Bridging the Gap Between Perspective and Reality

A perspective is “a point of view,” as opposed to a reality, which is “the true situation that exists.”

With that distinction in mind, consider the following questions with which I have been faced over the last 10 years:

• Was the well water mixed with natural gas coming out of the kitchen spigot a result of recent drilling, or had it already been in the groundwater for decades as a result of near-surface fractures?
• Did hydraulic fracturing on the farm really kill grandpa and some of the livestock and ruin the groundwater?
• What impact does the exhaust from hundreds of trucks needed for each shale well have on air quality?
• Does flowback and production wastewater contain bromine and organic matter? Once they are treated and discharged into a river, and later disinfected with chlorine for public drinking water, do they react to form trihalomethanes, some of which are known carcinogens?
• Does deep wastewater injection and hydraulic fracturing, with associated induced seismicity, cause earthquakes, as has been seen in Youngstown, Ohio and pervasive in Oklahoma?
• Is the industrial revolution the primary cause of global warming? Are there also climatic effects from Milankovitch Cycles which are caused by the earth’s orbit around the sun?
• Can CO₂ be safely sequestered for 1,000 years or more?

These are just some of the controversial questions affecting our world today, and topics for which scientists from industry, academia and government are working to provide accurate perspectives.

While attending the recent AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition in Calgary, I realized what an impact the DEG can have both domestically and internationally on environmental-related topics – on shaping the public’s collective perspective on these realities. I was fortunate to meet many from the United States, Canada, Africa, Australia and the Netherlands who share my concerns.