Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumAre we pounding the earth too much?
Yes, I know. The earth surface is huge and thick and should be able to withstand repeated pounding. And by "pounding" I mean drilling, dense housing, fracking..
And yet I wonder whether all the sinkholes and, possibly earthquakes, are the result of too much pounding. That at some point the crust finally gives in.
Or is this too far fetched?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and while there is some drilling deep-sea, it's still coastal.
I think the crust is generally too thick for more than surface rearrangements.
see page, too:
https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/sage/geology/lesson1/concepts.html
question everything
(47,470 posts)It is just that all of a sudden there are so many sinkholes... not just in recently soggy soil, but also in Florida where, all of a sudden, a man got swallowed while asleep - last year?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)That's what happens when
- you pump all the water out from underneath you.
- a river from a broken sewer or water main flushes all the dirt out from under you.
question everything
(47,470 posts)I think that this is what I meant in my OP, posted on GD
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024904490
U.S. to Map the Risks of Man-Made Earthquakes
ANCHORAGE, AlaskaA rise in the frequency of earthquakes in regions with increasing oil and gas extraction is prompting scientists for the first time to assess risks of man-made quakes and include them on federal maps that influence building codes and public policy.
The new mapping, which the U.S. Geological Survey hopes to release later this year, is likely to put regions of the central U.S. not typically thought of as earthquake zones on notice for greater seismic hazards. Unlike West Coast states at high risk for major quakes, like California, other areas typically aren't as prepared to handle strong temblors.
The USGS regularly maps hazards from naturally occurring quakes, alerting building engineers and local governments to the probability of moderate and strong shaking in their regions based on fault lines and seismic studies. The agency said that in the wake of research showing increased seismic activity in certain regionsincluding two strong 2011 quakes in Colorado and Oklahomait decided to release a separate map to evaluate the risk of man-made quakes, called induced quakes.
(snip)
An average rate of more than 100 earthquakes a year above a magnitude 3.0 occurred in the four years from 2010 to 2013 in the central and eastern U.S., compared with an average rate of 20 events a year observed from 1970 to 2000, according to the USGS... The mapping effort comes as regulators, industry officials, politicians and scientists begin to grapple with how to measure and respond to potential quake risks from human activities in the aftermath of a jump in seismic activity in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Ohio and Colorado.
(snip)
Wastewater disposal after oil extraction appears to cause larger quakes than fracking, researchers said. In that process, oil is extracted with salt water. The remaining brine, or wastewater, is injected into the ground. The pressure caused by that can put stress on an existing faults and trigger quakes, some scientists contend... On Thursday, new research unveiled at the Seismological Society of America conference said that quakes can be triggered up to 30 miles away from the site of wastewater disposal, a greater distance than previously thought, said Katie Keranen, an assistant geophysics professor at Cornell University who led the study.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579535991486675268
(If you cannot open by clicking, try to copy and paste the title onto google)
The_Commonist
(2,518 posts)We can punch holes in the Earth's crust until it looks like the surface of the moon, and the Earth doesn't care. The Earth doesn't care about sinkholes and earthquakes or the density of human settlement. Does. Not. Care.
However, what we do might affect humans, so it would make sense for us to be a little more careful about what we do. Of course, many of the people doing the hole-punching don't care about humans either. So there's that...
2naSalit
(86,536 posts)Interesting question. I wonder...
http://solarimg.org/artis/
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)If so, I can state with a large degree of confidence that nothing we are doing on the surface of the Earth, or even into the deep crust, can possibly alter the location of the magnetic poles.
and I am sure we are exacerbating whatever this would indicate by trashing the biosphere as well as this taking place. This pole drift has bee wildly erratic since 2010 and I started hearing about this after the 2004 quake/tsunami in the Indian Ocean. We have been trashing our environment for a good 100+ years. Don't know if there's any one cause, but we are generally responsible for the decline in water and air quality.
I think it's a composite of things that are bringing about the sinkholes etc. Maybe it's not pounding, per se, but that we have redirected water and changed too many ecosystems for surface integrity...? But I think the "pounding" plays a role at some point.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)spin of the inner core (see illustration first post).
Nothing done on the surface of the earth could possibly affect that.
I was referring to the surface activity affecting surface concerns like sinkholes and the possibility of the inner core activity helping that surface motion along. Sorry if I wasn't articulating that, but that's what I meant.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)We couldn't affect that if we wanted to.
The sinkholes, however, are probably exacerbated by increased pumping of ground water for commercial agricultural irrigation.
EDIT: Or the spin of the inner core (scooped by Demeter)
2naSalit
(86,536 posts)that's what I meant to imply but may have blown it somehow... crap happens.
Having a crappy day and trying to keep my mind off an overwhelming issue by getting involved in conversation here since I am way out in the sagebrush (NOT in NV!!! ).
muriel_volestrangler
(101,306 posts)The 'mas' units are milliarcseconds - so a variation of about 140 mas is 140/3600000 of a degree - about 1/26,000 of a degree.
Not that our activity will have any effect on that either.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/japanquake/earth20110314.html