Slashdot Mirror
Finding Fault With Anti-Fracking Science Claims
A widely carried Associated Press article (here, as run by the Wall Street Journal) reports that some of the convincingly scientific-sounding claims of opponents of fracking don't seem to hold up to scrutiny. That's not to say that all is peaches: the article notes, for instance, that much of the naturally radioactive deep water called flowback forced up along with fracking-extracted gas "was once being discharged into municipal sewage treatment plants and then rivers in Pennsylvania," leading to concern about pollution of public water supplies. Public scrutiny and regulation mean that's no longer true. But specific claims about cancer rates, and broader ones about air pollution or other ills, are not as objective as they might appear to be, according to Duke professor Avner Vengosh and others. An excerpt: "One expert said there's an actual psychological process at work that sometimes blinds people to science, on the fracking debate and many others. 'You can literally put facts in front of people, and they will just ignore them,' said Mark Lubell, the director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior at the University of California, Davis. Lubell said the situation, which happens on both sides of a debate, is called 'motivated reasoning.' Rational people insist on believing things that aren't true, in part because of feedback from other people who share their views, he said."
I've always just called it "confirmation bias." I see it just as much in the left wing as the right, and nearly every other area of human interaction. Why should sciences be exempt?
Whether fracking is scientifically sound or not, we have just got to stop this desperate scrabbling to dig up any scrap of fossil fuel we can find.
The world is acting like an addict that will do anything to get their next fix, no matter how damaging it could be, or what the consequences could be that we just don't care to think about. I'm no treehugger but even I think this is like raiding grandma's handbag to give to "my man" and it's embarrassing, undignified and immoral.
The first step to recovery is to admit the problem. We're still in denial.
I call bullsh*it. If you really believed that you would boycot the evil energy companies. Which would of course mean you wouldn't be posting on the Internet.
You want energy. I want energy. They want to sell us energy. Where is the evil in any of that?
God Damn, man! They are selling gasoline cheaper than milk right now (US). All you have to do to get milk is feed cows and wait, gas needs a LOT of work to obtain, complex chemistry to refine and a complex worldwide distribution network for both crude and the end products. If you weren't a fool you would give thanks for the hard work being done daily by millions to supply the energy you take for granted. And those 'evil' profits flow into pensions, dividends and lots of other productive uses. And never forget that those evil profits are the thin sliver left over after expenses and a shocking amount of taxes flowing into the welfare state that I'd bet good yellow gold YOU depend on.
Democrat delenda est
When some of us question the shaky science of AGW we are called anti-science, 'deniers' and worse
Then perhaps you'd be well advised to start making formal scientific arguments in the peer-reviewed literature, rather than going through public relations firms hired to appeal directly to the public. If the data is on your side, then work it up to the same standards as everyone else and present it. Unless you do that, it's not science.
Or, like the GOP, you could just claim that more research is needed before actionable conclusions are made, all the while trying to cut funding for the very research you say we have too little of.
Course, I'm waiting for the frakking community to tell us that the flammable tap water is normal:
"What you mean your tap water isn't flammable? You got yourself some defective water. After all, it's made of hydrogen and oxygen: one was responsible for the Hindenberg, and the other is used as rocket fuel."
Well, I guess you just stumbled into the Great Liberal Conspiracy that all scientists are required to join before they are granted their PhDs. Why anybody puts any credence in them when ExxonMobil's PR firms are saying something completely different is beyond me.
Seriously, though... Taking a potshot at this data point or that, or citing professional rivalries between climatologists (re: "climategate") isn't going to be enough. It's like pointing to a "gap" in the fossil record and calling it a flaw in the theory of evolution. If you have the requisite training and can produce a bona fide model that takes the body of existing data and produces a different result, then maybe you have something. A Nobel prize even, if one was awarded in climatology. If you've done this, then I'd like to see the citation. Surely there is at least one reputable peer-reviewed journal that isn't part of the great conspiracy and would publish a solid paper that makes a convincing argument.
I work in the business and all this fracking panic in the US is justified for one simple reason, the US oil companies are not regulated.
So at the same time I say fracking can technically be done in a controlled and responsible way but not with the present US legislation that has grown companies devoid of any moral.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
When grant money is on the line science will reflect whatever is required to ensure continued financial support.
Right. Scientists are just trying to protect their paychecks, but the energy companies and their political shills are in it for the good of mankind.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"I'd love to see the money oil companies spent on defending their dirty businesses go to research and development of cleaner technologies."
I'd love to see their money go to paying my mortgage and buying me a corvette, but it's their money.
You did mention subsidies and I agree with you completely. In the case of subsidies it's not their money. But instead of giving that money to some other business venture I'd rather give it back to the tax payers and let them decide who deserves to get it. Government and business need to be kept separate for the exact same reason that government and church do. When state and church lay in bed they tell us what to do with our minds, when state and business lay in bed they tell us what to do with our bodies. It amazes me that so many who are opposed to religion making its way into politics don't see the problem with government and business mingling; or maybe they do, they just don't see the similarities between regulating thoughts and regulating trade.
I don't really care too much about "viable alternatives." I'm more worried about legal alternatives. As with all scarce resources, prices will rise as supply diminishes. When people are hungry for energy there will be a lot of money to be made in providing it. I'm not so worried about running out of fossil fuel as I am about legal barriers in place preventing new startups with mere millions from competing with the big boys who have the courts and police and politicians in their pockets.
Ummm... You assert that editors of peer-reviewed journals are refusing to publish quality papers, but you support this assertion by referring to "leftist friends" who post on Facebook, ignoring studies claiming that "fracking is not bad". That doesn't even make sense.
Was there ever a time when the mean global temperature was warmer than it is today, and even warmer than most models project it will be by the end of this century? Of course there was, and for millions of years. What's your point?
No study will ever show that "fracking is always bad" or "fracking is always good" because good and bad are not scientifically defined concepts. Fracking may have repercussions (like seismicity or groundwater contamination) in some instances and not others, depending on the specific geological formations and other factors. The research you'll see will mostly be aimed at characterizing those effects and identifying the situations (if any) in which they are likely to occur. I'm not a geologist or hydrologist, so I have no horse in this race intellectually. But if there is real chance of adverse effects, I'd like to see that investigated before they start fracking underneath my town. At the very minimum, the companies involved should be able to secure sufficient insurance to settle any claims if something goes awry, and insurance companies will need to know how to price those risks.
In all fairness to the DOE, they did develop a breeder reactor system that could meet all of our energy needs for hundreds of years to come, and was passively cooled so that it could avoid the fukishima like meltdown problems the current generation of reactors suffer from. It was just politics that stopped it from being built on a larger scale.
Sorry but the fact the gas companies got exemptions from the clean air and clean water acts makes me highly suspicious they knew from day one this was risky and they wanted to limit their exposure to lawsuits and fines. Shattering bedrock releases the gas just like it's supposed to do. The fact it migrates upward isn't shocking. Why exactly would you assume gas would stay put once you shatter what was containing it.
Take, for instance, the recentish revelations that climate models weren't taking clouds into consideration very well, if at all.
Or look at the spread of predictions, with the extreme ones predicting 20-30 foot sea level rise by 2100.
Or the 1970 (?) climate models which predicted global cooling.
It's all just science, nothing remarkable in its variability, but the left wing fanatics take the extreme predictions as gospel and refuse to even admit there's any uncertainty, while the right win uses the uncertainty as excuse to doubt everything.
I figure that all those who take definitive positions are the true fanatics, whether left or right, refusing to recognize the reality that the future is not as predictable as they would wish.
Infuriate left and right
Well, you're just wrong about that. "Science" is not some oracle out of the Wizard of Oz that pronounces on the truth and falsehood of things. I don't know a single scientist who thinks that way, and I've known quite a few.
But you're right about not expecting science - or reason - to be a universal value that dictates (or even informs) policy. Politics is about balancing interests, and the weight of an interest is measured in dollars, not papers. I've heard people say that Republicans are scientifically illiterate, but I don't think that's true at all, at least not at the top. The GOP rejects science and reason not because they're ignorant, but because once you commit to a rational basis for government, your power is immediately diminished. Real power is power you can exercise arbitrarily, according to the side your toast is buttered on at the moment. You don't want a bunch of eggheads with their studies forcing your hand in one direction when the big money wants something else. We've been through this with the tobacco industry, we're going through it now with the fossil energy industry, and we'll go through it again with other moneyed interests.
The petroleum industry can afford to hire all of the scientists they want and more, but they know that won't get them the results they need. So why not just knock science off of its pedestal completely, in the eyes of the public?
Except that right now, the extreme right end is elected to Congress, and the extreme left end (in this country) is mostly in history books. Can you name a single Democratic Congressman who with politics similar to Hugo Chavez? Not "as reported by Fox News" or in the fevered imagination of that pill-popping-sex-tourist-draft-dodger with the radio show, but actually making speeches, or proposing legislation? There's nothing close. "Hard left" in this country is to propose a 70% marginal rate on very high incomes (not unheard of in our history, and not bad for the economy) and single-payer health care (like those radical leftists Canadians). "Close the carried-interest loophole", whoa, strong stuff.
Note that, since high marginal tax rates are part of our own history, and single-payer health care is just across our northern border, that promoting these things is in no way "to the exclusion of reality". They've been tried, and they work fine. Whereas, the right wing in this country proposes things that, if/when they are measured, are demonstrated not to work well (everything from abstinence-only sex education, to charter schools, to cutting government spending to "stimulate the economy"). The two "ends" in this country are in no way equivalent.
You can literally put facts in front of people, and they will just ignore them
Including such facts as "This benzene-toluene mixture we combine with diesel fuel and water, then pump at high pressure into the bedrock where your drinking water comes from is totally harmless. Trust us. No, of course we won't let you test the chemicals we use, that's proprietary."
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
There's no confirmation bias in his comment, it is accurate. Tobacco is in fact an addictive poison that kills almost all its users with no beneficial effects at all, while marijuana is benign if eaten (if smoked can contribute to emphesyma), can be helpful for some medical problems, is not addictive, is not carcinogenic, and in fact has no bad side effects at all (although the main effect is unpleasant for some people).
No, he's accurate. The confirmation bias is your own, not his.
Free Martian Whores!