Next Up on the Fracking Fear-Mongering List: Earthquakes!

Environmentalists have failed with every specious charge brought forth against fracking, with fear-mongering fallacies consistently flying in the face of the evidence to the contrary.  Now they are claiming that fracking is a criminal activity due to the potential of natural gas drilling to cause earthquakes.

Earthquakes?  Really, linking seismic events to fracking is outright laughable.

Disingenuous information is the real criminal activity in this saga.  Fracking's latest misinformation tour is being castigated by a celebrity clown car chugging through the hills of Scranton, Pennsylvania, carrying 30,000 pounds of frack-a-phobic bananas (apologies to the late Harry Chapin).  This Landship of Fools should hook up the onboard hookah to the tail pipe of their fossil fuel-burning bandwagon for a real chemical cocktail; perhaps sampling the BTEX compounds spewing from the diesel exhaust might foster an epiphany.  Inhaling one breath of diesel exhaust would expose them to thousands of times more damaging chemicals than one would ingest living his entire life in the shadow of a natural gas well -- and it would be about as likely as fracking to cause an earthquake.

Durham University released a study proving that fracking is insignificant when it comes to earthquakes.  According to Professor Richard Davies of the Durham Energy Institute:

We have examined not just fracking-related occurrences but all induced earthquakes -- that is, those caused by human activity -- since 1929. It is worth bearing in mind that other industrial-scale processes can trigger earthquakes including mining, filling reservoirs with water and the production of oil and gas. Even one of our cleanest forms of energy, geothermal, has some form in this respect[.]

In almost all cases, the seismic events caused by hydraulic fracturing have been undetectable other than by geoscientists. It is also low compared to other manmade triggers. Earthquakes caused by mining can range from a magnitude of 1.6 to 5.6, reservoir-filling from 2.0 to 7.9 and waste disposal from 2.0 to 5.7.

Fracking activities release an amount of energy that is equivalent to or even less than someone jumping off a ladder onto the floor.

Environmentalists seem to welcome any fraudulent data supporting the agenda, like the once-celebrated global warming hockey stick graph.  The eco-avenger mantra: we call 'em like we want to see 'em...and if we don't see 'em, we just make 'em up!

Comparing the notion that a man jumping off a ladder can trigger an earthquake to actual historical evidence makes this claim hysterically funny.

Why?  Because not even a nuclear bomb can trigger an earthquake!

With all of the activity at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s and '60s, you'd expect California to drop into the ocean.  Yet dozens of nuclear bombs did not cause any earthquakes on the San Andreas fault.

There is even documented proof of government experiments where nuclear bombs were used in an attempt to trigger earthquakes.

On January 19, 1968, a thermonuclear test, code-named Faultless, took place in central Nevada.  Seismograph records showed that the waves produced by the fault movement were much less energetic than those produced directly by the nuclear bomb.

Posibly the DOE should have tested a more active fault.  So the feds conducted nuclear bomb tests in Alaska in an attempt to generate a seismic event in one of the most active seismic zones in the world.  Again, no earthquake happened. 

The largest underground thermonuclear tests conducted by the United States were detonated in Amchitka at the western end of the Aleutian Islands, including a 5-megaton test named Cannikin detonated on November 6, 1971.  Good news: the project failed to trigger any earthquakes.

USGS and DOE scientists agree that even large nuclear explosions have little effect on seismicity outside the area of the blast itself.

Yet, without any scientific basis whatsoever, the anti-fracking lobby will still conjure up images of cataclysmic earthquakes to further their cause.

How do these eco-avengers live with themselves, knowing that their only accomplishment is hurting poor children and low-income households by driving up the cost of energy?

But fear not! Celebrity publicity hounds and Fractivists, you can still take a stand against fracking.  Teach the evil energy-for-profit corporations a lesson; be the first on your block to cease using fracked natural gas.  Follow this simple example from PG&E: locate your gas meter, turn off the gas main, and then padlock the valve!  That action will bring more natural gas into the homes of single moms, fixed-income seniors, and the poor, and at a lower price today than it was over a decade ago.

Once again, "drill here, drill now" will work just fine.  It already has for natural gas.

Alan Aszkler (alanaszkler@gmail.com) is a Polish-American conservative and frequent contributor to American Thinker.  He has been interviewed on national syndicated talk radio for works published here.

Environmentalists have failed with every specious charge brought forth against fracking, with fear-mongering fallacies consistently flying in the face of the evidence to the contrary.  Now they are claiming that fracking is a criminal activity due to the potential of natural gas drilling to cause earthquakes.

Earthquakes?  Really, linking seismic events to fracking is outright laughable.

Disingenuous information is the real criminal activity in this saga.  Fracking's latest misinformation tour is being castigated by a celebrity clown car chugging through the hills of Scranton, Pennsylvania, carrying 30,000 pounds of frack-a-phobic bananas (apologies to the late Harry Chapin).  This Landship of Fools should hook up the onboard hookah to the tail pipe of their fossil fuel-burning bandwagon for a real chemical cocktail; perhaps sampling the BTEX compounds spewing from the diesel exhaust might foster an epiphany.  Inhaling one breath of diesel exhaust would expose them to thousands of times more damaging chemicals than one would ingest living his entire life in the shadow of a natural gas well -- and it would be about as likely as fracking to cause an earthquake.

Durham University released a study proving that fracking is insignificant when it comes to earthquakes.  According to Professor Richard Davies of the Durham Energy Institute:

We have examined not just fracking-related occurrences but all induced earthquakes -- that is, those caused by human activity -- since 1929. It is worth bearing in mind that other industrial-scale processes can trigger earthquakes including mining, filling reservoirs with water and the production of oil and gas. Even one of our cleanest forms of energy, geothermal, has some form in this respect[.]

In almost all cases, the seismic events caused by hydraulic fracturing have been undetectable other than by geoscientists. It is also low compared to other manmade triggers. Earthquakes caused by mining can range from a magnitude of 1.6 to 5.6, reservoir-filling from 2.0 to 7.9 and waste disposal from 2.0 to 5.7.

Fracking activities release an amount of energy that is equivalent to or even less than someone jumping off a ladder onto the floor.

Environmentalists seem to welcome any fraudulent data supporting the agenda, like the once-celebrated global warming hockey stick graph.  The eco-avenger mantra: we call 'em like we want to see 'em...and if we don't see 'em, we just make 'em up!

Comparing the notion that a man jumping off a ladder can trigger an earthquake to actual historical evidence makes this claim hysterically funny.

Why?  Because not even a nuclear bomb can trigger an earthquake!

With all of the activity at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s and '60s, you'd expect California to drop into the ocean.  Yet dozens of nuclear bombs did not cause any earthquakes on the San Andreas fault.

There is even documented proof of government experiments where nuclear bombs were used in an attempt to trigger earthquakes.

On January 19, 1968, a thermonuclear test, code-named Faultless, took place in central Nevada.  Seismograph records showed that the waves produced by the fault movement were much less energetic than those produced directly by the nuclear bomb.

Posibly the DOE should have tested a more active fault.  So the feds conducted nuclear bomb tests in Alaska in an attempt to generate a seismic event in one of the most active seismic zones in the world.  Again, no earthquake happened. 

The largest underground thermonuclear tests conducted by the United States were detonated in Amchitka at the western end of the Aleutian Islands, including a 5-megaton test named Cannikin detonated on November 6, 1971.  Good news: the project failed to trigger any earthquakes.

USGS and DOE scientists agree that even large nuclear explosions have little effect on seismicity outside the area of the blast itself.

Yet, without any scientific basis whatsoever, the anti-fracking lobby will still conjure up images of cataclysmic earthquakes to further their cause.

How do these eco-avengers live with themselves, knowing that their only accomplishment is hurting poor children and low-income households by driving up the cost of energy?

But fear not! Celebrity publicity hounds and Fractivists, you can still take a stand against fracking.  Teach the evil energy-for-profit corporations a lesson; be the first on your block to cease using fracked natural gas.  Follow this simple example from PG&E: locate your gas meter, turn off the gas main, and then padlock the valve!  That action will bring more natural gas into the homes of single moms, fixed-income seniors, and the poor, and at a lower price today than it was over a decade ago.

Once again, "drill here, drill now" will work just fine.  It already has for natural gas.

Alan Aszkler (alanaszkler@gmail.com) is a Polish-American conservative and frequent contributor to American Thinker.  He has been interviewed on national syndicated talk radio for works published here.