Study Says Fracking is Safe In Theory But Often Not In Practice 297
First time accepted submitter chadenright writes "A university study asserts that the problems caused by the gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking,' arise because drilling operations aren't doing it right. The process itself isn't to blame, according to the study, released today by the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin."
Study in texas.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I am on a different side of it.
It *sounds* bad to be putting 3000 different chemicals into the ground until you actually start taking geology into account. Having been on-site and spoken with engineers, I am *EXTREMELY* dubious that when fraccing zones more than 10,000 feet underground that it can affect the water table thousands of feet above it.
Especially Texas where most of the wells I am aware of are deep wells.
Plus, fraccing is required when the permeability of your zone is low. That means, by definition, it would not be a water table or any other kind of zone in which those chemicals could be moving around. If it is that permeable already and connected to a water table you would be tasting the natural hydrocarbons already.
I have always brought this up when these types of articles appear that the very definition of the technology would seem to preclude these types of interactions with water tables.
This study only seems to confirm what I was already saying. Only wells that are improperly fracced have these kinds of results.
Now I can certainly see that horizontal shallow drilling accompanied by fraccing could possibly introduce the natural hydrocarbons (that were trapped in various formations) into water tables along with the fraccing fluid.
The mistake people make is thinking that the ground is the same the whole way down. Far from it. It's more complicated than that. If water tables are being affected it is because the engineers are idiots and not doing it right.
The study is entirely plausible. It says it works in theory (which it most certainly does) but in practice you can fuck up and contaminate the water tables. Doesn't tell me something I did not already know intuitively.
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OMG! Gasland was made by a liberal! It's accurate of course, but the fact that it was made by a liberal means it should be ignored completely.
Seriously, Gasland was one of the best documentaries I watched last year. Whenever I hear a politician or a shill on TV talking about how great fracking is, I think about that movie.
It's really funny how the energy industry is spending hundreds of times what Gasland cost to make to try to discredit it. P
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in PA, but haven't watched it yet. We have local fracking wells up near our reservoir. W've had companies run their wells at high enough pressure to break the containment shells and keep running for three months till busted. Not one of those reservor wells, though. Oh, and truckers busted driving away from the site with the release valve on the tanks "accidentally" leaking.
I don't need to see Gasland. I can read the news. I see how the industry here is in full come in, drill and move on locust mode. The drilling could be safe if done with geology in mind and within standards. I just have no faith this will be done 100% of the time. Not that what I say or believe matters.
I can also look up our history. Pennsylvania was deforested in the lumber booms about a century ago, and only has its current forests thanks to FDR, the New Deal and the Civilian Conservation Corps. A large part of our economy is dependent on forest tourism. A third of all of our water is already contaminated from acid mine drainage from the coal booms.
Even if it were 100% no matter what, I'd still be leery based off of my state's track record.
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fracking can never be done safe, at least not with today's technology. You are drilling russian roulette mode, sometimes it's safe but mostly it's not.
Companies are simply making guesstimates of what will happen when they pressurise formation and, where the fractures will go and how it will affect ground water at various depths.
Here's how it works for people looking for water. They drill down a bore into likely areas, and when water flows, they test the suitability of water derived from that formation, they keep drilling till they find a suitable formation to draw water from or the reach the depth level of the equipment or they run out of money or they give up and try at another location.
Eventually they mostly find a safe suitable source. Now along comes the fracking company, they purposefully introduce largely random (the lack the ability to 'accurately define where the fractures will occur) stress fractures in the rock, the purpose to specifically allow the mixing of fluid and gas materials to mix at various levels, basically turn rock formations into massive soda fountains. Will it affect nearby wells, they don't know and they don't give a fuck.
The law was written so that they could run off with the profits and tell those whose water they contaminate to piss off and laugh at their misery. The frackers rinse and repeat as long as governments allow them to do so. They know they are playing russian roulette with other peoples lives, seriously actual russian roulette people will get sick and die, there is absolutely no denying it. They paid their lobbyists to influence Darth Cheney to write laws to protect frackers from the frackers murderously greedy activities.
The reality is there is no technology currently available to forecast what will actually happen when you try to turn rock formations into massive soda fountains, none at all, it is a straight up guess. Pretty much a safe bet for the fracker they will likely get a big profit as for everyone else around that location, let's be honest, as far as the frackers are concerned luck of the draw 'Fuck Em'.
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I believe that fracking can be done in a responsible and safe manner - AT LEAST from a technical standpoint.
However, from a regulatory, financial, and corporate culture standpoint - NONE of the companies that are using hydrofracturing have any reasonable safety track record. Cost-cutting and accidents run rampant throughout the industry. At this point, there is nothing short of a complete corporate overhaul that will make me trust any drilling company.
I'd rather have a nuclear plant a mile away than any h
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Sociopathic fucks like you won't be happy to every aquifer in North America is poisoned so every last ounce of natural gas is extracted, while you live on some nice South Pacific island counting your ill-gotten gain.
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:4, Informative)
Would that be the same docu-drama which conveniently committed the fact that 'burning tap water' had been an on-going issue for nearly a century?
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you be correct when you don't even know how fraccing works? How is the method inherently a scorched earth tactic?
Remember, what I am saying, is that low permeability strata (meaning water does not flow through it) is cracked apart and those chemicals are introduced as a medium to leave proppant behind. The fluids themselves are largely reclaimed. Not left down below.
Most often, especially in Texas, those wells are so deep that it is not possible for the water table to interact with those formations that are being fracced. That's why you are not correct and just have no idea what you are talking about.
Ask a geologist some time if it is possible for a water table to interact with a low permeability formation that is 10,000 feet below it. He will say it is not possible. Guess why? It it was possible, that would mean the water table was that deep to begin with.
The very definitions of the terms being used mean you are incorrect and have no understanding of the process.
None, none, of what I am saying is condoning shallow fraccing in other areas of the country where it could interact with a water table.
It's not the fraccing, it is the people doing it.
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+1 for being educated on the subject.
it's rare here on /.
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, it does.
Who all owed their livings to the energy industry.
Well, then the solution is simple: keep all the engineers away.
So here's my idea: Let's only do fracking in theory. In practice, let's be more serious about looking for alternatives.
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:4, Informative)
So.. on-site all of these engineers were engaged in a massive conspiracy to lie to me about how fraccing works?
The solution is to do fraccing only where appropriate. This means proper surveys and considering how it might impact the environment. Which is exactly what the study says. It was improper in the areas that have had water tables affected. In some cases, it should have never been done in the first place, and I am the first to agree with that.
I have no reason to believe they are lying to me, and certainly not years and years before this became a big deal. Most people just have no idea how it actually works. If you did, you would know how absolutely ludicrous it is for a formation 15,000 feet below ground, that is trapping hydrocarbons, in a low permeability strata, to have any affect on a water table 10,000 feet or more above it.
It is not possible for large scale effects in such a situation. At most, if the well casing is damaged near the surface you might have some leakage into the water table. However, that will happen with or without fraccing. You can detect and repair that, which is in the best interests of the operators, regardless of environmental concerns.
There are no alternatives to fraccing whatsoever. The whole idea is to crack the formations apart, pump in proppant (sand like material), and remove the fluids to increase permeability. You cannot increase permeability any other way, which is what allows you to get the hydrocarbons out the ground fast enough to make it economically viable to produce.
You would be better off finding alternatives to fossil fuels. However, the only reasonable alternative at the moment for large scale power production is nuclear, but we can't have that either.
I just find it a little ridiculous to be railing against the technology, when it is impossible for the technology to cause the problems, when properly used.
It's not the technology. It's the people. Fraccing does not damage water tables every single time in every single case, which is what people love to say.
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It's not the technology. It's the people. Fraccing does not damage water tables every single time in every single case, which is what people love to say.
You had such a reasonable argument until here. You can ignore the crazy enviro-types. I belong to several organizations filled with them. They have their story and they're sticking to it. Just go ahead and leave them out of the entire equation. Those of us who are skeptical of fracking need to know how it can be done responsibly and why it isn't. Hopefully this can end in oil for everyone AND bad engineers in jail.
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Those of us who are skeptical of fracking need to know how it can be done responsibly and why it isn't.
I know the answers to both questions. Being done responsibly is easy. Just involve competent people and have the moral resolve to not frac the formation if there is more than a 1% chance it could affect the water table. The rest is quality control.
Why it isn't is very simple. Greed and quality control.
Hopefully this can end in oil for everyone AND bad engineers in jail.
That will be more effective than anything else by far. Send the fraccing engineers to jail along with the executives of the fraccing company if it is proved that any reasonable study would have shown it w
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:4, Interesting)
If you did, you would know how absolutely ludicrous it is for a formation 15,000 feet below ground, that is trapping hydrocarbons, in a low permeability strata, to have any affect on a water table 10,000 feet or more above it.
I would like to simple add a few thoughts to the discussion.
If the area they are frakking is 10,000 feet "Below" the water table, then they probably have to go through the water table in order to reach it.
So there is at least one path for contamination.
Additionally, frakking is the process of breaking geological formations in order to allow for the collection and extraction of liquid petroleum and gasses, AND a direct correlation has been show between frakking and increased geological activity.
So, they are intentionally breaking the layers of rock separating pockets of gas and oil, and causing small earthquakes.
Meanwhile you are arguing that "it is impossible for the technology to cause the problems", and that there is no way that during all of the intentional layer breaking they might cause something to change in the layers that are sitting on top of the work area
I'm not sure that "impossible" is the right term to use. I'd have chosen "marginally unlikely", but that's just me.
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:5, Informative)
If the area they are frakking is 10,000 feet "Below" the water table, then they probably have to go through the water table in order to reach it.
So there is at least one path for contamination.
No. There is no path with proper well casing.
Additionally, frakking is the process of breaking geological formations in order to allow for the collection and extraction of liquid petroleum and gasses, AND a direct correlation has been show between frakking and increased geological activity.
So, they are intentionally breaking the layers of rock separating pockets of gas and oil, and causing small earthquakes.
Extremely small earth quakes. It is misleading to give it that term because it implies to most lay people that you could feel it long distances away. You can't. Unlike the vast majority of posters I have been less than 100 feet away from the well bore in a trailer when a large frac was performed. I did not fall down, and other than a light amount of vibration, it was just a big bang. Also keep in mind, that any release of energy that high would require some impressive engineering on the well bore and drilling rig.
I would like to see studies that show a direct correlation between fraccing and increased geological activity. "Correlation does not imply causation". While I don't wish to seem like I am resistant to the truth, the science behind fraccing does not, at a glance, support sustained increases in geological activity.
Citation please.
Meanwhile you are arguing that "it is impossible for the technology to cause the problems", and that there is no way that during all of the intentional layer breaking they might cause something to change in the layers that are sitting on top of the work area
They can't cause any large scale or meaningful changes in layers sitting on top of the work area. I am assuming that you mean that a frac conducted at 15k feet deep can change layers between a thousand feet and the surface. That would not happen.
In order for it to be true, the energies required would be impressive to say the least. The frac would not be limited to the production zone, but would result in fractures at the surface. Such energies would result in an earth quake comparable to a nuclear blast. You would feel that in major cities hundreds of miles away.
You simply cannot affect changes through that many thousands of feet of rock without the requisite increase in energy levels. It's not like they are bringing out portable nuclear power on site. It's diesel man.
Additionally, and so many people here overlook this, for every fracture that is created you need to pump proppant into it. This means you can tell how well your frac performed, in part, by looking at how much proppant was pumped into it. To have large scale effects at the water table, thousands of feet above your target, would require many many times the amount of proppant you estimated was required. You would know.
I'm not sure that "impossible" is the right term to use. I'd have chosen "marginally unlikely", but that's just me.
Impossible might have been over doing it. However "marginal" is over doing it as well. Highly unlikely would be a better way to say it. You have better chances of winning the lottery.
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Allow me to match your anecdote.
I have also been near one of these wells during a frakking operation, I have family members who are close enough to one to watch while they are pumping.
There are cracks in the foundation of the house that only formed after the well went live, and the tremors that i've personally felt were considerably more active than "Just a big bang".
For the record, I live in Southern Louisiana.
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of something we say in UI design meetings:
"If 3% of your users screw up, it's a user problem... but if 30% of your users screw up, it's a UI problem."
If the fracking process is not tolerant of hasty, underfunded, undertrained, fly-by-night drilling operations, then the process is not suitable for deployment here in the West.
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Well, they clearly did not tell you the whole truth. I mean, apply some critical thinking skills here - to get these fracturing fluids down to, say, 10k feet, they must somehow PASS THROUGH THE WATER TABLE. Considering that the plumbing required to do this is handling pressures intended to FRACTURE ROCK - If you think there is no chance of this plumbing failing underground and releasing its contents at a depth that wasn't supposed to be affected, you are seriously stupid or deluded. This seems to be the
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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So in theory, BP should have done a great job with Deepwater Horizon, right? After all, they're huge, hired Halliburton, etc. The problem is that they're a profit-seeking enterprise. That made them rush the job, and to do stupid things in the name of increased profits. Let's not kid ourselves. Anyone will do bad stuff to get more money.
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Does it matter at the end of the day if peoples' water supply is poisoned because water several thousand feet below is leaching to the surface, or whether it's screwy concrete closer to the surface, or it's just incompetent assholes spilling the chemicals on the ground. About the only thing that wouldn't be the company's fault would be naturally occurring natural gas in wells and aquifers, and maybe the sensible thing to do before developing a new natural gas field is to take six month's or a year's worth o
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It does not have to be suspended completely though. That is an over reaction.
Fraccing does not occur everywhere under the ground. It is in fact a highly targeted and precise operation when done correctly.
As long as all the engineers can show that the water table could not interact with the fracced formation to a very high confidence, it should be allowed to proceed.
I said some of these fracced formations were more than 10,000 feet below the water table. Believe me when I tell you that there are thousands
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Fraccing is just not that high energy
And a single straw doesn't weigh enough to cause any noticeable harm to a camel.
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That's neat. I see what you did there.
Instead of a witty retort (it was rather witty) why don't you explain to me how I am wrong about the high energy part and that fractures really do reach thousands of feet above of them to the water table? I mean thousands of feet above the ceiling that was calculated?
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I think this [watershedsentinel.ca] article probably explains part of my concerns better than I could here.
As a small quick summary, frakking can and has caused increased geological activity.
To directly address your question:
While the actual amount of energy being added to the area during frakking is relatively small, the amount of energy that is released is anything but small.
The amount of energy released is enough to cause vibration that can be felt on the surface in many areas, sometimes e
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I read that article and it does not have anything to do with the type of fraccing I have encountered.
That stuff is crazy. The ones I was witness to were anything but shallow, but at 15k feet instead. There was certainly not millions of gallons of fluid. Everything had to be trucked in.
Initially, all the fluid was reclaimed and trucked off site for disposal. That was not pumped back down into the ground to my knowledge at all. Any fluid remaining was extracted over time to a container on the site. I remember that for a few years a truck had to come by every so often to empty it. What I witnessed had practically no impact on the local environment at all. No ponds, fluids, etc. Just a well bore, casing, and a pipeline to take the natural gas to the refinery. That's it.
That article describes a completely different fraccing process. Not to mention none of these walls were horizontal, but vertical. Straight down to 15-20k feet deep.
I will fully admit that what that article talks about seems completely reckless and irresponsible.
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At this point I am convinced we are not talking about the same process. It has the same name, but is otherwise very different.
The article laid out a process that was flat out nuts and irresponsible. None of the wells I was at were anything like what you are describing. I have a feeling those engineers would not be a part of something that reckless either.
I believe what you are saying and it does not have anything to do with my experiences or understanding of the technology. It's amazing that these are d
Re:Study in texas.... (Score:5, Informative)
That sound great, until you realise that by frac'ing and drilling into the rock, they've changed the permeability of the rock (ie: the point of frac'ing).
Drilling does not change the permeability of the surrounding rock. Keep in mind there is something called well casing which essentially protects the hole all the way to the surface.
If you drill a hole in concrete and fill it with water, did it make all of the concrete more permeable? Nope.
Many of the chemicals are water soluble and/or are lighter than the ground water, why wouldn't the ground water seep down in the now permeable rock and mix with the chemicals?
The ground water would not seep down because all of the rock formation did not have a uniform increase in permeability. It was like a bunch of cracks in a concrete wall that was further separated from the water table (we will just say a layer of dirt) by another layer of concrete that was unaffected by the frac.
Imagine this.
You have a mix of concrete in which you suspended bubbles of Coke. It is 100 feet thick. You then have a layer of normal concrete that is 1000 feet thick. On top of that you have a 100 foot layer of dirt that has a bunch of water in it.
The water table is only going to extend to the concrete itself, and not all the way to the bottom. That's the way they work, otherwise water could just fall all the way to the core of the Earth.
You then drill a hole through the whole thing. Before you frac, or do anything else after drilling the hole, you make a nice reinforced straw. That is called casing. All of the dirt does not directly interact with any fluid in the hole. It can't. The casing is there.
The water table is protected by the casing.
Now you perforate the casing all the way at the bottom with shaped explosives. This allows the Coke to flow into the hole under pressure and go to the surface. However, since the permeability is so low... you are not getting a lot. The Coke does not interact with the water table due to the casing.
That's where fraccing comes in. You create thousands of small fractures (hence the name) in the bottom layer with that nasty fluid everyone hates. Pump in proppant (which is like sand) and remove the fluid.
Now what you have is a bunch of fractures that allow the trapped Coke to travel to the hole faster. That's why it is done.
The fractures themselves extend out horizontally some distance, and vertically, but they they simply don't make it all the way through that 1000 foot thick layer of concrete to get to the water table above it.
That is why ground water does not seep into fractured formations thousands of feet below it. A path does not exist.
So now that you understand that, the only way the water table can be affected is with damaged casing (has nothing to do with fraccing) or a fraccing process that put the water table at risk because it was too close.
That's why the technology is perfectly fine in theory. Any dickhead that decides to do something like that too close to water table is the real problem.
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Keep in mind there is something called well casing which essentially protects the hole all the way to the surface.
Which have this annoying habit of failing horribly according to the TFA.
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Exactly.
Casing has nothing to do with fraccing. In a well that is never fracced, you still have casing.
The problem is not fraccing. It is quality control and proper engineering.
If you frac to close to the water table and use low quality cement for your casing, don't follow proper procedures, you have a lot of problems. Not just the water table either. You could lose the whole well.
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We've been drilling wells that only had to deal with the reservoir pressure of the gas/oil they were drilling.
Handling pressures required to FRACTURE ROCK is a bit of a different story. The engineering margins are going to be fundamentally narrower. Combine this with the fact that fracking wells tend to be far more numerous than oil wells, and the operations are being done by companies which now have a clear track record of "who cares if a few wells blow out?" and "no that contamination didn't happen", an
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"I am assuming some competency and accountability on the part the operator here."
Given the industry's track record in locations like Dimock, PA, this is an utterly stupid assumption.
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The Energy Institute said its report was conducted using general university funds, rather than specific grants from energy-industry companies or environmental groups. However, the institute said the Environmental Defense Fund assisted in developing the scope of work and the methodology for the study.
Apparently the ties are to an environmental group which wasn't at all happy with the conclusion. This group appears to believe scientists who suggest global warming is man made, but doesn't want to believe scientists who say hydraulic fracturing is safe. Hmm...
RTFA? (Score:2)
I know you can't be bothered to read the article because you've already made up your mind, but it says:
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However, the EDF is a known corporate water carrier with an eco-friendly sounding name:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Defense_Fund [wikipedia.org]
And that is NOT peer review, either.
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RTFA. it was funded entirely by the university (this was a deliberate attempt to avoid politics, it seems), however it received some non financial support from an environmental group. they stressed that that group had no editorial control.
the air you breathe has thousands of chemicals in it. the word "chemical" doesn't necessarily mean "bad".
look at the list of compounds in common foods and be horrified.
that said, like nuclear power, i support the concept, but i have little faith that it'll ever be done
Blame the Cement (Score:3, Informative)
I only work as an MWD Engineer in the industry, so take my comment with a grain of salt. As far as I can tell the problem is likely due to improper cementing in 99.99% of cases. They almost always rush it, and drill ASAP afterwards, if not sooner. I wouldn't doubt they are fracking their cement job, leaving a nice path to the surface water table.
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it can be safe (Score:5, Funny)
There is nothing intrinsically unsafe about it in most cases, but if you frack a stranger without a condom, you can get cooties.
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You should also make sure the rock is at least 18 years old before shooting liquids in it, or there could be other legal repercussions besides.
A Texas University... (Score:4, Informative)
... funded by Big Oil [utexas.edu] comes out with what is basically pro-fracking study that basically says, "We're doing it in a dangerous manner; it's the process, not what we're doing, even though everyone is doing it wrong."
And peer review? Nope. But it was reviewed by the pro-corporation sham of an environmental watch-group, the Environmental Defense Fund [wikipedia.org]:
In addition to university faculty, the Environmental Defense Fund was actively involved in developing the scope of work and methodology for this study, and reviewed final work products.
(source [utexas.edu])
Not buyin' it.
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Even the wikipedia page paints a portrait of them that's more or less neutral and less biased than what you seem to want us to believe (i.e. a "sham" group). In any case, unless you can point to specific flaws in their methodology, this appears to be a legitimate contribution to the debate.
Didn't read summary or TFA, but ... (Score:2)
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Energy Industry says "Energy Industry OK" (Score:2)
I see plenty of the Energy Industry, a drilling company, Big Oil, and even an Investment Professional on the Advisory Board [utexas.edu]
I couldn't quickly find where the bulk of the department's funding comes from. But I bet it's no surprise.
They sure seem to be good friends to fracking. [utexas.edu]
The Difference Between Theory and Practice. (Score:2)
- Albert Einstein -
Implementation is a part of the process (Score:3)
If it isn't implemented safely, then it isn't safe.
Communism works great in theory.
Re:Implementation is a part of the process (Score:4, Funny)
If only Lenin had the foresight to make a system where it's literally impossible to fail, like capitalism. If a business makes money, it's a sign that capitalism is a success. If a business is a disaster, capitalism is still succeeding as resources are directed elsewhere. Even if you end up crashing the global economy in the process.
Re:Frak! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Frak! (Score:5, Interesting)
In all seriousness, though, "safe in theory but not necessarily in practice" suggests that maybe the theory is wrong...
Or, horror of horrors, government isn't stepping up to the plate. This sort of thing is the poster child for why pure Libertarianism don't work. Over at the Oil Drum [theoildrum.com] there are many discussions on fracking - and from the couple of folks actually doing it, they would agree with TFA - it can be done safely, but often isn't.
Apparently Texas, who has been regulating fracking since the 1950's does a reasonable job of it. Significant fines for dumping wastewater, regulators that know what they're looking for. It shouldn't be rocket science to hire a couple of oil field guys (or some ex - Texas regulators) and come up with a best practices document.
Hell, the EPA might even be able to do it. But this is what really frosts me about the current state of affairs. Even if industry and government should have similar goals (keeping the screw ups and cheaters out of the game), they can't seem to get together and put up some fairly simple regulatory frameworks.
Maybe this is what Tainter [wikipedia.org] means by too much complexity causing our eventual downfall. Humans are just too stupid sometimes.
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This sort of thing is the poster child for why pure Libertarianism don't work.
Pure libertarianism: somebody owns that underground water. Somebody else starts fracking and chemicals get into the water. The owner of the water then sues the fracker and 0wns him in court. (Possibly literally; if the damages are high enough, the fracker might wind up indentured to the party he wronged.)
Alternative scenario. The fracker and the water owner are the same person. Now he can eat the cost of the fracking (can't s
Re:Frak! (Score:4, Insightful)
Lawsuits are too late when people have been poisoned.
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"Libertarian system: big company poisons people, executives are held personally liable and all their possessions are confiscated as part of the settlement.
Pure libertarianism may have problems (pure anything is likely to have problems) but I think the executives would be more careful in such a system than in the limited liability corporation system."
Correct. They would act deceptively through anonymous proxies and not be identifiable for prosecution.
FTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
Current system: regulators are supposed to catch violations before they occur, so people don't get poisoned and saving the company from it's own greed.
Current regulatory capture: regulators come from the same industries they are supposed to regulate, so they do industry favors so they'll get cushy jobs when they go back to the private sector. See: Robert Rubin, Clinton's Treasury Secretary that went straight to CitiGroup.
Libertarian system: oligarchs avoid any and all responsibility using middle management and mules. Company policies are such that sacrificial lambs, I mean employees, must cut corners if they want to keep their jobs. When the shit hits the fan, the company points to their other (unenforced) policies to cover their own asses, leaving the mules to take the fall.
Case in point: how Wal-Mart gets sued every few years when one of their stores is caught forcing employees to work off the clock. Wal-Mart promptly points to their written policy that hourly employees must be paid for all hours worked. Nevermind that other policy on how all work must be completed without paying any overtime. So a middle manager decides to cheat on payroll to keep his own job.....
Re:Frak! (Score:5, Insightful)
The role of government here is supposed to be that government imposes regulations, the industry follows the regulations, and then nobody sues anybody as long as everyone was following the regulations.
Wrong. Regulations exist to try and minimize harm, not indemnify the regulated.
Following regulations is never a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Or if you are really a believer in big government, you might think that government inspectors prevent accidents.
I can't think of any historical examples where we've ever had enough Government inspectors to really provide a baseline.
historically, we've had no inspections, but never really gone to the other extreme of full inspections.
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Regulations exist to try and minimize harm, not indemnify the regulated.
Following regulations is never a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Hmm, I think that's fair. I overstated the case and I stand corrected.
I can't think of any historical examples where we've ever had enough Government inspectors to really provide a baseline.
That's an interesting perspective, and not the one I usually get when I discuss libertarian issues with people. A common complaint I get is that without all the government inspectors, peopl
Re:Frak! (Score:4, Interesting)
It isn't anything inherent in government that people are trusting; it's that they wouldn't have a conflict of interest. If the restaurant finds out that they poisoned people (we assume it was accidental) then the best thing for them to do is fix the problem silently and say nothing. If you have a society where the restaurant polices itself, those people stay sick and don't know why. If you have a society where the restaurant pays a third party, it is still in the third party's interest that the restaurant stay in business. But if the government gets involved, their livelihood isn't on the line, so they can be expected to expose the poisoning and the patrons seek treatment. You never want to depend on people to choose to act against their own self-interest, which is what most proposed implementations of Libertarianism would require.
Re:Frak! (Score:5, Insightful)
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The real problem is that we have seen a number of examples of little or un- regulated markets, and nearly every time they cause some problem or another. The most recent example is the banking industry which put is in the current recession. The reason the invisible hand is invisible is because it doesn't exist.
Except that your "most recent example" is no such thing. The banking industry is a highly regulated industry and was during the time leading up to the crash. As a matter of fact, those regulations were one of the factors that led to the crash.
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Never mind the story on /., you are arguing that the banking industry was not regulated and that is what caused the recession? (Depression at this point).
And you get +5 something for this nonsense?
Banking is some of the most regulated industry in the world, there are tens of thousands of regulations in banking. Banking hasn't been a 'free market' ever since 1913 and especially since FDIC and then the money was destroyed in 1971 so there was no competition either in money, nor in money prices (interest rate
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Wrong. Regulations exist to try and minimize harm, not indemnify the regulated.
Following regulations is never a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Legal precedent says otherwise. There are many many cases where following the regulations indemnifies you. For example, a pontoon boat overturned in Baltimore harbor a few years ago, while ferrying a few dozen passengers. A nearby coast guard boat responded immediately but several people died. They sued the captain, who sued the taxi company, who sued the coast guard. Final result: since the boat was carrying the proper number of passengers and was current in its coast guard inspection, the coast guard
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Even believers in big goverment must acknowledge that regulatory inspection can nev
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Sounds like libertarianism is a lawyers paradise and if you can't afford one then you drink tainted water.
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How does someone "own ground water" in a libertarian society? I thought you had to improve land with labour to stake a claim to it.
Having never lived in a fully libertarian society, I cannot speak from first-hand experience.
I'll give you a two-fold answer:
0) In a settled society, like modern America, you buy the water rights from whomever currently is holding them.
1) In a pioneer society, you get the water rights along with the land, and you get the land by improving it or something.
I have read libertarian
Re:Frak! (Score:4, Insightful)
So what sort of legal framework is there that gives the libertarian water-rights owner the right to sue the fracker? "Suing" is a legal construct, and requires "legal basis" for the suit to be brought. Aka, the fracker has violated some sort of law. So in this libertarian world, we have laws about water discharge chemical levels? I thought that was the sort of stuff that libertarians hated -- laws that say what they can't dump into the land, what they can't dump into the water, what they can't dump into the air, etc.
Re:Frak! (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought that was the sort of stuff that libertarians hated -- laws that say what they can't dump into the land, what they can't dump into the water, what they can't dump into the air, etc.
Most libertarians, when discussing pollution, bring up the Tragedy of the Commons. If nobody owns a resource, everyone feels they can dump stuff on it or into it.
If someone owns the water rights, and I dump poison into their water, they can sue me for putting poison in their water. If we are living on a river, and he's downstream of me, his river water rights probably give him standing to sue me for dumping junk in the water.
The other tine of the fork is the option to sue for harm. If I sell tainted water, my customers can sue me for the potential or actual harm suffered.
But actually, you might have noticed that I never said that I personally believe that the pure libertarian society is perfect and likely to be problem-free. I just was bothered by the conflating of "libertarianism" with "desire for total anarchy".
I personally have conservative tendencies. If something has never actually been tried, I'm suspicious of it; that's one reason I don't really believe in anarchocapitalism. And I do not believe that the pure libertarian model can really solve everything; for example, I'm not sure that private roads are really as practical as government-owned roads. I do see a role for government in enforcing air quality standards; I am not a pure enough libertarian to think that somebody should own the air, or that people will always voluntarily do the right thing. ("People will shun you if you pollute" or whatever. Eh, ask an anarchocapitalist how that would work; since I don't believe in it, it isn't fair for me to try to explain it.)
An example I like to bring up: 19th-century technology proved sufficient for hunting some species of whales to extinction. 20th-century technology is sufficient for overfishing some species of fish to extinction. I personally believe government should regulate fishing to prevent this, and I am suspicious of libertarian daydreams that say the free market can solve that problem. (And if we just agree that Bill Gates owns all the oceans or something, he might prevent the overfishing but I'm not sure we would be better off.)
The government of the USA used to be a whole lot smaller and do a whole lot less. I personally believe that we could drastically slash the size and scope of government and net be better off, but I don't believe we can do away with government completely.
steveha
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Aka, the fracker has violated some sort of law. So in this libertarian world, we have laws about water discharge chemical levels?
It sounds like you are probably trolling, but I'll bite anyway.
Civil law != criminal law, even in a Libertarian Utopia. Civil law allows for people harmed by the negligence of others to attempt to have their grievances made right. Criminal law allows for government to arrest people who are suitably dangerous to society. In my understanding of Libertarianism, the idea is that laws should not be overly restrictive -- that is, there should be just enough legal framework to take action when necessary to
Re:Frak! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are Libertarian courts going to magically work differently than other courts? You get hauled into court for poisoning your neighbor's water supply, you hire kick-ass legal team and sufficient "researchers" to con a judge and/or jury into believing your neighbor is a whining asshole, and regardless of whether it's a Libertarian state or not, you win. Your neighbor's water is still poisoned, he has insufficient resources to continue the battle, and the tiny, impotent state is utterly incapable of evening the playing field even a little bit. In other words, he's just fucked, you make lots of money, which allows you to build even more kick-ass legal teams and hire even more "researchers".
At least with regulations there is some sort of baseline, as opposed to putting your faith utterly and completely in a political ideology that no more seems to be able to stop abuse of process than existing political systems. Things always sound lovely in theory. In theory Communism creates a wonderfully fair system that sees much more even distribution of wealth. In reality it's been a failure, and I suspect a pure Libertarian state would do no better. At the end of the day, you have to have a certain degree of flexibility and pragmatism in your political and economic system, otherwise you will end up riding your ideology into the gutter sooner or later.
Re:Frak! (Score:5, Insightful)
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In a libertarian system, if the guy loses his court case because of shenanigans, he can turn to the legislature to fix the shenanigans. In our system, if the legislature passes a law saying that the corporation can poison your water, where do you turn?
You seem to be co
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"The bad guy can outspend the victims 100:1 in court, but how can he change the facts? If the facts are that he put poison in the water, how does outspending by 100:1 save him?"
Facts are irrelevant. Testimony matters.
Faith-Based Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's your sign: the Cigarette Company Defense. For decades, the smoking industry never lost a liability lawsuit. How do you know your Uncle Joe got cancer from smoking two packs a day when it could have been genetics, or asbestos?
So, how do you know that your contaminated ground water came from Shell, and not that Exxon operation in the next county? Or that BP well on the far side of the aquifer?
Just how many communities, much less individuals, could afford years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, paid studies and expert testimony to prove that yes, it was indeed Shell that poisoned your water?
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You clearly have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
Sadly, the bad guys being able to outspend 100:1 means they can hire "experts" to testify on their behalf that the plaintiff is wrong, and therefore muddying the waters enough to where the jury isn't sure, and therefore needs to vote for the defendant.
Re:Frak! (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if industry and government should have similar goals (keeping the screw ups and cheaters out of the game), they can't seem to get together and put up some fairly simple regulatory frameworks.
You're somewhat confused about what the "similar goals" are between industry and government actually are. It has nothing to do with stupidity and much more to do with corruption and money. Industry (including and particularly cheaters) pay people in government through campaign contributions plus the age old promise of high paying jobs in industry once their political career is over to produce a "favorable" business climate. This can mean passing favorable legislation or removing regulatory pressure. If that isn't possible the regulators can simply be de-funded, the options are endless. The politicians love it, they get campaign contributions, connections to powerful people in industry and maybe even a cushy jobs on the Board of Directors when they are done. Where I'm living (Alabama) this sadly explains the majority of political practice here, from both parties.
Maybe this is what Tainter [wikipedia.org] means by too much complexity causing our eventual downfall. Humans are just too stupid sometimes.
One possibility is that politicians are too stupid to establish a functional regulatory framework. However they somehow manage to construct a complicated taxation framework to collect trillions in taxes, build a massively complicated military and defense structure... I think a more reasonable explanation is that many (not all) politicians have no interest in building such a structure. The constituents are too diffuse and disorganized to make it worth their while except during election time, when they are at least give it lip service.
Re:Frak! (Score:4, Informative)
> Hell, the EPA might even be able to do it. But this is what really frosts me about the current state of affairs. Even if industry and government should have similar goals (keeping the screw ups and cheaters out of the game), they can't seem to get together and put up some fairly simple regulatory frameworks.
As I understand, a large part of the problem is that regulatory bodies are often underfunded to the point of dysfunction. It is done intentionally, under the heading of "starving/shrinking the government", arguing that the government would be (is) inefficient anyway. The second related major issue is that nominees heading agencies are often cannot be confirmed due to (even) a single senator holding up the vote.
Re:Frak! (Score:4, Insightful)
This sort of thing is the poster child for why pure Libertarianism don't work.
Except it's not an example of pure Libertarianism. You have heavy regulation and a legal system ("complex" in the sense of Tainter, I might add), both which are far from Libertarian.
The poster child for why pure libertarianism doesn't work are countries where criminal gangs took over (such as supposedly happened in parts of the former Eastern Bloc). Pure libertarianism requires a population that will fight, often proactively, threats to liberty. When that doesn't happen and it usually doesn't, then you can't have libertarianism.
As to Joseph Tainter's theories, I don't see anything about political and economic parasitism in the form of rent-seeking. Complexity in itself doesn't damn a society. What it does do is conceal conflicts of interest between the society and the groups controlling that society as well as subsequent acts of rent-seeking.
For example, the well-known example of the Roman Empire had two well known examples of this. First, the consolidation of land ownership (the primary means for investing wealth prior to the Industrial Revolution) in the hands of wealthy families and second, the devolving of the Praetorian Guard from elite defenders of Rome to selfish kingmakers who helped hasten the demise of the western part of the Roman Empire.
Finally, one shouldn't confuse stupidity with conflict of interest. A collapse of society might indeed serve my interests. Even in cases where stupidity is a factor, it's usually a case of someone pursuing a strategy to further their interests, but they just don't realize in time that their actions are counterproductive (such as brinksmanship against another player using the very same strategy).
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Frak! (Score:5, Informative)
The article stated that one of the main problems was bad cementing jobs, but from what I've gathered from reading and talking is that it is really hard to get a good cement job. There are things you can do to screw it up, but even if you do everything by the book, you can still end up with an imperfect seal. According to the US U.S. Minerals Management Service, cementing problems were associated with 18 of 39 blowouts between 1992 and 2006.
So, if doing fraking "right" requires you to have perfect cement jobs everytime, then it isn't possible to do fraking right.
Re:Frak! (Score:4, Insightful)
You can do everything right and still get a bad seal. If you rush the job and ignore warning signs, you are pretty much guaranteed to get a bad seal. Which do you suppose causes more problems?
You could say the same of any drilling. If you don't have a good seal, you haven't done it right. It is possible to check this kind of thing afterwards. Maybe they should.
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So, if doing fraking "right" requires you to have perfect cement jobs everytime, then it isn't possible to do fraking right.
That's a pretty big "if". You could also say that the vast majority of gas wells are done perfectly, and a few had problems which needed to be fixed
Keep in mind that natural gas in water wells is very common throughout the Appalachians [usgs.gov]
Re:Frak! (Score:4, Insightful)
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We run into this ALL the time here at work. Since we're working with cutting edge software that even the developers don't entirely understand we can often say "It'll take an hour" and then it winds up taking 2 days. Or we'll say it'll take 2 days and we're done in an hour. Until something has been done for decades and experience is developed you find yourself constantly solving problems you didn't even know could exist.
If Plan A always worked perfectly everything would be done 8x faster. It's only throug
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We run into this ALL the time here at work. Since we're working with cutting edge software that even the developers don't entirely understand we can often say "It'll take an hour" and then it winds up taking 2 days. Or we'll say it'll take 2 days and we're done in an hour.
These problems are typical of software development and just about any other job I have had that didn't involve rote repetition.
I don't think this is the problem with fracking. They have dropped thousands of these wells, so the process is not "cutting edge". Granted, they are dealing with highly variable conditions, but again, there is plenty of history to go on.
The problems with fracking (two of them, anyway) are a) doing things incompetently that could theoretically be done in a safe manor and b) doing t
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Water contamination and geological instability is thought to be an artifact of pumping the waste water back in the ground after the fraking is complete. Which doesn't have to happen, but is expensive to treat.
Re:BSG (Score:5, Funny)
The solution is obvious. Only do theoretical fracking.
On-Topic (Score:2)
For those who my have missed the joke and modded this down for some reason, the quote could be better written:
Which is not only certainly true (most people will do whatever they can to avoid using a condom), it also seems strangely appropriate and on-topic in this instance. Especially if you've ever known any drillers.
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Medical expert Doc. Cottle agrees.
Hey, communism and "True Scotsmen" are safe too! (and I'm inclined to include the "free market" as well).
Re:Humanity should be ashamed by 'Fracking' (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in one of the most geologically stable places on the planet. And we still have earthquakes here. It's called the Canadian shield [wikipedia.org]. But hey, you know if you frack properly, you don't get any problems. And I'm sure you're also going on about that BS movie where people were lighting their taps on fire, but guess what, people were doing that before. Hell there's places around me where that's possible from naturally occurring methane in the water. Mostly well water, and you need to back pressure it in your well.
Really though, next I'm sure you'll go on a rant about how the tar sands are evil. But gloss over the fact that oil has been leeching into the rivers in Canada for thousands of years. Hell, there's enough oil leeching naturally that people used to(and still do) patch their boats with it.
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And I'm sure you're also going on about that BS movie where people were lighting their taps on fire, but guess what, people were doing that before. Hell there's places around me where that's possible from naturally occurring methane in the water. Mostly well water, and you need to back pressure it in your well. Really though, next I'm sure you'll go on a rant about how the tar sands are evil. But gloss over the fact that oil has been leeching into the rivers in Canada for thousands of years. Hell, there's enough oil leeching naturally that people used to(and still do) patch their boats with it.
So you're saying that hydraulically fracturing the ground around oil and pumping in proprietary chemical mixtures, in addition to the natural leeching, can't increase the methane and chemical pollutants in your drinking water over time?
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And in practice has killed fewer people than have died mining coal. Your point?
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That that's a depressingly low bar? I don't think most anti-nuclear people are pro-coal. How many people have died producing solar?
Re:And in theory ... (Score:4, Insightful)
How many people have died producing solar?
I don't know, but if/when there is even a single death from a construction accident, its death per megawatt will suddenly be worse than coal...
Re:And in theory ... (Score:4, Informative)
In practice, even factoring in Fukushima, nuclear power plants turn out to be the safest thing. (It helps if you don't build it in a tsunami zone and ignore a safety report for 5+ years, of course.)
New designs being developed now are even safer and more efficient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4 [youtube.com]
http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/ [nuclearpow...please.org]
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Okay, the use of nuclear power in places like the US and France have proved to be safe. No 3 eye fish yet. It's being compared to coal because coal has proved to be an economical way to create electricity.