![Gas drilling rig [image credit BBC]](https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/penn_drill.jpg)
US gas drilling rig
[image credit BBC]
How much effort has to be put in by how many ‘authorities’ to determine whether hydraulic fracturing is an acceptable technique for recovering gas?
Surely the wisdom doesn’t vary that much from one region to another. While each federal state or country agonises over its decision, the industry as a whole continues to advance and make a big impact on the energy business worldwide.
Feds: California Fracking is Safe | Washington Free Beacon
It seems California has finally made its choice.
‘A report released by the Bureau of Land Management found “little scientific evidence that fracking and similar extraction techniques are dangerous,” the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday.’
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‘A report released by the Bureau of Land Management found “little scientific evidence that fracking and similar extraction techniques are dangerous,” the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday.’
Phew! What a relief.
But wait……
The actual LATimes report in addition to the above quotation, also states:-
“….. report has found no scientific evidence that fracking is harmful to the environment, but the authors say they had little information on which to base conclusions.”
A different thing entirely.
If there’s ‘little information’, then it’s hardly surprising there was no evidence of harm.
In fact the two quotations are contradictory: the first states theres ‘little’ evidence (i.e. there is some); the second states there is no evidence.
A different thing entirely.
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maybe not. it could be they had little information on which to base a conclusion because there was no evidence of harm. with the thousands of fracking sites in the US it would be preposterous to claim that there is no data. therefore the lack of information means they were only searching for positive examples, while ignoring the very large body of negative examples.
In other words, the authors were engaged in weasel words.
Been recent talk again of renting California, splitting into two States. It’s long been considered too large for democracy.
Hydraulic fracking has been around since 1949, with maybe two million fracking operations (don’t have the exact number to hand) completed since then. It’s a little late to be finding out whether it’s safe or not.
The latest proposal is to split California into six states, incidentally.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbrown/2014/07/17/six-californias-initiative/
Fred Berple above makes a good point: a lack of negative examples can be construed as a lack of data if “data” is not viewed as lacking positive and negative connotations.
When someone looks to the economic damage of blowouts, i.e. uncontrolled releases of oil and gas, he needs to have a bunch of blowouts to analyse. Without them, he can make no assessment of their result. So, if the analysis was based on the damage of fracking, and there was no damage found, then the analysis would be inconclusive. If, however, the analysis was based on the IMPACT of fracking, then there would be enough data for a conclusion.
Just like the IPCC: create a group to study the impact of human-CO2 climate change, and you will only find the aspect that could be applicable to human-CO2. If you set up the group to study climate change generally, and find what portion is attributable to CO2, you will get the changes and the potential attribution in context.
Big difference when it comes to solutions and social engineering.
Another gripe of fracking opponents is water usage in parched California. That should be seen in the context of total industrial water consumption for the whole state – anyone got data? Maybe it’s here:
http://www.water.ca.gov/wateruseefficiency/cii/
One stat – California Population:
1995 – 32.1 million
2020 – 47.5 million (projected)
This analysis of the technical advances of the fracking industry – gas and oil – shows that things are advancing at a much faster pace than most people realise.
http://www.nohotair.co.uk/index.php/shale-gas-2014/215-shale-gas/3191-shale-gas-2014
It’s the policy makers that hold things up, especially in Europe.
California – if you didn’t know in Britain – has it’s own synthetic reality. There are a host of products used in industry which are labeled something like: ‘The “xyz” in this product is known in the State of California to cause cancer…” It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks, it doesn’t matter what the generally accepted scientific opinion is, the courts in California “know” these things. Talk about more “Legal Fictions” – to quote your own Barfield.
W^3
Last time I checked one of the things “known to the State of California to cause cancer” was chemotherapy. I kid you not.
The one thing that would destroy the bad men if ISIS and the back of OPEC is world wide fracking.
Let them eat sand.