Many environmentalists - BH favourites Leo Hickman and Richard Dixon among them - are tweeting about a story (£) in the Times today which claims that fracking has been linked to an increase incidence of earthquakes in Oklahoma.
I heard this story yesterday and there is considerably less to it than meets the eye. According to NPR, the US Geological Survey noted an increase in the incidence of magnitude 3 temblors associated with injection wells. These are wells drilled for the purposes of disposing of waste water, often from oil and gas production.
At the head of the NPR story is this:
May 6, 2014
A previous version of this story incorrectly said that the United States Geological Survey had linked an increase in seismic activity in Oklahoma to fracking.
So not really earthquakes, and not fracking.
Bishop Hill
Leo is insisting that some of the water will have come from fracking operations and that it's therefore OK to say that fracking caused these tremors.