I believe the earthquakes in Greenbrier, Arkansas have ceased since fracking has been forbidden.
The difference between fracking and strip mining is that one occurs on the surface, the other 2+ miles underground. Otherwise, it’s just the same… 
Above is a video, produced by Marathon Oil, explaining the fracking process.
http://www.energyfromshale.org/sites/default/files/Typical-Shale-Fracturing-Mixture-Makeup.pdf
90% water, 9.5% sand, .5% other chemicals, including
sodium chloride
ethylene glycol
borate salts
and others
Not at all. Last earthquake there (a 3.3) was just over a month ago.
In addition, the city has experienced “swarms” of earthquakes before, the most famous being in 1982.
Occams razor suggests that the simplest solution is that the swarm of earthquakes is a naturally occurring phenomenon. These swarms have occurred 3 times in thirty years, after all.
True, that doesn’t mean we should encourage them though. 
I’m still skeptical of fracking as I’m not at all certain our understanding of geology and tectonics is fully complete enough to begin messing around like this. There are plenty of nasty toxic things that occur naturally underground that would do us considerable harm if they seeped upward.
It’s possible I am thinking of something else, but all the same…
I’ve seen a video clip of a man essentially lighting his tap water on fire as it poured from the faucet. As best I can recall (it’s been at least a couple years now) it was attributed to the effects of fracking. The idea being that natural gas was mixing with groundwater or some such. Does anybody know anything about that?
There is a debunking response here from the oil and gas industry (PDF):
I haven’t seen the film Gasland so I’ll refrain from making any comment on it.
This explanation sounds wrong, unless I have misunderstood you.
Your first paragraph seems to be addressing conventional gas resources, where the hydrocarbon is trapped under an impermeable layer (often a dome of rock). This is relatively easily extracted by drilling a hole through the dome of rock and inserting a pipe. The impermeable layer is not made permeable by fracking in this case.
In deep tight formations, the hydrocarbon is not trapped under an impermeable layer, but within a layer of sand or sedimentary rock. It is this layer that is disrupted by fracking. This is typically way, way deeper than any aquifers, and also way deeper than what is normally referred to as “bedrock”.
I should state, by the way, that although I work for an energy company I do not speak for them, and my opinions are my own.
Are you against mining?
If it threatens to poison a community’s drinking water? Of course.
Not entirely, though I don’t support deep mining efforts that require cooling and pressure relieving equipment, etc because they are getting near the bottom of the crust. Even those efforts are somewhat more predictable though since they are primarily vertical shafts. If a geological incident occurred, presumably the magma and other gasses/ substances would take the path of least resistance directly up the shaft. My (unsubstantiated) fear with deep fracking is that we currently don’t understand enough about how things work when there is now a large webwork of fractures running horizontally under the surface. It is plausible that we could create a sort of “mini fault” with this type of operation, which could then spread to outlying areas. OTOH, maybe we could harness the geothermal properties!
This is the other side to consider. Effectively harnessing geothermal energy would be a boon to mankind. It would undoubtedly have downsides, but consider the downsides of the alternative. The natural gas extracted through these methods isn’t spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, and we don’t have to kill people wholesales to maintain access to it. Most of the problems associated with fracking are fixable. There are still unknown problems but like every other energy source there is a balance that has to be found. I think we could at least concentrate on those known problems which mostly result from this being a newly exploited technology that isn’t be sufficiently regulated.
No doubt many of the current problems could be solved. The problem is the rush to get to the gas NOW, before we have the means to do it in a way that assures the safety of the surrounding community.
Perhaps there is a more reliable source for debunking the movie than the industry making a profit from it.
I agree in sort of. I think we have most of the means, but there’s no incentive for the fracking gas companies to do so. Since no serious effort is taken to ensure safety we are well behind in progress in that area.
The world’s deepest mine is only 2.4 miles deep, which is quite a ways from the continental crust boundary. No one is “getting near the bottom of the crust” via mining.
Or hydraulic fracturing.
I’m not sure why people get all bent out of shape about fracturing that doesn’t occur anywhere near an aquifer. Poorly drilled wells that go through an aquifer? Sure. But that applies to any well, fracking or no. Massive quantities of produced brine? Keep that shit out of the municipal wastewater system, and let’s not inject it into a fault line, mmkay?