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Arkansas Earthquakes Could Be Man-Made
oxide7 writes "The small earthquakes that struck north central Arkansas could be from a combination of natural and man-made activity. Some experts think that pumping water into the ground as part of the extraction process of natural gas could cause local seismic events."
I don't know how yet, but clearly this is a plot by the global warming freaks.
What do you think?
Could this be simply a symptom of the Gas Effect? I'm quite alarmed by the similarities, all the evidence points to it, in fact.
Really, this is a small price to pay to help make us less dependent on foreign fossil fuels. Every bit of hydrocarbon we can extract from American soil is one less dollar going to fund terrorism in hostile countries, one less dollar that ultimately will be used to purchase guns and explosives that will be used against us. At some point, we need to stop sending these third world shitholes both our cash and food aid. Pay for the oil with food, save the cash for ourselves.
The theory that fracturing the local geology by pumping in a lubricant under extremely high pressure might cause some sub-surface movement certainly sounds preposterous to me...
"fracking" is a sign of desperation by gas companies... nat. gas follows a cliff, not a bell curve like peak-oil... of course it's safe.
Dams do this do, e.g. the Hoover Dam and the recent quake in China. Read more at "Top 5 Ways to Cause a Man-Made Earthquake": http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/top-5-ways-that/
Mention of HAARP in 3..2..1
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
Sorry, it's a very boring day debugging someone else's application.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
This is test, vote down.
o_O
The 4.7 and 4.3 were kind of freaky (4.7 especially, as evidenced by some ridiculous 911 calls from the neighboring city of Conway, ~13 miles south). Everything under 4 or so is just noise.
I just hope science proves it's these injection wells, so I have someone to sue when my house comes crashing down and I'm out the 10% deductible in my earthquake rider.
All that said, local opinion seems to be that tornadoes are scarier than earthquakes.
Which are these "hostile countries"? Most of them are full of people who would like to live somewhere like the US - but the US has supported dictatorships instead. Attitudes like yours go a long way to explain why there's a problem.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
From the fine article: "Some experts think that pumping water into the ground as part of the extraction process of natural gas could cause local seismic events. But the area hasn't been studied enough, they say, to know for sure."
Another story to gin up a way to stop energy production. I really hate this "do as I say - not as I do" attitude of the people who want to stop *United States* energy production.
Where's the outrage of Cuba's oil production? China's oil production? Venezuelan oil production?
I didn't bother reading the article, so please tell me these people are well aware that Arkansas has been home to some of the largest seismic events in North America. It isn't a very active fault, but it has produced some whoppers over the centuries.
It's natural gas. There aren't any "drops" of it, at least not straight out of the ground.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Have Christopher Walken or Grace Jones been seen in the area? They are trying to create a monopoly on ... on ... ? What does Arkansas produce again?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
there is that. we may continue ending up as fodder/food for our captors, but there's just as good of a chance (& some historical evidence (way back)) that we can do much better than that. it's much more of a domestic issue than any threat from other struggling peoples. we're going to call it corepirate nazi megasloth generated mindphuking hypenosys, for lack of a more accurate (lengthy) definition at this time.
Everyone knows that the government has developed several variations on Tesla's earthquake machines (HAARP, etc) and has been using them all over the world (Haiti, anyone?) to cause "natural" disasters. Sheesh!
Your conservative robo-bias is clear. Government spending is "nonsense" and every dollar saved somehow helps the economy (especially when it gets sent to china to pay for a big screen TV)... Whereas any attempt to make energy safe to extract and consume is seen as "unaffordable". Crank up the radio, Rush is on!
Whether 'Murphy' decided to show up on this specific event is debatable, but it seems pretty obvious to me that 'frac-drilling' is causing more issues than were perceived possible.
They should do an experiment: keep fracking till you create an earthquake. If it's never triggered, then we know!
/like fire with your water?
that's right in line with even more world peace breaking out everywhere?
So then you disagree that a key strategy of Environmentalists and Democrats is to make hydrocrabon usage more expensive, so that people will use less of it?
And you purport that every one of the $3.8 trillion the government spends is completely legitimate? What about all of those oil and gas company subsidies?
You remind me of a friend of my dad's.
According to him, Kitrina was an inside job.
but I think this guy did, which is why I responded to his post. I don't suffer from paranoia.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Mother earth is getting mighty pissed at us, me thinks...
This has been happening in a field south of the Dallas/Ft Worth area for years now due to the fracking going on there. Parts of the Houston area were subject to subsidence caused by pumping oil and gas in that area.
Thank god for the lack of regulation in the area (Fracturing), think of the jobs that are being created, to fix the home damaged by the earth quakes.
This is a business stimulus plan to aid employment. The local government can't fix the problems in the their buildings or the roads, but we want smaller government anyway. All the repair jobs will increase tax revenues and really when you think about it, we really only want to fix the houses of those that can afford it. The others are eye sores anyway and should be torn down, more jobs created. As to water pollution, more jobs to install home filters. This is a major win win.
The best part is that we as Americans can pay world market prices for the gas generated, since if we don't pay enough, they export it. Funny thing is that when the middle east raises the price, so does the local company. And to think we lease that land they are using for a fraction of what it cost to use.
America is a great place to live......
period. Let them make them present their argument and we can parse on its merit. This is a geek website -- not an all-too-ready-to-jump-to-conclusion website.
In other news, china detonated a nuclear bomb to test its arsenal in secret, but the surprise of their lives when a big tsunami went and crashed into sri lanka, killing hundreds of thousands....details at 11....
As someone from the area, I think there's more going on than that. I was visiting my grandmother (who lives in West Memphis, AR) a couple of weeks ago, and I heard several loud explosions. They actually created shock waves that we could feel. When asked about it, she told me that the local authorities have said that there is some kind of classified stuff going on for the department of homeland security. They supposedly have a whole area that looks like an Iraqi town for training purposes.
As to the explosions, it's anyone's guess what it could be. Maybe they're testing ways to generate earthquakes, or maybe it's totally unrelated. If it's true, I wish they would stay away from the New Madrid Fault.
Arkansas is the only US state with diamond mines.
No we don't disagree. The point being is that we're not increasing the cost simply to increase the cost. There are real and documented costs that will come to fruition if we *don't* get off of fossil fuels.
Those costs will dwarf any minor increase in energy prices today.
You can continue to pay subsidized (cheap) energy prices today and then in the future pay high prices because the fuel is running out (oil) AND pay through the nose for mass conversion of the energy economy in a short period.
OR
you can pay slightly higher prices now and amortize the cost of these changes over time.
Most people don't buy a house outright. They get a mortgage and spread out the cost over time. This the same thing.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Lets hear it for deregulation... This is a Win Win for everyone. The Gas companies get the land for cheap lease rates, Little or no regulation or enforcement of the existing regulations. The practice is generating jobs for home repairs, increased insurance rates and payouts, This all is a business driven economic stimulus plan to create jobs and get cash flowing in a normally economically depressed state. The water pollution drives the need for water filtering systems, filters and treatment, all job generators. The people that have houses that can not be repaired are most likely eyesores anyway, so they can be torn down, more jobs. Whats the down side?
Suspicions surrounds seismic activity generated by geothermal drilling is not new. There was a pilot plant shut down in Switzerland after the number of localized earthquakes sky-rocketed. This is potentially scary stuff for the people that live there. This might be long term. More here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=geothermal-drilling-earthquakes
Troll mod? Seriously, going that far defeats the purpose. If you want to bury something, mark it overrated. Personally, I find the comment informative, as it rebuts Hangmn's obvious political spin.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I will grant there might be a few cases where I'd rather reduce the chances of an earthquake in the short term, even if it made the eventual earthquake worse (say, if I just discovered a weakness in a dam, and will be spending the next two years madly strengthening it). But in general I would rather have more, smaller earthquakes.
PBS did a piece in February (Frontline, Need To Know?) about this very issue, frakking, and the potential for earthquakes was mentioned although their focus was on the illegal use of diesel and other compounds in the frakking fluids.
By making claims, and then not presenting any sort of evidence, you lose. When people argue against your points, and all you can do is take your ball and go home, you lose. By insulting others instead of debating, you lose. You have a long climb UPWARDS to reach the level of fuzzyfuzzyfungus.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You used the plural. Arkansas has a diamond mine. And that mine is a fee-to-dig park, not a commercial mine.
Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, and a couple other states have geology and sites under consideration for commercial diamond mining.
The last commercial diamond mine in the US closed in 2002, I think it was in Colorado.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I'm no expert on Arkansas gas extraction, but there are oil wells all over western Kentucky and southern Illinois. In those states, the landowner has mineral rights over the ground beneath their land, and the oil companies pay them a percentage of the profits gained from that particular well. In exchange, the landowner lets the oil company place their semi-noisy oil well on their property (much less noisy than living in a city, mind you). A single well doesn't pay a whole lot, maybe only a few hundred dollars a year (these things aren't industrial-scale well operations), but if you're a farmer with a lot of land, it adds up.
I'm not sure how Arkansas works, but if it's like KY or IL, I doubt that there's some evil gas company out there raping the lands. Probably there are gas companies there that initially didn't think that fracking would induce earthquakes -- it doesn't everywhere; not every man-made ground disruption causes earthquakes, only some of them. The gas companies probably knock on people's doors and give them a deal, where the person will take home part of the profits of their particular gas well, and in exchange, the gas company can build a well on their property.
At least, that's how it works in other states.
Replace "geology" with "coke-addled floozies" and you have what Charlie refers to as "Thursday".
Who sounds preposterous now?
Researching a 100-mile radius around Fort Worth, the U.S. Geological Survey recorded 11 minor earthquakes from 1973 to 2006, the period the government database spans.
But, in the last seven months, 15 more minor quakes have happened, including the four most recently in Cleburne. Still, most occurred along the Dallas and Tarrant County line.
Other scientists believe that major cuts in government funding for R&D will cause mass starvation among academic researchers, while other scientists have determined that wearing real fur increases the risks of death by spontaneous combustion....
Oh wait our gov would never do anything like that... scoffs...
The gentleman that works for the USGS that has been investigating the enola swarm spoke to our local ham radio club about his findings a while back. The fracturing process itself is very very much NOT likely to be the cause of the earthquakes. The data between times/dates/sites of fracturing operations and times/dates/sites of seismic activity show no correlation.
That being said, there definitely is a potential correlation between the enola swarm activity and the injection wells used to dispose of the fracking water. Note that an "injection well" is NOT the same thing as a fracture site. The injection well is not allowed to use enough pressure to cause fracturing. But there are quite a few dates where injection and shaking correlate. There are some dates of injection that don't have a corresponding "shake" and some "shakes" that don't have a corresponding injection, though, so there isn't enough data to say it is definitive yet.
Please for the love of all things right STOP SPREADING THIS nonsense about "fracking is the cause, fracking is the cause, fracking is the cause" (I live here so I'm sick of hearing it.)
Yes, it does call micro quake swarms. We need to stamp out this form of green energy, it isn't safe.
I've usually seen this method referred to as hydraulic cracking or breaking, and mainly because of oil or gas trapped in large thin layers of shale. This has really only started becoming popular since oil prices are high enough now to make it worth the additional cost.
This is done all over Texas these days, and haven't heard of any seismic issues from it (at least not in south Texas, other posters above say it has happened in north Texas). I would imagine the area in Arkansas has to be pretty unstable to begin with. Despite what the article says, I thought Arkansas was part of the New Madrid fault system?
This cluster of quakes was going on for a couple of weeks before the 4.7. Check it out on Google Earth with recent quakes enabled
Any one else notice that the Greenbrier area is only 100 kilometres or so from the New Madrid Quake fault zone?
If I can't discuss my work with the tea lady, I probably don't know what I am doing....
Come on now it's Arkansas........everyone knows that these are earthquakes caused by god because gays are allowed to get married. Remember after this is a state full of people who don't believe in evolution.
Or.... Wait.
Did no one else think of A View To A Kill when they read this?
The causal relationships here are quite strong, yet the involved scientists are quite tentative regarding the facts as well as conclusions.
Keep this in mind as an example the next time you read a highly speculative press release regarding global warming (oops, "climate change") or "goo to you" evolution.
Please don't censor this.
Who cares?
Since it appears we may have some problems in the middle east for some time to come, I think it is time we stop worry about trying to regulate things to hell, and start pumping our own oil pronto!!!
For one thing....let's lift the fucking ban on drilling in the Gulf.
In the first place, hydrofracking produces natural gas, not oil.
In the second place, hydrofracking destroys the water supply. Of the things we need more than cheap energy that exacerbates global warming, Number One is WATER.