Book #4 The Quality of Silence

The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

SPOILER ALERT

On 24th November Yasmin and her deaf daughter Ruby arrive in Alaska. Within hours they are driving alone across a frozen wilderness. Where nothing grows. Where no one lives. Where tears freeze. And night will last for another fifty-four days. ...They're searching for Ruby's father, missing in the arctic wilderness. And Ruby, deaf since birth, must brave the darkness where sight cannot guide her. She won't abandon her father. But winter has tightened its grip, and there is somebody out there who wants to stop them. Somebody tracking them through the dark...

I enjoyed the book although I found the plot somewhat preposterous. An astrophysicist, Yasmin - the mother - jumps into the cab of a 40 ton tractor/trailer arctic truck - and drives across the Arctic tundra. Apart from the fact that she is driving on ice these units can have up to ten gears - but she manages. Hmmmm.

Overall though - it is a chilling read, in more ways than one. And the story campaigns against hydraulic fracturing in the Alaskan Arctic, with concerns about the impact of fracking in more fragile northern environments. Good enough for me....

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Hydraulic Fracturing - Sifting Through The Facts

I think that most of us are aware now that "fracking" is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside. More pertinent facts include the disruption caused to local infrastructure around the gas well site: each gas well requires an average of 400 tanker trucks to carry water and supplies to and from the site.

It takes between 1 and 8 million gallons of water to complete each fracturing job. The water brought in is mixed with sand and chemicals to create fracking fluid. Approximately 40,000 gallons of chemicals are used per fracturing.

Up to 600 chemicals are used in fracking fluid including known carcinogens and toxins such as:

• lead
• radium
• uranium
• methanol
• mercury
• hydrochloric acid
• ethylene glycol
• formaldehyde

The fracking fluid is then pressure injected into the ground through a drilled pipeline.

The mixture reaches the end of the well where the high pressure causes the nearby shale rock to crack, creating fissures where natural gas flows into the well. During this process methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out from the system and contaminate nearby ground water. In the USA it has been shown that methane concentrations are 17x higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites than in normal wells.

Only 30-50% of the fracturing fluid is recovered. The rest of the toxic fluid is left in the ground and is not biodegradable.

The waste fluid is usually left in open air pits to evaporate, releasing harmful VOCs (volatile organic compounds) into the atmosphere, creating contaminated air, acid rain and ground level ozone.

This morning I listened to the highly respected geologist Dr Alasdair Bruce discussing the dangers of fracking, on BBC Radio Sussex. He left me in no doubt that this process can cause untold harm to aquifers and that our ground water could remain contaminated for many years.

A horrifying thought....