Glasses sure, but also contacts (invented, of course, by scientists). Wingtips and waders, but also Chuck Taylors and Manolos. Lab coats, suit coats and motorcycle jackets.
But one stereotype holds true: Scientists are curious, with the kind of curiosity that not only kills the cat, but follows up with a dissection and a peer-reviewed journal article.
This defining quirk leads to a certain amount of conflict and eye-rolling where scientific inquiry and public policy collide, as in the debate about whether to allow hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in North Carolina.
Fracking is the process of drilling down into shale beds, then blasting water — along with a mix of chemicals and some gritty fillers like sand or ceramic particles — into the spaces in the shale beds, widening the spaces and forcing the trapped natural gas into a collection well.
Gas companies want to start fracking in the shale bed that runs through Durham, Orange and Lee counties. Scientists believe the practice demands further study (preferably where it’s already legal) and careful oversight.
The conflict seems poised to play out along the lines of the stereotypes, too, with the men (and women) of action in the General Assembly kicking sand at the eggheads and mocking them for being overcautious.
One understands why the General Assembly and the energy companies might be in a hurry. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that hydrofracking shale beds could yield 340 billion cubic meters of gas per year by 2035. Since the United. States uses about 1.7 million cubic meters of gas per day, that works out to a little more than a six-month supply that Americans wouldn’t have to buy from foreign markets.
But, as researchers at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Duke University’s Center for Global Change, have demonstrated, fracking causes gas to seep into the groundwater, resulting in methane-laden tap water in study sites in Pennsylvania and New York. They don’t quite know what to make of this yet — and that’s kind of the point.
As the General Assembly returns to Raleigh this week, it will take up a very limited number of bills, but fracking could be among them. Gov. Beverly Perdue vetoed a bill that would open the state to hydraulic fracturing, and vetoed bills are on the short list of General Assembly business for the fall. Faced with competition from gay marriage referendum, a voter ID bill and other hot topics, fracking may be shoved to the back of the calendar, but it’s not going away for good.
That makes this the right time for Rob Jackson, a professor at the Nicholas School and the director of the Center for Global Change, to visit Periodic Tables, a beer-and-science talk at Durham’s Broad Street Cafe. Jackson’s talk and the ensuing Q&A session, slated for tonight at 7 p.m., will give voters who live over shale beds a glimpse at what researchers know, and what they don’t.
We encourage everyone to go. Curiosity is good. Information is better.
