

Fluid Injection's Role in Man-Made Earthquakes Revealed - jrs235
http://www.caltech.edu/news/fluid-injections-role-man-made-earthquakes-revealed-46986?rp

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beloch
"The experiment revealed that fluid injection itself did not directly provoke
an earthquake. Instead, the aseismic slip likely built up stress at the edges
of the creeping zone of rock. Eventually, the stress overcame the friction
between the rock faces within the fault, triggering earthquakes."

It's worth asking if this could be used to deliberately set off minor
earthquakes that relieve stress in such a way as to prevent larger ones.

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MiguelHudnandez
Sort of like the straw breaking the camel's back...

I have been wondering why oil companies have not been making the smaller-quake
argument -- the link between hydraulic fracturing and earthquakes has been
clear for some time.

I think 1,000 4.0 earthquakes have the same energy as a single 8.0 earthquake.
The thousand 4.0's would be much more survivable. Even better, ten thousand
3.0's or a hundred thousand 2.0's spread out over decades...

I am wondering if fracking in California will slow down now that a finger can
be pointed at a corporation after a quake, instead of being shrugged off as an
"act of god." The earthquake would occur eventually & naturally, of course,
but what if oil & gas exploitation triggered it?

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igivanov
1 mag 8 = 1,000,000 of mag 4

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale#Richte...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale#Richter_magnitudes)

On top of that major quakes happen deep below, not where humans do their
thing.

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glabifrons
I'm amazed that I'm reading in the same article talking about faults in
limestone and "underground trapping of carbon dioxide emitted by power
stations".

The water we're pumping down there isn't the only water deep in the earth.
Water + C02 = carbonic acid, commonly known to dissolve limestone (frequently
the cause of sinkholes when it happens near the surface). Am I the only one
who thinks pumping enormous amounts of C02 deep into the ground (where it's
going to come into contact with water and limestone) is a really, really bad
idea?

Outside of that, very interesting article. Fantastic that they have access to
a fault via an old military installation!

