Read the passages below and write an essay that addresses the following:  What is the position in each passage?  What evidence or reasons are given in support of each position?  Which position is more convincing and why? Do no additional research on the topics other than using a dictionary. [NEW]  The Controversy:  Does fracking contribute to global warming? Passage 1.  Pro:  from "Fracking Contributes to Global Warming" by Louis W. Allstadt The fracking that's going on right now is the real wake-up call on just what extreme lengths are required to pull oil or gas out of the ground now that most of the conventional reservoirs have been exploited—at least those that are easy to access. First of all you have to look at what is conventional oil and gas. That was pretty much anything that was produced until around 2000. It's basically a process of drilling down through a cap rock, an impervious rock that has trapped oil and gas beneath it. And once you're into that reservoir— which is really not a void, it’s porous rock—the natural pressure of the gas will push up the gas and oil. Now what's happened is that the prospect of finding more of those conventional reservoirs, particularly on land and in the places that have been heavily explored like the US and Europe and the Middle East just is very, very small. And the companies have pretty much acknowledged that. All of them talk about the need to go to either nonconventional shale or tight sand drilling or to go into deeper and deeper waters or to go into really hostile Arctic regions and possibly Antarctic regions. Both the horizontal drilling and fracturing have been around for a long time. The industry will tell you this over and over again—they've been around for 60 years, things like that. That is correct. What's different is the volume of fracking fluids and the volume of flowback that occurs in these wells. It is 50 to 100 times more than what was used in the conventional wells. The other [difference] is that the rock above the target zone is not necessarily impervious the way it was in the conventional wells. And to me that last point is at least as big as the volume. The industry will tell you that the mile or two between the zone that's being fracked is not going to let anything come up. But there are already cases where the methane gas has made it up into the aquifers and atmosphere. Sometimes through old well bores, sometimes through natural fissures in the rock. What we don't know is just how much gas is going to come up over time. It's a point most people haven't gotten. It's not just what's happening today. We're opening up channels for the gas to creep up to the surface and into the atmosphere. And methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas in the short term—less than 100 years—than carbon dioxide. Source Citation Allstadt, Louis W. "Fracking Contributes to Global Warming." Natural Gas , edited by Dedria Bry.

1. Read the passages below and write an essay that addresses the
following:
What is the position in each passage?
What evidence or reasons are given in support of each position?
Which position is more convincing and why?
Do no additional research on the topics other than using a
dictionary. [NEW]
The Controversy: Does fracking contribute to global warming?
Passage 1. Pro: from "Fracking Contributes to Global
Warming" by Louis W. Allstadt
The fracking that's going on right now is the real wake-up call
on just what extreme lengths are
required to pull oil or gas out of the ground now that most of
the conventional reservoirs have
been exploited—at least those that are easy to access.
First of all you have to look at what is conventional oil and gas.
That was pretty much anything
that was produced until around 2000. It's basically a process of

2. drilling down through a cap rock,
an impervious rock that has trapped oil and gas beneath it. And
once you're into that reservoir—
which is really not a void, it’s porous rock—the natural pressure
of the gas will push up the gas
and oil.
Now what's happened is that the prospect of finding more of
those conventional reservoirs,
particularly on land and in the places that have been heavily
explored like the US and Europe
and the Middle East just is very, very small. And the companies
have pretty much acknowledged
that. All of them talk about the need to go to either
nonconventional shale or tight sand drilling
or to go into deeper and deeper waters or to go into really
hostile Arctic regions and possibly
Antarctic regions.
Both the horizontal drilling and fracturing have been around for
a long time. The industry will
tell you this over and over again—they've been around for 60
years, things like that. That is
correct. What's different is the volume of fracking fluids and
the volume of flowback that occurs

3. in these wells. It is 50 to 100 times more than what was used in
the conventional wells.
The other [difference] is that the rock above the target zone is
not necessarily impervious the
way it was in the conventional wells. And to me that last point
is at least as big as the volume.
The industry will tell you that the mile or two between the zone
that's being fracked is not going
to let anything come up.
But there are already cases where the methane gas has made it
up into the aquifers and
atmosphere. Sometimes through old well bores, sometimes
through natural fissures in the rock.
What we don't know is just how much gas is going to come up
over time. It's a point most people
haven't gotten. It's not just what's happening today. We're
opening up channels for the gas to
creep up to the surface and into the atmosphere. And methane is
a much more potent greenhouse
gas in the short term—less than 100 years—than carbon dioxide.

4. Source Citation
Allstadt, Louis W. "Fracking Contributes to Global Warming."
Natural Gas
, edited by Dedria Bryfonski,
Greenhaven Press, 2015. Opposing Viewpoints.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context
, Accessed 12
Dec. 2016. Originally published as "Former Mobil VP Warns of
Fracking and Climate Change,"
Truthout.org
, 19 July 2013.
Passage 2. Con: from "Fracking Does Not Contribute to Global
Warming" by Coral
Davenport
A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences concludes that hydraulic
fracturing—the controversial technique behind the nation's
recent oil and gas boom—doesn't appear to
contribute significantly to global warming, as many
environmental groups have warned.

5. It's great news for oil and gas companies such as ExxonMobil,
Shell, and Chevron, which have relied on
breakthroughs in so-called fracking technology to cheaply
unlock vast new reserves of domestic oil and
natural gas that had been trapped underground in shale-rock
formations.
"It's very good news," said Richard Keil, a spokesman for
ExxonMobil, of the study. "This is a
groundbreaking survey. It's the most extensive one that's been
done yet, and it serves to add important
new evidence that hydraulic fracturing does not contribute to
climate change—it does not contribute
methane emissions at levels higher than those set by the
Environmental Protection Agency [EPA]."
The study concluded that the majority of hydraulically fractured
natural gas wells have surface
equipment that reduces on-the-ground methane emissions by 99
percent, although it also found
that elsewhere on fracking rigs, some valves do allow methane
to escape at levels 30 percent
higher than those set by EPA. Overall, however, the study
concludes that total methane
emissions from fracking are about 10 percent lower than levels
set by EPA.

6. The $2.3 million study was conducted by scientists at the
University of Texas, with funding
provided by nine energy companies, including ExxonMobil, and
one environmental group, the
Environmental Defense Fund. A spokesman for the University
of Texas said that while the
companies contributed money to the study, they had no input on
the research or results, which
were subject to independent peer review before being published
in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, one of the nation's most
prestigious scientific journals.
University of Texas researchers say their yearlong study, which
involved measuring methane
emissions from 190 natural gas production sites in the Gulf
coast, mid-continent, Rocky
Mountains, and Appalachia, is far more comprehensive than
[other studies], which relied on
existing data rather than new fieldwork.
Source Citation

7. Davenport, Coral. "Fracking Does Not Contribute to Global
Warming."
Natural Gas
, edited by Dedria
Bryfonski, Greenhaven Press, 2015. Opposing Viewpoints.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context
,
Accessed 12 Dec. 2016. Originally published as "New Study
Says Fracking Doesn't Contribute to
Global Warming,"
National Journal
, 16 Sept. 2013.