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Well fuck our planet

thoughts on this video.

Oh wait, we're talking about a different kind of fracking.

huh a fracking thread.

This became a big deal in my area of Ohio about a year ago when operations caused a 4. something earthquake. Scared the shit out of me and may have been what fucked up our plumbing. Assholes came on the news and said "hurr fraken dun cause earthqukes it's bringing jerrrbs to the valley" even though earthquakes of that intensity are pretty rare in Ohio.

People were furious and they had to stop around where I live but unfortunately they're still active in other places. Fuck fracking.

WALL OF TEXT INCOMING
The thing with fracking is that it often gets maligned. My point is, at its core, it's an ingenius method to increase the amount of usable fuel humanity has at its disposal; a fracking operation doesn't take up that much space, and it can provide access to fuel that would be completely unavailable without it. Most of the oil drilling going on in the world today is classified as fracking. (Not to mention it's several THOUSAND times better than the oil sands we have in Alberta, which I'm pretty sure is one of the worst things that's ever happened to our world's environment."
HOWEVER.
I'm not denying the issues, as the video above demonstrates. Fracking has caused water pollution almost everywhere it's been used, and it's even been known to cause earthquakes in areas that aren't geologically stable enough to support the process. But we also need to realize that these are issues with the execution by the companies, NOT the process itself. Most of the water pollution comes from two primary issues: well construction and wastewater disposal. Assuming that the companies would properly maintain the wells and treat the water they way they should, there wouldn't be an issue. However, fuel companies are well-known for their tendencies to cut corners, and doing everything properly is entirely possible but expensive, which is why the pollution happens.
TL;DR: Don't blame the process, blame the companies for cutting corners.

The last thing we need is more goddamn fossil fuel sources.

I love fracking. It's one of the few times I can think of that the government has actually done something useful with the billions of dollars we dump into it (the process was developed by the Dept. of Energy). There are, of course, some concerns about water usage and the contamination of the water, but proper safety regulations and enforcement of those regulations will reduce the negative impacts.

Earthquakes? No. The amount of energy an earthquake releases is massive --even for a small one. We're talking several nuclear bombs worth of energy. Drilling a hole into the ground and pumping water into the hole isn't going to be able to release that energy. What's happening is a classic case of >implying causation. They see fracking, and then they see an earthquake and they come to the conclusion one caused the other. What really happened is a fault built up so much stress it finally slipped, and people just happened to be drilling a hole in the ground at the same time.

I have a question for the environmentalists: What exactly are our options? We can't frack, cause that causes water pollution, we can't use fossil fuels because the sea level will rise a tenth of a centimeter every year, we can't use nuclear power because of radiation, we can't use dams because the salmon will get butthurt. I hate to break it to them, but solar and wind just isn't going to cut it (even then, some are saying we can't use wind because of the stupid eagles that fly into the damn things). Our energy needs are huge and neither of those will make it--not only because they provide a fraction of the power, but because they don't operate continually due to being reliant on conditions beyond our control. This means we need batteries using technology we don't have in order to prevent blackouts. I applaud your desire for a cleaner planet, but you gotta be realistic. If you don't want fossil fuels, then nuclear really is the only alternative at this time, because, as they said in the sixties, fusion's still fifty years away.

@xTSGx

the concept of CO2 being a pollutant is still being debated, so therefore I ant siding if climate change is real or not, I'm more neutral on that topic

But I still agree that we need more clean alternate and efficient sources of energy

Fracking is heavily objected against in this side of the planet.

People have seen the insane amount of geological damage it can do and don't want it anywhere near our pristine environment. Our economy rely's heavily on our coastlines remaining intact (which is where the fossil fuels are here). Fracking promises to improving one corner of our economy at the huge risk of ruining the other

People complain that solar and wind isn't going to cut it? Well I'd rather see all our money spent on making solar panels more efficient that continuing to rip our planet up trying to get at finite, unsustainable resources

This. No point in continuous use of such harmful fossil fuels to power us through the next millennium when we'll just have killed ourselves off by then due to said use of fuels.
Solar and wind isn't going to cut it? That's because solar and wind isn't an already established trillion-dollar market with corrupt CEOs to bribe lawmakers into allowing for more and more development of their markets. This is why Exxon and Shell go into universities and snatch up any promising environmental scientists they can find who will say that oil does no bad provided they get a secure job out of it. This is why so little money is put into renewable resources that could be far better than they are now, providing the powers that be aren't there to stop them. Because they see this alternative energy source as a threat to their millions. They don't care that they are letting the world slowly, or perhaps not so slowly, die since they're all 80+ and won't be around to experience it.
And that was your highly-liberal-Madisonian-88-square-miles-surrounded-by-reality take on it. For more information on the subject, look up our recent mining bill debacle. Unchecked corruption, irreversible damage and serious health concerns, all for the sake of some trivial amount of taconite.
Oh, yeah, as for the bird thing. That's because people set up wind turbines all willy-nilly and ended up having them right in the birds migration paths. All we have to do to avoid that is look up where the birds go and build around that. Nothing too complex there.

Fracking is like digging a big hole in the ground and shoving 100,000 penises in it.

The problem right now is that our society is too far away from being able to use sustainable sources of energy (read: "green" power) in such a way that it produces an amount of energy that can compare to what we use on a daily basis. We're getting there, but until we do, we'll always be reliant on fossil fuels. I'm not saying that we're never going to get there, but the simple facct of the matter is that the technology isn't far enough along in its development to allow that yet. There are too many hurdles for the production of sustainable energy on a large, commercial scale, which is really all that power companies give a shit about.
Personally, I think that it'll come not in the form of wind or solar energy (although people will have that for their own, personal use) but as nuclear fusion. Technology is well on its way, and scientists have finally been able to produce a meaningful amount of energy using it. Not enough quite yet, but we'll get there.