Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the controversial method for extracting natural gas, has become a hot button issue across the U.S. But let’s try to look objectively at its benefits and risks.

Experts discuss the rise and boom of unconventional hydrocarbon extraction in the final Sustainable Development Seminar Series of the 2012-2013 academic year.

Mothers, carbon, trash, vanishing ice and “secret lives”: Watch a movie for Earth Day and learn.

What are the implications of hydraulic fracturing on agriculture and food security? In agricultural areas with widespread, ongoing hydrofracking, there have been incidences of livestock poisoning from contaminated surface water sources or grasses, and soil contamination from explosions, spills, flares, irresponsible fracking-wastewater treatment, and leaky gas pipes.

Earthquakes that have shaken an area just outside Youngstown, Ohio, in the last nine months are likely linked to a disposal well for injecting wastewater used in the hydraulic fracturing process, say LDEO seismologists.

Fracking is back in the news again, and in a big way. On July 1, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, backed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration, released its recommendations regarding the controversial natural gas extraction technique. Amidst the din of statewide protests, the agency supported fracking in most of the state’s portion… read more

Pennsylvania well spills tens of thousands of gallons of fracking fluid into a nearby creek; Gasland director Josh Fox talks to Columbia University about renewable energy.

Disclaimer: Although this blog post has been researched like any other news piece I would write, it represents my personal perspective about natural gas drilling. For a journalist, it feels strange to begin with a disclaimer, but that’s what I’ll do here. The reason is simple: This blog post is skewed. Why? because, if the… read more

An article in the New York Times has prompted debate over the effects of hydrofracking, a means of obtaining natural gas, on drinking water supplies.

In the recent documentary Gasland, Josh Fox investigate the rapidly growing practice of hydraulic fracturing or “hydrofracking” that natural gas companies have developed to produce gas from underground shale deposits.