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Permalink Reply by Chris Farabaugh on November 13, 2011 at 10:38am

I think the Weather Channel need to get out of political and environmental issues and focus on what theyre supposed to....tell me the weather for the coming days. 

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Permalink Reply by George Brown on November 13, 2011 at 12:40pm

They can't because their weather forecasts are too often wrong.  Better to go with sensationalism.

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Permalink Reply by Little Cougar on November 13, 2011 at 2:06pm

sooooooooooo true!!! 

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Permalink Reply by Dan on November 14, 2011 at 4:00am

 

Wow, I thought someone would have made this claim as the earthquake was happening.  Don’t know if they still do, but in California they had been injecting water into faults for decades with the belief that a lubricated fault would move more often with less damaging energy than a dry fault.  Now I'm one to believe that most times that we try to fix mother nature we create 4 new problems, but I think it is horse sh#@ that fracking causes damaging earthquakes.  Look at the map of the East Coast and draw a line from the St Lawrence, down the Ohio and Mississippi.  Two different plates under there moving two different directions.  In the 1800's the New Madrid Fault moved, bricks fell in Boston and boats were swept miles up the Ohio and Mississippi.  Back then idiots probably blamed it on paddle boats causing turbulence in the water leading to cataclysmic doom and gloom. 

 

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Permalink Reply by 2s72s0k9mm8gd on November 14, 2011 at 1:41pm

There may be a silver lining if this "fracking causes earthquakes" thing proves true.........could be beneficial to mankind if it were to cause "The Left Coast" to go bye-bye!

I think quakes have been around a little while longer than fracking. In 1985 there were tremors here in Pa & Ohio.......caused flag poles to sway in New Castle Pa! Sensationalism is the oldest form of propaganda.

What should be of more concern to us is ...........What is the propagandists' true agenda..........?

!!!!! KEEP ON FRACKING !!!!!

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Permalink Reply by Philip Brutz on November 14, 2011 at 6:02am

Here is the actual report from the Oklahoma Geological Survey.

http://www.ogs.ou.edu/pubsscanned/openfile/OF1_2011.pdf

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Permalink Reply by Mirabelle Dictu on November 14, 2011 at 12:12pm

Thanks, Philip. Very informative. And to the poster above who says the weather channel should get out of environmental issues, ahem, weather IS an environmental issue! Can we not at least TRY to be objective?

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Permalink Reply by Dan on November 15, 2011 at 3:40am

 

Below is the conclusions from the above link.

“Examination of Possibly Induced Seismicity from Hydraulic Fracturing in the Eola Field, Garvin County, Oklahoma”

Conclusions

“Determining whether or not earthquakes have been induced in most portions of the stable continent is problematic, because of our poor knowledge of historical earthquakes, earthquake processes and the long recurrence intervals for earthquakes in the stable continent.  In addition understanding fluid flow and pressure diffusion in the unique geology and structures of an area poses real and significant challenges.  The strong spatial and temporal correlations to the hydraulic-­‐fracturing in Picket Unit  B Well 4-­‐18 certainly suggest that the earthquakes observed in the Eola Field could have possibly been triggered by this activity. Simply because the earthquakes fit a simple pore pressure diffusion model does not indicate that this is the physical process that caused these earthquakes.  The number of historical earthquakes in the area and uncertainties in hypocenter locations make it impossible to determine with a high degree of certainty whether or not hydraulic-­‐fracturing induced these earthquakes.

Whether or not the earthquakes in the Eola Field were triggered by hydraulic-­‐fracturing these were small earthquakes with only one local resident having reported feeling them.  While the societal impact of understanding whether or not small earthquakes may have been caused by hydraulic-­‐fracturing may be small, it could potentially help us learn more about subsurface properties such as stresses at depth, strength of faults, fluid flow, pressure diffusion, and long term fault and earthquake behaviors of the stable continent.  It may also be possible to identify what criteria may affect the likelihood of anthropogenically induced earthquakes and provide oil and gas operators the ability to minimize any adverse affects as suggested by Shapiro et al. (2007).”

A lot of ifs.................Magnitude 3 or lower earthquakes are mostly almost imperceptible and magnitude 7 and over potentially cause serious damage over large areas, depending on their depth.  These quakes and other quakes claimed to have been possibly caused by hydraulic-­‐fracturing in the US and the UK have measurered mostly between magnitude 1 and 2.8.

One persons quake is anothers imperceptible tremor.

 

 

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