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Vermont Bans Fracking
eldavojohn writes "Vermont is the first state to ban fracking (hydraulic fracturing), a process that was to revolutionize the United States' position into a major producer of natural gas. New York currently has a moratorium on fracking but it is not yet a statewide ban. Video of the signing indicates the concern over drinking water as the motivation for Vermont's measures (PDF draft of legislation). Slashdot has frequently encountered news debating the safety of such practices."
This isn't science.
This is engineering implemented by human actors who are both Not rational and Not accountable for their actions due to deregulation of fracking and its exemption from the Clean Water Act.
Linking anti-fracking with anti-science is dishonest and manipulative of the discussion.
WE need scientific evidence, and the people flooding the water table with cocktails of industrial grade chemicals don't?
May the Maths Be with you!
I'm not sure, but I don't think Vermont even has the right kind of geology for gas or oil. The Green Mountains are very old, I believe metamorphic rock, and I thought natural gas and oil are generally in sedimentary deposits - sandstone with a limestone cap, or some such.
I suspect the ban is a symbolic gesture, already knowing that nothing is really at risk.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Clearly you haven't studied the effects of lubricating geological strata. Their having the same problem up around Calistoga, CA where they've been enhancing geothermal systems by injecting water to increase the steam but also as a side effect lubricating strata, and causing earthquakes from sub 1.0 to nearly 5.0 on the Richter Scale. In the case of Fracking, these are places where there was little or no movement in the ground and you created movement first by creating an artificial fault network (the Fracking itself) and then by applying a lubricant to help the gas migrate to the surface. All of that said, there are a host of ways to manage and mitigate these problems, and we need to be looking at how we can best balance the interest of the many with the well being of those impacted.
However, the real problem surrounding fracking is that ex-VP Cheney ramrodded legislation through for his good friends at Halliburton and its subsidiaries allowing them to claim the contents of their fracking fluid as a "Trade Secret", and virtually excusing them from all clean water law. The result is that a few greedy, nasty, bad men, did really sorry things to a few people's drinking water and used a number of small rural communities as their toilets. There is worrisome evidence that a few people have died. There is significant evidence that a number of people have been exposed to toxic levels of benzene, heavy metals, and a whole raft of other known carcinogens and neurotoxins. The culprits are folks who are well connected, have friends all the way to the Supreme Court and the chance they'll even receive even a wrist slap is vanishingly small. At best, those who have been assaulted and abused (or their grandchildren... if any survive) may in distant decades collect some small monetary recompense for their suffering and almost certainly shortened life spans. This is not an indictment on the industry. I believe its possible to "Frack" safely and with clear consideration for the environment and the people that live in said environment. It is, as with so many other things, a situation where a few really disgusting self serving two legged vermin, have paved the entire scenery with their personal manifest destinies and left all including responsible business men and women holding a bag full of their rancid social excrement.
A just system would punish the guilty and reward the innocent. We are sadly in a longing search for a just system. We need to come up with a better game than simple "Monetary Profit", because this game is killing us all.
When the result of fracking in your backyard is making your drinking water flammable, they're damn right to not want it there.
Well, since the only instance of this "flammable drinking water" that I know of existed *before* any fracking took place, you don't have much of a factual/logical leg to stand on here.
Another NIMBY/Luddite fairy tale, spread to frighten the uninformed masses into knee-jerk reactions.
Like yours.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.