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Actually no is the correct answer according to a recent opinion piece in Seismic Research Letters , which doesn't specifically address Terra Seismic, but which notes operational earthquake forecasting is not very far along, and can at best note regions with increased probability of earthquakes of a certain size, utilizing not only seismic data but also geomorphology, geologic and tectonic studies. And as others have noted, if you frack and actually cause earthquakes, then they are much more predictable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_barrage suggests fish mortality is quite high with this method. Considering estuaries are typically fish breeding grounds, If the alternative wasn't nuclear I'd say it wasn't worth the risk to an already depleted ecosystem.

There are a very limited number of places on earth where tidal dam power works. Power output scales linearly with height difference. This map shows the tidal range all over the world. Combine that with a need for a bay or inlet that can be dammed without impacting commerce or the environment, and the list of places tidal power can be used shrinks dramatically. Remember, you need a bay or cove that is large enough to be worthwhile for making power, but not so large that it is economically important. And also not in an environmentally sensitive area.

Nothing wrong with a little tidal power but just looking at the geography it will never be a significant source of power.

Sauropod Growth Rate

it's on the stars :-p

The mechanism of sexual reproduction started some 1.2 billion years ago in the Proterozoic Eon.

http://paleobiol.geoscienceworld.org/content/26/3/386.abstract

Sex is about exchange of genes. It DOESN'T require the simultaneous evolution of male and female or huge jumps in the structure of the organism. That concept is preposterous, in fact hilarious in it's naivete and lack of knowledge of basic biology.

Look at the sexual reproduction in plants - many reproduce sexually without having male and female types. Even the lowly yeast manages it.

I don't know where your information is coming from, but the ideas you are putting forward are ridiculous.

The geothermal CO2 would have been released anyway due to the vulcanic activity. So the CO2 balance is zero. There are other issues with geothermal energy, which are more severe for Japan: It seems to make the region more prone to earthquakes. The geothermal tests around Basel (Switzerland) have been stopped after the seismic activity increased.

This was an unprecedented earthquake and subsequent tsunami. A once in a millennium occurrence?

The sea wall in fron of the damaged plant was designed for a tsunami of about 6 meters in height (see here)

It seems that the probability for a violent tsunami, of which the wave height exceeds 5 m, is highest along the Pacific coast in central Japan, reaching a value of 41 per cent.

Globally, there are about 5 recorded tsunamis a year with one over 10 meters high every few years: see page 100

People seem to have missed the point: I was trying to make a point about the insane philosophy of apathy that some posters here seem to have, ie that since temperature or CO2 has been high before we should just ignore it and keep making the problem worse completely ignoring the fact that such changes often coincide with major extinction events.

You can find almost any extreme you're looking for if you don't mind going back far enough.

but anyway, not a journal but reasonable:

sulphur dioxide:
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/110401_bombardment.htm

nitrogen dioxide:
Not perfect but major volcanic events can be a significant source of NO and NO2.
http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/32/10/905

but then my point was supposed to be that just because something can or has happened "naturally" doesn't stop it from being very bad.

Except hotspots have forced apart other plates.

This theory never really made since, How many other impacts cause this kinda of geomorpholgy?
Plus this idea was put forth before the discovery of the hotspot off the Yucatan.

While I'm not discounting that the asteroid in question most likely cause an extinction event, I doubt it could rip a plate in two.

Also Just about every Tectonic model puts the formation of the Gulf starting to tear apart around Early Jurassic , Whereas the impact in question was around the Late Permian.

The Craters of the Moon flows are eruptions from the rift, which, though it was helped by it, does not require input from the Yellowstone hotspot to remain hot and rifting.

That's an interesting opinion. My view is that well, yes, it might require input from the Yellowstone hotspot.

I looked through the paper and don't see any evidence to support a present-day connection with Craters of the Moon.

Except that that the plume comes up to Yellowstone and then is dragged out underneath most of the Snake River plateau, including the Craters of the Moon.

Here's the thing. There are three factors that seem relevant and supporting of my hypothesis here. First, caldera eruptions seem to have ended in the area about 4 million years ago. So where did the residue come from? Did it really stay hot for 4 million years? Second, it is a large volume of hot olivine-bearing basalt. That's a further indication that both the magma was very hot and dry (olivine reacts in the presence of water). The link describes a number of "eruptive episodes" dating back from 2,000 to 8,000 years ago (just the last part of the Craters of the Moon's history). Adding up the estimated volumes, I get roughly 20 cubic km of basalt. That compares to 1,000 cubic km for the last caldera eruption (and subsequent filling of the hole by another 1,000 cubic km). Sounds like a lot less except that the flow rates are near equivalent. If the Crater of the Moon activity had gone on for the last 600,000 years rather than just the 6,000 year period, then it would also yield roughly 2,000 cubic km of material. Third, the current study shows the magma plume not only coming up to Yellowstone, but subsequently being dragged back along the Snake River plateau, including the Craters of the Moon.

OTOH after Googling around a bit, apparently the basalt flows separate into chemically distinct groups which would be contrary evidence. This link also cites 30 cubic km as the total volume of the flows in question from 15,000 years ago to present (and would, if extended to the past 600,000 years give a flow of 1,200 cubic km, more than enough to fill the caldera, but not as much as the combination of caldera eruption and subsequent fill).

The point is that we have a significant amount of hot magma, a potential source lying just 30-50 miles below, and the only other explanation requires the magma to stay hot for somewhere around four million years. Chemical composition of the lava indicates that it most likely doesn't have a direct link to the underlying magma body. So an alternate hypothesis is that a similar process exists like what allegedly is occurring at Yellowstone. Bits of the underlying body bubble up and flow to the surface.

It's not as if insects won't have bacteria.

I wonder if the amber has certain properties that exchanges certain materials with its captive animals to aid preservation. Maybe we don't see much larger things because there's not much amber dripping from a tree.

http://paleobiol.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/28/3/389

This article seems to say spiders are preserved in amber, but since the bloodsuckers that host the paper want $15 for just one day access to the paper, I'm not that desperate to know what the article says.

I found a picture of what looks like might be a sizable spider in amber:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aranya_fosilitzada_a_l'ambre.JPG

Using Google Images shows a lot of spiders in amber, so maybe something as big as a tarantula might show up there.

There is recent evidence that methane clathrate destabilization alone couldn't have caused the PETM, because that scenario doesn't agree with paleo-reconstructions of the ocean lysocline. See Panchuk et al., Geology 36, 315 (2008).

http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/35/5/415 There's the link to the abstract from their work last year.

A huge increase in the number of fungi organisms (eating the dead) couldn't possibly last very long, since dead organisms don't reproduce.

Eshet, Y. et al. (1995) Fungal event and palynological record of ecological crisis and recovery across the Permian-Triassic boundary. Geology, 23, 967-970.

Also I don't think hundreds of millions of years of evolution were undone.

Over half of all families were destroyed; a family represents tens of millions of years of evolution. A number of orders, several classes, and even a couple subphylums were wiped out. That's hundreds of millions of years of setback in many cases.

So obviously the 4% of marine species that survived must have been quite diverse.

That's what assumptions will get you. The survivors were mostly concentrated in a few classes. Most of the world's diversity was lost. Example: seen a trilobyte lately? There were over 17,000 trilobyte species across Paleozoic time, and thousands around at the end of the Paleozoic, in all kinds of niches. All killed.

The world really turned to hell.

http://bssa.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstra ct/95/2/708

I actually had the honour of proof-reading this paper before it was published. One of the authors is my wife's uncle.

This system is already in place and working today. It is based around a network of buried sensors that allow the accurate location of the epicenter within just a few seconds. The system is used to shut down high-speed trains, etc, before the damage-causing vibrations arrive.

Yes, exactly! :-)

I'm speculating that bacteria, in colonies, may be responsible for gold nuggets, at least in some cases. There are other cases of bacteria creating mineral concentrations (like stromatolites). Bacterial activity in hot rocks and hot springs is well known; gold is often found with other elements that some bacteria like, such as sulphur. Concentrations of gold don't seem to fit a natural process, I'd expect to see minerals dispersed within strata, not concentrated into pure blobs.

OK, bizarre theory, I know. Anyhow, I just did some googling and found this.

"Biogenicity of gold- and silver-bearing siliceous sinters forming in hot (75C) anaerobic spring-waters..."