Whole Lotta Shaking Going On
Fracking is perfectly safe. We’re all going to hell anyway so what’s a little fracking to speed along the process.
Ten earthquakes, three of them greater than a 3.0 in magnitude, rocked the DFW area on Tuesday afternoon and into early Wednesday, knocking items off of walls, causing cracks to appear in ceilings and generally rattling nerves across the region.
What’s unusual about this? North Texas has not had earthquakes like this since the 1970’s.
#2 Unusual: Fracking is happening there.
But, fracking companies assure us, is not why Dallas is having earthquakes.
Geophysicists said that this many earthquakes indicates stress in the Earth’s crust that needs to be relieved.
Yep, that’s all. Ten times a day.
Oy, chihuahua! Nobody has blamed this on Obama? At least not yet? Y’all might remember a few years ago when the D.C. area had a six pointer one August. The Washington Monument was damaged. So was the National Cathedral and even though the Capitol Architect won’t publicly admit it, all the work being done on the dome right now is also a result of that quake. Heck, it was felt all the way up into Canada and shook up my cousins! An entire school at the epicenter had to be rebuilt and the town supporting the school had a lot of damage. However, thank the Lord, nobody was tracking in Virginia. The state guvmint won’t allow it. They think those little hacking stations will dissuade all the high tech firms from relocating in the Old Dominion. (Wait a minute! Thats a reason?)
1When the Rocky Flats nuclear site was working, they used to inject their dirty water into the ground, and guess what” LOTS of 3 to 4 magnitude earthquakes. They were made to stop, and guess what else stopped?
2Dirty water injected into the ground is 1. a waste of water, which is going to be more precious than oil, and 2. the cause of earthquakes in an area which usually doesn’t have earthquakes. Water is a lubricant.
Those “geophysicists” who assure us…. that none of this is the result of “fracking”. Reckon which oil company might employ them????
3A study just concluded that fracking caused earthquakes in Ohio, which hadn’t had any since ever; they stopped after the fracking was shut down.
http://www.livescience.com/49326-fracking-caused-ohio-earthquakes.html
4Most of the residents of Tarrant County couldn’t tell the difference between an earthquake and the effects of Chuck Norris (as Walker Texas Strangler) throwing bad guys around. Even in reruns that’s a significant impact.
5Guess they didn’t ask Oklahoma about that earthquake problem. By mid-July last year they already had 253 “absolutely not because of the fracking” earthquakes.
6Please allow me to be Devil’s Advocate here.
Fracking has been around for over 50 years, but the problems have only been reported in the last 10-15 years, and many places where fracking occurred have no reported problems. Any hypothesis that fracking causes earthquakes has to explain why it was done for 35 years without earthquakes, and why some areas have earthquakes and others don’t.
And we must remember that blaming natural events on human activity requires more than a post hoc argument or geographic correlation. That is the domain of TV preachers who blame Hurricane Katrina on “teh gays” parading in New Orleans.
Hurricanes happen; earthquakes happen. The Gulf Coast Geosyncline has been settling in that area for about 70-80 million years. It has seen lots of hurricanes and earthquakes and most of them were not caused by fracking or gays. The reason Dallas is 500 feet above sea level is geologic uplift–earthquakes pushed it up there.
The White Rock Escarpment runs from Dallas to San Antonio through Waco and Austin. It is a MAJOR fault line transected by hundreds of minor fault lines. And to the east is the Luling-Mexia-Talco fault line extending all the way into Arkansas. Just because these faults haven’t moved much in our lifetime doesn’t mean they will never move again. They will move again, it is a certainty. It’s geology.
I’m not trying to defend fracking, but I hesitate to draw a conclusion from the facts available. And blaming your favorite demon doesn’t always lead to the truth.
7Ralph –
Although fracking has been around for 50 years, it wasn’t used as often in the first 35 years as it is now. It’s the amount of fracking that creates the problem.
It’s like when the auto was invented, there were very few accidents initially, because there were very few cars, just like the correlation between early fracking and a lack of earthquakes.
8Yessirree! Take layers of solid rock, crack them into little pieces over a wide area, inject lots of slippery stuff into that and expect it to stay in place like it always did. That’s the smartest thing since Louie Gohmert!
9Rick, the alternate explanation is that these quakes have been going on for 70 million years and you just now noticed them. The basis of that explanation is provable in the geologic record.
10You’re right about that! I never noticed a single quake over 70 million years ago, or as I called that era, the good old days.
11@Rick
12re:”70 million years ago,” ie “the good old days”
We may not have gone to the same high school, but we certainly graduated at about the same time!
Rick, I didn’t mean to imply that you had been living under a rock for 70 million years.
What I’m getting at is that we need better science on this subject. One reason the global warming debate was so tough was that we could not overcome the argument that the increase in temp was a natural transition, not an anomaly. When the data was collected, correlated, collated, and cogitated upon, it was obviously an anomaly. We need similar data to prove that these quakes are an anomaly not a natural occurrence.
13Ralph –
I understand your comment, and agree. Humans tend to take a small piece of info and make decisions based on that data, whether it’s comprehensive or not. Like now, gas prices are low, and apparently the masses are rushing out to buy 12 mpg vehicles because a tank of 87 octane costs them less than $100 again. But what about the summer of 2015? 2017?
Fracking & earthquakes? Maybe more study needs to be done to prove a correlation. But let’s not forget fracking may also affect the water table, water that some people would like to drink.
By the way, I haven’t lived under a rock all these years, but like the Flintstones I have lived on one. My yard is mostly lava, I’m about 10 miles away from the flow that’s coming down the mountain in Hawaii.
14Rick, that’s pretty cool. They say we all live downstream from someone. But most of us don’t live downstream from Pele.
15Dang! Just had a free moment to peruse all the responses and I find words in mine that I did not spell that way! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! Whats going on!
16I’m not a scientist at all so I stay out of the earthquake arguments. I AM a mom and grandma and know from reading and listening to folks that today’s fracking has lots of nasty chemicals added and cannot ever be used again. Since Texas doesn’t have any water to spare, and the towns whose lakes and rivers are running dry, the fact that fracking uses way more than its share of available water is reason enough for me to avoid it.
17I absolutely agree with Ralph. Let’s not do nonscience like Republicans.
18Dear Ralph: Fault lines are not all that steady to begin with, so when you shoot thousands of gallons of poisoned water at ultra-high pressure into an unsteady geological area, you’re going to get earthquakes. As for always having earthquakes around here, I doubt that you can testify of your own experience that they have been going on in this area for 70,000 years. From what I have read, there have been occasional small ones here and there over more recent years, especially in the area of the fault line. But I have lived in Dallas, about a eight crow’s-flight miles east of the former stadium area for a bit more than 50 years, and this is the first time I have ever felt one. Actually, I have felt four: one this past November, and three yesterday, complete with a loud, deep rumbling noise and shaking of the whole house. I hope someone does a study of the geological structure of the northern end of the Balcones fault line near Irving, which should have been done long before the frackers started working. And I won’t even start on the insanity of giving the frackers access to millions of gallons of our ever scarcer water.
19Mary, anecdotes and speculation are fine if that’s what convinces you. But if you want to convince a scientist, you have to produce data.
The geologic record is clear. 70 million years ago Dallas County was below sea level. Now, according to Wikipedia, it is 755 feet above sea level. That transition could not have happened with out a lot of earth quakes. I don’t know when they occurred, but obviously they did occur. And assuming that no natural earthquakes happened recently contradicts the evidence. So the data has to distinguish between natural and unnatural quakes. That data may exist, but I’ve never seen it.
20It’s a big part of my job to talk about Fracking (anyone who cares to do so can find my presentation ‘Living and Dying in the Eagle Ford Shale’–so let’s assume I know quite a bit about it. First of all, although, yes, Fracking has been going on for decades–so-called slick water Fracking, which George Mitchell invented, is very new. It features a special cocktail of anti-friction, super-slippery chemicals highly pressurized when mixed with water. The psi at which this mix is injected is far stronger than old-style Fracking. Some scientists believe that it is the injection wells of that slick water, once used, deep into the ground, that causes the earthquakes, while some think any activity connected with Fracking can cause them. At any rate, slick water+high pressure deep into the Earth? See how there might be a connection? There really is no doubt left on this outside of industry, folks. We’re talking about hundreds of earthquakes in areas which have had almost none, ever. I was standing in Karnes City giving an interview to Bloomberg when one hit a few miles away;that’s not ‘earthquake country.’ Neither is the Metroplex.
21And a couple of more things. A two dimensional correlation is not adequate. If the epicenter of the quakes is not at a depth consistent with the depth of the fracking, the argument that fracking caused the quakes is not supported.
With regard to the water argument, our economy has decided that water is cheaper than oil. And I doubt that any of us want that to change.
22The quakes were all pretty close together, the largest centered at 32.837, -96.890. There’s a horizontal gas well surface location at 32.852, -96.915. No one pays much attention to what happens in the bottoms until the ground starts to shake. We used to have midnight, lights-off drag races on Wildwood. Only chickens turn their lights on.
23On the other hand, since the shaking couldn’t possibly be caused by anything related to the O&G industry; our next best guess is that the old Texas Stadium really was the Seventh Seal and since it was torn down, fate was only waiting for the arrival of the anti-Christie for all hell to break loose.
24More information…. just to add to the debate.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/06/3608591/77-earthquakes-linked-to-fracking/
Y’all not too many people in the insurance bidness, here in Texas….. will write a homeowner’s policy to completely cover hurricane damage. I don’t want to even think about shopping for “earthquake” coverage…. for Pete’s sake.
25Miemaw, that is a great article but it exemplifies the two great logical fallacies that have to be removed from the argument if the anti-fracking movement is to prevail.
The first is the post hoc fallacy. When two events occur in sequence, it does not prove that the first event caused the second event.
The second is the “correlation equals causation” fallacy. When two events occur at the same place or time it does not prove causation.
Causation requires separate proof independent of the sequence, or local correlation.
(The article and the press release did not correlate depth, only surface position. If the epicenter of the quake was significantly deeper than the injection site, it negates the argument entirely. Fracking fluids do not migrate to the higher pressure of lower strata.)
That article is probably true, but the authors stretched their conclusion well beyond what the data will support.
And please allow me to repeat myself. I’m playing devil’s advocate here because this issue will go to the courts. And when it does, the lawyers will tear apart the fallacy ridden arguments. The argument I presented above about geologic events in geologic time is supported by testable evidence and reasonable logic. If you want to overcome that argument, you need better evidence and better logic.
26Here is a reference for those who are curious about where I get my dogma.
Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit.
27http://users.tpg.com.au/users/tps-seti/baloney.html
Ralph Wiggam, I triple appreciate your role as “Devil’s Advocate.” The science deniers are hitting us from 3 directions.
The battle is in the legal courts, the court of public opinion and the political arena, where the Republicunts have been all too successful with gerrymandering, voter suppression and every & all means of stacking the courts with judges from the Bob Jones school of st00pid.
But I am not convinced that data points and the scientific method will win the day for us. Sorry Florida, I’m not sure your future as the new “Atlantis” will convince the deniers.
What may convince the deniers and other rubes is the actions of the got mine, screw you folks, who are building ocean safe homes in Dubai and other countries.
Similar to Keystone XL, which Canada doesn’t want. Now Boehner and the Koch brothers want us to support all the risks without an iota of the profit.
As you say Ralph, we need to hit them with impeccable science. However, we can also hit them with their total hypocrisy. What we can’t wait for is some cosmic aligning of all our ducks that will satisfy the the dog in the sky crowd faith fleas.
28thnx pkm
29Ralph, thank you so much for the “Baloney Detection Kit.” Totally awesome! I’ve never seen it all in once place like that before. I’m heading to my library to look for the book now.
30Ralph Wiggam, thank you. It’s years since I’ve read any Sagan, and I reserved the book at my local library.
I’m glad fracking is not coming to NY state. Our NYC water comes from upstate reservoirs, and poisoned water, soil, and air are consequences of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.
Our energy future is renewables, period.
31