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Oklahoma's Earthquakes Linked To Fracking
An anonymous reader writes Oklahoma has already experienced about 240 minor earthquakes this year, roughly double the rate at which California has had them. A recent study (abstract) has now tied those earthquakes to fracking. From the article: "Fracking itself doesn't seem to be causing many earthquakes at all. However, after the well is fracked, all that wastewater needs to be pumped back out and disposed of somewhere. Since it's often laced with chemicals and difficult to treat, companies will often pump the wastewater back underground into separate disposal wells. Wastewater injection comes with a catch, however: The process both pushes the crust in the region downward and increases pressure in cracks along the faults. That makes the faults more prone to slippages and earthquakes. ... More specifically, the researchers concluded that 89 wells were likely responsible for most of the seismic activity. And just four wells located southeast of Oklahoma City were likely responsible for about one-fifth of seismic activity in the state between 2008 and 2013."
"The repeated, consistent anecdotal evidence is overwhelming proof enough on its own."
The plural of anecdote is NOT data...
Fracking causes "minor" earthquakes, quarrying produces local ground shaking, and you're getting jobs and economic prosperity back in return. Suck it up, cupcake, or otherwise they'll start putting up a bunch of regulations that will stop the whole thing, and then we can all go to the poor house together 'cuz there won't be ANYTHING in the country that someone can't yowl about and get stopped.
Poverty causes death, plain and simple. Kill another industry, and you're killing people, plain and simple. Right now, 1/6th of the USA struggles with hunger. Some don't survive it, 'cuz if they don't starve to death, then they get sick, can't afford doctors, and die that way. Good grief, this is supposed to be the "Land of Plenty" but we've driven jobs out of the country with income taxes that make industry unprofitable and now we want to regulate the rest of the industry that can't be shipped to China into inactivity as well.
Starve, then. I've got mine - retired with a lifetime $$$ stream, but you're making the USA a worse place to live if you go around making everything more expensive or impossible to do inside our borders.
The politics of jealousy once again, as someone is upset that a CEO somewhere is getting >1M in salary, but fail to realize that the "industry profits" go to making more and more industry, which employs more and more people, sometimes in some fairly good jobs if there's competition locally to make labor scarce. Go to the Bakken and get a job in the oil fields, and make 6 figures while making an oil drilling rig go or driving a truck. "Industry profits', and only industry profits can bring back prosperity to America. The gov't can't do it, other than getting the H out of the way of industry so that THEY can do it. The gov't doesn't create wealth, industry does that. There's only 3 ways of creating wealth - wealth being something tangible that you didn't have before - and they are mining, manufacturing, and agriculture. Drilling is mining. We should be trying to get MORE of these 3 things into the USA, not less. And if there's a price to pay, then get on with it and build your buildings to withstand the "minor" earthquakes that sometimes occur, and buy insurance.