The Arrival of Man-Made Earthquakes 166
An anonymous reader writes: The New Yorker has a long investigative report on a recent geological phenomenon: man-made earthquakes. The article describes how scientists painstakingly gathered data on the quakes, and then tried to find ways to communicate the results — which are quite definitive — to politicians who often have financial reasons to disbelieve them. Quoting: "Until 2008, Oklahoma experienced an average of one to two earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or greater each year. (Magnitude-3.0 earthquakes tend to be felt, while smaller earthquakes may be noticed only by scientific equipment or by people close to the epicenter.) In 2009, there were twenty. The next year, there were forty-two. In 2014, there were five hundred and eighty-five, nearly triple the rate of California.
In state government, oil money is both invisible and pervasive. In 2013, Mary Fallin, the governor, combined the positions of Secretary of Energy and Secretary of the Environment. Michael Teague, whom she appointed to the position, when asked by the local NPR reporter Joe Wertz whether he believed in climate change, responded that he believed that the climate changed every day. Of the earthquakes, Teague has said that we need to learn more. Fallin's first substantive response came in 2014, when she encouraged Oklahomans to buy earthquake insurance. (However, many earthquake-insurance policies in the state exclude coverage for induced earthquakes.)"
In state government, oil money is both invisible and pervasive. In 2013, Mary Fallin, the governor, combined the positions of Secretary of Energy and Secretary of the Environment. Michael Teague, whom she appointed to the position, when asked by the local NPR reporter Joe Wertz whether he believed in climate change, responded that he believed that the climate changed every day. Of the earthquakes, Teague has said that we need to learn more. Fallin's first substantive response came in 2014, when she encouraged Oklahomans to buy earthquake insurance. (However, many earthquake-insurance policies in the state exclude coverage for induced earthquakes.)"
Keep digging you own hole (Score:1)
But stop messing with my atmosphere.
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Re:Keep digging you own hole (Score:5, Informative)
since the scale is logarithmic, you would need more than 3 million 2.0 earthquakes to dissipate the same energy as a single 8.5. So no, all these 2.0 or 3.0s don't make a dent in the probability of a giant 8.5
Re:Keep digging you own hole (Score:5, Interesting)
I look at it like being on a mountain and whacking at rocks with a big mallet. Little ones, you'll almost certainly send rolling down the slope. Ones that are several dozen kilograms, it'll be hit or miss whether you'll make enough of an impact to send them down the mountainside. But giant multi-tonne boulders? You're irrelevant to them, even if they're already precariously balanced.
On the other hand, there's always the possibility that you might hit a smaller rock, sending it cascading into a bigger rock, etc, and ultimately trigger a chain reaction that was already sitting there on a knife's edge. But the odds of this, just hitting rocks at random (let alone deliberately trying to avoid precariously balanced rocks), is very low.
The amount of energy people are putting into the ground compared to the scale of the forces involved in major faults is pretty much irrelevant. Even if the fault is "ready to go", you're still hardly affecting it. There's always the chance you might start a cascade of slips... but that's unlikely, even if you weren't deliberately trying to avoid working near major faults - and drillers do try to avoid working near major faults.
Possible - but very unlikely.
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The amount of energy people are putting into the ground compared to the scale of the forces involved in major faults is pretty much irrelevant.
The energy is the internal energy of billions upon billions of gallons of water. In fact, it is significant with respect to fault forces - as demonstrated by the clear empirical link between disposal wells drilled into basement rock and seismic activity.
and drillers do try to avoid working near major faults.
From TFA, it sounds that in Oklahoma many drillers do try to avoid drilling disposal wells into basement rock. However, a large part (~20%) of the total impact is coming from just a few large disposal wells owned by a single firm, which is currently resistin
Re:Keep digging you own hole (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Gallons are not a unit of energy.
2) A billion gallons of water is about the mass of a cube of rock 77 meters per side. The sort of fault that can unleash a major earthquake is hundreds of kilometers long and extends a good way through the crust.
It is the boulder. You're hitting at it with a mallet. It doesn't care.
In fact, it is significant with respect to fault forces - as demonstrated by the clear empirical link between disposal wells drilled into basement rock and seismic activity.
Link with minor quakes They are the little rocks and occasional moderate sized rock that you can actually budge with your mallet.
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1) Gallons are not a unit of energy.
I didn't say it was - the energy involved comes from 1) Earth's gravitational field and 2) the internal energy of the water. Both are proportional to the water volume. The amount of water in question, around 50 billion gallons, is not small. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a percentage in arguing with someone who doesn't believe in conservation of mass or Le Chatelier's principle.
Link with minor quakes
About magnitude 3.0 to 6.0. M3 quakes are pretty small, but underestimating 4.0 - 6.0 quakes is a dangerous mistake. Prior t
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English words do tend to have alternate definitions [merriam-webster.com] which can be confusing to non-native speakers. As the AC said below:
[Percentage is] an accepted euphemism for "advantage", stemming from gambling and loansharking.
Butterflies and boulders (Score:2)
The theory is that faults are similar to large glaciers where melt water has been shown to lubricate the interface between a glacier and the bedro
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The USGS and Oklahoma Geological Survey say [huffingtonpost.com] that the quake was natural, but one study [gsapubs.org] argues that 18 years of cumulative injection triggered a lesser fault, which started a cascade that led up to the major fault. Aka, the "you hit a rock, it hits a bigger one, etc" scenario I outlined in my initial post.
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The USGS and Oklahoma Geological Survey say [huffingtonpost.com] that the quake was natural
In fact, the USGS has concluded that disposal well pumping is responsible for increased seismic activity in Oklahoma (the article you link merely quotes a single geologist who works at the USGS). And, while the OGS does officially state the quake was natural, this position is not supported by even one study result - it's instead an arbitrary, politically mandated claim. The director of the OGS himself has even published research which does support induced seismicity in Oklahoma, and in TFA strongly implied
Re:Keep digging you own hole (Score:4, Interesting)
The fault in Prague isn't even near an injection well. There's no way it was directly caused by wastewater injection. Now, the smaller quake that led up to it was near a wastewater injection well, and there are some who think that was the trigger, while others disagree. But that's just an example of what I mentioned in my first post, the possibility of starting a cascade. But that's not as likely even if one wasn't trying to avoid triggering sizeable faults, something that the fact that there have been so even few moderate quakes in areas with injection wells despite the vast, vast amounts of wells that have been doing this for many years.
And lets not pretend like these are the only human activities that cause earthquakes. Draining aquifers causes earthquakes. Building and filling large dams causes earthquakes. Even fluctuating reservoir levels cause earthquakes. Building very large skyscrapers causes earthquakes. Large mining projects cause earthquakes. Everything we do that adds or substracts weight from an area can trigger earthquakes [wikipedia.org]. So why the focus on this particular cause? Do you mistakenly believe that this is somehow unusually severe? You talk about the merely cascaded 5,6 Prague quake that caused some damage. The 6,3 1967 Koynanagar Earthquake caused by Konya Dam killed 180 people and took out power to Bombay. Vajont Dam in Italy caused earthquakes, eventually destabilizing the slopes and sending a landslide into the filling reservoir and killing 2000 people. The 8,0 2008 Sichuan earthquake which killed 68.000 people, injured 376k people, left 5-11 million homeless was probably caused by Zipingpu Dam. Where's your outrage over this? Why all this outrage over these tiny quakes and the occasional moderate quake possibly triggered by a tiny quake, when there's far bigger induced seismicity causes out there?
Simple: it's your political view coloring your analysis of the situation.
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So why the focus on this particular cause?
We're discussing an article about it. The article is not about other forms of induced seismicity - although the events you mention are useful in demonstrating that the amount of water injected in Oklahoma is quite significant.
it's your political view coloring your analysis of the situation.
I read peer-reviewed research in order to understand phenomena like the one in question. You on other hand are devoted to a particular position on an empirical question regardless of published research. You've already lied about the USGS' position, and are now resorting to non sequitor
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the scientists on the 'environmental' side
This is a generic false equivalence which contradicts the positions of the actual Oklahoman scientists who provided the majority of the material in TFA.
In fact, these scientists all support the Oklahoma oil industry and continued injection via disposal wells. They want 1) the government to recognize the scientific evidence on the matter, 2) firms and government to investigate which wells contact basement rock and 3) firms to move wells which do in fact contact basement rock.
'harvest' the 'scientific results'
No harvesting or picking of resul
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> The amount of energy people are putting into the ground compared to the scale of the forces
The "amount of energy" is already present, it's not the addition of energy. The problem is that the water being pumped in is acting as a lubricant, in ways that oil embedded shale is not so good a lubricant. The earthquakes are due to _release_ of energy, not addition of energy.
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I live in California, less than a mile from a fault line. You can't even feel a 2.0. Even a 3.0 is no worse than a truck driving by your house. If you are sleeping, it is unlikely to wake you up. There are some good reasons to oppose hydraulic fracturing, but "earthquakes" isn't one of them. This is as silly as opposing windmills because an occasional bird gets wacked.
Re:Keep digging you own hole (Score:5, Informative)
There are some good reasons to oppose hydraulic fracturing, but "earthquakes" isn't one of them.
Guess you skipped the article, which isn't about fracking. Instead, it's about disposal wells, which unlike fracking (which as you say is linked only to very small earthquakes) have been conclusively linked to larger quakes of magnitude 3.0 - 6.0. According to TFA, there were 585 such earthquakes in Oklahoma in 2013, while there were just a few annually prior to 2008.
This is as silly as opposing windmills because an occasional bird gets wacked.
None of the scientists or Oklahoma residents quoted by TFA are "opposed" to disposal wells. They want 1) the empirical link between disposal wells which contact basement rock and seismic activity to be recognized; 2) firms to be required to investigate if their wells contact basement rock; and 3) to move wells which do in fact contact basement rock.
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OTIS!
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still causes property damage.
frequently to just repaired homes and buildings since the swarms are clustered in small areas.
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Without this information, it is difficult to understand whether this is just scaremongering by anti-fracking environmentalists.
You asked the right questions, but you came to the wrong conclusion. The simple fact of the matter is that we don't have this information, i.e. there are no peer reviewed studies predicting or discounting any of your three possibilities with a reasonable degree of certainty. Thus, it is entirely prudent to take precautions that would prevent a possible scenario where areas could
Re:Keep digging you own hole (Score:5, Informative)
he simple fact of the matter is that we don't have this information, i.e. there are no peer reviewed studies predicting or discounting any of your three possibilities with a reasonable degree of certainty.
This simply isn't true (can you say astroturf?). Fracking is a complete non sequitor here; disposal wells in Oklahoma have been shown to be the primary cause of increased seismic activity there by multiple tens of peer-reviewed studies, while zero papers have reached an alternative conclusion.
Re:Keep digging you own hole (Score:5, Informative)
Seismic activity in Oklahoma is not caused by fracking, but by disposal wells via which truly vast quantities of water are injected into basement rock. Fracking tends to cause only very small earthquakes, while poorly placed disposal wells can lead to quakes of magnitude 3.0 - 6.0 (based on examples in TFA).
Throw Away Culture (Score:2)
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I'm quaking in my boots... no wait, that's the ground.
I've had enough! (Score:2, Funny)
Dadburnit liberals and their commie "Global Shaking" scam.
Get off my perfectly-stable lawn!
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Why blame them when this is the Republicans that are doing this because they hate the poor. They want them to die. That is why they are doing this. They hate them.
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That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Why would we want poor people to die? Who is going to clean my house?
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Plate tectonics disproves man-made earthquakes! Everyone knows the earth is always moving!
Fracking (Score:1)
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Lets see, no earthquakes until fracking started, then more and more earthquakes as fracking continues. Yup, sounds logical to me.
I retired to Florida just when fracking started. Obviously it caused that as well. Who do I get to sue ?
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You got it wrong.
You retired to Florida. So you are the first suspect. Where can I cash in my reward?
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Obviously you caused the earthquakes.
Where in Florida? Because we're going to sue *you*.
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I'll give you my lawyers number. He'll probably handle your tort against whoever removed your sense of humor.
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If he's let you practice humor as badly as you do, he should be disbarred.
If lawyers got to decide whats funny nobody would ever laugh.
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Not only that but sea level appears to be rising in Florida causing more flooding. Maybe it's just because Crashmarik moved there and is causing Florida to sink.
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It is difficult... (Score:3, Insightful)
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" --Upton Sinclair
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Re the Upton Sinclair quote: I'm pretty sure (don't have time to dig through the library at the moment) that earthquakes from well injection were known in California in the 1920s (when Sinclair had a small interest in the oil boom there, hence Oil! [later "There Will Be Blood"]).
sPh
Counterpoint (Score:2)
It is easy to get someone to make a particular claim if they are paid enough to do so.
Re:It is difficult... (Score:4, Insightful)
The irony is that we've accidentally stumbled onto probably our best chance at mitigating disastrous earthquakes. But one side is desperate to prove we aren't causing earthquakes, and the other side is desperate to prove this is an evil thing which must be stopped.
In avalanche-prone regions, we don't wait for the snow to build up until it comes down in a humungous avalanche. We deliberately cause smaller avalanches before the snow builds up to levels which could cause a devastating avalanche. Either by firing cannon shells or dropping dynamite from helicopters into the snowpack. With fracking, we've stumbled upon the exact same technique. We could intentionally trigger smaller earthquakes before seismic stresses build up enough to cause a devastating earthquake. But one side insists there's no connection, while the other side is desperate to portray it as an activity from which no good can come.
The ultimate "man made earthquake" (Score:4, Interesting)
Russian analyst urges nuclear attack on Yellowstone National Park and San Andreas fault line [smh.com.au]
A Russian geopolitical analyst says the best way to attack the United States is to detonate nuclear weapons to trigger a supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park or along the San Andreas fault line on California's coast.
The president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems based in Moscow, Konstantin Sivkov said in an article for a Russian trade newspaper on Wednesday, VPK News, that Russia needed to increase its military weapons and strategies against the "West" which was "moving to the borders or Russia".
He has a conspiracy theory that NATO - a political and military alliance which counts the US, UK, Canada and many countries in western Europe as members - was amassing strength against Russia and the only way to combat that problem was to attack America's vulnerabilities to ensure a "complete destruction of the enemy".
"Geologists believe that the Yellowstone supervolcano could explode at any moment. There are signs of growing activity there. Therefore it suffices to push the relatively small, for example the impact of the munition megaton class to initiate an eruption. The consequences will be catastrophic for the United States - a country just disappears," he said.
"Another vulnerable area of the United States from the geophysical point of view, is the San Andreas fault - 1300 kilometers between the Pacific and North American plates ... a detonation of a nuclear weapon there can trigger catastrophic events like a coast-scale tsunami which can completely destroy the infrastructure of the United States."
Full story [smh.com.au]
Re:The ultimate "man made earthquake" (Score:4, Informative)
Oblig (Score:2)
Re:The ultimate "man made earthquake" (Score:4, Informative)
"Geologists believe that the Yellowstone supervolcano could explode at any moment. ...
For a geologist "any moment" is sometime in the next million years.
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In this case I believe it's closer to the next 30 million years. I also believe that a surface level explosion of a nuke on it would be quite unlikely to have any significant effect (on the volcano).
OTOH, our ability to predict just when a volcano will explode is extremely poor. IIRC Mt. St. Helens took everyone totally by surprise.
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No, there were obvious precursors for weeks before the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 [wikipedia.org]. The size and nature of the eruption was a surprise (few expected a sector collapse -- when the whole side of the mountain failed), but the eruption itself was predicted.
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OK. A few weeks. And we still couldn't predict the nature of the explosion. (Or, with any certainty, when it would happen. Or even, as *I* recall, that it would happen. Perdiction, yes, certainty, no.) That's really not enough to do much preparation for an eruption.
Remember, there were hikers on the mountain who had not been warned that this was dangerous. That doesn't sound like certainty to me. Perhaps a few people were certain, but nobody who had any public voice chose to use it (and was believe
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The first warning signs of the Mt. Saint Helens eruption started about 10 weeks before the eruption. 3 weeks before the eruption a red zone was established around the mountain. There were no hikers on the mountain proper, just a few people who had property there and refused to leave. Interactive map showing the locations of the people killed by the May 18th 1980 eruption of Mt. Saint Helens. [columbian.com] Nearly all of them were well outside the red zone. The huge lateral blast of the initial eruptions pretty much s
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The scale of the lateral blast was a surprise. The presence of a multiple-hundreds of metres bulge on one flank of the volcano and it's increase over a period of days before the event was a bit hard to miss, which was why it was being monitored.
Most people expected a landslide from that flank, but not an explosion, because no-one had observed such an event from sufficiently close, and then lived to tell the tale in sufficient de
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How big a nuke? This is Russia, they probably still have a second Tsar Bomba sitting in a silo somewhere.
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If I understand the dynamics properly, any bomb that would melt its way down to the zone of magma would prevent the volcano from erupting, because it would then not need to force its way through solit rock. If they just melt down the mountain, you get magma flow without the eruption.
OTOH, I am not a vulcanologist. So don't count on this analysis if you really need an expert opinion.
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Not geophysical - thus no actual science was harmed or even approached in the making of the report.
He probably finally got around to watching a Superman movie.
Also note that "any moment" for Yellowstone is in geological time and not years or decades.
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No, it's a ridiculous claim, which is why it got so much incredulous coverage. The Yellowstone Caldera is not undergoing any unusual activity, just its normal random fluctuations, and nor is it something that even a hundred Tsar Bombas could readily destabilize.
But do we know? (Score:5, Funny)
There are fault lines in Oklahoma. There's a fairly large one that runs down from Nebraska into the eastern part of the state. It's usually pretty quiet, but every now and again you get a shift.
And the article said that they're updating fault maps - they don't have enough data.
So... are we sure these are caused by fracking? 'Cause even if you are, you'll never get Oklahomans (especially the government) to believe it.
After all, we're the state that gave you Sen. Inhofe, who still denies that climate change is happening at all (sorry about that, I didn't vote for him). We've got a lot of people employed in the Oil industry. Going against Oil here is political suicide.
Hopefully we can provide scientists enough data to prove what's going on (if it is indeed manmade) so they can use the data elsewhere. They'll make no traction here.
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Don't stand in the way of science man.
We're discovering how to prevent deadly earthquakes. Within your lifetime, the state of California will begin fracking all up and down the San Andreas fault. (They will leave the oil in the ground though.)
They will look back on the days when we just ignorantly allowed big earthquakes to happen, killing thousands in our apathy, just like we do now at the Romans for using lead pipes.
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Depends on the water. Hard water tends to coat the pipes and so dissolves less lead than soft water.
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The lead pipes were mostly fine
Perhaps you could elaborate "mostly".
(and they may be some still in use near you)
How is that at all related?
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Uncertainty of dying of poisoning, with little or none of it getting into people's bodies versus close to certainty. So merely a bad idea (like lead in fuel) instead of lethal.
Lead pipes were used until only a few decades ago so the water you are drinking may have passed through some lead pipework if the building is old enough.
My point - comparing drinking a lot of stuff sweetened with lead acetate versus tiny amounts even on the parts per million scale.
The lead pipes th
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Fracking in California? Never happen! They don't have enough water to do any fracking!
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Everyone automatically talks about "fracking" in relation to the quakes. Fracking is just a brief pulse. Wastewater injection in disposal wells is a far more likely culprit if these are human-induced.
Re:But do we know? (Score:4, Informative)
Hopefully we can provide scientists enough data to prove what's going on (if it is indeed manmade) so they can use the data elsewhere.
Well, as TFA says:
The official position of the O.G.S. [Oklahoma Geological Survey] is that the Prague earthquakes were likely a natural event and that there is insufficient evidence to say that most earthquakes in Oklahoma are the result of disposal wells. That position, however, has no published research to support it, and there are at least twenty-three peer-reviewed, published papers that conclude otherwise.
There's a lot of research and science on this already. The only people who seem to be confused are Oklahoma politicians, corporate executives, and some Oklahoma geologists who are employed or influenced by politicians.
This is a state that went from 1-2 earthquakes over 3.0 per year to OVER 1500 such quakes in 2009-2014. So, something significant has changed (an increase of over two orders in magnitude is generally not just average variation), and it seems to have changed right around the time that people have started pumping a lot of stuff deep into the ground.
If these are NOT manmade, it's one heck of a coincidence....
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They tabled that until the next legislative session, after seeing Indiana and Arkansas.
But it's pretty much identical to them, being both:
-misleadingly titled a "restoration act" (when they aren't restoring anything; it's already perfectly legal to discriminate against homosexuals in the state in pretty much any manner)
-extending the existing legal shield for private persons created by the existing religious freedom act to also extend to businesses (cause businesses are people apparently...)
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after 4-5 years with almost no significant snow/ice, getting an actual snow storm with substantial snow (a whopping 5 inches!!) this year was considered a freak event (and of course, a reason to disprove global warming)...
and of course prior to 4/5 years ago, this sort snow storm was much common, being an almost yearly event.
Oklahoma: living proof of https://xkcd.com/1321/ [xkcd.com]
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I have not heard that conclusion previously. Do you have any information indicating the dust bowl was due to inadvertent geoengineering? I was taught in school it was a natural event. Or was it due to draining aquifers and lack of rain?
Re:But do we know? (Score:5, Informative)
It gets better:
Recently the legislature introduced a bill that would block the oil/gas industry from liability for spills and earthquakes.
There's another that calls for an investigation into the scientists investigating the earthquakes (sound familiar to another topic??).
And they recently gave the oil/gas industry yet another tax break....while the state has a massive 600million dollar shortfall in its budget (Kansas gets most of the press for doubling down failed red state budgetary policies, but OK is right there with them). Further, they want to continue to cut the income tax again, and eventually eliminate it entirely. These two items of course not being negotiable, even in the face of the massive budgetary shortfall.
And the legislature passed a bill last week (which will be signed soon by the idiot Fallin if it hasn't already) that would ban local municipalities from interfering with, restricting, or banning oil/gas operations within their jurisdictions. That's right: the state government has told local government they cannot govern themselves in this area. Oil and gas by state law must (essentially) be given free reign to drill and operate where they want in the state.
Just like last year the state legislature banned local municipalities from setting their own minimum wages. By state law now, no city in Oklahoma may set a minimum wage higher than the state minimum wage, which of course is only as high as the federal. This was done in response to the mere idea being floated in OKC of setting a city minimum wage higher than the fed/state minimums.
Blech.
Re:But do we know? (Score:5, Informative)
are we sure these are caused by fracking?
Actually, we are sure that they are not caused by fracking (which tends to cause only very small quakes of magnitude < 3.0). Rather, larger 3.0 - 6.0 magnitude quakes in Oklahoma are being caused by disposal wells via which extremely large quantities of water are being injected into the ground. TFA states that > 25 peer-reviewed studies have concluded the disposal wells are responsible, while 0 studies have produced an alternative result.
Cause even if you are, you'll never get Oklahomans (especially the government) to believe it.
The USGS has already concluded that the quakes are caused by disposal wells. The director of the OGS (interviewed in the article) essentially states that OGS is being politically prevented from agreeing with that conclusion openly. So it's only the regulatory side of Oklahoma government which has issues with empiricism.
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The director of the OGS (interviewed in the article) essentially states that OGS is being politically prevented from agreeing with that conclusion openly. So it's only the regulatory side of Oklahoma government which has issues with empiricism.
That was my point, actually.
Oklahoma is a very oil-friendly state. We're not about to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs until our houses all fall down.
Hopefully those studies can keep others from falling in the same hole we are here. As for us, forget about us, we'll be pumping until there's nothing there but rock.
Obviously A Devine Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Repent sinners! God is angry at Oklahoma.
poor reporting... (Score:1)
This isn't the "arrival" of man-made earthquakes. Ever since man has been doing large scale environmental modification, we have been inducing seismic activity.
The most common induced seismic events occur when we build dams to create reservoirs. One of the first examples was the filling of the Oued Fodda Dam in 1933. Others occur due to depletion of underground reservoirs (like the Lorca earthquake in 2011) or enhanced geothermal energy extraction (Cerro Prieto in 1979).
Of course all phenomena is new to the
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The subtitle of this article does not specify that this is the arrival of the "first" manmade earthquakes as you've mistakenly interpreted. The article itself clarifies this "arrival" in the following statement (emphasis mine):
"Few noticed that Keranen and her team had gathered likely the best data we have on a new phenomenon in Oklahoma: man-made earthquakes."
In other words, STFU and RTFA, slew. I can't believe you actually wasted time googling up citations of other man-made earthquakes in support of you
we all know who's behind this (Score:1)
Crossed lines (Score:5, Interesting)
So, if the insurance company can prove the quakes were man-made, they don't have to pay out. But if they can prove it, that goes against claims by many in the state and oil industry. The oil industry would likely try to hound/silence/sue the insurance company.
If they deny a claim with loose evidence that it's man-made, the claimant could (theoretically) prove it was a natural occurrence. Because proving such is to the benefit of the oil industry, they would jump at the chance to "help", and perhaps have the state "investigate" the insurance company for fraud or questionable practices or something.
It seems to me that, despite whatever exclusions the insurance company has, they will likely pay out for any and all earthquake claims with the oil industry helping them cover that pay out behind the scenes in order to keep any proof or claims of "induced" earthquakes out of the public eye.
Re:Crossed lines (Score:4, Insightful)
I gotta admit, that caught my eye, too.
But if they can prove it, that goes against claims by many in the state and oil industry. The oil industry would likely try to hound/silence/sue the insurance company.
Not necessarily. Industries and governments are famous for two-faced policies.
If the insurance company says that they were manmade, the government can say, "No, they weren't, but this is a civil matter and we can't interfere." And nothing will happen. Worst case, it will be tied up in courts for the next 20 years. By then, those people currently in charge will have made a ton of money and be retired somewhere outside the US.
It's kind of like the music industry claiming that a 30-second ringtone is enough the song that consumers must pay royalties while, at the same time, claiming that they weren't so they didn't have to pay the artists royalties.
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I gotta admit, that caught my eye, too.
But if they can prove it, that goes against claims by many in the state and oil industry. The oil industry would likely try to hound/silence/sue the insurance company.
Not necessarily. Industries and governments are famous for two-faced policies.
If the insurance company says that they were manmade, the government can say, "No, they weren't, but this is a civil matter and we can't interfere." And nothing will happen. Worst case, it will be tied up in courts for the next 20 years. By then, those people currently in charge will have made a ton of money and be retired somewhere outside the US.
It's kind of like the music industry claiming that a 30-second ringtone is enough the song that consumers must pay royalties while, at the same time, claiming that they weren't so they didn't have to pay the artists royalties.
And then there's a giant class-action lawsuit where the insurance and oil companies are held jointly & severally liable. Or there's a lawsuit which crosses state lines & works its way through the federal system up to the supreme court.
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Compare this to Texas where local bans are in place and it is only oil industry bribes at the state level that keeps fracking.
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IANAGeologist, but I don't think earthquakes work like that. If anything, a large quake is more likely due to the lack of a buildup of small quakes since a large quake is caused by a large slippage on the fault. Lots of small slippage causing lots of small quakes would prevent a larger slippage and a larger quake.
Of course, this is based on the normal earthquake cause of plate slippage. Quakes caused by fracking might be caused by something else. Maybe underground caverns that used to have oil in them c
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So, if the insurance company can prove the quakes were man-made, they don't have to pay out. But if they can prove it, that goes against claims by many in the state and oil industry. The oil industry would likely try to hound/silence/sue the insurance company.
I'd love to see a fight between Big Oil and Big Insurance, because Big Insurance's profit margins are driven by data and not ideology.
No amount of Oil Industry pressure would let them accept a bad legal precedent which could screw with their long term 12%~15% profit margins.
Not to mention that the insurance industry is a very.... entangled business community.
Almost everyone who issues insurance policies is also hedging their risk by buying a reinsurance policy from one or more (re)insurance companies.
It's n
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It would also leave the homeowner in a somewhat laughable situation... They could either toe the line and say that the earthquake is "natural" therefore getting the insurance (hush) money, or try and convince the state that it was man-made, losing their house if victorious, and hopefully changing policy enough that more earthquakes won't happen.
Shame is, this only seems like a conundrum to the type of people who place the well being of society over their own momentary gains.
Teabagger Mindset (Score:2, Flamebait)
Just One Job (Score:2, Flamebait)
Free gas and barely noticeable tremors (Score:4, Funny)
So if I understand this, the price of Natural gas is down, what, 80%? And now places where mostly no one lives have hundreds of itty bitty tinny tiny tremors so small that the people, that don't live there anyway, can barely detect them without specially calibrated scientific instruments. Also figure into the equation that the nearly free natural gas has allowed us to decommission coal burning plants left and right and is even threatening the economic viability of nuclear fission.
Notwithstanding the absolute fact that relying solely on a single source of power is dangerous and stupid, this seems like a pretty freaking wonderful tradeoff! Granted the media panders exclusively to the eco-terrorist agenda and anything other than a rare earth exhausting solar panel, or a bird extincting windmill is unmitigatedly evil in their narrative. But for those of us that rather like living in the first world, with reliable power at record low prices, this seems like a glass half full sort of story.
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Sounds like a Bond Villian (Score:3)
...communicate the results to politicians... (Score:3)
"The article describes how scientists painstakingly gathered data on the quakes, and then tried to find ways to communicate the results — which are quite definitive — to politicians who often have financial reasons to disbelieve them."
Might I suggest ... a man made earthquake where they live?
Come, Mr. Bigglesworth .... our work is done here...
They already have small quakes in the area (Score:2)
Parturiunt Montes, Nascetur Ridiculus Mus (Score:4, Funny)
GEOLOGIST: Injection of wastewater in Oklahoma is triggering earthquakes.
POPULAR PRESS: Injection of wastewater is causing earthquakes.
ACTIVIST: Fracking causes earthquakes.
GEOLOGIST: Many small quakes relieve pressure, bigger ones inevitable but smaller, less often.
ACTIVIST GEOLOGIST: Many quakes means movement! Big one inevitable! It's our fault! Soon!
POPULAR PRESS: Mankind fucking with Earth again
GAIA: I just want to be left alone. Naasty peepl.
ARCHIMEDES: Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.
WASTEWATER INJECTION CREW: All we're doing is lubricating the lever. We did not create it.
VIRTUALLY EVERY OKLAHOMAN: No big deal.
Meanwhile,
GEOLOGIST: Depletion of groundwater creating uplift along San Adreas Fault [arstechnica.com]
DESERT PERSON WITH LUSH LAWN: San Adreas is not my fault.
AGITATED FRACKING ACTIVIST: Who let that guy in anyway? We're talking about Big Oil.
MULLHOLLAND: We shall deflate the West to bring water to California.
Meanwhile,
SCIENTIST: By use of amazing technology, traces with unique Cesium-134 fingerprint of Fukushima have been detected in ocean off Vancouver.
SCIENTIST: if a person swam for six hours each day in water with Cesium levels twice as high as those found in Ucluelet, they'd receive a radiation dose that is more than 1,000 times less than that of a single dental X-ray.
INTERNET DOOMPORN STAR WITH PERFECT TEETH: This is an extinction level event! Look, a fish died in the Pacific! Salmon are misshapen! The cans are dented!
POPULAR PRESS: Mankind fucking with Earth again
GAIA: Stop the world, I want to get off!
Parturiunt Montes, Nascetur Ridiculus Mus
The mountains are in labor; an absurd mouse is the result.
~~Horace
Wow, are you horribly slow or what (Score:2)
Look, I don't expect slashdot to be a "news site", but seriously, it would be best to be at least vaguely familiar with the subject material before making a story submission.
The Geysers#Seismicity [wikipedia.org]
It is not even close to news that humans are causing quakes [kansas.com].
Perspective (Score:2)
To put this in a bit of perspective, earthquakes were pretty much unheard of in the state when I was a kid. Yeah, seismologists would probably tell you there were some, but not ones anybody ever noticed. We used to console ourselves that, yes we have tornadoes, but those you can prepare for. At least we didn't have Earthquakes like California. Hahaha, suckers!
In 2014 we had three times more earthquakes than California [grist.org].
induced quakes have been around for decades (Score:2)
Quakes may be associated witht loading or drainign of large water dams. The 2008 Sichuan China quake could have been one of these.
Geothermal energy projects sometimes have induced quakes. Most geothermal project i
Really Limited Thinking (Score:2)
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TFA has nothing to do with fracking. It is about disposal wells. Indeed, TFA states that fracking is linked only to very small earthquakes, unlike disposal wells which have now been conclusively linked to earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 - 6.0. Further, all of the article's scientific statements are quotes from geologists who live and work in Oklahoma, or simply relate to the amount of research which has so far linked seismic activity to disposal wells.
They should take time to learn about the geology of flyover country.
You should take the time to learn something about petroleum
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Lots of discussion, people saying production should be lowered, government not wanting to, things like that
Lots of discussion about how to deal with the problem, and who will pay for damages... but no discussion about whether this was caused by mankind. Groningen is a very stable area in terms of tectonic plate movement, and yet earthquakes are really frequent, and epicenters overlap almost perfectly with the location of the gas fields.
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