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Earthquake fear ends Dutch gas boom:
The Dutch are proud of the way they have created a country by fighting back the ocean—but when they started making their own earthquakes it proved a step too far.
The tiny village of Zeerijp in the northern Netherlands looks ordinary on the surface, yet closer inspection reveals cracks in homes, schools and historic buildings.
A series of quakes caused by extractions at Europe's biggest gas field in Groningen province culminated in a 3.4-magnitude tremor in January, the biggest for six years.
[...] Facing a wave of public anger over the threat to life and limb, the Dutch government announced that all gas extraction from Groningen will end by 2030.
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Earthquake Fear Ends Dutch Gas Boom
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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Thursday September 27 2018, @06:06AM (6 children)
Well, you might have a point for new buildings, but historic buildings were certainly not built taking modern regulation into account. Also, in a region where you never had and didn't expect earthquakes, it's quite understandable that you don't take that possibility into consideration.
And of course, that 3.4 magnitude was the biggest one up to now. No one knows if continuing gas extraction might lead to bigger earthquakes in the future.
However I'm wondering if the earthquakes could be avoided if they'd just pump some replacement gas into the ground. I hear we've got too much carbon dioxide; maybe they could kill two birds with one stone?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @09:20AM
It might make the concentrations and yields lower though. But the tech is improving: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171018090158.htm [sciencedaily.com]
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday September 27 2018, @09:37AM (2 children)
I don't think the historically volcanically active south ever gives a shit about humanity's ancient buildings, yet for the most part the great works of the Romans are not cracking and falling apart. Maybe northern europen architects should just not suck at a basic art that southerners mastered over 2000 years ago.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 27 2018, @11:13AM
Maybe that's because they used Roman concrete [wikipedia.org], which incorporated volcanic ash. I think SN might even have had a story on that sort of recently, how it caused the formation of carbon nanotubes.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Thursday September 27 2018, @05:01PM
Note that only those buildings that didn't fall apart are still standing. So when judging from the buildings that still stand means you inherently have a massive selection bias, as the vast majority of buildings the Romans built no longer exist.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 27 2018, @06:46PM (1 child)
It's not even fracking that causes the earthquakes, that's just FUD.
Wastewater injection is what causes earthquakes (although, oddly, only in certain basins).
However I'm wondering if the earthquakes could be avoided if they'd just pump some replacement gas into the ground.
That's basically what wastewater injection does, they pump water down there to replace the gas. It's good for them because they get rid of wastewater and actually allows the extraction of whatever remnants are still down there by displacement.
It's hypothesized that pumping fluid down there lubricates the fault which causes the earthquakes. So, yeah, pumping captured CO2 down there instead might actually work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:47AM
At a high enough pressure, the carbon dioxide might liquefy. For example, carbon dioxide in a fire extinguisher is liquid.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_dioxide_pressure-temperature_phase_diagram.svg [wikimedia.org]