Sunday, February 1, 2015

SURVEY: MAJORITY OF SCIENTISTS OPPOSE EXPANDED USE OF FRACKING







 

SURVEY: MAJORITY OF SCIENTISTS OPPOSE EXPANDED USE OF FRACKING



AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

A fracking site in Colorado. The majority of scientists surveyed by the Pew Research Center oppose the expanded use of fracking.

A new survey out this week from the Pew Research Center finds scientists have a more negative view of fracking than the general public.

Among scientists, 31 percent favor the increased use of fracking, while a majority– 66 percent– are opposed. The general public is slightly more positive, 39 percent of adults favor it, while about half (51 percent) are opposed.
The phone survey included 2,002 adults nationwide, as well as 3,748 U.S.-based members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society.

The scientists’ views about fracking vary across different disciplines. More than half of the engineers surveyed support more fracking (53 percent), while just 25 percent to scientists in the biological and medical fields favor it. Earth scientists fall in the middle– 42 percent favor it.


                           Courtesy: Pew Research Center

The survey reveals other divides between scientists and the public on energy issues. About half the public attributes climate change to human activity, compared to 87 percent of scientists.

Less than half the public supports building more nuclear power plants (45 percent) while 65 percent of scientists favor doing so.

The public is more likely to support increased offshore drilling (52 percent), while scientists are less enthusiastic– only 32 percent favor expanding it.

We believe that hydraulic fracturing has a certain place in the oil and gas field.  We have been using fracking for many-many years and it is not a new technology.  But many of its side effects (other than producing oil and gas) have not been well thought or fully accounted:  the staggering (and completely unacceptable) death toll due to truck traffic accidents, the noise issues, othe nuisance issues, the potential health issues associated with frac sand (almost all of it being crystalline silica sand, a proven lung carcinogen), diesel exhausts, gas emissions, the usability of the land after fracking has stopped, and so on.

If all these impacts are fully and properly accounted for, we believe that this method will be reduced or adjusted for.