I will not be at all surprised when disease rates in areas near fracking skyrocket. Of course it will take probably ten years to even loosely correlate illnesses and deaths with "new" oil activity, and longer still for any change of course (if ever)

In many ways it feels like we still live in the wild west

Remember: You can never prove that your particular case of cancer came from drinking carcinogens.

Sure, all your neighbors died of the same thing, but maybe you’re the only one that would have had it anyway.

(This argument has worked in court, which is why I’m repeating it.)

Luckily, you don't need to prove 100% culpability to win a civil suit.

Please source your claims. Fracking most definitely increases rates of low Richter scale seismic activity. However, fracking does not pollute groundwater. Wastewater injection, a process which happens once a fracked well is exhausted, can - if done improperly.

However, your claim is nothing but anti-science drivel unless you source it. Do you also believe vaccinations are harmful because they "inject chemicals into your body"? These processes are more nuanced then you think and are heavily regulated.

> Lets screw up the environment by not quitting our society's oil dependency so that a few shareholders of [INSERT_RANDOM_OIL_COMPANY_hERE] can enjoy all the $$$ while future generations (and probably us too given how fast this go) get to pay the price.

This is sanctimonious and inaccurate. Oil allows our consumer culture to exist. We make plastic crap with oil, we import it from China using oil, we deliver it using oil to an amazon warehouse, and then deliver it again using oil to a Prime Member. That cycle, in turn, supports everyone else’s job. Indeed, the very web is built in that oil consumption cycle, since Google runs the web and 98% of Google’s business is helping sell more plastic crap to people.

Oil and gas is not particularly profitable. In fact it’s less profitable than average: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/.... Return on equity is single digits, versus 20%+ for companies like Facebook.

I think the jobs argument for ruining the environment is something that should be seriously engaged but it's still intuitively clear to me that we won't run out of useful things to make or do that easily. Transitioning away from oil is a big project.

did you miss the last three decades where oil companies have been funding FUD initiatives to prevent any climate action from happening?

Your argument puts a lot of emphasis on short term gains at the expense of long term public/environmental health.

We don't have to get oil domestically. Other countries are more than happy to decimate their local environments to sell oil to the US at below market rates.

I'm sure this makes me an asshole, but given the choice between making regions of Saudi Arabia or the USA unlivable, I'd take Arabia any day.

I don’t get any of this comment. Oil is the king of being sold at market rates, and if we aren’t producing any market rates skyrocket. Also doesn’t matter where oil is burned, it still becomes CO2 and other greenhouse gasses if we don’t leave it in the ground.

Please stick to the community guidelines and respond directly to the argument. Calling a response "sanctimonious drivel" does not make your reply more compelling.

The fact that OP is being sanctimonious is highly relevant to the point I’m making. It’s one thing to hold the opinion that we need to eliminate oil use because of the serious environmental repercussions. But if you’re living in america enjoying American employment options and living standards, you don’t get to engage in “holier than thou” “us versus them” rhetoric. Our entire economy and all of our jobs are predicated on cheap energy. Oil companies make a lot of money because they deliver an essential, high demand product. But given that oil and gas is less profitable than your average industry (as you’d expect a commodity to be) there is no basis for acting as if the benefits of cheap oil flow to oil company shareholders. It flows overwhelmingly to consumers.

I'm not saying OP made a stellar point, but "drivel" is an unnecessarily aggressive descriptor here. Try to assume good faith and draw out an argument that elevates the overall discussion. You're raising a worthwhile concern. Raise it in a way that invites, rather than shuts down discussion.

You're right, "drivel" was unwarranted. I have deleted that.

I drunkenly invited someone to Denver at my expense for a duel the other day (not literally, but figuratively). All this partisan, populist rhetoric is driving some of us a bit nuts, but you are usually a voice of reason. It's ok to slip up from time to time.

> "But if you’re living in america enjoying American employment options and living standards, you don’t get to engage in “holier than thou” “us versus them” rhetoric. "

This is a strange place for the love-it-or-leave-it fallacy to rear its simplistic head. Grandparent is pissed at fracking companies and the perceived greed of their shareholders. A widely-held viewpoint expressed plainly. The mere existence of your disagreement doesn't make his opinion any less valid.

For anyone interested in this destructive industry, here's an interesting report: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/30/how-the-us-frac...

People are electing to buy the fuel with their own money. So, what is the implication of your comment? We should force people to stop doing what they want?

I don't have kids, I walk to work, and I sit in the dark a whole lot (in the winter). I could deal if my state banned all motor vehicles (except the interstates, in order to stay Commerce Clause compliant) and coal mining/burning. I doubt most could.

you forgot that little detail of in the USA we do not have enough clean water to waste in such a manner in the first place.

You mean poor people don't, which you incorrectly assume that there is any sympathy for the lower class. If you're rich however, like the people that own these companies, you can have all the clean and filtered water you want and move and purchase any land you want so you can continue to live the good life while everyone else gets screwed and pays the price. Out of sight, out of mind. Not my water, not my problem.

Lower oil prices is great for everyone, you underestimate the great benefit of cheap energy if you think that way.

Using the floorboards and rafters of the house as heating fuel is great for the householder... Until it it isn't.

We built a system that depends on borrowing from the future, and it's abundantly clear it's running out of available credit.

Resources are meant to be consumed. What right do the future generations have over the right to consume those resources over us?

What if we make future generations not needing to actually consume these resources ?

Also if you consume all the available non-renewable energy that you have, at one point you will mathematically end up in a dire situation.

There is a fantastic talk with Milton Friedman about this argument that I recommend looking up.

A typical Engineering mindset conceptualizes the problem as if it were physics, where you see current output and stock and calculates the end result, but thats not how humans interact with each other: we are execute ingenuity at every step changing the basic formula again and again. If the former were true, you would have seen oil prices increase steadily over time, as oil absolutely runs out (no new one is produced), but you can see thats not what happens, it's even today way cheaper that it was decades ago. If it were starting to run out, the prices would shoot up and alternatives would become so appealing that they would be developed and used.

Hopefully the concept is clear, the TLDR is don't use physics to explain economics.

Because technology advanced and new reserves were found.

The main problem is not that we'll eventually run out of oil. It's just that by the time we finish all the reserves most people living on Earth will probably experience extreme weather conditions all year round.

> The main problem is not that we'll eventually run out of oil.

The concept of "peak oil" (discounting whether or not it's a fallacy) wasn't ever that we'd run out of oil. When peak oil occurred, there would still be oil in the ground.

The problem was (supposed to be) that the amount of energy it would take to extract that oil from the ground would be greater than the amount of energy you would get from that oil extracted. In other words, it would take as much or more than a barrel of oil's energy to extract that barrel of oil.

At that point, it would make no economic sense to try to get that oil, at least from an energy consumption point of view (it may make sense for other reasons though - for instance, to use the oil to make chemicals or plastics or other materials).

We were supposed to hit that point - and we have hit that point multiple times on a per-oil producing country level. The United States hit it a long while back. But then this new technology of fracking came into being, and it changed the equation radically. Now it seems the USA is outputting more oil than it ever has, in effect reversing it's peak oil status (which I don't think was ever thought possible).

Shale oil and oil sands were known about for a long time, but the technology made it super energy intensive; fracking opened it up, and also made old wells produce again. I'm sure the concept is being applied world wide as needed, and that's caused the "world peak oil" timeline to recede as well.

What would probably happen if "peak oil" ever did occur on a world level, would be that other energy sources would be used to extract it; nuclear generated electricity would be the best choice, much like it's been proposed for water desalination. But even those thoughts were predicated on the idea that solar costs wouldn't drop like they've did in recent years, so maybe solar might be the better choice?

Also, the oil probably wouldn't be brought up for fuel usage in such a scenario, since you'd still be upside down in that regard. But it would make sense to extract it for its other uses as a raw material.

> What if we make future generations not needing to actually consume these resources ?

In all likelihood we'll need to consume the resources available to us to advance to the next level of technology where the existing resources are no longer needed.

> Also if you consume all the available non-renewable energy that you have, at one point you will mathematically end up in a dire situation.

Mathematically speaking, the resources will be consumed eventually. We just need to try to make as much progress as possible before that happens.

> Mathematically speaking, the resources will be consumed eventually. We just need to try to make as much progress as possible before that happens.

Economically speaking, oil is infinite. Thats why its price goes down over time!

Why haven't we consumed everything yet?

Certainly not due to heavy-handed rules imposed by governments, which I think is the proposed solution for those that appall at oil consumption.

You mean the rules that make it illegal to put your home walking distance from your job, or to build a granny unit, or to build a home without parking, or to build an apartment building, or to not have a lawn, or to repurpose parking to housing, or to opt out of subsidizing meat production?

When you take much, much more than you need, it becomes immoral.

That's your opinion. I rather not have a moral system where someone decides how much you do of anything is immoral.

I assume you're fine then with people inflicting as much violence on others as they want?

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I strictly mentioned I wouldn't depend on someone deciding how much (x/violence) is moral or immoral.

Do you want to depend on someone to say how many beatings is moral to be inflicted upon yourself?

> Do you want to depend on someone to say how many beatings is moral to be inflicted upon yourself?

Regardless of what I want, we currently live in a society where the govt holds the monopoly on violence. You're free to have your opinion that an adolescent libertarian utopia is possible though.

Crossing into name-calling and personal attack is not cool and will get you banned here. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site in its intended spirit?

You are also free to clap at internment camps and smile at your own moral and intelectual superiority.

Would you please stop doing flamewars on HN? We've asked you repeatedly and we ban accounts that keep doing this.

Generic ideological flamewars are among the worst, because they're so repetitive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Okay. This is the first 'warning' I've read. I would read the thread that prompted this flagging, where I responded to a literal insult.

Ok, I've responded to a couple of the comments upthread. Not seeing a moderation reply doesn't mean we implicitly endorse a comment. The likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it.

Re previous 'warnings': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19894978, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19696256, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19348644 are the ones I was referring to.

The market capitalization of the large oil companies have also been very closely correlated with oil prices, so cheap oil could in fact hurt their margins rather than help shareholders.

As logical as thinking that capping the velocity of cars only harms car companies. It's just not economic thinking.

Not only this, he doesn't seem to understand fracking is not a new technology. Horizontal drilling is along with several others. It is these which make fracking ops viable.

Most people want to improve the environment. They way to do that is not legislating in controls on production because then we just import from ME and pay to secure shipping routes in that region. Instead, legislate in incentives to reduce demand (electric car subsidies etc.).

The thing is that oil industry is actively lobbying the legislators to block any legislation that would reduce the demand.

Tesla also lobbies to get subsidies for his own industry. No clean participants in the energy market.

It's on the state to fulfill its obligations with the citizenry

Parent never said it's a new technology