It's not unexpected that shooting massive amounts of water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure into the earth to shatter shale and release natural gas might shake things up. But earthquakes aren't the worst problem with fracking.
Low-cost, high-grade coal, oil and natural gas - the backbone of the Industrial Revolution - will be a distant memory by 2050. Much higher-cost remnants will still be available, but they will not be able to drive our growth, our population and, most critically, our food supply as before.
Russia does not have a modern economy: it's a petro-power. The only thing it sells that the world wants to buy is oil and natural gas. When was the last time anyone bought a Russian computer? A Russian car? A Russian cell phone? Russia is so dependent on high energy prices that if oil falls below $100 a barrel, the Kremlin can't meet payroll.
Turkey's energy bill due to imports will fall with the increase in use of renewable energy sources. We have no control over the prices of petroleum and natural gas.
The cheapest natural gas in the world is in the United States.
Natural gas is a better transportation fuel than gasoline, so if that's the case, it's cheaper, it's cleaner and it's a domestic resource.
Natural gas emits only half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned, but if methane leaks when oil companies extract it from the ground in a sloppy manner - methane is far more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - it can wipe out all the advantages of natural gas over coal.
There is an urgent need to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, dramatically reduce wasted energy, and significantly shift our power supplies from oil, coal, and natural gas to wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources.
One of the industries we follow very closely is the trucking industry. They would love if today there was an option for them to run their fleets on natural gas, because of the price disparity between oil and refined diesel - which they almost exclusively run on now - and natural gas.
I don't care whether you use natural gas, ethanol, the battery. You can use anything, just so it's American.