Weird Science

There's an interesting article on the Scientific American Web site about the importance of starting science education early. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=start-science-sooner.
Never having been one for science in my earlier days, I wish I would have paid more attention now. I've been lucky enough to have been placed in jobs where I was forced to re-learn science concepts, and to gain a better understanding of how those things impact real life.
But its evident that many have not had that opportunity.
I am convinced that much of the misunderstanding and outright fear that exists among the general public when it comes to drilling the Marcellus Shale is directly related to our cultural distain for the sciences. Lets face it -- most people have no interest in them. They're just too hard (or inconvenient) to understand.
A prime example is the ongoing Chicken Little attitude about hydrofracing. Its a process that is plagued by misunderstanding, but lets look at the "water" that stays in the formation. Many have expressed great concern that this water, or frac fluid, will find its way into drinking water aquifers and contaminate groundwater.
First, its important to remember that the Marcellus Shale formation being drilled lies between 5,000 and 8,000 feet below ground. For perspective, the Grand Canyon at the South Rim is about 5,000 feet deep. Drinking water aquifers lie around 1,000 feet, and most personal water wells are drilled more shallow than that.
Second, natural gas wells are cased in cement and steel. In most simple terms, wells are drilled to an area below the aquifer, drilling is stopped, the well is cased in steel, then cement is piped down into the well and forced back up outside the steel casing to protect the aquifer. Once the cement sets, drilling is resumed. This is all done to protect the water table.
When drilling is done, the completions process (which includes hydrofracing) begins. Because the Marcellus Shale is a "tight rock," or has little porosity, the gas contained inside it does not easily flow into the well. Hydrofracing, a process in which water, sand and chemical additives, are forced through the well and into the formation to create "fractures," is used to encourage gas to flow into the well. The pressure used to send the water into the formation is quite intense - yet in most cases, the created fractures a rarely more than a hundred feet or so long. Under the pressure of 8,000 feet of soil and rock above it, these relatively thin fractures don't stay wide open forever.
Most people who are interested in shale drilling know all of this in theory.
I've asked many geologists about why frac water doesn't rise to the aquifer level. Most refer back to the very reason hydrofracing is necessary to produce the Marcellus in the first place. They remind me that the gas, which we've known about for decades, has been down there for a long long time -- without finding a way to the surface' giving proof to the concept of natural geological seals between formations. They remind me about the amount of pressure they need to force water into the formation to create fractures in the first place -- its significant, yet still does not break the formation or create a pathway for gas to escape to the surface.
And that water that gets trapped down there? One geologist explained to me that for it to travel upwards to the aquifer, there would need to be an energy source "pushing" it, if you will. He asked me to think of it as water trapped between two panes of glass. Without help, or an energy source, it basically stays there. There is no source of energy to force it upwards at thousands of feet underground.
Seems to me, after having asked the questions and been tutored by expert geologists, that a lot of this is basic earth science. Which looking back, even to my high school years, I really never learned. Earth Science classes were the basic sciences for the "every kid." As an honor student, ironically, I never had a single class in earth science. It was all AP biology, physics and chemistry for me. All of which I learned little from as well apparently.
Our overall lack of science knowledge makes us all vulnerable to those who DO understand and want us to remain confused and scared of the unknown and complicated. Lots of what people fear about drilling could potentially be easily overcome with some simple geology 101. Now if we could just get people to care about science.