In fact the earthquakes are not related to fracking itself. Instead they are caused by deep injection disposal of fracking fluids (and other fluids...eg nerve gas at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in the 1970s...would probably happen for deep injection of CO2 for sequestration also).

It is too easy to wrap all the phenomena together and call it all "fracking". There was a story in the news a few weeks ago about how Schlumberger lost a "radioactive fracking tool" along a Texas highway. Well, it wasn't a fracking tool at all. It was a standard gamma-gamma density logging sonde of the type that is used in many industries (groundwater production, monitoring, and clean-up among them). But it was a great opportunity for a headline writer to put radioactive and fracking in the same phrase.

A little technical knowledge and accurate reporting would help to steer this global discussion in good directions (and *really* protect Mother Earth and her irresponsible humans).