LETTER: What's all the negativity about fracking?

With predicted massive earth quakes inevitable with having to dig out coal in seams ranging from three to ten feet high and the mass destruction of houses and with huge dips in roads due to subsidence. 
Having to deal with all the waste dirt being dumped on the surface creating blots on the landscape. Where will all the toxic, acidic water be taken to when pumped out of the mine? And let’s not forget about all the trains and lorries running around creating dust and noise.

The planet, the green activists would reckon, would burn up in a few years time with all the methane released as the coal is cut.

So, why all the negativity about Fracking? How can cracks which are created between two-and-a-half and five kilometres underground to extract the gas cause earth quakes, or affect the roots of trees? When coal was extracted up to 1,000 meters deep at the most, it only caused a few tremors that nobody noticed, especially at night.

All the propaganda over fracking is from the early days in the USA. Safety and methods have improved considerably since then.

Mansfield needs the equivalent of the coal industry for jobs and making Mansfield the proud town it used to be.

In fact the whole country needs it, even if it just means to be free from having to rely on gas imports. We cannot rely on wind farms as everyone with an ounce of common sense knows they are useless. If there is no wind they do not work, if there is too much wind, they shut down. If it is too cold they need heaters on to keep the blades warm. Solar panels are only good if the sun shines. Tidal generators only work one way. Nuclear power is the only real answer but that is way too expensive to be viable. The only thing they are all good at is taking our money from our wallets in ridiculous subsidies.

Friends of the Earth and the green leftist activists can only protest but never seem to have any answers.

So let’s get fracking and make the whole country prosperous and independent.

K. B.

Mansfield (name and address supplied)