How Fracking Caused An Ohio Earthquake
Youngstown, OH. Photo: Blue80 (CC)
As many as 11 Ohio earthquakes, to be exact. Pete Spotts reports for the Christian Science Monitor:
The link between “fracking” and earthquakes was thrown into stark relief over the weekend when a magnitude 4.0 quake struck Youngstown, Ohio – typically not a hot bed of noticeable seismic activity. The quake triggered shaking reportedly felt as as far away as Buffalo, N.Y., and Toronto.
The temblor struck Dec. 31 and was the latest and strongest of 11 minor-to-light quakes that have hit the region since March. The epicenters are clustered around a wastewater injection well for a hydraulic fracturing operation.
Understanding the potential effect hydraulic fracturing or related activities could have on local earthquake risks is one question some researchers hope to answer as they try to develop tools for communities.
Fracking allows energy companies to extract natural gas trapped in shale deposits deep underground. By injecting large quantities of pressurized…
Symbolic? Washington Monument Cracks in Quake
Jennifer Epstein writes in the Politico:
The earthquake didn’t cause widespread damages or injuries, but it did put a crack in the Washington Monument. After unconfirmed reports suggested the monument was tilting, park officials said Tuesday night that the 550-foot obelisk suffered a crack in the 5.8-magnitude rumble centered in Mineral, Va., near Charlottesville.
Inspections conducted by helicopter found a crack “at the very, very top” of the monument, park service spokesman Bill Line told The Washington Post, and the monument and plaza surrounding the structure will be closed indefinitely as it is examined.
Though it suffered damage, the monument isn’t leaning, the Park Service said. The Park Service has also temporarily closed the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial pending further inspection, while other landmarks — including the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial set to be officially unveiled this weekend — remain open.
New York Man Spends Life Savings Ahead of May 21 Doomsday
[disinfo ed.'s note: just as a reminder, the world may end on Saturday. Have a great week!]
A video report from CNN, and below a write up from Fox News:
A New York man spent his entire $140,000 life savings advertising his prediction that the world will end May 21, the New York Post reported Friday.
Robert Fitzpatrick, a 60-year-old Staten Island resident, said he spent at least that sum on 1,000 subway-car placards and ads on bus kiosks and subway cars…
Scientists Find First Evidence Climate Affects Tectonic Plate Movement
Via Discover:
Geologists have known for years that tectonic plates affect climate patterns. Now they say that the opposite is also true, finding that intensifying climate events can move tectonic plates. Using models based on known monsoonal and plate movement patterns, geologists say that the Indian Plate has accelerated by about 20% over the past 10 million years. “The significance of this finding lies in recognising for the first time that long-term climate changes have the potential to act as a force and influence the motion of tectonic plates,” Australian National University researcher Giampiero Iaffaldano told COSMOS.
The researchers plugged information from research on monsoonal patterns and the Indian Plate’s movement into a model, which indicated that the monsoonal erosion that has battered the eastern Himalaya Mountains for the past 10 million years erodes enough material to account for the plate’s counter-clockwise rotation. By gradually shaving off rocks from the eastern flank and…
Suburban Sprawl: A Government Tactic Against Nuclear Annihilation And Natural Disaster
In the aftermath of last month’s devastation, Japanese leaders have called on urban planners to make Japan decentralized and lower density so as to be less vulnerable. It wouldn’t be the first time that sprawl has been employed as a strategy against societal annihilation; during the Cold War, American planners pushed for suburbanization as a defense against nuclear disaster. BLDGBLOG enlightens:
At the height of the Cold War, the sprawling, decentralized suburban landscape of the United States was seen by many military planners as a form of spatial self-defense. As historian David Krugler explains in This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War, “urban dispersal” was viewed as a defensive military tactic, one that would greatly increase the nation’s chance of survival in the event of nuclear attack.
Specially formatted residential landscapes such as “cluster cities” were thus proposed, “each with a maximum population of 50,000.” These smaller satellite cities…
Japan’s Safety Regulators: Fukushima No. 3 Nuclear Reactor May Have Been Breached
David Jolly & Hiroko Tabuchi report in the NY Times:
TOKYO — Japan’s effort to contain the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant suffered a setback, an official said on Friday, citing evidence that the reactor vessel of the No. 3 unit may have been damaged.
The development, described at a news conference by Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, raises the possibility that radiation from the mox fuel in the reactor — a combination of uranium and plutonium — could be released.
One sign that a breach may have occurred in the reactor vessel, Mr. Nishiyama said, took place on Thursday when three workers who were trying to connect an electrical cable to a pump in a turbine building next to the reactor were injured when they stepped into water that was found to be significantly more radioactive than normal in a reactor. The No.…
Genpatsu-Shinsai: The Language of Disaster That Stalked Japan
Interesting article from Leo Lewis in the Times from 2007, about how Japan nearly avoided a “nuclear power-quake disaster” back then. It always seems when these great disasters happen there was the one lone expert who no one took seriously. Leo Lewis writes”
Japan’s turbulent history of war and natural catastrophe has already given the world a terrifying vocabulary of death: tsunami, kamikaze, Hiroshima.
But the country now stands on the brink of unleashing its most chilling phrase yet: genpatsu-shinsai — the combination of an earthquake and nuclear meltdown capable of destroying millions of lives and bringing a nation to its knees.
The phrase, derived from the Japanese words for “nuclear power” and “quake disaster”, is the creation of Katsuhiko Ishibashi, Japan’s leading seismologist and one of the Government’s top advisers on nuclear-quake safety. He said that the world may never know how close it came to its first genpatsu-shinsai this week. Luck, as much an anything else, helped to avert it.
Russians Claim U.S. West Coast Fault Near ‘Total Failure’
You have to appreciate the work that went into this “Apocalypse Soon” report in the European Union Times. Not only do they build on the “Ring Of Fire – America Is Next Great Quake” scare propagated by Fox News, they also manage to work in mass animal deaths, the Supermoon, a comet on its way to smash into Earth and more!
A grim top-secret report prepared by Moscow’s Institute of Physics of the Earth for Prime Minister Putin on the catastrophic 9.0 magnitude Sendai Megaquake and Tsunami that hit Japan on March 11th is now warning that the “balance of our planet” has been altered after the titanic forces underlying this disaster has moved the Japanese Islands at least 13-feet closer to the North American West Coast Region and shortened the day by a couple of millionths of a second and tilted the Earth’s axis slightly.
According to this report, the Sendai Megaquake disaster is the “third…
Is U.S. West Coast About To Experience The Next Great Quake?
disinfo reader Aleph Omega sent along this video from Fox News’s Cavuto show, saying:
The geologist [Jim Berkland] who predicted 1989 SF earthquake within 4 days is predicting an earthquake on the west coast within the next month, but more likely between 3.19.11 through 3.26.11. His telltale signs are: rare closeness of the moon to earth (full moon is tomorrow), equinoctial tides on the 20th, earth and groundwater tides — all of which loosen pressure in the earth. Also, massive fish kills in Redondo Beach and whale beaching.
Glenn Beck Says Japan Quake Was ‘A Message From God’
Let’s hope this idiotic pronouncement from Herr Beck finally makes his declining but still large radio and television audience realize that he truly is a pompous, self-absorbed moron. AFP via Raw Story:
US celebrities and media Tuesday blasted right-wing radio host and television presenter Glenn Beck for calling the monster quake that rocked Japan last week a message from God.
Actress, author and talk show host Whoopi Goldberg said Beck should “check the mirror” if he thought Friday’s 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami were signs of God’s anger with mankind.
“If this is because we’re misbehaving and God is pissed (angry), I would check the mirror, Glenn,” Goldberg said on The View talkshow, which she co-hosts with three other women.
The disaster has claimed nearly 3,400 lives and left more than 10,000 people missing in northeastern Japan.
In a rambling presentation on his radio show on Monday, Beck said God may have caused the catastrophe in…
Gilbert Gottfried Fired As Voice Of Aflac Duck Over Japan Jokes
CNN reports:
The Aflac duck lost its voice Monday after the insurance giant fired the comedian behind the commercial quack for tweeting jokes about the earthquake and tsunami that has devastated Japan.
The Columbus, Georgia-based company fired Gilbert Gottfried less than an hour after discovering the tweets, according to a news release from Aflac.
“Gilbert’s recent comments about the crisis in Japan were lacking in humor and certainly do not represent the thoughts and feelings of anyone at Aflac,” Michael Zunda, the company’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said in a statement.
So far, the earthquake and tsunami have left more than 2,400 people dead, and thousands more in shelters or missing. Most of the tweets attributed to Gottfried make light of the natural disaster in either a flippant or sexual manner…
Earthquake Moved Japan Closer to U.S., Shifted Earth’s Axis, Shortened Day
This is astounding. Paul Rincon reports for BBC News:
Japan’s coastline may have shifted by as much as 4m (13 ft) to the east following Friday’s 8.9 Magnitude earthquake, according to experts.
Data from the country’s Geonet network of around 1,200 GPS monitoring stations suggest a large displacement following the massive quake.
Dr Roger Musson from the British Geological Survey (BGS) told BBC News the movement observed following the quake was “in line with what you get when you have an earthquake this big”.
The quake probably shifted Earth on its axis by about 6.5 inches (16.5cm) and caused the planet to rotate somewhat faster, shortening the length of the day by about 1.8 millionths of a second.
Japan’s meteorological agency has proposed updating the magnitude of the earthquake to 9.0. [UPDATE: Has been changed to 9.0] This would make it the joint fifth biggest quake since instrumental records began, but other agencies have not…
Japan Nuclear Radiation Likely To Reach California
The likes of Matt Drudge and Alex Jones have been banging the drum to create fear among U.S. citizens that radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster will reach North America. Now Neil Katz poses the same question for a mainstream outlet, CBS News. The conclusion he posts is:
“As for America, experts say for now we are in the clear. ‘It is true that radiation emanating from Japan is moving across the Pacific and it’s feasible that one could detect those radiation levels in California,’ says [Dr. Cham] Dallas. ‘But it’s certain that it wouldn’t be dangerous.’”
Do any disinformation readers have expertise in radiation safety issues? Can we be so certain that there is no danger as Dr. Dallas suggests? Please post your thoughts in the comments.
Here’s some more of Katz’s story:
As conditions worsen at four nuclear reactors in Japan, many here and abroad are worried about the health risks of radiation.
What…
A Lesson In Social Media Ignorance: Earthquake In Japan 2011
A friend recently shared a link to an image featuring a collection of facebook statuses regarding the recent events in Japan. All of which are blatantly ignorant and insensitive, to such a degree that it most likely will qualify as black humor for some. I am not sure the history of the image, however I’d assume they were gathered using something like YourOpenBook.org (A search on the site reveals many similar postings).
Phil Plait: No, The “Super-Moon” Didn’t Cause the Japanese Earthquake
Moon's Apogee and Perigee.
The ever lucid Phil Plait writes on Bad Astronomy:
Japan suffered a massive earthquake last night, measuring nearly magnitude 9. This is one of the largest quakes in its history, causing widespread and severe damage. Before I say anything else, I’m greatly saddened by the loss of life in Japan, and I’ll be donating to disaster relief organizations to help them get in there and do what they can to give aid to those in need.
While there isn’t much I can do to directly help the situation in Japan, I do hope I can help mitigate the panic and worry that can happen due to people blaming this earthquake on the so-called “supermoon” — a date when the Moon is especially close to the Earth at the same time it’s full. So let me be extremely clear:
Despite what a lot of people are saying, there is no way…
Haitians Mark One Year Anniversary Of Earthquake
The Haitian National Palace after the earthquake on January 12, 2010
A year after tragedy hit Haiti, survivors are marking the anniversary of the devastating earthquake. A year later and hundreds of thousands of people are living in shelters, communities are slowly being rebuilt and there is a constant battle against cholera. BBC News reports:
Haitians are preparing to mark the anniversary of the earthquake that devastated their country and left some 250,000 of their fellow citizens dead.
Church services are due to be held around the nation, including at the ruined cathedral in Port-au-Prince.
There will also be a minute’s silence at 4.53pm (2153 GMT) – the exact moment when the 7.0 magnitude quake hit.
Traffic stopped as the streets of Port-au-Prince turned quiet and businesses were closed.
People walked in solemn processions to prayer services marking the anniversary of the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history. Many people wore white, a colour associated with…
NZ Quake Creates New Faultline
The Earth is looking increasingly unstable — is this a sign of crustal displacement? From the Daily Mail:
The earthquake that devastated a city in New Zealand tore open a new 11ft faultine in the Earth’s surface.
The 7.1-magnitude quake which hit Christchurch, the country’s second-largest city, destroyed about 500 buildings and caused an estimated £930million of damage.
But hundreds of lives were saved by tough building rules, it was claimed. Only two injuries were reported.
The quake was caused by the continuing collision between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates, said Professor Mark Quigley, of Canterbury University.
‘One side of the Earth has lurched to the right … up to 11ft and in some places been thrust up,’ he said. ‘We went and saw two houses that were completely snapped in half by the earthquake.’
The quake cut power across the region, roads were blocked by debris and gas and water supplies were disrupted…
[continues in…
Deepak Chopra Caused the Recent Mexicali Earthquake? Well, He Thinks He Did…
So is this guy joking or is he just an enormous dickhead? Deepak Chopra apologized for causing the 7.2-magnitude earthquake felt in parts of Mexico and the southwestern United States on April 4th…
An Ominous Drilling Sign for the Truth
The year is 2010 and to anyone not in denial, the industrialized nations have entered the greatest calamity the world has ever known:
- Iceland is history.
- Greece’s economy, much like the ancient Parthenon, is in ruin.
- 46 states could face bankruptcy in the United States.
So then, why is President Obama going back on his word and drilling holes in the earth?
The Interior Department under Barack Obama offered for sale more acres of dry-land drilling on public lands than the Bush Administration had at the same point in 2008.
An economy in a state of rigor mortis doesn’t need oil to lubricate an engine that blew up on October 29, 2008, and our way of life won’t come back if the oil industry creates a handful of jobs or we reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Drill, Drill, Drill didn’t make environmental sense in 1973 or 2008
In 1973, America’s solution to the Arab oil embargo and long gas lines…
