12 Signs That Something Big Is Happening To The Earth’s Crust Under North And South America
h/t Michael Haz
The author isn't talking astrology.
I posted that account yesterday about how the famous Portola Expedition encountered numerous daily earthquakes as they traversed the LA Basin on foot 245 years ago this summer. It's not that earthquakes were more frequent then -- it was a fluke -- it was a "swarm" of earthquakes.
24 comments:
It's all pretty evident:
"A United Nations report warned that climate change is already having sweeping effects on every continent and is likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control." Front page of NYTimes
Yellowstone had a quake today. Talk about ground zero.
phx said...
Yellowstone had a quake today. Talk about ground zero.
Vulcanism.
phx said...
A United Nations report warned that climate change is already having sweeping effects on every continent and is likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control." Front page of NYTimes
We could use a little volcanic action to cool things off.
A rumbler woke me up @ 12:29AM. I didn't read anything about it, but I'm a light sleeper. Everything wakes me up.
I lived for earthquakes.
I did not see the problem. I honestly did not. I tried really hard to visualize the problems, did visualize the problems, and everything seemed fun. Everything crashing down seemed like a great fun, and the earth opening up to great chasms beneath everyone's feet forcing quick decisions, this way or that, all seemed like a challenge. Like an obstacle course. Fun. Hanging on by fingertips. Everything shaking. Glass breaking.
But now I realize that is so immachuuuuuurrrr.
Same as jumping straight out of a fast moving car. It's not how you visualize. There's more to physics than meets the child's imagination.
Now you think every single bit of infrastructure must be checked, careers on the line, responsibilities heaped on shoulders, building inspectors, pipelines, wires, poles, water, rivers, streams, dams, gutters. Best not to own anything.
I've been collecting alcohols bit by bit, a thing here, a thing I hear about there, here a thing, there a thing, and they are collected on cheap thoughtless shelves. Over time the shelves are filled with heavy bottles. One little shake and a veritable fortune in odd alcohols that nobody drinks comes crashing. Imagine the stink. It is a very poorly planned thing that turned out.
The situation is fluid. And dynamic.
"A United Nations report warned that climate change is already having sweeping effects..."
Hahaha ... phx cracks me up with that one every time.
The idea that climate change can cause earthquakes is what we call pseudo-science.
The subduction of the plate getting tucked under so. Am. pretty much has zero to do with the transform plate boundary that is the San Andreas fault.
Neither of those has anything at all to do with the subduction zone of the Pacific Rim.
phx, think of it as Gaia having a satisfying orgasm.
Given that I can see two of California's largest volcanoes from my house (not a view from my house but from an ancient lava bench nearby)....I should probably be worried.
We haven't had any recent earthquakes, but several faults run directly through the valley where I live and one is right in my back yard.
On the other hand. If mother nature decides to get dyspeptic, where should we go? West? I don't think so. East? Nearer to Yellowstone. Nope. North? Oregon and Washington are having their own issues with Mount Hood. Looks kind of familiar doesn't it? Move to Oklahoma and deal with tornadoes. Probably not, although the eastern areas are pretty nice and homes are cheap.
Stuck. I guess we just stay put and buy some fireproof boots.
The Vulcans
Time to cue "We built This city On Rock'n'Roll".
Get an asbestos kayak and ride a lava flow. Might not end well, but think of the fun along the way.
And Shasta is cool. Hood and Rainier would cause me more concerns.
Earthquakes are nature's way of fracking.
"Earthquakes are nature's way of fracking."
Hehe. :)
Bottom line, really... if we didn't have plate tectonics to continually shake stuff up, we probably wouldn't be here at all. Actually, no "probably" about it. Without a dynamic crust there would be no life on earth because it's all part of a system that also creates our magnetic field.
Now, one thing that might happen that involves everything is that the Earth's magnetic field might flip... it does that every little while ("little while" in geological time scales) and that could happen any century now. I don't think that anyone suggests that this would cause earthquakes, though.
The other things all happening at the same times (according to the article) are all normal things caused by understood processes and not tied to each other any more than California and Vesuvius.
The extreme volatility of the Pacific Rim "ring of fire" is due to the fact that the subducting crust along Asia is very very old (the oldest on Earth) and contains lots and lots of water... water lowers the melting point of the mantle above the subducting crust (the mantle isn't liquid!) and that localized melt drives the volcanoes.
Pacific Rim "ring of fire"
Someone had to do it. Sorry
:-P
The room right next to the one I'm in has a seismograph cylinder with the little pens making squiggles...
I'm going to go look at that, and at the display showing earthquakes for the last week over the world.
Then I'm going to go find lunch.
DBQ, you little dickens. That's my favorite version; with the mariachi sound. Did you know June Carter wrote it?
I've read the biggest time bomb is the New Madrid Seismic Zone. One quake in the 1800s made church bells ring as far away as Toronto.
"In a report filed in November 2008, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that a serious earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone could result in "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States," further predicting "widespread and catastrophic" damage across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and particularly Tennessee, where a 7.7 magnitude quake or greater would cause damage to tens of thousands of structures affecting water distribution, transportation systems, and other vital infrastructure.[20] The earthquake is expected to also result in many thousands of fatalities, with more than 4,000 of the fatalities expected in Memphis alone."
wiki
The danger with the New Madrid zone is the lack of common earthquake activity. Here in CA we build for earthquakes, made to shake, then keep going. Now, even our freeways have been retrofitted to ride the earth waves.
Other places don't have that, so the brick and masonry buildings stand strong until the ground buckles, then they crumble. Lot's of that potential in Central US.
Thanks, Paddy, scary stuff.
Patrick, here in the Midwest our homes have had to be built pretty much to earthquake and hurricane standards since the mid 1990s, since most states use the same building codes for single family homes. Older homes are at risk.
Our steel framed office buildings do not have to meet the extensive earthquake requirements that are required in California.
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