Posted on 02/06/2009 6:07:14 PM PST by nickcarraway
Nearly nine months after a devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province, China, left 80,000 people dead or missing, a growing number of American and Chinese scientists are suggesting that the calamity was triggered by a four-year-old reservoir built close to the earthquakes geological fault line.
In Dujiangyan, a hard-hit city, right, a girl held an egg as her father carried her to safety. A Columbia University scientist who studied the quake has said that it may have been triggered by the weight of 320 million tons of water in the Zipingpu Reservoir less than a mile from a well-known major fault. His conclusions, presented to the American Geophysical Union in December, coincide with a new finding by Chinese geophysicists that the dam caused significant seismic changes before the earthquake.
Scientists emphasize that the link between the dam and the failure of the fault has not been conclusively proved, and that even if the dam acted as a trigger, it would only have hastened a quake that would have occurred at some point.
Nonetheless, any suggestion that a government project played a role in one of the biggest natural disasters in recent Chinese history is likely to be politically explosive.
The issue of government accountability and responsiveness has boiled over in China in the past year. The grieving parents of thousands of schoolchildren killed in the disaster have already made the 7.9-magnitude earthquake a political issue, charging that children died needlessly in unsafe school buildings approved by negligent or corrupt officials.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Gotta save that egg.
Hmmmm.... I am not sure I buy it.
This is a voodoo science theory.
I refuse to read anything from the NYT
Thus its the earthquakes’ fault that the dam burst?
Absolutely Superb Science! Who knew that water weighed so much more than rock?
The link between reservoir filling and moderate earthquakes has been very strongly established and accepted in the geological community.
What's unique about this is the size of the earthquake being linked to reservoirs.
Water on top of rock weighs a lot more than the rock.
No way. The movement of tectonic plates made Mt Everest. These forces are a whole lot bigger than that reservoir.
Although a large damn by length and surface area of impounded water, I don’t think its exceptionally tall. The weight of a few hundred feet of water is minimal compared to the hundreds of feet of rock below it.
I’m tired of people claiming that man can control natural disasters.
ping
Do these earthquakes from reservoir filling occur deep in the earth, or near the surface. If they only happen near the surface, and only at the time of the filling, it only suggests that the terrain around the reservoir is reacting to the water pressure. Kind of like a plastic bag expanding when filled with water.
All kinds of construction activity will set of instruments, with vibration...but we are talking about a massive quake from deep within the earth.
Eggs.....its whats for dinner
HF
Thanks BBell! Will add, not ping, because...
Chinese earthquake may have been man-made, say scientists
Daily Telegraph (UK) | 03 Feb 2009 | Malcolm Moore
Posted on 02/02/2009 4:35:38 PM PST by PotatoHeadMick
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