Mistaken fracking

The general impression is that nobody cares about what goes on under the ground and that the matter is a ‘manufactured’ issue, promoted by those who have no viable argument against fracking but who are seeking to obstruct it, any which way, including the dissemination of studious amounts of misinformation.

In North America, rather than being ‘beset by problems’, there, fracking has been an unalloyed success, with the authorities moving quickly and effectively to shut down any sites looking likely to cause pollution, and this happens very infrequently.

Here, with regard to causing earthquakes from geological faults, a mandatory legal prerequisite is a comprehensive geophysical survey of the area, prior to fracking, and if this outlines the presence of a ‘fault’, then fracking is banned from taking place in that zone.

The inference, also wrong, about fiery lavatory-pans, belies the fact that due to the ‘proliferation’ of methane, this has been a feature in North America ever since they started installing ‘running water’ systems 150 years ago. ‘Dragon’s breath’ water faucets also.

Also, they do not understand the ‘Richter scale’, where 2.9 is a tremor, not an earthquake. On the RS, earthquakes (minor ones) start registering above 4.0.

Finally, it is difficult to understand the mentality which says “fracking bad, wind turbines good”, when wind turbines can only produce electricity 90 days a year, statistically 25 per cent of their ‘rated’ output, but because of other practical constraints is actually unlikely to exceed 16 per cent of the r.o. – so, if not from fracking, what other clean, reliable medium is going to generate the outstanding 84 per cent void in requirement for electricity?

Recent events in the east of Ukraine show the serious danger in not being fully selfsufficient in the generation of reliable ambient supply of electricity.

Paddy Keenan, of Ward Close, Andover