Fracking — a procedure to extract natural gas from earth — made headlines recently after Vice President Mike Pence and Democrat vice presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris brought it up during their debate. Leading up to the 2020 elections, both Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden and Senator Harris, on various occasions, have remarked that they will end fracking. But during the vice presidential debate, Harris denied Biden’s anti-fracking stance and instead remarked … [Read more...]
Are Little Quakes in Western Tennessee Precursors of “The Big One”?
The Raleigh, NC, News and Observer was on the case of “The Big One,” with a story February 4 about a cluster of tiny quakes in far western Tennessee. From the text of Ms. Simore Jasper's story I cannot find a reference to any quake larger than a magnitude 3. It remains a matter of conjecture whether the residents of Dyersburg, TN, actually felt any effects of a 2.7 or were inspired by the power of suggestion. The mentioned 1.3 quake is so weak that it could not “hit” anything at the … [Read more...]
Fracking: It helps Americans, hurts terrorists
Oh, my! Few things can better communicate the enormous benefits of the boom in U.S. shale oil and gas production from fracking than this. The boom not only drives costs for American energy consumers to record lows, but also drives down revenues for OPEC, the leading source of financial support to the world's biggest and most deadly terrorist organizations. … [Read more...]
Fracking’s Safety
Ken Cohen at ExxonMobil has just published an article summarizing some of the basic things we know about the safety of "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing in drilling for oil and natural gas). The gist: It's not a significant source of either air or water pollution, and its record, good from the start, has been improving consistently. There will of course be those who write it off just because Cohen works for, and the article was published by, ExxonMobil. Sigh. Logical fallacies (genetic fallacy, … [Read more...]
