To be angry fracking ban has been lifted despite Tory manifesto promise?

[carefullycourageous]

I am so annoyed the ban on fracking has been lifted with no real discussion, even though the Tories promised in their manifesto they wouldn't allow it unless it was proven safe. No proof has been published.

Experts say it will not help us with our energy bills, just result in pollution and more profits for energy companies.

for Liz Truss!

YABU: I'm fine with fracking, who needs clean water anyway?
YANBU: I'm annoyed the ban has been reversed

And the site in the South Downs, between Chichester and Bognor, and the North Downs, in West Surrey. There are a couple on the Isle of Wight, too.

Hopefully the Tory voters in these safe Tory seats will be sufficiently pissed off to do something really radical like vote Lib Dem.

Saying gas is better than coal because it creates less CO2 is like saying chucking my rubbish out the car window is ok because it's better than fly tipping. They are both irresponsible and damaging to the environment

It’s also better for local air quality, which matters a lot when you don’t have it.

Renewables can’t power a modern economy (well, hydro is the exception). People keep talking about peak oil but we keep getting better at extraction and opening up more places for exploration.

tbh a fleet of modern nuclear would be the best option but loads of people are really against that too for whatever reason.

Renewables can power a modern economy - that's not the problem.

It is not the very short term cheapest - we need investments now for gain later

It is the cheapest for us in the medium term - our energy costs would be much higher if we didn't have so much resilience ( and even before this crisis out renewables were the cheap bit £

At the moment we need all the energy we can get. Fracking is one source. They do it in America with little inconvenience and it is a great source of energy.

I can’t understand why you believe this at all given the evidence of the devastation fracking has done to the areas in Canada and the US.

Results of 1 spill:
1,400 barrels of fracking slurry mixed with crude oil had drained off the wellsite owned by Enduring Resources and into a snow-filled wash. From there, that slurry – nearly 59,000 gallons – flowed more than a mile downstream toward Chaco Culture national historical park before leaching into the stream bed over the next few days and disappearing from view. The rolling, high-desert landscape where this happened is Navajo Nation off-reservation trust land, in rural Sandoval county, New Mexico. Then three days after the spill, something ignited and exploded 2,100 feet away on another wellsite owned by Enduring Resources, starting a fire that took local firefighters more than an hour to put out.
The two accidents account for just 1% of oil- and gas-related incidents in north-western New Mexico in 2019, according to statistics kept by the New Mexico oil conservation division (OCD). Since those two, there have been another 317 accidents in the region as of 29 March, including oil spills, fires, blowouts and gas releases.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/04/navajo-nation-fracking

It takes about three to five days to create a fracking well. Most will produce gas or oil for two to four decades. Source: Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development

Fracking produces 30 percent to 100 percent more methane emissions than traditional natural gas wells, according to researchers at Cornell University. The heat-trapping gas is a major contributor to global climate change.
Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology, told the Cornell Chronicle that the main takeaway from his research is that if you project forward 20 years, gas production from shale is “worse than conventional gas and is, in fact, worse than coal and worse than oil.” Howarth advised that renewable energy is the only good option.
Source: Climatic Change journal

According to an Environmental Protection Agency analysis, 173 chemicals used in fracking are toxic if consumed regularly by mouth.
Source: Environmental Protection Agency

A 2014 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council claims that fracking is contributing to an array of dangerous air pollutants including: Ozone smog, Pollutants, such as formaldehyde, benzene and other toxic hydrocarbons, diesel emissions, and a component of “frac sand,” silica can cause serious lung disease in fracking workers

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health took 116 air samples from 11 fracking sites in five states to see how much silica workers were encountering. Of the samples taken, 47 percent revealed silica exposures larger than the OSHA permissible exposure limit (PEL), and 79 percent exceeded the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommended exposure limit. Unfortunately, the toxic effects of silica dust can take a long time to show up. Acute silicosis, which almost always causes disability and death, usually occurs after several months or years of high exposure to silica. Accelerated silicosis appears within five to 10 years and has the same outcome.

Oklahoma experienced more than 2,400 earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or higher between 2014 and 2017.The Sooner State has surpassed California as the country’s hotbed of earthquake activity.
In 2014, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources concluded that fracking had produced tremors southeast of Cleveland in Poland Township.
Source: Office of the Secretary of Energy & Environment

A 2011 study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives looked at 68 private drinking wells in New York and northeastern Pennsylvania and found elevated levels of methane in those near fracking wells.

Residents of Dimock, Pennsylvania, claimed that their drinking water became contaminated with methane after Cabot Oil & Gas began fracking there in 2007. In some cases, the tap water had so much methane in it that it could be set on fire. Some Pennsylvania residents filed fracking lawsuits, and a jury awarded two families a $4.2 million verdict.

Canadian officials concluded that three earthquakes that occurred in Western Canada in late 2018 were caused by the fracturing process itself. According to Global News, the British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission concluded that the earthquakes, which ranged in magnitude from 3.4 to 4.5, were caused by hydraulic fracturing operations being conducted by the Canadian Natural Resources.

In 2018, Canadian researchers published new findings in Geophysical Research Letters that show that injection-induced earthquakes are more common in areas like northern British Columbia where “tectonic strain rate” is high.

B.C.'s Peace region is experiencing roughly 1,500 small earthquakes a year and most of them are connected to fracking operations, according to a new study.
Researchers set up 15 earthquake detectors around the region and recorded 5,757 tiny earthquakes that were otherwise undetected between 2017 and 2019.
"The vast majority of them seem to be connected with hydraulic fracking operations," said Alessandro Verdecchia, one of the study's lead researchers, during an interview on CBC's Daybreak North. The research was published in the Seismological Research Letters journal in July.

A new study has found homes close to where fracking was used to extract natural gas in British Columbia have higher levels of certain organic pollutants, which may lead to short- and long-term health effects.Elyse Caron-Beaudoin, lead author and a professor in the department of health and society at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, said researchers took water and air samples from the homes of 85 pregnant women in the Peace River area of B.C. for one week. Pregnant women were recruited for the study because of the potential negative health effects of living close to natural gas wells using fracking, including higher rates of pre-term births, low birth weight and heart malformations, she said.Source:Science of the Total Environment

That all sounds utterly appalling and shocking. What is the PM doing? It really , really beggars belief .

Every new day seems to heap more disaster on to us, caused by the decisions this 12 years in charge Government makes.
Also why don't they go to work any more?

I agree the consumption risk to humans of contaminated water is not the primary concern, but it is definitely worth a mention in the context of the environmental damage of fracking. Especially when you consider all our pets and livestock drink the same water we do and many cannot tolerate as much exposure to these chemicals as we can. The fracking solutions with all their chemicals leach into surface reservoirs- which the US & Canada also have. The SW US where fracking occurs do rely a lot on deep water wells, but for Ohio/Pennsylvania the terrain and water systems are very similar to our northwest. Geologically they are the same mountain range of Pangea- now separated by the Atlantic due to continental drift.

Anyway here is a table of the actual toxic chemicals found in 10% or more drinking water disclosures in the US along with the biological impacts to humans from the EPAs executive summary of their focussed report on the impact of fracking to drinking water.
www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-12/documents/hfdwa_executive_summary.pdf

Renewables can power a modern economy - that's not the problem

They demonstrably cannot, unless you are using hydroelectricity, which has killed loads more people than gas or nuclear ever have, btw.

Oh give over with the rubbish

Yes We need storage
We know how to build the storage

Get on with it

How does hydro electricity kill people?

We have a big windfarm off our coast. Way in the distance. I think it looks quite inoffensive at that distance. The problem is the last few years it's been idle so much of the summer and even in the autumn. Our prevailing winds have just vanished. Which is bad for wind farms and makes sailing less interesting.

So we can't rely on it as much as we thought we would.

Now wave power would work here. But the Dutch squashed the last idea because they dredged for our mussels. Well having smashed up our mussel beds they've now buggered off. So it may be considered again

I’m wondering too..all I can think off is burst dams? But such disasters are extremely rare and the death toll while huge on the day, is small when viewed over the span of years or decades when compared to deaths from gas explosions/leaks and deaths linked to gas impacts on air quality and climate change. I would tend to agree that hydro-electric might have killed more people than nuclear has to date as nuclear is extremely safe but then again there are far fewer nuclear plants than hydro-electric so it may not be fewer if you do the relative statistical analysis on a deaths per plant or deaths per KWH produced basis.

How does hydro electricity kill people?

Banqiao Dam broke, killing tens of thousands of people in the 1970s. While we would hope that Three Gorges Dam won’t eventually suffer that fate, the potential is there (not to mention the ecological and cultural damage caused in building the dam, which you need to factor in with effective renewables).

However I understand the need for energy in Chongqing so the risk is probably worth it. But there’s always trade-offs.

(I always compare the Banqiao incident to Chernobyl, nuclear really is so much safer)

And tens of thousands is the conservative estimate—it may have been hundreds of thousands from Banqiao. If Three Gorges collapses, deaths could be well into the millions.

There is no way hydroelectricity will kill more than gas if we look forward 50 years, as climate change has killed plenty and will kill millions.

There are direct deaths and indirect deaths, climate change is going to be pretty apocalyptic globally. Heat, cold, storms, floods all kill, but also the war and famine climate change will bring.

Any shale gas extracted will simply go onto the world energy market at the prevailing price. It won't help any of us struggling with bills.

There won't be enough to impact the overall market price, and the only outcomes will be another private billionaire somewhere, and a damaged environment.

A stupid decision for everyone.

I agree @MintJulia - Truss is using the energy crisis to enrich a few individuals by giving them a licence to trash parts of the country's environment.

It is infuriating both that this is being offered but also that it is being swallowed..

I agree with this. No one wants extra nuclear but there is no other viable option in the medium term. Renewables are too weak and unreliable. We should get nuclear up & running which will itself take years but at least we have the technology, whilst also heavily investing in more reliable renewables

For the person recommending hydroelectricity, have you seen what's happening in China? It might work in the sea but China's rivers/reservoirs are drying up so completely that they're running out of hydro power.

There is no way hydroelectricity will kill more than gas if we look forward 50 years, as climate change has killed plenty and will kill millions

No it won’t. Even the IPCC AR5 does not contain such apocalyptic scenarios.

There are direct deaths and indirect deaths, climate change is going to be pretty apocalyptic globally. Heat, cold, storms, floods all kill, but also the war and famine climate change will bring

You do know climate-related deaths have only declined since the Industrial Age, right? Like, better infrastructure always leads to reduced deaths in natural disasters. Look at Bangladesh’s experience if you don’t believe me. To me, the best way to save people is for developing countries to access fossil fuels in abundance and build good, climate-appropriate structures. Death rates would drop markedly.

And guess what? You absolutely must use fossil fuels to build that infrastructure.

YABU for believing the Tories would stick to their manifesto

However YANBU for not wanting fracking to come back, I live about 5 miles from a well, in an old house, and I do worry about the earthquakes starting up again.

100% agree with you OP.

The attention seekers were slow getting this one running, the moratorium was lifted several days ago. Part of the statement also refers to local planning permission processes NOT changing.
The Bollocks about radio-active water pollution is fiction because we don't have any.
The only ingredients used in UK are water and sand from designated sources plus some something like a soap to lower the surface tension of the water.

Nothing goes into the ground without approval from the Environmental Organisation set up to monitor the wells.

It is not uncontrolled and unregulated.

Sometimes people are so far away from each other on the spectrum of opinion it is just not worth discussing. I guess that is me and you.

I think the flooding, heat, cold, famine and war deaths that we know are going to happen, and are already happening, as a result of climate change are more of a pressing concern than the imaginary deaths from this dam possibly breaking, but it probably won't do any good to keep arguing, as I am not advocating for the dam anyway.

I assume you want to freeze this winter? At the moment we have nothing else to heat us.