Not sure if this is worth posting as it amounts to some angst. I don't for one moment think most people take diagrams of fracking literally. They are like London Underground maps. They don't follow the route as in real life, bends and changes in direction, but are schematically composed for a paper map. Same goes for fracking diagrams where the pipe and drill are said to turn sharply from vertical to horizontal when just by thinking about it one would realise the turn was much more gradual. However, these diagrams seem to have got the beef of a professor and he made a post on what appears to be a pet bugbear. In my book this comes under the heading of underestimating fellow humans – especially those who are not professors. At https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2019/04/04/do-you-really-understand-how-… … which s a post derived from another blog. Dr Jay Lehr begins – and admit it, you don't have a clue. We might not have a clue about the technical aspects of fracking and therefore he is right to a degree as this doesn't stop people from pontificating on the subject by believing one point of view and not a contrary one (which they read later, or not at all). The professors point is that the average person's ignorance on the subject doesn't stop them from having a strong opinion on the subject – but you could say that about a lot of subjects from climate change to vaccinations. Most diagrams of shale gas wells have a pipe going down vertically into the ground and then turning at a sharp right angle to proceed horizontally towards where the well will be hydraulically fractured. How is that possible he asks. Can you think of any mechanism underground where a pipe would turn 90 degrees and be able to keep the end of the pipe, with its drill bit, spinning 360 degrees, in order to penetrate further into the rock strata. Of course you can't he says because it can't be done. Yet, amazingly, most people even remotely interested in the subject do not question the possibility of this impossibility. This is the point where he assumes people take the diagrams literally as a faithful rendition of fracking.
Meanwhile, at https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/increasing-electricity-system… … which basically implies that shutting down too many power stations is beginning to bite. National Grid appear to be worried. One of the commenters suggests blowing up the bird mincers and building some new coal fired power stations. Can't see the politicos of any flavour being as sensible as that.