from the not-proof,-but-quite-a-coincidence dept.
The central US state of Oklahoma has gone from registering two earthquakes a year to nearly two a day and scientists point to a controversial culprit: wastewater injection wells used in fracking.
Located in the middle of the country, far from any major fault lines, Oklahoma experienced 585 earthquakes of a magnitude of 3.0 or greater in 2014. That's more than three times as many as the 180 which hit California last year.
"It's completely unprecedented," said George Choy, a seismologist at the US Geological Survey.
As of last month, Oklahoma has already experienced more than 600 quakes strong enough to rattle windows and rock cars. The biggest was a 4.5-magnitude quake that hit the small town of Crescent.
http://phys.org/news/2015-09-state-quakes-year.html
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Funny) by penguinoid on Saturday September 26 2015, @06:52AM
"Super Blood Moon" to Give Stargazers a Rare Show
How One US State Went From Two Quakes a Year to 585
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
Two out of three ain't bad. Looks like it's time to buy stock in whatever idiots buy when they panic.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2015, @07:13AM
Morning after pills.
Booze.
Twinkies.
Shotgun shells.
Really that's just big pharma, defense manufacturers, and standard vice investing. All of those sectors are doing exceptionally well as it is.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 26 2015, @07:34AM
Vice stocks always do well when everything else isn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2015, @10:19AM
How does one buy stocks in "vice"? Get married?
(Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday September 26 2015, @08:04PM
build a casino, start a brothel, and start dealing dope.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2015, @06:54PM
While this is true, right now just about everybody is doing amazingly. Any active investor paying attention is easily up 30% yoy for the last several. Really absurd growth is happening right now and no news outlets are covering it. Probably has to do with the majority of people that aren't independently wealthy not being able to profit from it since so few have rebounded savings from the recession yet.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2015, @08:06PM
Wrong, only 1% of the population is doing amazingly, the other 99% are being fucked the worst since the late 1920s.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday September 30 2015, @09:50AM
German Diesel cars.
(Score: 3, Informative) by inertnet on Saturday September 26 2015, @08:59AM
The Dutch government had to cut output from the largest gas field in Europe because of increasing earthquakes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field#Present [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday September 26 2015, @12:31PM
The explanation of "It's the fracking, duh!" is only controversial because the companies doing the fracking have paid a lot of money to make it seem like there's a serious scientific debate about this when there isn't. Reality looks something like this:
Before fracking: 2 earthquakes per year, and geologists saying "Hey, if you store all that wastewater underground you might cause a lot of earthquakes."
After fracking: 600 earthquakes per year, and geologists saying "Hey, we noticed you are doing exactly what we warned you would cause earthquakes. After studying this carefully, we now know our predictions were completely correct. Thank you for giving us the chance to test our theories and prove that we know what we're talking about, but now that we know it's a bad idea why don't we call it quits?"
That strategy might seem familiar regarding other areas where there is extremely clear science pointing to one very specific explanation for an easily-documented phenomenon.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2015, @01:26PM
Are you a geologist? How do you know what they say beyond a few cherry picked quotes from a slanted source?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by SanityCheck on Saturday September 26 2015, @01:44PM
Are you a paid shill? Cause you sound like one.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Saturday September 26 2015, @02:38PM
Are you a paid shill?
The evidence is inconclusive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2015, @06:58PM
Are you a shill inspector? How do you know what shills post like without being an authoritative expert on shills?
(Score: 4, Funny) by rts008 on Saturday September 26 2015, @05:02PM
The source is slanted due to the ground shifting during those quakes.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2015, @02:06PM
I think the "controversial" refers to fracking itself, not the explanation that fracking is causing earthquakes.
Anyway, while it's unambiguous that fracking causes earthquakes, it's unclear to me that that really means it's "a bad idea" -- note that the biggest quake mentioned has a magnitude of 4.5, and most are even less. We need more information about the distribution of magnitudes; if that 4.5 is close to an upper bound, then I don't see a real problem.* OTOH, if one assumes a distribution like natural earthquakes, then seeing a 4.5 once a year means you might expect a 5.5 every decade or so, and a decent chance of higher magnitudes. (Maybe geologists actually have a good answer here, but I haven't heard it.)
* Of course, we'd still need to work on attributing a specific quake to the fracking operation that caused it (or to determine it was a natural quake after all, in the rare case this is true), so the appropriate party can be sued for any damage that does occur.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2015, @03:44PM
Quakes of 4.5 can be a problem in a geologically quiet area where buildings are not built with earthquakes in mind.
Local geology has a huge influence too. You can have an 8.0 in California, but with the sand-like subsurface they have, the quake effect drops off pretty rapidly so that people 20, 50, 100 miles away from the epicenter are not much affected at all (this also fosters the earthquake machismo the West Coasters have; many will tell you they've been through many huge quakes, but in reality that 7.5 that was 30 miles away was only a 4 where they were); on the other hand, the East Coast, which sits on a huge table of granite, shook from Toronto to Georgia for the relatively small quake that occurred in Virginia.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Sunday September 27 2015, @07:37AM
WTF? Okay, first: I've never known a fellow Californian that had "machismo" regarding earthquakes. For people that grew up here, we regard earthquakes the same way most people do with, say, airplane crashes: the big fatal ones are once-in-a-lifetime rare, and the moderate ones rarely really hurt anybody, so it doesn't seem like a big threat most of the time.
In fact, most of us are baffled by the calm attitude people elsewhere have towards tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and blizzards, given they happen and kill a decent number of people every year.
California has a wide range of substrate soil types [usgs.gov], and the sandy type *amplifies* shaking during an earthquake. During the 1906 SF quake, for example, the neighborhoods on sandy ground were typically destroyed even as the next street over survived intact.
The distance that an earthquake's power can travel is largely determined by its strength. Minor quakes are usually really felt only within a single city, while major ones cause severe damage for a wide distance. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake [wikipedia.org], for example, had an epicenter in Santa Cruz — but the Bay Area 50-90 miles away sustained severe damage, including liquifying the ground under buildings in some areas and double-decker roads collapsing.
The reason that our buildings fare fairly well is that after 1989 the state required virtually *all* public buildings (old or new) be built/retrofitted to be able to withstand severe earthquakes reliably. Most homes had been created using quake-friendly materials like wood and stucco in the first place.
So, er, yeah: in conclusion, you evidently know very little about California's geology, earthquakes, or inhabitants. :-p
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday September 27 2015, @06:33PM
Oklahoma is not on any major currently active fault lines, but that does not mean there are not ancient ones there or active ones nearby (look up the New Madrid Seismic Zone where a rift is apparently opening). There are ancient arches, rift valleys and old fault lines across much of Middle America. These new earthquakes could be building up strain and cause effects down the line in ways that no one is prepared for, the problem is we have little idea where or when. I'm not going to lose sleep over it, geology moves along a much vaster time scale than I do, but the "next big one" is not necessarily going to be on the west coast.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday September 26 2015, @08:07PM
coincidence, not causation!
(Score: 1) by Squidious on Saturday September 26 2015, @02:19PM
Awesome! Can we do some of that fracking around the Yellowstone Caldera? I hear there is lots of methane there.
BA-BOOOOM!
Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
The terrorists have won, game, set, match. They've scared the people into electing authoritarian regimes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2015, @04:46PM
Fracking shall be the mother of the apocalypse.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday September 26 2015, @09:49PM
"Hey Boo-Boom, I hear there's some valuable methane in these here frack-a-nic baskets."
"Gee, Yogi, both the Sierra Club and the USGS are already not happy with us, maybe we should just leave them alone."
"Nonsense, my dear chum. What could possibly go wrong?"