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The Arrival of Man-Made Earthquakes
An anonymous reader writes: The New Yorker has a long investigative report on a recent geological phenomenon: man-made earthquakes. The article describes how scientists painstakingly gathered data on the quakes, and then tried to find ways to communicate the results — which are quite definitive — to politicians who often have financial reasons to disbelieve them. Quoting: "Until 2008, Oklahoma experienced an average of one to two earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or greater each year. (Magnitude-3.0 earthquakes tend to be felt, while smaller earthquakes may be noticed only by scientific equipment or by people close to the epicenter.) In 2009, there were twenty. The next year, there were forty-two. In 2014, there were five hundred and eighty-five, nearly triple the rate of California.
In state government, oil money is both invisible and pervasive. In 2013, Mary Fallin, the governor, combined the positions of Secretary of Energy and Secretary of the Environment. Michael Teague, whom she appointed to the position, when asked by the local NPR reporter Joe Wertz whether he believed in climate change, responded that he believed that the climate changed every day. Of the earthquakes, Teague has said that we need to learn more. Fallin's first substantive response came in 2014, when she encouraged Oklahomans to buy earthquake insurance. (However, many earthquake-insurance policies in the state exclude coverage for induced earthquakes.)"
In state government, oil money is both invisible and pervasive. In 2013, Mary Fallin, the governor, combined the positions of Secretary of Energy and Secretary of the Environment. Michael Teague, whom she appointed to the position, when asked by the local NPR reporter Joe Wertz whether he believed in climate change, responded that he believed that the climate changed every day. Of the earthquakes, Teague has said that we need to learn more. Fallin's first substantive response came in 2014, when she encouraged Oklahomans to buy earthquake insurance. (However, many earthquake-insurance policies in the state exclude coverage for induced earthquakes.)"
There are fault lines in Oklahoma. There's a fairly large one that runs down from Nebraska into the eastern part of the state. It's usually pretty quiet, but every now and again you get a shift.
And the article said that they're updating fault maps - they don't have enough data.
So... are we sure these are caused by fracking? 'Cause even if you are, you'll never get Oklahomans (especially the government) to believe it.
After all, we're the state that gave you Sen. Inhofe, who still denies that climate change is happening at all (sorry about that, I didn't vote for him). We've got a lot of people employed in the Oil industry. Going against Oil here is political suicide.
Hopefully we can provide scientists enough data to prove what's going on (if it is indeed manmade) so they can use the data elsewhere. They'll make no traction here.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Repent sinners! God is angry at Oklahoma.
since the scale is logarithmic, you would need more than 3 million 2.0 earthquakes to dissipate the same energy as a single 8.5. So no, all these 2.0 or 3.0s don't make a dent in the probability of a giant 8.5
So, if the insurance company can prove the quakes were man-made, they don't have to pay out. But if they can prove it, that goes against claims by many in the state and oil industry. The oil industry would likely try to hound/silence/sue the insurance company.
If they deny a claim with loose evidence that it's man-made, the claimant could (theoretically) prove it was a natural occurrence. Because proving such is to the benefit of the oil industry, they would jump at the chance to "help", and perhaps have the state "investigate" the insurance company for fraud or questionable practices or something.
It seems to me that, despite whatever exclusions the insurance company has, they will likely pay out for any and all earthquake claims with the oil industry helping them cover that pay out behind the scenes in order to keep any proof or claims of "induced" earthquakes out of the public eye.
I look at it like being on a mountain and whacking at rocks with a big mallet. Little ones, you'll almost certainly send rolling down the slope. Ones that are several dozen kilograms, it'll be hit or miss whether you'll make enough of an impact to send them down the mountainside. But giant multi-tonne boulders? You're irrelevant to them, even if they're already precariously balanced.
On the other hand, there's always the possibility that you might hit a smaller rock, sending it cascading into a bigger rock, etc, and ultimately trigger a chain reaction that was already sitting there on a knife's edge. But the odds of this, just hitting rocks at random (let alone deliberately trying to avoid precariously balanced rocks), is very low.
The amount of energy people are putting into the ground compared to the scale of the forces involved in major faults is pretty much irrelevant. Even if the fault is "ready to go", you're still hardly affecting it. There's always the chance you might start a cascade of slips... but that's unlikely, even if you weren't deliberately trying to avoid working near major faults - and drillers do try to avoid working near major faults.
Possible - but very unlikely.
Trump's plan to get rid of Mueller appears to be 'be so guilty of so many things that Mueller works himself to death.'
So if I understand this, the price of Natural gas is down, what, 80%? And now places where mostly no one lives have hundreds of itty bitty tinny tiny tremors so small that the people, that don't live there anyway, can barely detect them without specially calibrated scientific instruments. Also figure into the equation that the nearly free natural gas has allowed us to decommission coal burning plants left and right and is even threatening the economic viability of nuclear fission.
Notwithstanding the absolute fact that relying solely on a single source of power is dangerous and stupid, this seems like a pretty freaking wonderful tradeoff! Granted the media panders exclusively to the eco-terrorist agenda and anything other than a rare earth exhausting solar panel, or a bird extincting windmill is unmitigatedly evil in their narrative. But for those of us that rather like living in the first world, with reliable power at record low prices, this seems like a glass half full sort of story.
Seismic activity in Oklahoma is not caused by fracking, but by disposal wells via which truly vast quantities of water are injected into basement rock. Fracking tends to cause only very small earthquakes, while poorly placed disposal wells can lead to quakes of magnitude 3.0 - 6.0 (based on examples in TFA).
.: Semper Absurda
he simple fact of the matter is that we don't have this information, i.e. there are no peer reviewed studies predicting or discounting any of your three possibilities with a reasonable degree of certainty.
This simply isn't true (can you say astroturf?). Fracking is a complete non sequitor here; disposal wells in Oklahoma have been shown to be the primary cause of increased seismic activity there by multiple tens of peer-reviewed studies, while zero papers have reached an alternative conclusion.
.: Semper Absurda
There are some good reasons to oppose hydraulic fracturing, but "earthquakes" isn't one of them.
Guess you skipped the article, which isn't about fracking. Instead, it's about disposal wells, which unlike fracking (which as you say is linked only to very small earthquakes) have been conclusively linked to larger quakes of magnitude 3.0 - 6.0. According to TFA, there were 585 such earthquakes in Oklahoma in 2013, while there were just a few annually prior to 2008.
This is as silly as opposing windmills because an occasional bird gets wacked.
None of the scientists or Oklahoma residents quoted by TFA are "opposed" to disposal wells. They want 1) the empirical link between disposal wells which contact basement rock and seismic activity to be recognized; 2) firms to be required to investigate if their wells contact basement rock; and 3) to move wells which do in fact contact basement rock.
.: Semper Absurda