ohmm and other information to tell you that it is a clay layer, then I would feel safe. There are bound to be imperfections inside this layer, but they are not going to be 100 meters deep and 10 meters of clay layer is plenty.
What I am saying is that if you make sure you error enough on the good side then you should be safe not only in theory but also in the practical application (except maybe for the truck transportation issue).
I am sure that things haven't been played safe in many many cases where fracking has happened, as has been documented things have gone horribly wrong in many of these cases and I am also not questioning what you are saying about the not so nice behavior of the oil companies.

Re:Study in texas....

[geoskd]

Option 8:) Conservation. Learn to do more with less. Drive smaller cars. Be more efficient. Stop pretending NASCAR is a sport and downplay the cult of the big, powerful car. Auto racing began in an attempt to raise awareness of the new mode of transportation, automobiles. Well, mission accomplished. Now let's raise awareness of the fact that everyone does not need a locomotive to get from here to the grocery store

Yeah, I didn't list that because conservation is not a source of energy. Realistically speaking, Nuclear is the only option I listed. Its the only one with a fuel source measured in millennium instead of years. Nuclear cant handle the load right now because the infrastructure isnt there yet. The real question is when will we be ready to implement 100% nuclear, and what do we do in the mean time. Everything else is just political window dressing to keep the NIMBYs at bay.

And one question: Why is it that whenever someone who doesn't believe that alternative energies can be useful for the next fifty years, they always only evaluate the various alternative technologies independently? It's "Solar isn't good enough because it can't power everything", and "Wind isn't good enough because it can't power everything" and so on for every alternative technologies. Maybe our energy needs don't have to only rely on one technology at the exclusion of the others.

The issue is that all of the renewable energy sources together aren't good enough and, without a significant (read unpredictable) breakthrough, never will be. Anyone who tells you different probably isn't qualified to have an opinion in the matter.

Odds are that eventually someone will come up with something good enough other than nuclear. The trouble is that it might be tomorrow, or it might be 10,000 years down the road. Only the desperate or the monumentally stupid would gamble our immediate future on something we don't already have in our hands. Renewable energy isn't an incremental improvement on existing technology, its a revolutionary new idea that hasn't happened yet. Good luck with that.

-=Geoskd

Re:Study in texas....

[geoskd]

If the local wells are somehow hitting the resonant frequency of our mud, it seems that it would be trivial to establish what that frequency is and adjust the procedure to avoid it. Or am I missing something?

No, that's about it. More than likely, the issue comes from the foundations of the buildings being close to the right size and shape to resonate. Possibly the flooring, or maybe its a local rock shelf, or a single vein of rock. A good way to test the whole theory is to use a seismometer and check a grid pattern around the well head. If the pattern is uniform, then there is obviously some amplifying effect relating to the local geology. That would be a pretty good argument to stop the fracking. I think you'll find the distribution to be either highly local, or unrelated to the fracking, or both. Also, get the vibration frequency. Frequencies don't just come from nowhere, so it should be pretty easy to correlate the frequency from the seismometer with something from the fracking process that is causing it. If there is no correlation, then it becomes less and less likely that the fracking is the cause.

-=Geoskd

Re:Study in texas....

[geoskd]

regulation that isn't enforced isn't proper...

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing little about geological conditions, and going only by your description: "1000 feet of concrete" will not be affected by vertical and horizontal explosions below -- I can still conclude that 1) ALL rock formations under ground can't be as uniform as concrete, and structural anomalies must exist 2) these anomalies in the 1000 ft area drilled cannot be detected given the methodologies, 3) over X number of drill sites there exists X number of anomalies 4) some of these anomalies MAY contain structural conditions which could lead to unexpected and unknown pathways 5) these unknown and unexpected pathways could have negative consequences.

Re:Study in texas....

[PopeRatzo]

Yeah, I didn't list that because conservation is not a source of energy.

Sure it is, the same way being economical is a source of wealth.

The issue is that all of the renewable energy sources together aren't good enough and, without a significant (read unpredictable) breakthrough

Two things: 1) How do you know that "all of the renewable energy sources together" aren't good enough (and I never said it had to be ONLY renewable energy sources) and 2) all "breakthroughs" are "unpredictable".

Innovation is what humans do. And it's not like we have a choice. The oil fields are not refilling themselves. And future generations, looking back at the short-sighted way we trashed the planet just so we could continue to drive our 3-ton Escalade's to the mall.

I'm sorry, but I don't even want to hear about tar sands and fracking until there is a reasonable effort at conservation and fuel economy. Take a ride down LaSalle Street on a Monday morning and count the number of Escalades and Armadas and Suburbans and Hummers that are carrying one person to work, even though there is a train station 3 blocks from their home and another one 1 block from their office. I'm not prepared to accept fracking just so these people can ride their personal locomotives to work while expecting their gas to cost $2/gal. Screw them. The price of gas doesn't even begin to cover the cost of the externalities that are caused by the use of fossil fuels, and if I'm going to be expected to pick up part of those externalities, I want to see a little skin in the game from the people who are making those demands.

Odds are that eventually someone will come up with something good enough other than nuclear. The trouble is that it might be tomorrow, or it might be 10,000 years down the road.

It's definitely not going to be any time soon unless there is a significant effort and commitment to make it happen, instead of "Drill, baby, Drill".

Re:Study in texas....

[khallow]

regulation that isn't enforced isn't proper...

Whatever. I distinguish between regulation and enforcement. I think you ought to as well. There's a big difference in how to fix problems of regulations that are somewhat broken rather than regulations that aren't being enforced.

Re:Study in texas....

[Anonymous Coward]

Dangers of preaching with little knowledge. Your theory DEPENDS on the well being drilled AND sealed/cemented properly. So did the BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. During the investigations, it turned out that several safety procedures were kinda glossed over or ignored.

The well itself was not cemented properly because someone decided onshore that they only needed less than the recommended centering rings. The proper and recommended testing of the cement casing wasn't done because they were in a hurry because time was money.

These fly-by-night, largely unregulated gypsy drillers are not responsible or accountable for their mistakes. Sure, doing everything right gives good results. Too bad humans are at the beck and call of faceless corporate bureaucrats following corporation soulless rules.

Other than that, you're right. Done perfectly, there's no problem. Done perfectly.

But a bad casing is not that hard to do by laziness, or accident. Then the high pressure fracking fluid can squirt right back up the casing, fouling the water table. That's what happens, not perfection.

And in theory ...

[Anonymous Coward]

nuclear power plants are also safe.

Re:And in theory ...

[reub2000]

And in practice has killed fewer people than have died mining coal. Your point?

Re:And in theory ...

[Surt]

That that's a depressingly low bar? I don't think most anti-nuclear people are pro-coal. How many people have died producing solar?

Re:And in theory ...

[bsane]

How many people have died producing solar?

I don't know, but if/when there is even a single death from a construction accident, its death per megawatt will suddenly be worse than coal...

Re:And in theory ...

[reub2000]

Okay, the use of nuclear power in places like the US and France have proved to be safe. No 3 eye fish yet. It's being compared to coal because coal has proved to be an economical way to create electricity.

Re:And in theory ...

[washort]

Not really. Coal is shockingly bad in terms of deaths per terawatt. Rooftop solar is certainly the worst among "clean energy" sources.

In practice, even factoring in Fukushima, nuclear power plants turn out to be the safest thing. (It helps if you don't build it in a tsunami zone and ignore a safety report for 5+ years, of course.)

New designs being developed now are even safer and more efficient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/

Re:And in theory ...

[gewalker]

According to this, it is 10 times the rate of deaths due to nuclear power.

Re:And in theory ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rooftop solar is certainly the worst among "clean energy" sources."
Do you have actually figures (facts) on rooftop solar death? I seriously doubt that it is anywhere near deaths from nuclear power generation. Chernobyl, Fukushima...Tell us where there have been any comparable incidents in solar power generation.
So why should we believe any thing you say about nuclear power?

Re:And in theory ...

[Uberbah]

Rooftop solar is certainly the worst among "clean energy" sources.

Worst, how - when some guy falls off a roof? That's not a flaw of solar power, that's an industrial accident, same as if a maintenance worker fell off a cooling tower at a nuke plant.

In practice, even factoring in Fukushima, nuclear power plants turn out to be the safest thing. (It helps if you don't build it in a tsunami zone and ignore a safety report for 5+ years, of course.)

Safest when human hubris and greed are no longer a factor. In the U.S., as in Japan, the regulatory bodies in charge of nuclear power are dominated by former executives from the nuclear power industry. Their first concern is profitability, not safety.

New designs being developed now are even safer and more efficient:

Vaporware, as much as is cold fusion and "Clean Coal". At least with cold fusion, it's not being used as a distraction to keep the status quo going (old nuke/coal plants operating).

Re:And in theory ...

[GameboyRMH]

In total figures and deaths per terawatt solar and wind are very low, although rooftop solar is the worst of renewable energy.

The source is in the GP's first link. Nuclear is the safest by a big margin, even if there were some massive coverup and it were 100x worse in reality, that would only bring it on par with natural gas.

Re:And in theory ...

[Andy Dodd]

More than nuclear if you calculate it on a deaths per terawatt-hour basis.

Re:And in theory ...

[Andy Dodd]

Wrong, not vaporware - Plants with vastly improved safety designs compared to Fukushima have already been built, and plants with major improvements over THOSE are in the process of being built. The ABWR is not vaporware. The AP1000 is not vaporware.

As to Chernobyl - plants with safety designs that poor were never built in the United States, at least not for civilian nuclear power. In fact, Fukushima is the first civilian reactor to release anything more than negligible contamination, that's a pretty good track record considering the units in question were originally scheduled for decommissioning that year (some of the oldest reactors on the planet) and the situation was triggered by a natural disaster that killed 25,000+ people in a matter of hours.

Chernobyl may have been a civilian reactor on paper - but in the Soviet Union, the line between civilian and military was always blurred, and Chernobyl was clearly designed to permit operation of the plant as a weapons plutonium supply - that's the only reason someone builds a graphite moderated water cooled power reactor. (Such a design is fundamentally unstable and dangerous)

Re:And in theory ...

[geoskd]

That that's a depressingly low bar? I don't think most anti-nuclear people are pro-coal. How many people have died producing solar?

Solar power has about 0.44 deaths per TWh

Granted thats better than the 4.0 for Natural Gas, but Solar is not viable for other reasons.

-=Geoskd

Blame the Cement

[Anonymous Coward]

I only work as an MWD Engineer in the industry, so take my comment with a grain of salt. As far as I can tell the problem is likely due to improper cementing in 99.99% of cases. They almost always rush it, and drill ASAP afterwards, if not sooner. I wouldn't doubt they are fracking their cement job, leaving a nice path to the surface water table.

Re:Blame the Cement

[Anonymous Coward]

"I only work as an MWD Engineer"

Mega-Watt Dick?

Re:Blame the Cement

[siddesu]

measurement while drilling (on your asshole, asshole)?

it can be safe

[sjames]

There is nothing intrinsically unsafe about it in most cases, but if you frack a stranger without a condom, you can get cooties.

Re:it can be safe

[owenferguson]

This is brilliant. Also: Almost a 3-digit UID. Kudos, sir. Wish I had mod points.

Re:it can be safe

[Tyrannosaur]

You should also make sure the rock is at least 18 years old before shooting liquids in it, or there could be other legal repercussions besides.

Humanity should be ashamed by 'Fracking'

[adosch]

This is going to be a pretty strong opinion without a lot of facts (but a lot of feelings towards humanity, morality and nature) but why, as a nation, are we even letting 'fracking' exist to fatten pockets of Oil companies and politicians to piggy bag loop holes onto ? I don't need to be a 'fracking' expert to know a handful of things:

A) Pumping unknown chemicals into the ground that pollute water sources is a bad idea, B) Causing earthquakes in the mid-west where should not be feel-able earthquakes is not a good thing at all, what-so-ever, C) The uncanny health deterioration and after-effects of water pollution on animals and humans, not to mention 'poisoning the well' with natural gas so you can start potable and stream water on fire is (there's a theme here) not good at all, period. D) Contamination from fracking water just being dumped out on the land and seeps back into our habitats, bad. E) The pollutants from the refining process that has makes places in Wyoming have worse air pollution than L.A., horrible. May the list go on...

Why do we all need a 'study' to come out to tell this is bad? I'm ashamed of the greed that our country has consumed itself in that we'll destroy anything, for what? The Almighty Dollar.

Re:Humanity should be ashamed by 'Fracking'

[Mashiki]

I live in one of the most geologically stable places on the planet. And we still have earthquakes here. It's called the Canadian shield. But hey, you know if you frack properly, you don't get any problems. And I'm sure you're also going on about that BS movie where people were lighting their taps on fire, but guess what, people were doing that before. Hell there's places around me where that's possible from naturally occurring methane in the water. Mostly well water, and you need to back pressure it in your well.

Really though, next I'm sure you'll go on a rant about how the tar sands are evil. But gloss over the fact that oil has been leeching into the rivers in Canada for thousands of years. Hell, there's enough oil leeching naturally that people used to(and still do) patch their boats with it.

Re:Humanity should be ashamed by 'Fracking'

[manaway]

And I'm sure you're also going on about that BS movie where people were lighting their taps on fire, but guess what, people were doing that before. Hell there's places around me where that's possible from naturally occurring methane in the water. Mostly well water, and you need to back pressure it in your well. Really though, next I'm sure you'll go on a rant about how the tar sands are evil. But gloss over the fact that oil has been leeching into the rivers in Canada for thousands of years. Hell, there's enough oil leeching naturally that people used to(and still do) patch their boats with it.

So you're saying that hydraulically fracturing the ground around oil and pumping in proprietary chemical mixtures, in addition to the natural leeching, can't increase the methane and chemical pollutants in your drinking water over time?

Re:Humanity should be ashamed by 'Fracking'

[Mashiki]

So you're saying that hydraulically fracturing the ground around oil and pumping in proprietary chemical mixtures, in addition to the natural leeching, can't increase the methane and chemical pollutants in your drinking water over time?

Properly done. No it won't. Incorrectly done, there's the chance it will. If you think the rock formations are the same all the way down, you're fooling yourself.

Re:Humanity should be ashamed by 'Fracking'

[T.E.D.]

But hey, you know if you frack properly, you don't get any problems.

No. More like "if everyone fracks properly, other innocent people don't get any problems".

Perhaps when phrased properly, you might suddenly see the problem here.

Re:Humanity should be ashamed by 'Fracking'

[DeadCatX2]

I'd like to point you to Dimock, PA.

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/06/fracking-in-pennsylvania-201006

In Dimock, horses and other pets are losing their hair. This only started once the fracking began. Go tell the Sautners that Gasland is BS.

"Drilling operations near their property commenced in August 2008. Trees were cleared and the ground leveled to make room for a four-acre drilling site less than 1,000 feet away from their land. The Sautners could feel the earth beneath their home shake whenever the well was fracked.

Within a month, their water had turned brown. It was so corrosive that it scarred dishes in their dishwasher and stained their laundry. They complained to Cabot, which eventually installed a water-filtration system in the basement of their home. It seemed to solve the problem, but when the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection came to do further tests, it found that the Sautners’ water still contained high levels of methane. More ad hoc pumps and filtration systems were installed. While the Sautners did not drink the water at this point, they continued to use it for other purposes for a full year.

“It was so bad sometimes that my daughter would be in the shower in the morning, and she’d have to get out of the shower and lay on the floor” because of the dizzying effect the chemicals in the water had on her, recalls Craig Sautner, who has worked as a cable splicer for Frontier Communications his whole life. She didn’t speak up about it for a while, because she wondered whether she was imagining the problem. But she wasn’t the only one in the family suffering. “My son had sores up and down his legs from the water,” Craig says. Craig and Julie also experienced frequent headaches and dizziness."

Re:Humanity should be ashamed by 'Fracking'

[manaway]

Properly done. No it won't. Incorrectly done, there's the chance it will. If you think the rock formations are the same all the way down, you're fooling yourself.

You can read the article two ways, one is to accept the author's slant, the other is for facts and make your own assessment. If you read only the first paragraph, then the whole problem is improperly followed procedures. If you read the whole article for facts, you'll find statements like this:

"As has been the case in other inquiries, the University of Texas study did not find any confirmed cases of drinking water contamination due to pathways created by hydraulic fracturing. But this does not mean such contamination is impossible or that hydraulic fracturing chemicals can’t get loose in the environment in other ways (such as through spills of produced water). In fact, the study shines a light on the fact that there are a number of aspects of natural gas development that can pose significant environmental risk. And it highlights the fact that there are a number of ways in which current regulatory oversight is inadequate."

So no confirmed cases, according to this study, but contamination is a significant risk. What requirements are there for "confirmed," and what about the study itself? Read to the bottom of the article and you'll find it was performed by a school that gets some portion of research funds from "three or four large energy companies." With one large energy company, named in a current fracturing-related lawsuit in Texas, partially funding a follow-up study at the same school. Is an energy company going to invest in a friendly, independent, or hostile institute to do its research? You'll perhaps understand a careful reader being sceptical of the conclusions.

Fracturing the earth around gas and water with unknown chemicals is currently and frequently being incorrectly done. You are fooling yourself if you believe otherwise.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

'Gasland' Journalists Arrested At Fracking Hearing

[Anonymous Coward]

Unknown/Unnamed College does Study....
Fuck your rigged study. Oh yeah Fuck MSNBC too.

"Josh Fox, whose HBO documentary "Gasland" raised questions about the safety of the natural gas drilling technique known as horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was handcuffed and led away on Wednesday as he tried to film a House Science Committee hearing on the topic.

(For bonus points: How many cops did it take to arrest one man?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLys0MvDxuo

for even more fracking horrors. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCA1ypq_9mQ&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL951372EA49D09D50

But ya all just keep your fucking bullshit playing like some democrats or motherfucking republicans are gonna fix jack shit.
Ya all can kiss your asses goodbye soon. America is going over the cliff, and it's stupid motherfuckers like all of you who let it happen.

But what about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to know fraking is safe. Any news on frelling?

Fraking great!

[slowLearner]

I had a great time fraking all through 1984! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frak!

Did anyone else

[Anonymous Coward]

think that this article was going to be about sex, from the rss feed title?

Nothing to see...

[iive]

Groat said the report was based on a review of previously published data rather than fresh field observations. "We did not go out and measure things," he acknowledged.

Well, your result are only as good as your sources.

Ob. Einstein.

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not

A Texas University...

[forkfail]

... funded by Big Oil comes out with what is basically pro-fracking study that basically says, "We're doing it in a dangerous manner; it's the process, not what we're doing, even though everyone is doing it wrong."

And peer review? Nope. But it was reviewed by the pro-corporation sham of an environmental watch-group, the Environmental Defense Fund:

In addition to university faculty, the Environmental Defense Fund was actively involved in developing the scope of work and methodology for this study, and reviewed final work products.

(source)

Not buyin' it.

Re:A Texas University...

[poity]

Even the wikipedia page paints a portrait of them that's more or less neutral and less biased than what you seem to want us to believe (i.e. a "sham" group). In any case, unless you can point to specific flaws in their methodology, this appears to be a legitimate contribution to the debate.

Re:A Texas University...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shell Oil is also funding UT Austin's research. I'm sure it's about as objective as the fracking research at PSU.

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2012/02/15/shell-oil-invests-39m-in-ut.html

In theory...

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they are not.

On-Topic

[mosb1000]

For those who my have missed the joke and modded this down for some reason, the quote could be better written:

Study Says Sex is Safe In Theory But Often Not In Practice

Which is not only certainly true (most people will do whatever they can to avoid using a condom), it also seems strangely appropriate and on-topic in this instance. Especially if you've ever known any drillers.

Re:On-Topic

[daktari]

Ah, drillers thinking with their drill bits...

RTFA?

[mosb1000]

I know you can't be bothered to read the article because you've already made up your mind, but it says:

The Energy Institute said its report was conducted using general university funds, rather than specific grants from energy-industry companies or environmental groups. However, the institute said the Environmental Defense Fund assisted in developing the scope of work and the methodology for the study. The EDF said it reviewed drafts of the report during the course of the project but did not contribute to its conclusions.

So, just in case your question was not rhetorical (and I'm pretty sure it was) there's your answer.

Re:RTFA?

[forkfail]

However, the EDF is a known corporate water carrier with an eco-friendly sounding name:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Defense_Fund

And that is NOT peer review, either.

Didn't read summary or TFA, but ...

[fahrbot-bot]

... I can tell you that's spot on. I mean it seems great, everyone feels good - no great - but then there's the heat, moisture (either sticky or slimy) and runoff ... sometimes exhaustion from all the activity and close proximity, but you go on - drill baby drill, right?. Then... oh, wait - "fracking"? Never mind.

in related news

[Anonymous Coward]

"according to the study, released today by the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin."

In related news, Eskimo University says Ice is the new health food!

Can say the same thing about lots of things

[Anonymous Coward]

You can say that about lots of things. Communism is great in theory. Agile is great in theory. Unfortunately those people with contaminated well water don't care that it's say in theory.

in my case

[nimbius]

im a sysadmin with no social life, so i cant remember the last time i fracked.
although i keep condoms just in the event.

Re:in my case

[Anonymous Coward]

I use them (condoms) to fix leaks around my car, since I am to cheap to by latext gloves. All the rest the same tough.

Just plain stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fracking is one of the most idiot, hair brained schemes I have ever come across. When the CSG option was raised I thought it might be a good thing. A means of cheap energy freeing up oil for manufacturing - so long as there is carbon-capture good practice ramping up also - to tide us all over until we get to zero carbon power sources across the board.

Then I read how they were planning to do it. Only a corrupt government could have accepted this scheme, ONLY a corrupt government.

What the frack?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was born because my parents liked to frack and no one wore a condom back then. But, now condoms are popular, so I'd say that fracking is a lot safer than it used to be.

I think that fining waste water when people frack is overkill. Does it hurt our drinking water when we flush a used condom down the toilet? How do regulators prove the improper disposal of fracking waste, anyway?

HA! You have it easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Oregon they want to frack VOLCANOS! http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/01/15/1253233/pouring-water-into-a-volcano-to-generate-power

Energy Industry says "Energy Industry OK"

[Strange Ranger]

I see plenty of the Energy Industry, a drilling company, Big Oil, and even an Investment Professional on the Advisory Board
 
I couldn't quickly find where the bulk of the department's funding comes from. But I bet it's no surprise.
 
They sure seem to be good friends to fracking.

Prima

[Anonymous Coward]

goood goods ilike its My Blog

The Difference Between Theory and Practice.

[scruffy]

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.

- Albert Einstein -

Industry rarely does things right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this any real surprise? Many companies will take shortcuts if it can save them some money. Even fining them will not work if taking shortcuts to save money will save them more money than compliance (or the fines for non-compliance). To make any regulation meaningful, you have to make the penalty severe enough that those companies will do it right. Not enough companies do the right thing just because it is the right thing to do. The good companies should not fear regulation if they are doing things right.

Implementation is a part of the process

[Rix]

If it isn't implemented safely, then it isn't safe.

Communism works great in theory.

Re:Implementation is a part of the process

[kaizokuace]

communism makes some assumptions that don't coincide with how humans work together in reality.

Re:Implementation is a part of the process

[Uberbah]

If only Lenin had the foresight to make a system where it's literally impossible to fail, like capitalism. If a business makes money, it's a sign that capitalism is a success. If a business is a disaster, capitalism is still succeeding as resources are directed elsewhere. Even if you end up crashing the global economy in the process.

Re:Implementation is a part of the process

[dkf]

If only Lenin had the foresight to make a system where it's literally impossible to fail, like capitalism. If a business makes money, it's a sign that capitalism is a success. If a business is a disaster, capitalism is still succeeding as resources are directed elsewhere. Even if you end up crashing the global economy in the process.

Sheesh. Communism has problems because it assumes that people are other than they really are. In particular, it assumes that it is possible to prevent the formation of elites. Capitalism's key problem is not that it makes wrong assumptions about human nature, but rather that it tends to fail to account for externalities (like the environment). It's possible to use regulation to fix the worst problems with capitalism — this is the approach that has been largely followed in the US and Europe for most of the past century, with substantial variation though — but you can't regulate people to be other than people, and you definitely can't regulate to prevent some people from being conniving back-stabbing scum. (Punishing them after the fact is not the same.) Capitalism within a careful regulatory framework is more effective than Communism, direct raw Capitalism without regulation is pretty awful unless you're on top, and there are other possible choices too.

And it wasn't Lenin that invented Communism. He was just the first to get a largely-working implementation going. It's inventor was Karl Marx (who also invented the term "Capitalism", even if only as a description of how 19th Century European society worked).

Re:Implementation is a part of the process

[Anonymous Coward]

Marx didn't invent communism, far from it. The rest of your post is equally unimformed. No society has ever claimed to be communist, led by a so called communist party yes, achieved or even pretended to achieve communism no. They commonly claim to be socialist though.

The rest of your post is based on false assumptions, research does not show what you pretend it does. Your "common sense" is a handdown from the propaganda you've been exposed to.

theory and practice

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fracking is Safe In Theory But Often Not In Practice"

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is much difference between theory and practice.

Two Words: Burning Faucets

[Anonymous Coward]

Nevermind the horrible sludge that has become the water supply for some people. Even if there was a safe method, it seems incredibly easy to mess up, with all the collateral damage that has been inflicted. So, even if they're right, they're wrong.

Oh yeah, funded by big oil.

You must be holding it wrong . . .

[crazybabydoc]

"A university study asserts that the problems caused by the gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking,' arise because drilling operations aren't doing it right. ---- Same is true about abstinence.

Shaved gorillas

[Jimbookis]

Of course not, have you seen the frontline lunkheads who are actually employed in the mining industry?

Re:'Gasland' Journalists Arrested At Fracking Hear

[Anonymous Coward]

Who ever modded me -1 , Rememeber your spitfull moderation when your family at home goes -1 from drinking contaminated water.

You really are on of the top retards.

I'll bet if you had to choose between slavery/police state vs restoring the constitution and arresting these banksters and their enablers, you'd choose to be a fuckin slave in the police state.

In the end you will get what you wish for. Godspeed you fascist piece of shit.

Safe In Theory But Often Not In Practice

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power generation.
Oil drilling.
Protected sex with prostitutes.
Going on a Carnival ship cruise.
Travelling to Mexico.
Eating peanut M&Ms manufactured in China. (thanks a lot Mars... jerks)
Making a minor change to the production config file.
Voting.

FTFY

[Uberbah]

Current system: regulators are supposed to catch violations before they occur, so people don't get poisoned and saving the company from it's own greed.

Current regulatory capture: regulators come from the same industries they are supposed to regulate, so they do industry favors so they'll get cushy jobs when they go back to the private sector. See: Robert Rubin, Clinton's Treasury Secretary that went straight to CitiGroup.

Libertarian system: oligarchs avoid any and all responsibility using middle management and mules. Company policies are such that sacrificial lambs, I mean employees, must cut corners if they want to keep their jobs. When the shit hits the fan, the company points to their other (unenforced) policies to cover their own asses, leaving the mules to take the fall.

Case in point: how Wal-Mart gets sued every few years when one of their stores is caught forcing employees to work off the clock. Wal-Mart promptly points to their written policy that hourly employees must be paid for all hours worked. Nevermind that other policy on how all work must be completed without paying any overtime. So a middle manager decides to cheat on payroll to keep his own job.....

Faith-Based Politics

[Uberbah]

The bad guy can outspend the victims 100:1 in court, but how can he change the facts? If the facts are that he put poison in the water, how does outspending by 100:1 save him?

Here's your sign: the Cigarette Company Defense. For decades, the smoking industry never lost a liability lawsuit. How do you know your Uncle Joe got cancer from smoking two packs a day when it could have been genetics, or asbestos?

So, how do you know that your contaminated ground water came from Shell, and not that Exxon operation in the next county? Or that BP well on the far side of the aquifer?

Just how many communities, much less individuals, could afford years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, paid studies and expert testimony to prove that yes, it was indeed Shell that poisoned your water?

Re:Faith-Based Politics

[thomasw_lrd]

That's why when you win a lawsuit, you get to charge your legal fees to the losers. Lawyers take cases they think they can win. The little guy doesn't lose out. Unless of course he can't find a lawyer to take his case.

Re:Faith-Based Politics

[s73v3r]

Wow, now you've just tilted the playing field even more in the favor of the big company. Tell me, what poor person is going to bother trying to bring such a lawsuit, when they know they could be potentially be liable for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in legal defense fees?

Re:Faith-Based Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not. If the small person loses, they file bankruptcy and owe nothing. If they win, then they win.

Re:Faith-Based Politics

[s73v3r]

That's a pretty terrible situation. And it's not a solution to the problem.

Fraking and earthquakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I will pose this theory just thinking out loud....

If you take a balloon and fill it, then press on it, it will bounce back into shape... Now dip paper in glue and wrap the balloon, this gives it a rigid quality, press onto it again and it does not give much. Pop the balloon and press onto it yet again and the paper will give but not bounce back to it original shape.

Is the ground in and around the gas pockets under pressure, or the trapped gas is acting like air in a balloon keeping the rock around it from buckling?

Anyway you know they use about 3000 different chemicals in which they refuse to disclose, what types, and the mixes of these chemicals, claiming stupid bullshit like "well we want to keep it classified its our----secret---- fracking recipe" The current way of doing it seems to work opening miles of locked up gas pockets. The problems that have continued to arise ---gas leaking from the surrounding ground--- as well as gas and chemicals leaking into the water chain--- not to mention we are unsure the amount of damage the chemicals will cause down to the environment down the road..

Keep in mind the "miles" of locked up gas, that is getting unlocked... With the balloon theory.. Again just thinking out loud, but there has to be something to this.
I also understand scientist are measuring earthquake activity far beyond the stereo type hot spots of old so reports of earthquakes in the idiot media can and have come from all over the US.

Re:'Gasland' Journalists Arrested At Fracking Hear

[Neil Boekend]

Most probably it wasn't the content but the wording of the message. Harsh language is one of the signals for trolling. While you bring up a valid point, the cursing is degenartory to your point.

Profit Strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

1. "Boffins say fracking is safe if done properly. So let's make hard regulations and have gov agencies make sure it's done properly".
2. (After the country is taken by a million fracking wells) "Regulations impair industry! EPA kills jobs! Let's overturn these stupid laws!"
3. Profit!

s/fracking/heroin/g

[Anonymous Coward]

because everyone knows that Heroin(tm) use is a safe and reliable way to treat those nagging back pains.

Undersea drilling

[residieu]

Just like undersea drilling doesn't necessarily lead to massive oil spills in the gulf, but it's still something we should expect to happen and know what to do when it does.

What the fuck are you smoking?

[DeadCatX2]

Point me to regulations for derivatives like Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that existed between 2000 and 2008.

Point me to regulations for Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) that existed between 2000 and 2008.

Hell, point me at any regulation that led to the crash. Any regulation at all. And by the way, I'm going to pre-empt your "Community Reinvestment Act" bullshit because the 30 year old law had nothing to do with the subprime mortgage crisis.

I know I can point at some that were missing which could have reduced the impact of the crash. Glass-Steagall, for instance. Or the SEC decision in 2004 that exempted the banks from regulations regarding reserves so that they could stack up even more debt (without which Bear Stearns wouldn't have been able to implode)

Translation ...

[jc42]

"We're pretty sure that there are some safe ways of doing it, but we haven't bothered to teach our workers to do it that way, because it's too expensive."

We in the computer biz are pretty familiar with this sort of euphemistic safety claim. But if the "users" can't get it right, it mostly says a lot about the UI that you've handed them. If the users can't figure out how to do it right, either it's been made too difficult, or they don't have good training/documentation -- or they're being "encouraged" to do it wrong by their bosses. Usually all of the above.

water water everywhere....

[gordona]

As I understand it, each hydraulic fracturing well requires several million gallons of water. In areas out west at least, water is a scarce commodity.

Title says it all

[Hillgiant]

It rather succinctly summarizes the entire oil industry.

For the record I have worked in industry almost my entire professional career. Everything from exploration to production to refining to distribution.

What the frack!

[Anonymous Coward]

It seemed pretty safe in Battlestar Galatica

Oilfield worker, OPPOSED to fracing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm working at an active frac site right now (well testing), and we're seeing pressure show up at a DIFFERENT well almost 1/2 mile away from the perforation zone after starting to pump a stage. The fluid most certainly does not stay contained 100%, and I don't care what anybody says about water wells being too shallow to be affected. Anything is possible when you pump water down hole at 10,000psi.

My family's water well has mild contamination from drilling mud, and the nearest gas well is almost a mile away. Bromide isn't "deadly," but it wasn't detectable in our water well 3 years ago. Don't even get me started on the VOC (volatile organic compounds) released during flowback and production after the frac-- it's a nasty business.

I'm employed by the frac boom, yet I'm strongly opposed to it.

Did you consider it at all?

[dbIII]

which does not mean "rule by the wealthy"

If you remove the majority of government control what do you think moves in to take that control? You must be very young or not pay much attention to the world if you missed what happened in Eastern Europe not very long ago. While overall it is a far better place than under communism there are a lot of lessons to be learnt there about stopping organised crime and others with a lot of wealth controlling vast portions of society - that's a consequence of a loss of government no matter what sort of government was there before.

Seems like you are painting all libertarians with a pretty broad brush here

My entire point above is that a very wide group of people put themselves under that banner!

Yes, those links provide what you think it the definition is but there's a hell of a lot of loud voices that shout for something completely different, so that's as irrelevant as claiming that "gay" only means being happy. It's at the point where the label is contradictory.
So, that leaves nothing but what you've written above, and the "indentured servitude" bit really shows what sort of person you are. "Liberty" for some and slavery for others? How 17th century aristocratic of you, and I'll bet you have the audacity to claim you are some sort of heir to Washington instead of the sort of person he fought against.
As I wrote above, people wrapped up in a flag to hide what they truly are.

Re:Did you consider it at all?

[steveha]

If you remove the majority of government control what do you think moves in to take that control?

Since I am a "minarchist" and not an anarchist of any stripe, I am not proposing to remove all government control. I actually think control of pollution is one of the legitimate things government can do.

Yes, those links provide what you think it the definition is but there's a hell of a lot of loud voices that shout for something completely different, so that's as irrelevant as claiming that "gay" only means being happy. It's at the point where the label is contradictory.

Hmmm. So what you are saying is I need to pay attention to all the people who claim to be libertarians, and if some threshold is reached, I need to invent a new term for the same thing so that I can distance myself from the crazies?

Suppose a group of crazy people start calling themselves "the Democrats". Then suppose that some actual members of the Democratic Party start saying "not all Democrats are crazy"... is your reply going to be "my whole point is a lot of people call themselves Democrats"?

So it's not enough for you that I post links where you can read about libertarianism and its philosophical underpinnings. I can't call myself a libertarian anymore, because you have decided that "libertarianism" is just some false flag in which bad people wrap themselves.

I disagree.

the "indentured servitude" bit really shows what sort of person you are.

Really? Or maybe you just don't know what I'm talking about.

First, go back to the top of the thread and find exactly where I wrote "and by the way I think the whole indentured servitude thing is a great idea and better than our current situation." Good luck with that because I didn't say that.

Second, since you clearly have no idea what that was about, I'll explain it. Under our current system, if you cause someone harm, you can get put into a prison, potentially for life. Some libertarians oppose the idea of prison; for one thing, they think it is stupid to tax the law-abiding to pay the expenses of looking after the criminals (feeding them, etc.), but more to the point, they think that prison is demeaning to the human spirit. So these libertarians look for economic punishments. The idea is that if Mr. Evil CEO approves of dumping poison into water, he will be liable. Money will be taken from him and given to his victims. If he doesn't have enough money to pay his victims, he will then become an indentured servant, forced to work, and his net income will be sent to his victims. If his crime was small (say, he stole some stuff from an apartment) he might work off his indenture in a couple of months; if his crime was large (say, he poisoned tens of thousands of people) he might wind up indentured for life.

So, is indentured service with wages going to the victims a horrible idea? Is it more horrible than prison? I'm not arguing for it or against it. But I'm not sure that just mentioning it in a parenthetical comment proves that I am a bad person.

steveha

Re:Did you consider it at all?

[dbIII]

Is it more horrible than prison?

Yes.
Because in prison the treatment is to some extent under the control of everyone while the alternative puts them at the mercy of the slavemaster with little oversight, or no oversight at all if government has been trimmed back that much. It should be obvious if you know more than a tiny bit of US history.
The "libertarian dream" can only function IMHO in the presence of either a very strong church balancing it (as in strong enough that if you are excommunicated you flee town) or a small very strong authoritarian government that is willing to execute those that go too far (eg. Kings or Warlords). Such medieval bullshit is required when there is nothing else to prevent evildoers from exploiting those around them. Without such measures it becomes a hellhole for anyone other than the generational rich. Now I know you are saying none of that is going to happen with "libertatrian lite" which you seem the pretend is everything we have now but a magicly smaller government and the few bits you don't like trimmed off. What you do not seem to understand is that it's the functions of a government or lack of them that defines if it's a free state or not (ideology) while the actual size and expense of the machinery of government comes down to implementation and can be big or small with any ideology. A libertarian based government is not going to come from your idea but directly from the libertarians with the money such as the Koch brothers - and it's very clear where they stand on pollution controls.
Anyway, you know by now that I think it's a very naive philosophy and the amount of manipulation by utter bastards like Koch to get people to rally under that banner as useful idiots really pisses me off. I'll stop insulting you as a proxy for them and leave you alone to work it out one way or another.

Re:Did you consider it at all?

[steveha]

in prison the treatment is to some extent under the control of everyone while the alternative puts them at the mercy of the slavemaster with little oversight, or no oversight at all if government has been trimmed back that much.

This thought is not startling and new to me.

On the one hand, I see the appeal of making the bad guy work to benefit his victims. And in theory, maybe as he works he can become a better person (our current prison system is abysmal at actually rehabilitating anyone). But on the other hand, it seems fraught with potential for abuse. If you let companies bid for intentured service involuntary contractors, the high bidders might be the real bastards who will really abuse their indentured servants; it might end up being "cruel and unusual" punishment, to coin a phrase. And what if the companies start cooking the books, shortchanging the indentured servants to extend the amount of time they have to work before they get free again?

And if a libertarian says that prisons are degrading to the human spirit, how about the effects of a sort of slavery?

Anyway, you know by now that I think it's a very naive philosophy

And yet my philosophy is pretty much the one upon which the USA was founded. It worked pretty well for quite a while. It wasn't perfect, of course, but our current system is pretty far from perfect and I think we could improve things if we steer the ship of state more toward the libertarian direction again.

steveha

Take these studies with a grain of salt.

[Benfea]

At least one professor was fired for publishing research that suggested that fracking is unsafe. Given that, I'm going to assume that most of these studies paint fracking in a better light than it deserves to be.

Safe indeed!

[madhi19]

Whatever it safe or not the end result is that we pump more of that black shit out and burn it in the atmosphere. Clean and safe Oil is a lie being propagated by those who would lose the most if we just got off that 20th century addiction. Our modern civilisation is more addicted to Oil than most crack addict. Going cold turkey will be a bitch!

Similar to nuclear energy in that respect

[Paul1969]

The process is *theoretically* safe, but alas, we don't live in a theoretical world.
And studies of a process that don't examine the consequences of a worst-case scenario should *not* be used to justify allowing that process in the real world.

Gold Bug...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually there will be a sharp fall for the dollar denominated papers, the interest rates will hit the ceiling and that will be that.

Wiping with the flag?

[dbIII]

And yet my philosophy is pretty much the one upon which the USA was founded

Fuck no - it is very much the definition of the opposite. Entrenched aristocracy is what Washington was fighting against.
Think back to the example of your post above of things getting sorted out between the owner of the land and the owner of the water - give it a generation or two and that's an argument between aristocrats hopefully considering the welfare of their tenants/serfs/slaves who have zero political power becuase there is no government to consider their interests. It's a horrible system where the middle class vanishes, the upper class contracts until it doesn't even hold all the descendants of the previous generation and the vast lower class are considered worthless. With a gold standard it gets even worse because that concentrates wealth in the hands of those that already have it and makes it very hard for anyone to become wealthy with any sort of new effort. I see this as a widespread failure of education that there can be such a reversal akin to a devout Catholic nation producing large cults of devil worshipers that pretend that Jesus was calling for worship of Satan. This medieval aristocratic bullshit is very much opposed to the idea of democracy (the form of government not the party) and the basis of a republic (once again not the party). For something like this to grow out of the USA and pretend that it in any form relates to what was proposed at independance is mindboggling, and shows ignorance, hypocracy and audacity.

Re:Wiping with the flag?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a complete and total fucking moron, or are you trolling?

You are saying that a return to the values which the USA was founded is what Washington was fighting against and opposed to the basis of a republic?

This guy keeps discussing the differences between anarchocapitalism, pure libertarianism, his own views, and the current state of things. When he says anything you just tell him that words don't mean what he says or you just ignore what he said.

You asked him "Did you even consider" but you damned well didn't even consider anything.

Fuck, I'll bet you are a troll. And you got me to feed you. Fuck that and fuck you.

Re:Wiping with the flag?

[dbIII]

No, this loser I'm arguing with doesn't have the faintest clue what the people who are using him stands for but it's not his fault. He also has very little idea of what a democracy is, what a republic is and what the revolution was about in the first place. It's depressing. People in developing countries are fighting and dying for what Washington fought for and for what he is being tricked into thinking he should throw away.
Don't look at the camoflage but instead at the actions of those bankrolling this movement. Koch et al are aristocrats that want to return to pre-revolutionary America and are wrapping themselves up in the dream of Washington as camoflage while pissing on his grave.

Re:Wiping with the flag?

[dbIII]

I should add that I don't get to define what a libertarian is, neither do you or the guy posting above. The ones that get to do that are the ones that fund and organise the movement. Their actions define it instead of whatever words they use to pretend it's something else, and it's most definitely NOT "the values which the USA was founded" (which then went on to inspire democracies all over the world). Instead it's most definitely anti-democratic and the very reverse of the values of the early USA.

Re:Wiping with the flag?

[Anonymous Coward]

He also has very little idea of what a democracy is, what a republic is and what the revolution was about in the first place.

how you know all this? you know him IRL?

Whatever dude

[steveha]

it is very much the definition of the opposite.

Wow... a desire for individual liberty is the "very definition of the opposite" of the principles upon which the USA was founded. Not only that, you are saying that you know what I believe, and you know with 100% certainty that my beliefs lead to disaster. And it is so obvious that you are right and I am wrong that it is "mindboggling", "hypocracy", etc.

It is clear that attempting to have a conversation with you is just a waste of my time.

Have a nice life.

steveha

Re:Whatever dude

[dbIII]

Look kid, "corporatism" laid a big egg in the "libertarian" nest and kicked out that ideal you are pretending it still stands for. If you haven't noticed yet you are in for a shock in the future.