First of two parts
For the last five years, militant, sign-wielding anti-fracking demonstrators have grown into America’s most heavily publicized protestors — their most treasured asset – by opposing a cause they do not know so much about.
Students traditionally are exhorted to believe that “knowledge is power,” but perhaps un-knowledge or a smattering of information is power, too.
Anti-fracking activity has been torrential and without relief even though millions have been spent in a war against fracking without a single known cause having been produced.
Is that remarkable? Or is it a sign of impatience?
[img]1792|right|Jim Clarke||no_popup[/img]This morning the question about the lack of factual fault-finding regarding fracking was put to Jim Clarke. The most restless, relentless researcher on the City Council, he is running for re-election on April 8.
“A lot about anti-fracking is unanswered questions,” Mr. Clarke says. “There are concerns fracking may cause earthquakes. There have been examples of small tremors in the Midwest where they never had a history of earthquakes.
“Those seemed to have been caused not by fracking process per se,” he said, “but when you take the stuff out of the ground, you have to put something back into or otherwise it subsides.
“They create these injection wells where they were putting wastewater back down in. Apparently, the pressure of that stiff was causing the earthquakes (in Ohio).
Mr. Clarke noted that Los Angeles residents are on an earthquake fault. “My understanding is that fracking goes down, at the most, about two miles,” he said. “I think the fault line is considerably farther below the earth than the two miles.
“Isn’t it even going to have an impact?
“You get the sense from (anti-fracking) folks that ‘Oh, we are drilling through an earthquake fault.’ I don’t think that is exactly the case. I need to look again at how deep the Newport Beach-Inglewood fault line runs.
“Even the City of L.A. wanted to know if there was any connection between the earthquake the other day and fracking, or oil drilling.”
(To be continued)
