I think "fracking" is short for "hydraulic fracturing", which is a risky way to get natural gas from deep underground. Many in the oil & gas industry love it because they can make money from it, while suffering the bad side effects no more than the rest of us who make no money from fracking.

what the frack is going on in this thread?

Put up or shut up! OK, I admit that I am Willard Mitt Romney. And no, I will not release my taxes.

Skipping over a bit because OP is lololololol, but:

Pros
1) gets natural gas, lowers CO2 emissions and is cleaner
2) gives us cheap energy

The earthquake and environmental concerns are overstated (although one more than the other)

Okay, that sounds bad.

Excellent post!

Pros: Cheap energy is great, as long as the external costs are low enough. Lowering CO2 emissions and being cleaner (than what?) are both wonderful, too. Any earthquake or environmental concerns are unlikely to be as harmful as global warming. Which of the 2 concerns do you think is more over-stated?

Cons: On the other hand, we cannot trust the oil and gas industry. Maybe my biggest concern is that when we pull these massive amounts of fossil fuels out of the ground and send them into the atmosphere, it will greatly worsen global warming. A related concern is that while many other nations are correctly pursuing greener energy, we are procrastinating while making global warming worse.

YQuite frankly, I don't think that we currently know enough to do a proper cost/benefit analysis of fracking...

Burning natural gas does emit greenhouse gasses, but not as much as burning coal (IIRC, you get an equivalent amount of energy for about 1/3 of the emissions). Coal mining can cause erosion, toxic dust, and requires miners to spend significant amounts of time in dangerous conditions underground. Oil can be spilled during drilling or transit. Nuclear powerplants can melt down (oh, and uranium has to be mined). Solar and wind energy have not yet been shown to be scalable enough to replace fossil fuels.

So, really, it comes down to an assessment of how big the earthquake and environmental risks truly are. And I think that a fair bit of skepticism wrt the assurances of the businesses that benefit from the fracking is justified. I'm definitely interested in more independent studies of aquifers located close to fracking sites and perhaps some restrictions on the types of chemicals that could be used, or the areas where fracking could take place... Oh, and energy conservation is probably a good thing.

I don't often agree with ikes, and I'm not totally sold on the benefits of fracking, but there's little to argue with here.

We can use the gas to heat our homes and cook our food?

OP, a lot of the things you listed as Cons are merely a fracking company who makes mistakes. They get punished for those in some ways.

Fracking itself doesn't cause what you listed, only poor use of machinery, poor planning, etc.

Laaaaaaaaand Shaaaaaaaaaark!!

(I just wanted to be first since it appears Land Shark is the new SteeeeeeeeelHouse!!)

Can you provide any evidence that this is true? I'd be very interested to read some.

In terms of earthquakes here's a recent paper from (I think) a neutral source.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13355&page=1

It's 300 pages, so I didn't read the whole thing. The exec summary suggests that the earthquake "issue" is way overstated by some.

Here's how I see it:

Natural gas > coal

I think it emits about 50% as much CO2 as coal when burned. However, some life cycle assessments of natural gas have it's total GHG footprint as high as something like coal, as a lot of methane is released during the fracking & extraction process.

It's nice we have a lot in the USA. I've read a few different claims on how much supply we have here. From just a decade or two to a hundred years. Not sure.

How destructive it is on the environment, again I've read many different things. I think the process of drilling into the earth and injecting a chemically-laden substance would probably have some serious side effects and I would not enjoy having a well that draws from an aquifer nearby a drilling site.

I hope natural gas is used and thought of as a bridge fuel as we try to move into a society where we almost entirely rely on renewables. Global warming is real folks and we are definitely leaving a ****ed up world for future generations.

I think peak oil will wreak havoc on our economy in the coming decades and coal is just terribad so natural gas is probably the only real choice.

P.S. Just to add a con to fracking -- it uses a lot of water. Not great in intense droughts, which will be a more frequent byproduct of climate change:

Drought strains U.S. Oil Production

Good analysis of the pros and cons. It looks like it is a massive money making resource that we are going to get at some way or another. But we should probably cool are **** and use proper regulations to keep it safe since it can do some of the negative things Lank shark said.