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Scientists Link Deep Wells To Deadly Spanish Quake
Meshach writes "Research has suggested that human activity triggered an earthquake in Spain that killed nine and injured over three hundred. Drilling deeper and deeper wells to water crops over the past 50 years were identified as the culprit by scientist who examined satellite images of the area. It was noted that even without the strain caused by water extraction, a quake would likely have occurred at some point in the area but the extra stress of pumping vast amounts of water from a nearby aquifer may have been enough to trigger a quake at that particular time and place."
Where the hell is Span?
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Research has suggest that in most cases, murder is directly related to getting out of bed.
From TPA:
Research has suggested that human activity triggered an earthquake
Umm ...
It was noted that even without the strain caused by water extraction, a quake would likely have occurred at some point in the area
Please pardon me, perhaps I am being too dense to understand the following intricacies:
How can it be that "Human activity triggered an earthquake" when a quake "would likely have occurred at some point in the area" ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I can't be bothered to read anything on the topic. I must post something, now!
However, in order to seem relevant, I will post a link to something on the Internet, so that my post seems like a reasoned, researched, reply.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The Anthropogenic Earthquake Theory is a myth! There is no evidence that mankind's efforts have any effect whatsoever on earthquakes! Face the facts, people, Earth is big, man is small! There is no way that these--
Wait, did you say water wells?
Oh. Nevermind.
Stop! Drop whatever it is you are fucking doing RIGHT NOW because whatever it is, some scientists you are going to fuck some other shit up.
Just freeze and don't move, or we're all going to fucking DIE!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That also means that they are consuming more water than what is replenished each year, which in the long run may be a more important issue than a quake every 25 years or so.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
If they had not drilled the wells, the pressure would have grown greater and when the quake happened it would have been a stronger quake. Silly article headline!
Or maybe not - maybe there would have been a series of smaller quakes that released the energy more gradually. Do you have some evidence that shows that human-induced quakes are of lower intensity than natural quakes?
Human-induced earthquakes are usually caused by water injection, or more precisely by increasing pore fluid pressure which in turn has the effect of decreasing the rock's confining pressure. Basically, the water inside the rock pushes out in all directions with a (typically very high) pressure related to the height of the water column in hydrostatic communication with it above. The rock above is also pushing down, but other considerations aside, this confining pressure from the weight of the rocks tends to lock faults together preventing them from moving. The effective confining pressure is reduced by the pore fluid pressure pushing the rock apart. If you add to the water column the extra weight of the water may be minuscule compared to the increase in pressure caused by the greater height of the water column. That extra pore water pressure can then allow other forces, previously held in check by the rock's confining pressure, to break the fault causing an earthquake.
The most common place for this to occur is in filling new reservoirs and in deep waste injection wells used for disposal of fluids from oil and gas production. Suck quakes are usually very small, but I think they've been observed in rare cases above magnitude 5.
Removing water is a much less common cause of earthquakes. Pumping, for both water and oil, can ground subsidence, but rarely earthquakes. It will, however, subtly affect the balance of forces on a fault, so it's not inconceivable that it could cause a fault already near the breaking point to slip. I'd be curious to see the fault geometry and movement on the fault that caused the earthquake in Span.
I've heard of Spic in Span though. Is that where you're thinking of?
No, Spic and Span is what I meant.
Although it appears that it's seen on the official web site's title as Spic 'n Span, but that's missing an apostrophe. The product appears to say Spic and Span.
Like how people abbreviate "until" to "till" instead of "'til" - missing the apostrophe and adding a letter L, making it a different word (till as in cash till, or verb: to till the land, etc.)
Or, better example, Rock 'n Roll.
Interesting tidbit from World Wide Words, via Wikipedia:
Budget cuts, you know. Because the MF, the pean Central Bank and the Word Ban won't give you any more lans unless you turn over a letter or two. Maybe they can buy a vowl from Vanna and Pat. OK, that's all 've got...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This is what happens when you dig too deep for mithril.
If the wells go all the way to New Zealand then you know they've gone too far
There have been quakes in New Zealand too.
Yes, I also find it hard to believe that they've drawn down water 1/4 kilometer. That is just amazingly bad.
The other hard-to-believe is how a 5.1 earthquake did so much damage. How poor are the building standards in Spain?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
the Spanish Quake!
According to Jeff Fulgham, the CEO of Banyan Water and the ex-lead of General Electric's ecomagination division, the global replenishment rate is about 4,200 km3 while 2010 use was at least 4,300 km3. This is only possible by drawing down surface reserves like lakes and aquafirs.
Water use also limits the amount of CO2 that we can sequester in soils and plants to an additional 500 GT or so because we'll sequester water with it and not have enough for us. 500 GT is about 15 years worth at the current burning rates. IIRC (Rockstrom et al I think ... too lazy to check).
Two things to consider
1: What really matters is not the absoloute strength of the quake it's how the strength compares to what those writing the building regs at the time of construction thought was likely to happen.
2: In europe we generally build are buildings to last and have been building them for a long time. Many people live in buildings that were built long before the rise of modern building regulations.
* Yes I know there were natives arround before that but afaict they didn't build much in the way of lasting structures.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Either they have better evidence than justifies a "maybe" or the suggestion is completely absurd. Just another two things happened in the same place so once of them must have caused the other. This is garbage. It's not even correlation v causation. They haven't even shown correlation. It's just garbage.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Generally only nuclear bomb has enough energy to create a quake. (M4 to M6 depending on bomb size.) Human activity in adding or extracting fluids from the earth can accelerated or retard a quake, but rarely create new ones.
One fear is the consolidation of natural small quakes into a larger bigger quake. Each earthquake is equivalent in energy to 30 quakes of smaller magnitude. Perhaps human activity may have many of these smaller quakes go off at once.
The inverse has been proposed to prevent damaging quakes. Try to trigger hundreds of tiny quakes in place of a larger quake to relieve stress. but no one knows how to safely do this.
FWIW, this very evening an italian court condemned six scientists that had concluded 'no risk' in a meeting in the italian town l'Aquila just the day before an earthquake there killed 300 and wounded 1000's.
Bad luck maybe, but jailed for six years.
This M. Jean-Philippe Avouac is a good whistleblower...
Herve S.
Just as an FYI, your statement #2 appears to be on the mark. I read more about the damage and the only accounts I could find indicated "historical" buildings had collapsed. So my questioning the building codes appears to be off the mark.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/10/22/1634219/scientists-who-failed-to-warn-of-quake-found-guilty-of-manslaughter
Herve S.
Apple maps strike again!
That's stupid. What if a kid bumps his bike into a bridge pylon by accident* and because of lack of servicing by the government this is enough to make the bridge collapse ? Is the kid('s parent) responsible for the bridge collapse ?
If you walk into a room and a house of cards collapses can you be charged for hours or days of lost labour ?
Or is this just because it's an oil company and it comes down to "blaming the unpopular" ?
* because I don't think anyone is seriously arguing these people intentionally cause quakes