A few months ago, I was in a drive-thru line waiting for my chance to partake in the chicken goodness at Raising Cane’s. Normally, drive-thru lines remind me of a big advantage of EVs: electric motors don’t idle. With a gas-powered car, you’d sit in that line burning gas and … [continued]
“It’s difficult to watch this tragedy unfold, especially since we’ve known for a long time that the buildings in the region were not designed to withstand earthquakes,” said USGS scientist David Wald. “An earthquake this size has the potential to be damaging anywhere in the world, but many structures in this region are particularly vulnerable.”
After 15 years of planning and development, the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system is now available to more than 50 million people in California, Oregon, and Washington, the most earthquake-prone region in the conterminous U.S.
Pleasantly called natural gas and sold to many as a better solution, a good transition fuel, natural gas has been dominating new US electricity capacity alongside renewable energy. Yet, hydraulic fracking absolutely takes the “natural” out of it. Originally, natural gas was successfully sold as a cleaner transition fuel. Who knew there were not even laws on the books to address the hidden pollutants, and that there would be much information lacking about the truth of the acid stimulation, hydraulic fracturing, and other new extraction technologies?
As the ice sheets of the world melt, an enormous amount of pressure will be lifted off of the continental crusts that play host to them, as well as the surrounding oceanic basins. Something similar is broadly true, but to a much lesser degree, of the world’s remaining large glaciers (think of the Himalayas).
Last year saw insurers pay out $50 billion in insured losses from natural disasters, according to The Guardian. The Kyushu Island earthquakes in Japan ranked as the two largest disasters. These two events saw insurers pay out $6 billion from $31 billion in total damages. Chinese flooding last summer near the Yangtze River caused $28 billion in losses, and was the largest weather-related disaster cost wise in 2016, said Jeff Masters of Weather Underground. However, only $300 million was insured from the third-largest non-US weather disaster in recorded history.
Another destructive earthquake — possibly linked to oil and gas wastewater disposal — has hit Oklahoma, near the Cushing oil pipeline and storage hub.
Many of the most damaging earthquakes in Southern California over the last 100 years may have been the result of oil industry activity the area, according to new research from the US Geological Survey.
A new study from researchers at Stanford University has linked a 4.8 magnitude earthquake recorded in East Texas in 2012 to the now common oil industry practice of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and the accompanying wastewater injection wells, through the use of satellite data, according to a new press release from … [continued]
Texas regulators have been playing ostrich when it comes to investigating the link between fracking waste disposal and earthquakes, sez US EPA.
