[bitteralmond]

For anyone interested, I'd recommend Gasland.

http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/

This "new" evidence of contamination will not end it. People will be paid in quiet settlements, sell their houses at a fraction of what they paid for them, and move somewhere else. This will probably continue until the oil/bitumen/gas is gone.

[thatswrong0]

I would not. If you're going to watch Gasland, then you also need to read the opposing side. There are some parts of it that are incredibly misleading, such as the tap water on fire.

http://energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Debunkin...

http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2011/08/01/gasla...

Edit: Admittedly, these sources suck. Here's a NYTimes article that should hopefully be more palatable:

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/02/24/24greenwire-groundtr...

[kaonashi]

The 'opposing side' is the PR shills hired by the gas industry (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alyssa-carducci/2a/148/889) (http://heartland.org/alyssa-carducci) (http://energyindepth.org/about/).

"Government Relations" is a nice euphemism for propagandist.

In 50 years when the Midwest is a toxic wasteland, many of those responsible might be able to move to Dubai, but our children and grandchildren are going to have to somehow live in it.

[thatswrong0]

There's also a rebuttal to the debunking pdf:

https://1trickpony.cachefly.net/gas/pdf/Affirming_Gasland_Se...

[hearty778]

Number of deaths caused by contaminated groundwater due to fracking: ____?

[kaonashi]

Extremely loaded question. There's a documented increase in pollution, but trying to tie specific deaths to the increase is extremely difficult. We're talking about macro effects, not micro effects; so e.g. cancer deaths might increase by 20% or so, but cancer existed before the increase and will continue exist if fracking is stopped.

[Pxtl]

When the "opposing side" (the heartland institute) also deny the existence of global warming and second-hand smoke, I think your choice of references does more to harm that viewpoint than support it.

[thatswrong0]

It was a news article. I just grabbed the first relevant link pertaining to "gasland tap water fire". Because I apparently was using the wrong keywords: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasland#Negative

> In an article for Forbes magazine, Dr. Michael Economides, a professor of engineering at the University of Houston, commented on the Gasland scene of "a man lighting his faucet water on fire and making the ridiculous claim that natural gas drilling is responsible for the incident. The clip, though attention-getting, is wildly inaccurate and irresponsible. To begin with, the vertical depth separation between drinking water aquifers and reservoir targets for gas production is several thousand feet of impermeable rock. Any interchange between the two, if it were possible, would have happened already in geologic time, measured in tens of millions of years, not in recent history."

[rayiner]

> To begin with, the vertical depth separation between drinking water aquifers and reservoir targets for gas production is several thousand feet of impermeable rock.

Impermeable except for, you know, the several thousand foot long shafts that are drilled through that rock in the process of fraking.

[johnward]

>To begin with, the vertical depth separation between drinking water aquifers and reservoir targets for gas production is several thousand feet of impermeable rock. Any interchange between the two, if it were possible, would have happened already in geologic time, measured in tens of millions of years, not in recent history

It is true that drink wells are ~100 feet and these fracking wells are thousands of feet deep but I'm not sure that completely rules out the possibility of gas escaping a well and making it into drinking water.

[justin66]

Without having seen Gasland, my impression is that if it's the "opposing side" of those websites, it must be a work of genius. If JimmaDaRustia wept for humanity after seeing Gasland, well, I do the same when I see how easily people are manipulated by really dumb political lobbying materials.

[falk]

It's worth pointing out that the author of that New York Times article, Mike Soraghan, has in his Twitter bio "Frac(k)ing is my life" and that he links to the same articles you linked to.

https://twitter.com/MikeSoraghan

[specialist]

What level of proof do you require to believe that fracking very often contaminates ground water?

[thatswrong0]

Loaded question.

[JimmaDaRustla]

This was on TV one day, I had no intention of watching anything that day. 2 hours later...I'm sitting there weeping for humanity. Not literally, but I definitely recommend this movie to those interested. I can't make any recommendation to credibility, but I assure you that you won't come away with any positive outlook on fracking.

[tls]

Might I suggest you watch Fracknation.

[malyk]

Also Gasland 2 which recently came out on HBO.