Posted on 05/04/2015 6:36:43 PM PDT by cripplecreek
KALAMAZOO, MI -- The state official who oversees regulation of oil and gas wells says he is certain that Saturday's earthquake in Kalamazoo County is unrelated to fracking or other drilling in the area.
"I am extremely confident there is no connection," said Hal Fitch, a geologist who is director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's Office of Oil, Gas, and Minerals.
That opinion is echoed by David Barnes, professor of geosciences at Western Michigan University.
"I'm as certain as a scientist can be" that there is no connection, Barnes said.
Hydraulic fracturing -- also known as fracking -- is a process that involves pumping water at high pressure to create fractures in rock, allowing the oil or natural gas to flow more freely to the well bore.
Scientists, including those at that the U.S. Geological Survey, recently have connected an increase in seismic activity to high-pressure injection wells used to dispose of wastewater that is the byproduct of fracking. The link has been seen in Colorado, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Ohio.
However, Fitch and Barnes said the earthquake here appears to be a natural phenomena versus one induced by human activity.
(Excerpt) Read more at mlive.com ...
It was caused by global warming. Or is it cooling now? Either way it’s still Bush’s fault.
May be of interest.
God might be angry will all the Muslims living there?
Yes it was. And so was dishwasher breaking. And my car not starting. And my dog going on the rug. And my girlfriend leaving me!! And my goldfish dying!!
DAM YOU FRACKING!! DAM YOU TO HELL!!...punching the sand
Wait. What? Last week it was. Now it’s not. Must be settled science then. Right? Also, last week coffee would kill you and this week it’s the best thing algore ever invented.
:-)
Oil is slippery, you take it out of the group more friction LESS earthquakes!
I’ll match my sciencematicians semilogistics with them anytime.
The sun’s activity is in free fall, according to a leading space physicist. But don’t expect a little ice age. “Solar activity is declining very fast at the moment,” Mike Lockwood, professor of space environmental physics at Reading University, UK, told New Scientist. “We estimate faster than at any time in the last 9300 years.”
Lockwood and his colleagues are reassessing the chances of this decline continuing over decades to become the first “grand solar minimum” for four centuries. During a grand minimum the normal 11-year solar cycle is suppressed and the sun has virtually no sunspotsMovie Camera for several decades. This summer should have seen a peak in the number of sunspots, but it didn’t happen.
Lockwood thinks there is now a 25 per cent chance of a repetition of the last grand minimum, the late 17th century Maunder Minimum, when there were no sunspots for 70 years. Two years ago, Lockwood put the chances of this happening at less than 10 per cent (Journal of Geophysical Research, DOI: 10.1029/2011JD017013).
Oh Frack
It is near Climax so I expect a gusher any minute now.
Frackquakes Have been Settled Science for Some Time!!!
Well, it could still be glowbull warming.
What? Two honest scientists? No wonder I loved my Geology classes.
Would love to see what kind of fossils are in those Cambrian and Ordovician Era strata. I’m a Trilobite kinda guy myself. Phacops Rana reigns. A good hairy Olennellus ain’t too back either.
I hope THEY think that to be the case.
The Sandstone quarry near me (Napoleon) sells big spiral fossils embedded in the stone as decorative pavers.
Some are several inches across and others are tiny dime sized things.
Ok Earthquake not cause by fracking. Then I wonder what the heck is happening to my city that we are having swarms. Perhaps Chevron refinery? Naval Base closed? Obama’s Fault?
Deniers!
no wonder I didn’t feel it, there is only 1 green dot in Lapeer...
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