For the umpteenth time: I did not say I was supporting it - I didn’t make a mistake because I didn’t, not once, say it. Why is that so hard for you grasp?
Sitting on the fence is the wisest thing to do when you don’t have all the facts to make an informed decision. Going with knee-jerk, sensationalist responses so you have something to gripe about now that, imo, is much, much worse: that’s how terrible mistakes are made.
For the record - I can take as long as I like to make up my mind as the decision from initial to final will not be down to me. I fear you give me too much credit for having any influence on most matters.
‘Oh dear me look at all the mess. Just wish I had said something sooner. Oh well tis just one of those things. Oh nice the ‘Sound of Music’ is on the TV. La de da de da’.
Whatever he’s on - I’ll have some too; escapism sounds wonderful.
Are you a big fan of the Sound of Music by the way? Then again possibly Ausie films might be more your taste, you know the one’s that have an ostrich or 2 in em - oh and lots of sand ;-).
Come on, you know what I mean. Sitting on the fence when all around you is getting destroyed is akin to an ostrich burying it’s head in the sand. Pretty good allegory is you ask me :-D.
So we have to make decisions based on what ? because I don’t see much that makes me think we know anything about this subject really. But we have now to make a decision on the flimsiest bits of evidence. Not very scientific but definitely how environmentalists seem to carry on.
Sometimes it’s nice up here on the fence - you get a better view, time to absorb what’s going on around you without getting caught up in the flurry of unguided (and often uninformed) frenzied arguments and action that could, once more information is known, be totally the wrong thing to have done.
Come on Mark, hop up here and have a ponder before you make decisions based on limited facts ;-)
But you are missing the point. Fracking IS being carried out so the fracking companies have made their decision already. They are hell bent on using fracking and to hell with the consequences. You can sit on the fence and wait to see the results and if catastrophic you can gloat that it was wrong to use it after all.
The water brought in is mixed with sand and chemicals to create fracking fluid. Approximately 40,000 gallons of chemicals are used per fracturing.
Fracking Fluid
Up to 600 chemicals are used in fracking fluid, including known carcinogens and toxins such as… lead, uranium, mercury, ethylene glycol, radium, methanol, hydrochloric acid, formaldehyde.
US Gas Wells need
72 trillion gallons of water
and 360 billion gallons of chemicals
Only 30-50% of the fracturing fluid is recovered, the rest of the toxic fluid is left in the ground and is not biodegradable.
I can’t be bothered to answer each one in detail but I will say that lead, uranium, mercury, ethylene glycol, radium, methanol, hydrochloric acid, formaldehyde are already in use in various manufacturing processes and we are already exposed to many of those elements because they occur naturally. I don’t imagine that the industries will deliberately poison people - why would they? They would soon go out of business if that proved to be the case and who would hire them after that? It would be professional suicide to be so careless.
Only 30-50% of the fracturing fluid is recovered, the rest of the toxic fluid is left in the ground and is not biodegradable.
But those elements come from the ground anyway and already occur naturally in rivers and the sea.
As I have said, I am not an expert and I’m not in a position to make informed decisions about whether these companies will handle this professionally or not.
However, I have no desire to turn into a ‘Chicken Little’ and run around proclaiming that the sky is about to fall in!
I’m with you on this one we need to know more and we may need to try it out to see if it works because things rarely seem to work in life like they do on paper.
It is no wonder we are against most of these projects!
If you live in the USA, and they find something under your land, it belongs to you, but over here the rich purloin the profits.
Karen darlin’ I think I.o.M is geologically speaking predominantly Igneous rock like Granite. Here in the South East, (Balcombe) we are living on the top of chalk. As a consequence the water aquafiers extract water straight from the chalk. If Fracking allows all those poisonous chemicals into the chalk and it seeps into the aquafiers then we could be drinking poisoned water - hence one of the limbs of my own opposition to ‘Fracking’ per se.
Especially as she refused to do what the police told her to, nothing invites arrest as quickly as that on a protest, well that and knocking a policeman’s hat off
From what I saw on the news, the protest wasn’t particularly peaceful and law-abiding and they openly stated (the protesters) that they are going to up their game to prevent drilling; so if arrests happened, they only have themselves to blame - even some of the locals said they didn’t mind the protest if it remained a peaceful one but it didn’t so some of the locals declined to support the protesters.
