To frack or not to frack? For years the question has been asked over and over again on radio phone-ins and TV political panel shows.

Like the death penalty or Scottish independence, fracking was framed as one of those simple binary issues beloved of broadcast producers.

Cut what John Underhill of Heriot Watt University called a "polarised but misinformed debate". Discussions got as heated as the deep wells that were, both sides agreed, ready to give up vast quantities of shale gas.

Politicians of the right talked about national security and jobs, albeit with caveats about planning law designed to keep "nimbies" on side. Those on the centre-left tried to outdo each other with anti-fracking rhetoric.

The SNP, constrained by the realities of being in government, announced a moratorium. Labour - more than aware that a huge majority of Scots were uncomfortable with horror stories from the United States - pledged a full-scale ban.

Yet nobody stopped to asked experts like Prof Underhill, a geologist, if the technology could be transferred from the plains of North America to the rippled and contorted rock structures of Britain.

It can't, says Prof Underhill, at least not on anything like the scale both sides of the debate have suggested.

So what now? Well, the fracking debate - even if based on what, if Prof Underhill is correct, is a false premise - raised real issues of both environmentally sustainability and energy independence.

Scots may be worried about fracking. They seem far less animated by mass oil and gas extraction off their coasts, despite its high environmental price.

But this resource, used since the 1970s to heat homes and businesses, is running out. Half the gas we burn comes from abroad. It means we depend on not altogether reliable sources, Russia and the Middle East, to stay warm. And it also still means our central heating systems are contributing to global warming.

The fracking debate may be moot. That poses new questions. Do we have to wean ourselves off gas - or import? Should we scrap our old boilers and instead power up storage heating with off-peak renewables? Make delayed serious public investment in insulation? Our next choices will be difficult but rarely as binary as fracking.