Pacific Northwest At Risk For Mega-Earthquake 457
Hugh Pickens writes "Science Daily Headlines reports on research by Oregon State University marine geologist Chris Goldfinger showing that earthquakes of magnitude 8.2 (or higher) have occurred 41 times during the past 10,000 years in the Pacific Northwest. By extrapolation, there is a 37% chance of another major earthquake in the area in the next 50 years that could exceed the power of recent seismic events in Chile and Haiti. If a magnitude-9 quake does strike the Cascadia Subduction Zone, extending from northern Vancouver Island to northern California, the ground could shake for several minutes, highways could be torn to pieces, bridges might collapse, and buildings would be damaged or even crumble. If the epicenter is just offshore, coastal residents could have as little as 15 minutes of warning before a tsunami could strike. 'It is not a question of if a major earthquake will strike,' says Goldfinger, 'it is a matter of when. And the "when" is looking like it may not be that far in the future.'" Read below for more.
The last major earthquake to hit the Cascadia Subduction Zone was in January 1700. Scientists are aware of the impact because of written records from Japan documenting the damage caused by the ensuing tsunami, which crested across the Pacific at about 5 meters (15 feet). Knowledge about what happened in Oregon and Washington is more speculative, but the consensus — gleaned from studies of coastal estuaries, land formations, and river channels — is that the physical alteration to the coast was stunning. The outer coastal regions subsided and drowned coastal marshlands and forests, which were subsequently covered with younger sediments. "Perhaps more striking than the probability numbers is that we ... have already gone longer without an earthquake than 75% of the known times between earthquakes in the last 10,000 years," says Goldfinger. "And 50 years from now, that number will rise to 85 percent."
No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die... (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously? A man named Goldfinger is threatening the Pacific Northwest with tidal waves and earthquakes?
Well, at least MI5 will save us...
Re:No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, at least it's better than the whole laser-beam-to-the-crotch method of execution.
What? Of course I'd rather be drowned, crushed, and torn apart by massive hydraulic forces!
Yeah! Yeah! I AM a guy! So what?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, at least a trouser-snake.
Re:No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die... (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously? A man named Goldfinger is threatening the Pacific Northwest with tidal waves and earthquakes?
Well, at least MI5 will save us...
Don't worry. We have an agent working on it. I'm sure that whatever the magnitude of the earthquake he'll be shaken but not stirred.
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Re:No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? A man named Goldfinger is threatening the Pacific Northwest with tidal waves and earthquakes?
A more reasonable Goldfinger. After all, he barely expects a 37% chance of Mr. Bond dying in the next 50 years.
Re:No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die... (Score:5, Funny)
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Oblig. xkcd:
http://xkcd.com/123/ [xkcd.com]
Re:No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die... (Score:4, Funny)
You mean MI6 (Now called SIS)
Can you imagine the reaction of the operatives when that memo made the rounds?
Re:No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die... (Score:4, Funny)
The Northwest, and the West Coast as a whole, has a fairly substantial Asian population. LA, SF, Seattle and Portland have large Asian populations in particular.
If James were to visit, we would never see him again. Sensory overload would be his downfall.
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Portland has the highest number of strip clubs (per-capita) in the U.S.
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It's also has the highest number of microbreweries of any city in the world.
Yet another reason... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:4, Funny)
Wha? There are blizzards, snow storms, ice storms, hail and excessive temperature and pressure changes in the midwest (which lead to tornadoes).
no need to make it sound like all they have is tornadoes. Tornadoes just hit the trailer parks.
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Tornadoes just hit the trailer parks.
I was in a tornado [slashdot.org]. The tree behind the apartment I was living in looked like a weed someone had stomped on. There were trees with five foot diameter trunks uprooted; steel girders twisted, splinters driven into concrete blocks. The walk-in cooler at a bar down the street was ripped from the building. But the trailer park down the street was completely destroyed; it's a vacant lot now. Miraculously, nobody was seriously hurt!
This (central Illinois) may be the only place
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Your men may be "manly", but so are all men, because you know, man-ly = man like = men.
Meanwhile, our families are not a: retarded, b: conservative (politically), c: fundies, and d: devoid of logic, and we can't say the same about you big trucks folks. Drill baby drill, huh.
We may be liberal but we are financially conservative, something you big truck err big dick wannabes wish you were.
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Because everywhere else in the US doesn't have other natural disasters. There aren't wildfires in the west, tornadoes in the mid-west, hurricanes in the south, blizzards, snow storms, and ice storms in the north, flooding along the Mississippi...
Dear God! I had to delete three paragraphs of flamebait!
It's just too easy to continue that quote.
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I was in Atlanta when freezing rain was predicted once, and the city's response was to: park ambulances near the overpasses likely to freeze, so they'd be prepositioned to cart off the people injured in the accidents that would likely result. Seems salt trucks were not available in the region.
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:4, Informative)
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True, but natural disasters aren't the only reason I'm glad I don't live in California. Imploding economy, poor leadership, overbearing laws, and similar issues are others.
Name a state without the same problems, and you won't be talking about the USA.
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:5, Funny)
Arizona! Arizona doesn't have any overbearing laws.
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:4, Insightful)
Try reading the bill, smart guy. It specifically prohibits profiling based on skin color, and if the people claims the police officer did arrest them because of their skin color (and they can prove it), they hit pay dirt. By the way, the bill specifically states that such rare and difficult-to-obtain forms of identification like A DRIVER'S LICENSE is acceptable evidence that you're here legally. Actually read the bill for yourself and stop relying on biases "news" sources to feed you twisted summaries and you might actually learn the truth.
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It specifically prohibits profiling based on skin color, and if the people claims the police officer did arrest them because of their skin color (and they can prove it), they hit pay dirt.
Well, that's reassuring, because I'm sure the organs of the state would never do anything that they are specifically prohibited by law from doing, like running a secret prison system and torturing confessions out of people all over the world.
And of course proving intent is so simple! I'm sure there will be no difficulty with that, because a police officer would never lie about their intent, nor take any action to cover up their racist reasons for stopping someone.
Really, I feel safter already.
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By the way, the bill specifically states that such rare and difficult-to-obtain forms of identification like A DRIVER'S LICENSE is acceptable evidence that you're here legally. Actually read the bill for yourself and stop relying on biases "news" sources to feed you twisted summaries and you might actually learn the truth.
[Citation needed]
I'll help you out. Here's the full text of the law: http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf [azleg.gov]
I couldn't find any mention of a driver's license being sufficient proof of legality.
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I can eat a flamebate rating...
and you must be from one of those states where the leaders think they are so self righteous and moral that they get to legislate what genital configuration must be present in MY wedding bed, while they skip off with their rent boys to Italy...
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True, but natural disasters aren't the only reason I'm glad I don't live in California. Imploding economy, poor leadership, overbearing laws, and similar issues are others.
Name a state without the same problems, and you won't be talking about the USA.
Alaska only has one of the three.
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Yet another reason ... why I'm glad I don't live in the USA.
Fixed that for the GP. I mean, seriously. Is there a form of natural disaster you guys aren't under constant threat of?
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Oh wait...
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Yet another reason ... why I'm glad I don't live in the USA.
Fixed that for the GP. I mean, seriously. Is there a form of natural disaster you guys aren't under constant threat of?
Hey, reminding us of that constantly is the job of politicians facing elections, not slashdot.
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I live in Maryland, about 30 minutes outside of DC, and pretty much nothing happens here. Granted, we sometimes get the freak snowstorm (like Feb's Snowmegeddon), or sometimes get the tail end of tropical storms, but for the most part, the DC/Metro area doesn't have to worry about anything like that.
Oh wait....DC...never mind, we have our own brand of disaster to worry about -_-;;
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Yeah, here in Virginia and the area around here, we don't get much in the way of natural disasters.
A little flooding if you are stupid enough to build in a flood area, the occasional tornado that usually doesn't get very far before the mountains and trees break it up. etc.
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Are you kidding? 99 degree weather with 99% humidity is a freakin' disaster in my book.
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Yes! The DC/Metro area is great! All the seasons! Free museums! Lots of jobs (in administrative overhead)! You really want to move here! You could live in my condo by a Metro station!
I for one, am in favor of Pacific-Northwest fearmongering, no one really wants to live there!
/ Been trying to relocate to the Pacific Northwest for quite a few years now
// Have a feeling a lot of this fearmongering is encouraged by residents who don't want others to move in and bespoil it :-P
/// Says something about th
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I've lived here my whole life (lived in Montgomery Village until I was 6, then Olney, then lived in Germantown, then Gaithersburg, now downtown Rockville), and I love it around here...but when we leave the area in a few years, I certainly won't miss the traffic, overcrowding, or asshole drivers. I really miss how this area used to be...hell, Olney, my hometown, had only 7500 residents in it when my parents moved in there almost 20 years ago (I'm 26). Now, Olney has close to 40,000 people...and the city li
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>>>Because everywhere else in the US doesn't have other natural disasters.
Not compared to California. The worst "disaster" we have here (northeast) is 3 feet of snow, and all you have to do is wait for it to melt off the roads (usually 2 days or less). ..... But if your roof falls down on you, or a tidal wave buries you under 2 stories of water..... well that's it.
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..Mega-Sunami from the Canary Islands, Yellowstone Supervolcano, San-Andreas fault
Nothing to worry about really ....
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather have earthquakes than tornadoes, hurricanes, or flooding. With an earthquake, at least all of your stuff is in the hole that used to be your house, rather than scattered around the county.
Of course, the latest fear-mongering here in the Pacific North-wet is that if the Cascadia Subduction Zone rips open, it could light off Mt. Rainier and other cascade volcanoes. Pyroclastic flows, lahars, and ash, oh my!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also remember a tornado is a small thing. The chances of a tornado that is within 5000 feet of your home to hit you are very very slim. Only freaks of nature have the supertornados that are nearly a mile wide, most are very narrow.
you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than getting killed by a tornado directly.
I spent 1 summer as a volunteer storm chaser dropping a sensor payload in the path of a tornado. I was several times within 1000 feet of a tornado and certain it would go towards us.
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FYI: California isn't in the Pacific Northwest.
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"extending from northern Vancouver Island to northern California"
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... why I'm glad I don't live in California.
Here's a list of the earthquakes for the last 7 days [usgs.gov]. California is not the only place to be concerned about.
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IRIS [iris.edu] maps them out for you.
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Um, California isn't part of the Pacific Northwest. That's Washington and Oregon.
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides, keep in mind that they said "Pacific Northwest". As in Seattle. And they note it's the Cascadia zone, which extends to Canada. And, by coincidence, northern California. This is pretty much along the western states.
Frankly, having grown up in California and now living in Seattle, I can deal with earthquakes - most of what they cause tends to be very mild widespread wide-scatter (emphasis on scatter) panic.
I'd rather live on the west coast than in, say, Pella Iowa. Not only are there twisters, but there is also little to do unless you're a dairy farmer. (Incidentally, I left California for another problem that isn't so much a disaster: little to no opportunity for someone of my skills.)
Washington? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, Microsoft, arrrreee youuuuu ready to ruuuuuuuummmmbllle!!!!!!!
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Oregon? (Score:4, Funny)
Ducks and Beavers living together, UTTER CONFUSION!!!!
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They will just double the license fees to cover for any damage.
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I know you meant this to be funny, but MSFT ( and google) are all over this earthquake thing. That, along with access to power, is why they are building data centers in eastern washington, away from the fault lines.
Oblig. xkcd (Score:2, Funny)
By extrapolation
http://xkcd.com/605/ [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, either you or the moderators misunderstood that strip, though (my guess is that it's the mods). The point isn't that all extrapolation is bad, flimsy or invalid; it's just that not all naive extrapolations are automatically valid.
It's rather like with correlation and causation, too. Sure, correlation doesn't imply causation, but that doesn't mean that when there is correlation, there NEVER is causation (also an unfortunately all too common Slashdot meme that gets employed whenever an article causes co
Re:Oblig. xkcd (Score:4, Insightful)
You must be new here. Any xkcd reference gets an automatic +3 Interesting/Insightful mod, it's built in to slashcode. The fact that you think that someone would click on a link before moderating is laughable.
And... (Score:5, Insightful)
Preparation (Score:2)
Unfortunately, those who predict an earthquake don't give much guidance for preparation. It would be useful to know, for example, what an earthquake is likely to do to a wooden house held together by nails.
The subduction zone is off the coast. How would an earthquake there affect Portland, Oregon, which is 80 miles i
Re:Preparation (Score:5, Funny)
The subduction zone is off the coast. How would an earthquake there affect Portland, Oregon, which is 80 miles inland?
Create a lot of new beachfront property?
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Unfortunately, those who predict an earthquake don't give much guidance for preparation. It would be useful to know, for example, what an earthquake is likely to do to a wooden house held together by nails.
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, and you don't know what an earthquake does to a wooden house held together by nails and metal straps (let's be accurate here, those metal tie plates are mandated by code in earthquake country) then you deserve to die in an earthquake. With that said, the house I live in is floppy and sloppy. Seriously considering a shipping container home.
Re:Preparation (Score:5, Interesting)
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, there's a good chance that your house *is* built to at least some earthquake code. My house was built in 1960, has metal tie plates, and is bolted to the foundation, and not as a retrofit.
This isn't exactly new knowledge that earthquakes happen close to active volcanos, you know.
Re:And... (Score:4, Informative)
Governments in the area have been reacting to this news for a couple decades. In BC, we're spending over a billion dollars seismically upgrading critical bridges and making sure the older schools and hospitals don't colapse on their occupants. They've begun emergency preparedness drills, etc.
The problem is: at 8+ magintude, all plans go to crap...
Re:And... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, no. Vancouver is located near a triple-plate junction, and is susceptible to deep magnitude 9 subduction quakes with minimal surface shaking (akin to Chile), or shallower magnitude 7s with a lot of surface shaking. Locally, a magnitude 7 is a lot more problematic, although a magnitude 9 would put everyone else on the rim on tsunami-watch.
Richmond and the unconsolidated saturated sediments they live on below sea water behind a dyke is pretty much out of luck in prolonged shaking, as the liquefaction means they'll discover they built on oatmeal. The only way to earthquake-proof that is to keep Richmond entirely agricultural.
But for the city proper, it's pretty much set. Vancouver is built on glacier-compressed sediment, and once you've had 2km of ice squishing everything flat, as far as earthquakes are concerned, it's pretty much bedrock. The engineered fill around False Creek/Granville Island/the downtown docks are likely to have more problems (honestly, I'm concerned about those nice, huge cranes toppling under a bit of liquefaction, exactly like waterfront in Haiti), but as far as "places with people" go, the biggest danger should be the shower of broken glass in the city core. Even personal preparedness is fairly high: approximately 2,000 students per year pass the intro to disasters course at UBC; I don't have the numbers but I'd guess at least a few hundred take the equivalent course at SFU.
Vancouver Island protects the mainland from tsunami; the only real tsunami-danger east of the island is locally in the fjords if the earthquake triggers a landslide (likely things will fail; not so likely anything big enough will go in any one place to really cause a threatening seche). As for the west coast of the island, this past year's Chile-warning was a good practice run. The last-mile notification is still bumpy, but getting better.
Victoria (on the south tip of Vancouver Island) worries me more -- the current subduction has buckled the island up by approximately 15m, which is an awful lot to deal with if it all slips at once. This is made more complicated by the large proportion of the elderly (Victoria is a major retirement destination in Canada), who have lowered resiliency in emergencies.
Cheking out Chris Goldfinger's credentials (Score:3, Funny)
Ob (Score:3, Funny)
Clearly it's BP's fault. Those evil Belgians!
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What do you expect when you smell like cabbage!
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Hmmm... Owns large chunks of what was Standard Oil, Run by a Swede ...Started as AngloArabian Oil in Iran... ...Belgian?
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The part of it that is belgian.
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Which part of "it is now 2010, not 1998" are YOU having trouble with?
The B means the same as the J in Michael J. Fox. No doubt you won't get that either.
Oh, one other thing - the P never stood for "petrol" either.
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Yeah, like anyone's going to believe your retroactive pawning it off on the Brits, you goddamn Belgian.
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I'll give you (and the two ACs above) a clue - the B stands for Belgian as much as it stands for British.
No problem. (Score:2)
If they can hang on 'til the end of 2012, the problem will go away.
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That depends on how you see it.
How far from the predicted epicenter lived the guys who believed in the 2012 thing?
Maybe some guys came from the north and, when asked about the reasons for their trip they just said "We predicted a 37% chance of the the earth opening and eating our village in about 1000 years, so we decided to move".
Same old thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I suspect it amounts to the fact that nothing gets the slashbot's panties wet like the possibility of something wiping out Microsoft.
Re:Same old thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've met people 20 years ago who moved away from Vancouver in 1980 because they were scared of the big earthquake that will come ANY DAY NOW!
There is probably more chance to get hit by a drunk driver when you are walking down the road where they moved to.
--jeffk++
Re:Same old thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
So, while it is almost certainly more likely that a particular person will be killed by a drunk driver rather than killed by the earthquake, the likelihood of being caught up in it is significantly higher. And strictly speaking the earthquake is still coming any day now. We just don't have any good idea as to how to tell when it's going to happen. There's been some advances in that respect, but nobody can do so reliably based upon scientific inquiry.
Well, as long as we're talking catastrophe (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm curious what the impact of earthquakes in/around the NW would have on the Yellowstone Caldera.
Granted, it sounds like the earthquakes in the NW are orders of magnitude more frequent (and less catastrophic) than the eruption of the Yellowstone formation, but it seems likely that one might impact the other, being that they're only what, about 700mi apart?
Re:Well, as long as we're talking catastrophe (Score:5, Informative)
Somehow I doubt it. Vulcanism is a completely different natural process than plate tectonics. If anything, a massive earthquake like this, even if its energy did reach that far away, would, at most, shift the location of the hotspot where the future eruption is likely to take place. Which means that a section of thin earth (the hotspot) would be pushed away and replaced with a section of thicker earth that hadn't been warmed to the same degree yet. This should minimize the chance for a new eruption, not increase it.
Re:Well, as long as we're talking catastrophe (Score:4, Insightful)
Somehow I doubt it. Vulcanism is a completely different natural process than plate tectonics.
One involves the movement of the continents, while the other involves pointy ears.
Yes, I know "vulcanism" is today considered a "variant" of "volcanism", but that variant is based on a spelling error which has been propagated forward by the ignorant.
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I actually prefer the variant "vulcanism" because it shows the roots of the word going back to the god Vulcan. "Volcanism" just doesn't seem as poetic to me.
Old news (Score:4, Insightful)
Pacific NorthWest? (Score:4, Informative)
For the rest of the world they are referring to the North Eastern Pacific.
It the blackhawks after they beat nashville it got (Score:2)
It the blackhawks after they beat Nashville it got flooded Vancouver is ok for now. But now is SJ next???
Will California become it's own nation after it br (Score:2)
Will California become it's own nation after it breaks off from the usa? It if becomes a island?
37% (Score:4, Funny)
37%? 37% even? Are you sure it's not 37.367%?
Honestly, guys.
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Don't mock the Thunderbird (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, there was a pretty interesting BBC Horizon show on this a while back. Possibly the origin of the Thunderbird legend in Native American mythology and they traced a likely quake to a Tsunami that caused flooding in Japan according to an existing written record that is well dated. Aside from coastal flooding the question was whether the modern buildings would bend or break. Show left it with, "it'll be an interesting test."
Microsoft-swallowing earthquake (Score:3, Funny)
Oh please please please please please let there be an earthquake!
We are actually aware of this up here... (Score:3, Informative)
More interesting than when the big one is going to hit is how well we are setup to handle it when it does. I was in a building rated only for a 7.0 Ricter magnitude quake during our last major quake (which measured 6.8), and there were major fears that the building was going to collapse either during or just after the quake. Luckily for me, it weathered the quake with only minor damage.
However, after the Chile quake last year, I heard a report from our local NPR affiliate comparing the infrastructure of the NW with the infrastructure of Chile (our buildings are built to roughly the same standards, and are around the same age), and mentioning that the state governments up here were taking interest in learning from the lessons of that quake to prepare better for our next big quake.
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just because something happened in the past doesn't mean that it will happen again. let's take a hard look at the facts and the numbers, and not be frightened by prophecy. statistics tell the story that you want to tell.
You are right, of course. So, why don't you jump out of tall building? Just because things have fallen downwards in the past doesn't mean that you can't stay up if you try.
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Re:damned lies (Score:4, Informative)
No statistician I have met was ever willing to extrapolate beyond the set.
How many have you met?
I ask because it is done every day. Virtually the entire work of theoretical econometrics is extrapolation, and complicated by the absence of the usual experimental controls. Climate scientists do it as well. Obviously the results are subject to a lot of debate. Some bookies have statisticians on staff. Insurance companies want all sorts of extrapolation from their actuaries. Players in futures markets aren't doing seat of the pants guessing. U Iowa has been studying prediction markets of many kinds on a large scale for a very long time, and have well developed statistical models. Large companies and governments alike pay people to forecast everything from crime rates to how many drilling permits to hand out.
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Re:damned lies (Score:5, Interesting)
But it's not pure extrapolation. Earthquakes in subduction zones are the result of pressure buildup. They are not spaced randomly, as the time between them is determined by the tectonic action that causes the pressure to be generated or released. Thus, the time difference between earthquakes is relevant.
Re:damned lies (Score:4, Informative)
Re:An old story recycled for fear-mongering (Score:5, Insightful)
... It's not that I think the stories are incorrect so much as they serve no purpose other than to feed the human hunger for new and overwhelming things to fear.
I've lived in Los Angeles since I left Vancouver and been faced with the same cycle of destruction predictions and they serve no useful purpose. They are not instructive. They just terrify people to no real end. How are people supposed to respond to a supposedly impending natural disaster that spells utter destruction?...
How are people supposed to respond? Allow me to explain.
"Fear mongering" can create public pressure, and political support, for introducing strong building codes and enforcement, and effective disaster planning that can drastically reduce death and injury.
Alerting people to the danger, and giving them good information about danger zones (e.g. tsunamai strike zones, soil liquifaction zones, etc.) allows them to avoid placing themselves at avoidable risk.
Are you truly unaware of how you can reduce your own exposure to risk? If so, you have only your own ignorance to blame. (Hint: staying out of old masonry buildings helps. I sure do. Also, did you strap your water heater? How about that masonry chimney?)
Even the largest earthquake ever recorded did not create "utter destruction", even though it was vast; the vast majority of people still survived and most who died could have been saved with appropriate planning.
On the other hand, throwing up your hands and saying "nothing can be done" assures that the maximum number of people are killed and maimed.
Re:Central tendancy (Score:4, Informative)
It's unknown if large geological events like this occur according to any central tendency. It may be that the mean time between large earthquakes is not related to the mean. Ultimately we have no idea, the data is not good enough to say...
This is an absurd contention. Paleoseismic research provides precisely this information, and is a very well developed field. Further, we actually understand the basic mechanism that creates very large earthquakes and thus have a normative theory that explains and reinforces a purely statistical approach. Large earthquakes follow the same frequency law (the Guttenburg-Richter Law) as small and moderate earthquakes.
It strikes me as sad (but I guess not surprising given the anti-scientific political culture on the right) to find this same contra-factual "we don't really know anything" claim for earthquake geology that is currently pushed by those hostile to climate research.
For a useful backgrounder on earthquake statistics loook at: www.earthquake.ethz.ch/education/NDK/NDK