aaaand ..the state over-rode this towns decision and big oil/gas have begun drilling.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/05/26/local-democracy-squashed-fracking-resume-texas-town

Wow.
Brutal, ballsy, berating of Biggie,
I wonder if mama was fat, would he be,
So quick to pick on another man's issues
Or would he feel badly, and hand him some tissues?
To dry up the tears that another made fall
by saying that he was too big to play ball,
or to feel, or be loved, or to be a real man,
or just sit in the heat without help from a fan.
His rhymes were OK, but the tempo was lacking
Like a long cooling drink, from a well they've been fracking.

I married into an Asian family that run restaurants, are professional bakers, and wow, even the bad cooks can kick my ass in the kitchen. No one I've spoken to in her family has a problem with Panda Express style food ON OCCASION because the horse it's really high but it's so much more comfortable just enjoying food. Go eat a goddamn big mac, but before you take your first bite SAY OUT LOUD, "I'm just a dumb slut living on the planet earth. Eat fuck and shit motherfucker" and then eat the frelling burger. Frack you. It's good, bitch. Just stop lying to yourself, you food slut

And drink a Pabst. Hey. Asshole! Yeah YOU. Not me i know me bad but u worse so you, this I say: Go buy a 6 pack of non-lite budweiser, smoke some shitty weed out of an apple, and proclaim to the sky and no one in particular -- FUCK MY TRADITIONS AND FUCK MY AFFILIATIONS -- I will eat anything that my SLUT taste buds will enjoy. My brain may proclaim "But people and science says" -- SCIENCE and PEOPLE aren't your taste buds, bud(ette). Stop thinking what can create competition and power, the red queen effect its EVERYWHERE. When you think you're making conscious choices about your perception of food matter reacting with your taste buds, in reality your brain is making complex judgements on the world around it, cut throat and always seeking gain. You will seem to just "know" your tastes. Liar. You're competing with your surroundings. Points within time and space colliding and reacting. You don't know the difference between a tastey butt hole and the centerfold back cover of a Mad magazine.

Ok, but, don't always not think. Sometimes you must think and get vaccines and stuff. Do that. Eat orange chicken. Smoke weed. Drink a steel reserve once a month. Then go to a grocery store, buy a bunch of meat and vegetables, and FUCKING COOK BITCH. That's really the only lesson.

If the conversations were like this the entire time they tried to sell things on these types of 24/7 channels, I just might watch them. For the comedy, and to get some of the best fracking video clips in the Universe to play and re-play...

I'd love it if they had to label a really complicated star system that has three stars (two that are satellites--and obviously if this star system existed it would fall apart really fast or if it achieved equilibrium then it still has, as I/you can imagine, amazingly low chances of staying in this semi-stable state; like our own system...which IS falling apart, but it's just doing it at a moderately slow pace); then add in planets revolving around the stars, moons around the planets...and it will become hard to decide what is a satellite or a planet in some instances (as it may count technically as both).

Throw in a large debris field (an asteroid belt, but with "chunks" the size of very large moons--like 1.5x the size of our own Moon) and an Oort Cloud, again with comets that are as big as small moons/satellites and they will literally have no idea how to label anything.

The sad part is that I bet a very large segment of our population would also have the same problems with this task.

Sometimes, it is bad that we have Google...because some people will rely on it too much (especially so if it's students--those going through K-12, or similar setups in whatever country you're reading this from; but, not college...though problems do exist there, but it gets FAR harder to "lie" your way to a degree, etc...). However, if you are older and you use the Internet to look up things you don't know and if you remember any of it--this is when the Internet (or "Google") becomes a great tool and boon for humanity.

Nothing is better than spreading knowledge and wisdom.

I did some research and it looks like there was a rebuttal by the gas industry which was then rebutted by the film makers. This article... http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/02/24/24greenwire-groundtruthing-academy-award-nominee-gasland-33228.html?pagewanted=all explores the main points of contention which to me doesn't prove the gas companies case. They like to say that it's not the fracking process that creates problems, but the well drilling as if they are separate which they are not. The methane in the water they light on fire is said to come from a 50 year old well where the casing failed. The desire to frack is creating the need for more well drilling and increases the number of points where a problem can occur. All of these wells will eventually become 50 years old so there's not much difference in my mind. I agree, we don't have enough data to know how safe it is, but already it doesn't look safe enough to me.

I think there is already evidence of its negative consequences. Check out the movie Gasland. It shows people near a fracking site being able to light the water coming out of their tap on fire. I do agree with your point on the politicizing of this issue (and a million others) and that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. We are too polarized and there's not enough fact seeking and sometimes refusing to believe the facts. I see the companies portraying this as safe trying to set a belief level and that then allows them to be more profitable through the externalities they create, but at the expense of the public. This has been going on forever in almost every industry and is just a normal trait of capitalism. Not to say that is right. Since you're between the two sides, does that make you a shilpie?

I'm not endorsing the practice but I will point out that doing it is the only way we'll discover the long term results.

All I'm trying to say is that once something gets tied up in politics, it's near impossible to learn about it. Once it's political, lines are drawn and people take sides and you're either a shill or a hippie.

I'm from a small town in upstate NY in an area where fracking was to really take root. Fortunately (?) it's just been banned. I would have liked to know what the risks are and their likelihood, at least to the best of our knowledge. I'm sure there are people out there who have this information, but I have no way to identify them.

The shills say it's very safe, but I don't trust them at all. The hippies say it's going to kill us all, but they say the same thing about GMOs. I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but few people are offering nuanced opinions and I can't assume they're correct just because they are.

I have no way of knowing what's true and what's not and it pisses me off a bit.

I have first hand knowledge of oil well drilling and completion, This video depicts the processes used in fracking and you "hippies" are just ganging on a video to shout on your mounds sound bite tripe. The poster seems to have posted it for informative purposes and then you rats come and jump on board. Your informed and honest opinions are misplaced on a good video, downvotes for it are in the range of retarded.

The problem is with the removal of the fracking fluid; when it's brought to the surface, with its chemical load, if it's not treated correctly, it will end up dribbling from the surface back down into the groundwater.
Which sucks.

I rather feel that that puts the argument in a skewed light. Essentially, we are either in full awareness of the facts and long term results of fracking or we are not. If we are not yet, why on earth would we pursue it now? We have alternative forms of energy production, it's just a whole bunch of very rich people aren't quite done selling us oil yet.

The shale will still be there, and we may have developed more efficient and safer means of extracting it. And we will have to deal without oil eventually, what better time to begin, whilst we still have some that we can get if we utterly must? We are not yet in crisis but they want to take a risk, that's got to make you ask a few questions. I don't have a detailed scientific knowledge of the subject, but i would know if it was proven safe, and it isn't yet.

Incidentally or otherwise, the first earthquake that i've ever felt in my life happened very shortly after they began a new testing site for fracking nearby - one of two earthquakes that happened in short succession after the first wave of tests. I live in the north of england.. they never happen. It's worth looking into before we start doing it.. the last person i'm going to trust with the future of this planet is an oil baron.

@BoneRemake - let me know which bit of my horseshit you want me to look past and i'll attempt to look past it and see what you describe. Or was it an empty sound-bite? My criticism was valid - newt said everything that needed to be said on that subject, and yes i can in retrospect see the value of the video as a demonstration of the fracking process. But you don't have to be a hippy to try and see positive and informed decisions made in the world, but if it makes me one then i'm glad to be one. What does that make you? No need for name calling, it generally means you've not got an argument.

I'd just like to mention that it really, really suits the pro-fracking lobbyists to try and ridicule people and try to conjure mental images of the long-haired flower-child hugging trees and not showering and wearing tinfoil hats. It turns real, intelligent, professional people who care about what happens around them into caricatures, and it belittles their reasoned and sensible argument without even addressing it. It is a tactic as old as the hills.. i'm sure you're not a lobbyist, but i can't help think they're smiling knowing that the old seeds they scattered around took root somewhere..!

*controversy

Unfortunately fracking has become politicized and so there are no longer any sources of information that can be expected to be honest. It is now just another dichotomy: A completely safe method of resource collection, or a WMD disguised as such.

I'm upvoting because the explanation of how fracking works is (as far as I know) accurate.

There is room to dispute a few of the word choices, and how safe the process is portrayed. The companies that do it (probably) don't actually intend environmental harm. I think that fracking is (probably) mostly safe, but not 100%. What comes of this is that the (real) risks are downplayed.

You do not seem to understand when a video does exactly what it says it is going to do, explain the process of fracking, it even showed you the drilling part, the casing part, how they set the charges and what they do...

Made by an oil company yes, to explain the process of fracking ! There isn't lollipops flowing out of the ground down there. How about a video showing how a car is made, is that propaganda as well ? stupid cars burn gasoline and use oil and radiator fluid, are you aware how much downstream damage radiator fluid causes when it gets into freshwater ? why don't we all jump down every how it's made or done video.