The impact of fracking on global warming has included water contamination from chemicals and methane leaks, according to opponents. Advocates of fracking say the process of hydraulic fracturing has advantages to help the environment.
Here are 10 quotes from the heated debate in using fracking for energy sources:
1. The public makes its choices, based on information from both sides. The drop in gas prices beginning in 2014 encouraged
Rob Wile to declare, "Fracking has won," in a column for Business Insider.
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"Either way, as long as the booms are able to last, the country seems to have decided that it is willing to tolerate their local impacts for their apparent greater benefit," he writes.
2. However, a
March 2015 editorial in The Baltimore Sun put safety first:
"With fracking comes the headaches common to the recent natural gas boon — contamination of local wells, 24/7 heavy truck traffic, quantities of toxic waste that must be contained and disposed, and increased exposure to air pollution."
Studies have suggested that fracking produces abundant natural gas, so it will cause people to burn more fuel.
3. "Society is certain to extract more gas and oil due to fracking," said environmental scientist Robert Jackson of Stanford University,
according to Nature World News. "The key is to reduce the environmental costs as much as possible, while making the most of the environmental benefits."
4. "Abundant gas might make climate policy easier by making backing (away from) coal less costly, especially in the short run," says John Weyant, professor of management science and engineering at Stanford. "So abundant gas may get you on your way to a low greenhouse gas future but is extremely unlikely get you all the way there."
5. "We still get some reduction in (greenhouse gas) emissions, but one more effect is the first rule economics: If things are cheap, people will consume more," stated scientist Haewon McJeon, lead author of the international study,
according to Discovery News.
6. Steven Davis and Christine Shearer of the University of California, Irvine wrote in a comment
article for Nature, "In the absence of new climate policies, increased supplies of natural gas could actually delay decarbonization of the global energy system."
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7. "The United States is now the largest natural-gas producer in the world," Stephen Moore, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation,
wrote in The Washington Times in September 2014.
"As America has produced more natural gas, we have shifted away from coal. This, according to the Energy Information Administration, accounts for more than 60 percent of the carbon-dioxide emission reductions in the United States."
However, fracking's impact on global warming continues.
8. "In short, fracking speeds up human-caused climate change, thanks to methane leaks alone," noted Joe Romm,
founding editor of Climate Progress.
"So even small leaks in the natural gas production and delivery system can have a large climate impact — enough to gut the entire benefit of switching from coal-fired power to gas."
9. "The shale gas revolution can be very consistent with low-carbon development — that is quite clear. It can be very helpful as a bridge technology," says Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, according to the Daily Mail.
10. "Scientists have found that inherent in the fracking process is the release of large quantities of methane, which is at least 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a cause of climate change,"
writes Daniel Jacobson, state director of Environment California, reports The Sacramento Bee.
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