On 12/03/11 03:24, Fernando Cassia wrote: > On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 11:16 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: >> is there any evidence that earthquakes have been getting worse in >> recent centuries? if so, is there a reason for that? > > I´ve asked the local tv evangelist, and he says God is punishing us > for destroying traditional values and embracing socialism.
Among many indigenous people it is of course common sense that Mother Earth is reacting to resource rape. Be that as it may, it is also a business and a science to study: Microseismic science is the study of very small scale earthquakes that are induced by industrial processes such as mining or oil production. In the 1980s, many mines in northern Ontario were experiencing increased seismic activity, including a large rockburst which killed 4 miners in Sudbury in 1984.[1] In response to this accident, a consortium of mining companies was established with government support to develop monitoring systems to acquire seismic waveforms and to study the causes and mechanisms of rockbursts[2][3]. The research lab at Queen’s University set out to develop instrumentation, software and processing routines to locate the source of microseismic activity in mines, and when the lab disbanded in the early 1990s, ESG’s founders continued this work in a commercial capacity. from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_Seismology_Group It is also floating in the mainstream: "Coal Mining Causing Earthquakes, Study Says": http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070103-mine-quake.html "Mining process may trigger Texas earthquakes: Deep earth injection from natural gas mining may have caused series of small earthquakes": http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41761875/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/ Now, imagine a grapefuit. Suck out all the juice and then assess its stability. Or, compare a baloon full of air with one without air. Quite different. The "same" goes for volcanic eruptions: "The enormous Lusi volcano in Sidoarjo, East Java, has been spewing out the equivalent of 60 Olympic swimming pools of boiling mud a day since it first erupted in May 2006 from a drilling hole, owned by oil and gas company Lapindo Brantas. Thirteen villages have been smothered by the sludge and 60,000 people have been made homeless. The mud now covers 7sq km. The new data, according to an international team of scientists led by Durham University, provides the strongest evidence to date that the world's biggest mud volcano was not caused by an earthquake that occurred two days earlier and 174 miles away, as Lapindo claims." from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/14/lusi-volcano-scientists-blame-lapindo About five years ago I wrote a funding proposal for a "social vulcanology" project with a vulcanologist friend and we discussed the issue, which he said we had to leave out of the proposal entirely - not even hinting at the local, indigenous perception - in order not to be laughed out by his colleagues. Things have changed since then. jmp _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
