No self-respecting drug addict would use franken-morphine!

Fossil-fuel internal combustion engines in commercial vehicles are very inefficient. Electric power plants are very efficient. The dirtiest coal-burning power plant is many times more efficient (and emits less carbon per unit of energy) than the most efficient fossil-fuel powered commercial car. Therefore, an electric car using electricity derived from a coal power plant is still more efficient or "green" than a regular commercial fossil-fuel car. The equation gets even better when you consider our electric grid's power is on average only 39% derived from coal, and shrinking.

There's always sampling yourself then, regardless of what the O/G comany or their engineer does. It's not a huge cost if that's what you need for peace of mind. If anything is awry showing them your data would get their full attention really quick.

People should be sampling their wells regularly anyway, regardless of surrounding drilling activity. Honestly, if there was a gas station, dry cleaner, or industrial park nearby or uphill from my house, that would concern me more than contamination from fracking. There are even a lot of naturally-occuring metals (arsenic, barium, berylium are some of the more common ones) which can foul water and require a home filtration/treatment system

FWIW, I am an environmental consultant, a geologist, I live in Pennsylvania, I do not work for any oil and gas companies, so I have no conflict of interest (you'll have to trust me there), but I am interested in the subject and have done quite a bit of my own research.

This is an incorrect understanding of fracking and geology in general. "Impenetrable rock" above the shale is irrelevant, because fracking anything other than the gas-bearing shale formation would be a huge waste of time/money. In gas-bearing shale formations the gas is locked up in the matrix of the shale and cannot easily flow into a gas well. The fracking targets the gas-bearing shale formation to artificially increase the inter-connections so that gas can flow within and out of the formation. Or another way to think of is by surface area...a well in an unfractured formation only has the exposed surface area immediately around the well borehole to gather gas from, but when you fracture the surrounding rock the effective surface area of exposed rock is exponentially increased by cumulative surface area of the fractures.

Again this is a misunderstanding of reality. Frack water is 99% potable water and clean sand, the remaining 1% is are lubricants and biocides, many of which are actually food-grade, so in reality much less than 1% is anything that could be considered a "hazardous chemical". Immediately after a well is fracked the vast majority of the injected water flows back out of the well, so a fraction of that 1% is actually left in the ground. Mind you this is into a GAS formation that was unfit for human consumption before any fracking.

If that's not enough, consider also that shale gas formations are typically between 2,000 to 14,000 feet below ground, and drinking water wells are typically 50 to 500 feet deep. Fracking is powerfull, but it's not powerful to open up fractures through, literally, miles through solid rock, So, the fraction of a fraction of "hazardous chemicals" remaining in the ground after a frack would have to travel vertically thousands of feet of rock while resisting dispersion/dilution with the surrounding water to reach a well. Assuming the gas well is properly constructed and the frack wastes are properly handled it's basically impossible for frack water make it's way to a drinking well.

Before you call me a shill for the evil energy companies, there are issues with fracking we should be concerned about, but the public concern is currently misguided. We should be concerned about how the recovered contaminated frack water is being handled and disposed. We should be concerned that gas wells are properly constructed and sealed. Those are real problems, but, thankfully, can be solved with the correct regulations, oversight, and strict penalties. The problem is the public hysteria is directed at the wrong issues, and it's making it harder to address the real ones.

Groundwater in NATURAL GAS formations was contaminated by mother nature millions of years before fracking. In the case of Marcellus Shale there's also naturally radioactive rock just above the Marcellus Shale. No one is drinking water sourced from anywhere near a gas formation. So, the idea that frack fluids, which are 99% clean sand and potable water mind you, are contaminating that groundwater is fundamentally flawed.

You seem to have have fewer misconceptions than I thought at first. I'm glad you sample your well, it's alarming to me how many people do not. Personally, I think sampling your well water regularly not only protects yourself, but possibly the entire community around you.... but I digress...

Your concern that polluter would not pay for an accredited lab is probably unfounded though. The cost of analysis for an accredited vs non-accredited lab is not that much, but more importantly if a case were to go to court, any non-accredited laboratory sample results would immediately be tossed out of evidence without a second chance. That's about the easiest thing any environmental attorney can do in a case. A deep-pocketed O/G company isn't going to skimp a few bucks on analysis for a non-accredited lab with so much potential risk about.

That being said things can go wrong when sampling wells and mistakes can happen, but it's relatively rare. Independent verification or duplicate sampling is always a good idea. Obviously it costs more and would be out of the homeowner's pocket, but if you're willing to do it definitely puts you a stronger position to demand more action if something is awry.

If you read the rebuttal article that the Slashdot summary calls "beltway inside mouthpieces" that's exactly what it is. The rebuttal might be unnecessarily combative, but the points it makes are still valid.

The original slashdot summary is terrible. No wonder that the resulting "discussion" is equally terrible. There's a scant few posts in here that say anything intelligent with regards to science on the subject, but they are drowned out by the noise.

I'm an environmental consultant and you have a few wrong ideas here. FWIW, I don't personally work for any O/G companies.

1) There is a specific process to collect an accurate sample from a well. It's not terribly complicated and anyone with enough sense to follow a basic cookbook recipe can do it, but unfortunately companies can't trust all homeowners to follow those directions, so understandably they hire contractors to do the sampling for them.

2) Samples are not analyzed by an "in-house" lab. Any sample intended to hold any weight in court will be analyzed by an independent lab certified for the compounds they report. To obtain their certification, labs have to empirically prove they meet analytical standards set by the state, and/or National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program (NELAP, which has the same standards as the USEPA).

3) There is a very detailed discoverable paper trail built in to every single analysis an accredited lab performs. If a lab was caught tampering with results to favor a client they would lose their certification instantly, and with it ALL of the work for ALL clients, not just the O/G client, would cease immediately...lights-out, go home, call the bankruptcy lawyers, Go To Jail, Do Not Collect $200. I can't stress enough that the risks for laboratories are simply too high.

Anyone can independently sample their own water of course. Honestly, more homeowners with wells probably should be sampling their water, regardless of whether there's any drilling in your area.

If you had a structural geology class in the last 15 years there's a good chance you spent many hours with the Bree Creek Quadrangle exercises.

It's not mentioned in the article, but even if initial prices are too high to attract most home-owners, it could still be an attractive option for businesses with solar systems, they would just have to scale it up for their purposes. Particularly since many electric power companies are not reimbursing private solar power producers as well as they used to.

Batteries are not 100% efficient at storing and transmitting their charge, so you might not find much if any savings in your electric bill with overnight charging. If there is savings, then you have factor in how long it will take for that to give you a return on the investment and any long-term maintenance costs.

Funny, but completely misses the point. The real news here is that mobile data speeds are going to start competing with traditional wired home ISPs in the near future. Verizon has already stated they are not laying any more [expensive] new fiber cables to focus on their mobile services. You can read between the lines. As for pricing, the market will figure that out for sure. Consider this very real possibility: what if a mobile provider had a 5G [or next-gen] cell tower in a suburban area and offered everyone within range to combine their home ISP and mobile phone data into one competively priced package? I think many people would jump on that.

Still think I'm full of it? Consider this... my parents live in a very rural area and do not have access to cable or DSL lines, but they get their home internet through a "Wi-Fi" tower ISP located on a hill couple miles from their house. It's not as fast as DSL or cable, but it's big improvement over dial-up they had used prior. That sort of technology is only going to improve.

So, if beaming this energy back to the earth in microwaves will cook everything in the airspace between the transmitter and collector, how does this help combat global warming? There is water in the atmosphere afterall that I presume would be warmed by micro waves passing through it, much like a glass of water in a kitchen microwave. Has anyone calculated those residual heat effects of beaming lasers/microwaves through our atmosphere? My gut says there would be excess heat transmitted directly into our atmosphere derived from converted sun rays that would have normally bounced harmlessly off the Earth's atmosphere or even missed the planet entirely. I'd love for my gut to be proven wrong though if someone has that data.