Hydrofracking

[Fawkes]

There's a lot of debate going on in NY right now about fracking, and to be completely honest, I know nothing about it.

All my attempts at learning more about it have led me either to articles posted by natural gas companies or by environmental groups. I know that there is no such thing as "unbiased", but does anyone know of any good resources for learning more that are at least slightly more balanced than the two aforementioned groups? It's like learning about factory farming from Perdue and PETA.

[#FF0000]

I usually trust ScienceDaily as a source for these things. They're a very "just-the-facts" sort of source. In fact I don't know what they say about fracking -- though I know they have a lot of articles about it.

[Blake's Baby]

No in the end there are no unbiased sources, but as #FF0000 says, science journals with peer-review (not ones paid for by the gas companies or the envorenmental pressure groups) are your best source.

Or the BBC of course (evil government mouthpiece - booo! - and nationalised news organisation - hurrah! if you like that sort of thing - as it may be).

There were a couple of earthquakes in NW England last year (I think) which were directly linked to fracking in the official report.

Here's a link I found by googling 'Blackpool fracking earthquakes' - I'm sure you could find more (Blackpool is a town on the NW coast near Liverpool and Manchester, and close to the fracking zone):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9207396/Fracking-caused-Blackpool-earthquakes-QandA.html#

Of course the Telegraph is one of the (probably the) most establishment papers in Britain. It may not be entirely bias free. But it does report that the official report blamed the fracking for the earthquakes.

[Klaatu]

There has been concern that natural gas derived from fracking may contain (in some cases) deadly radioactive radon gas.