France bans extraction of Natural Gas by way of "Fracking" - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Hampants;30833333] :siren:This just in, breathing banned for mass release of harmful carbon dioxide:siren:[/QUOTE] that's not even a proper comparison "breathing causes you to breath fire" would be correct

[QUOTE=Pepin;30833046]The issue with the second statement is that the threat to public health hasn't been shown to be sizable at all. It could be in the future, but at the moment I can't find any research that indicates that fracking is a danger to anyone besides people who have cracked wells and these occurrences are very rare. There is a whole lot of speculation about what fracking may do to the environment, but I don't think it would be wise to use speculation as proof until it is proven and put into context.[/QUOTE] so the gist of your argument is that we should continue with fracking until we find out conclusively that it's harmful or until it starts hurting people, at which point we can stop. frack first, ask questions later? i really think the inverse should be true. Your mentality currently is "Fracking should be legal until we prove it harmful", but I think it actually should be "Fracking should be illegal until we prove that it's safe". When it comes to public health, the government should err on the side of caution. If even very sporadic occurrences of dangerous leaks are occurring, I think that's enough to earn a bit of a pause. You're working from the same mentality that only puts regulations on coal mines after a disaster has happened. and please quit with the terrible analogies. i'd like a little more nuance here [editline]1st July 2011[/editline] the difference between this and your analogies is that automotive travel and sports are basically necessities in our society whereas fracking is a corporate measure to slightly decrease costs. the harm done by something must be weighted against it's necessity. you need to put on your thinking pants and make a judgment instead of just acting like anything that can be made to sound analogous is analogous.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=timfvNgr_Q4[/media] Have a FUN explanation then all this jibberish text/

okay, time to withdraw all comments and do some more research before I start making assumptions

[QUOTE=Hampants;30833333]Why is it that we have to ban everything in the name of being environmentally "responsible" :sigh: [editline]1st July 2011[/editline] :siren:This just in, breathing banned for mass release of harmful carbon dioxide:siren:[/QUOTE] Are you so dense as to think that having toxic, flammable drinking water is acceptable?

[QUOTE=Biotoxsin;30834449]Are you so dense as to think that having toxic, flammable drinking water is acceptable?[/QUOTE] Toxic drinking water is unacceptable. Flammable drinking water is a cool party trick. [editline]1st July 2011[/editline] :v:

:psylon:

[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;30829383][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RWmi25YP4I[/media] from [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasland]this documentary[/url][/QUOTE] I have that doc and watched it full. Made me sad :frown:

[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;30833629]so the gist of your argument is that we should continue with fracking until we find out conclusively that it's harmful or until it starts hurting people, at which point we can stop. frack first, ask questions later? i really think the inverse should be true. Your mentality currently is "Fracking should be legal until we prove it harmful", but I think it actually should be "Fracking should be illegal until we prove that it's safe". When it comes to public health, the government should err on the side of caution. If even very sporadic occurrences of dangerous leaks are occurring, I think that's enough to earn a bit of a pause. You're working from the same mentality that only puts regulations on coal mines after a disaster has happened. and please quit with the terrible analogies. i'd like a little more nuance here the difference between this and your analogies is that automotive travel and sports are basically necessities in our society whereas fracking is a corporate measure to slightly decrease costs. the harm done by something must be weighted against it's necessity. you need to put on your thinking pants and make a judgment instead of just acting like anything that can be made to sound analogous is analogous.[/QUOTE] You can ask the question "how many people has fracking" killed an get a good idea of its danger. Through means of induction, there is no reason to assume that more people will be killed in the future. There is no reason to assume that people will be harmed later based off current evidence, excluding people with cracked wells (and I believe there is regulation now in place to prevent this). Next there is an implication that if you don't support preventive cause you don't support common sense. The majority of accidents are predictable and there is warning. A classic case of this is the Columbia crash in which the technicians stated the danger (the cold affecting the o rings), and it was ignored. The BP oil spill is a good and recent example of this as well. So I of course support common sense, that when there is a potential issue, that dealing with it should be the right action. You could argue that preventative action would have stopped Chernobyl (in that they would not hire non qualified workers) and that would be a good point, but I'd argue that in almost all cases well qualified people are hired to avoid anything bad, not just to prevent disaster, but to prevent the loss of money that occurs with disaster. Yes, I just argued that greed prevents disaster. Anyway, to clarify, this would actually be preventive action, but I'd describe it more as common sense because the dangers are real and known. In the case of fracking, I don't believe there is enough to support a believable danger. In the second paragraph you are basically we should assume everything is dangerous is proven to be safe. Isn't the only way to prove that something is safe by doing it? Kind of seems like you're supporting an industrial FDA. I wouldn't be in support of that for a number of reasons, the biggest being is that I don't support speculative preventive action. I can see why you don't like my analogies, and it is because it shows that the reasoning is bad. I'm going to excuse the "corporate measure to slightly reduce cost" part because it's not relevant to what you're saying. At first glance, your argument may look alright Cars and sports are basic necessities so it shouldn't be banned Fracking is not a necessity so it should be banned But if I generalize fracking to be "obtaining fuel" because that is what it is, then we get a much weaker argument, in which you'd have to argue that we shouldn't be drilling for oil either. Cars and sports are basic necessities so it shouldn't be banned Obtaining fuel is not a necessity so it should be banned You may actually be against obtaining fuel, but you can't argue it isn't a basic necessity in modern time as the majority of people need some sort of fuel. Most people for example need gas for their car. I can understand that you don't like the logic of your arguments getting picked apart, but you really have to understand the logical consequences of what you're saying and in that example there is quite a contradiction because how can cars be necessary, while the fuel to make them work isn't?