Fracking — not just for Battlestar Galactica nerds any longer.
Colloquial for “hydraulic fracturing,” fracking is a process of forcing water deep into oil shale to bring up natural gas. Combined with horizontal drilling (that is, and I’m not making any of this up, drilling somewhat sideways to avoid topside damage), fracking promises to be the next big breakthrough in energy development.
Just so long as government doesn’t mess it up.
Well, there’s debate about this. Gasland, a recent documentary, cited numerous examples of contaminated well water. And yet, last week Judge Nancy Freudenthal reversed federal government regulations against fracking, dismissing Gasland-promoted harms as “speculative.”
Anti-factual? Anti-science?
Not according to science writer Ronald Bailey, who has argued that fracking itself is harmless. Things can go wrong in any industrial process, and in cases where substantial damage has occurred because of negligence or incompetence, major judgments against energy companies have been awarded to their victims.
Just as things are supposed to go, in a free society.
But folks leaning to the left prefer the “precautionary principle,” at least when it comes to business. “[T]he new reality,” according to a Washington Examiner editorial, is that “those who are now seeking to stop history — or at least the development of new energy technologies — are liberals, led by President Obama.”
Had the Examiner used “progressive” instead of “liberals,” the irony of today’s Progressives being against progress might have unearthed one of this age’s sadder political truths.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “Liberals Against Fracking”
We are the Saudi ARabia of natural gas. Actually Saudi Arabia’s oil is dwarfed by our natural gas. Enough for us to be energy independent for a couple of hundred years, even at our current rate of growth before the recession.
Coincidentally, if energy is cheap, then there will be no recovery that requires government intervention and green jobs underwiriting. And no need for a president’s plan where “energy prices necessarily skyrocket”. And if energy is cheap,then this would put the private sector even more at odds with a government idea that it has to regulate and control everything. And a regulated, controlled economy, with a low energy cost and a low cost of living, with no need for bird blender whindmills, no need for suici-brid high-priced cars, may be a country that will have no recovery unless the government gets out of the way.
So the mother-fracking problem would be that the choice is the lib-prog government nany-state OR a recovery.
And that is a choice that is too important to be left to the American people.
As Slick Willie said “if we let you keep your money, you might not spend it the right way.”
Despite the hysterical rants from eco-moonbats, the “dangers” of hydrocarbon-well “fracking” are virtually nonexistent.
Fracking is performed in hydrocarbon zones; I know for certain that in West Texas, these zones are usually about 2 miles deep. Anyone who is using a water well more than a few hundred feet deep will have only salt water.
The major fracking components are water and sand; only a small amount of proprietary chemicals are part of the process. After completing the well, the wellbore is cased to prevent contamination of water-bearing zones by oil — or anything else in the well, such as salt water under HUGE pressure.
The upshot is that this is nothing more than Yet Another In A Long Series Of Moon-bat Hysterical Shucks.
Ever notice how many of the Holy Causes of the libtard-left are designed to throttle the American economy? Can’t grow crops in that area — might kill a bug or fish. Can’t extract your own energy — might kill fish (Gulf) or moose [actually, mosquitoes] (Alaska). Cut trees?!? — PLEASE — the birds…
Here’s my question: Has there ever been a group more focused on — and eager for — national economic and societal suicide than the libtard-left?
Note to REB
Presbo did pause from his vacation plans to iterate that he was only half done.