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Written, Transcribed by David Hyde. Original YouTube content created by Ben Davidson, published via 'Suspicious0bservers,' and the AGU. This blog post is not meant to be comprehensive, please feel free to comment or email any relevant scholarly sources, or news articles, concerning this particular topic. 

If you have been following the work of 'Suspicious0bservers,' then you already know that Ben Davidson, Dr. Christopher Holloman and Dr. Kongpop U-Yen are in the final stages of the peer-review process for the publication of their manuscript about how the solar polar fields of the Sun have been implicated in triggering the largest earthquakes (8.0 and greater) here on Earth.

But what about some smaller earthquakes?

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In recent years, studies have emerged taking into account a vast array of potential human-causes for smaller magnitude earthquakes, the causes range from large reservoir construction to fracking. This is by no means a new revelation, in fact, a little research into this topic reveals a rich history of inquiry.

A leading researcher in this field, and one who appears to be well ahead of his time, is Dr. Christian D. Klose, a Senior Research Scientist of Think Geohazards based out of New York, New York.

In 2013, Dr. Klose published a catalogue that took him eight years to compile, in which he read over 400 papers that had been published over the past several decades concerning some of the man-made causes of earthquakes.

His catalogue, ‘Mechanical and statistical evidence of the causality of human-made mass shifts on the Earth’s upper crust and the occurrence of earthquakes,’ expanded on his published work from 2010 and 2011 respectively, 'Human-Triggered Earthquakes and Their Impacts on Human Security,' and 'Evidence for anthropogenic surface loading as trigger mechanism of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake;’ Dr. Klose has been publishing on this, and similar subjects, since 2002.

Looking over the behemoth 167 source reference section of his 2013 paper, we can see that many researchers have been investigating the man-made causes behind earthquakes since, at least, 1962.

Dr. Klose’s most recent contribution is his new book, ‘Frack This!’ In the book, Dr. Klose: 

"...provides numerous examples of evidence ranging from tremors induced by the new fracking technology for producing oil and natural gas to earthquakes caused by secret nuclear underground tests that were performed in the US and the former Soviet Union since 1955. Other examples include mining earthquakes causing billions of dollars in damages and devastating earthquakes caused by the filling of artificial water reservoirs, such as the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China that took more 68,000 lives..."

Below is a transcript of Dr. Klose's presentation of his findings at the American Geophysical Union’s 'Fall Meeting' from December 9-13, 2013.

This blog article will shed light on some of Dr. Klose’s work, and supplement his research with a few relevant news articles that touched on the issue of human-caused earthquakes.

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Transcript: 'AGU 2013 Fall Meeting: Natural or man-made? Triggers and limits to induced Earthquakes'

(0:30) Thank you for coming. This year, basically, I came to AGU to present something more about the uncertainties, basically the risks of human-caused earthquakes.

(0:48) Last year I published a catalogue that took me eight years to compile, and I was reading over 400 papers that people published over the last decades on human-caused earthquakes.

(1:01) And this catalogue contains information on the magnitude of the earthquake, what mass was basically accumulated and/or removed from the Earth’s crust due to mining, due to filling of reservoirs, due to injection/extraction of fluids, geothermal energy production, and then, putting this catalogue into the context of geology.

(1:26) So, we see here, for example, a combination of the mass change, because it’s a whole theory basically that I try to educate as: the more mass we move on the Earth’s crust—the larger we can expect a magnitude Earthquake.

(1:44) And today I’ll give a talk about the Wenchaun (Sichuan) Earthquake 2008, which was a magnitude 7.9 in China 2008, and we have there, for example: the Min River valley, which was impounded or filled with water; it was the size, maybe, of Manhattan. And within two months, or one and a half months, there was a filling, an accumulation of mass equivalent to maybe a thousand empire state buildings.

(2:15) So this mass shifts, no geological process is able to come up with such a mass concentration in such a small area, except for volcanic explosions.

(2:26) And that’s why I argue that there is a chance that we can trigger earthquakes, because of these mass shifts. And if you take this catalogue, at the end only a hundred earthquakes qualified for analysis because of the quality of the data available.

(2:42) And looking at these different geological regimes, basically they say that there is a relationship with statistical significance, which is important, that the larger the mass shift is—the larger is the magnitude we can expect; and here you see we have ranges from kilo, megaton, gigaton and terratons.

(3:05) So, 2010 I basically published this catalogue already, but only the numbers here: that we see an exponential increase in human-caused earthquakes coming out of these publications.

Slide Caption: “earthquakes caused by mass shifts…earthquakes can be caused from mass shifts that result from large-scale geoengineering operations."

(3:17) This year, basically in other words 2013, published in Science Magazine a different approach saying: okay, what is the natural number of Earthquakes we observe in the mid-continent United States?

(3:29) And we see 21 earthquakes per year, roughly, and then we see really an increase over the last 10-15 years; now we have 150 events per year.

(3:39) So, the question is: why is that? Why do we observe so many earthquakes, now, per year?

(3:44) And here, there is the concern that it's because of technology that is taking place in the mid-U.S. continent that causes these Earthquakes.

Slide Caption: “number of earthquakes increases…odds to be harmed or die increases by a factor of 5 and greater in comparison to natural earthquakes."

(3:55) One hotspot that I mentioned in 2010 is the Salton Sea, it’s at the end of the San Andreas fault; to the border to Mexico. There is a geothermal power plant, and if you take the area, for example, and here we talk about the risk, basically what is the probability of having a human-caused earthquake in relation to natural earthquakes.

(4:18) Taking this area around this Geothermal Power Plant we have maybe a five times higher chance of an earthquake above magnitude 3.0 than in this whole area in Southern California.

(4:33) And keep in mind, the San Andreas fault is basically ending here, and in Southern California we basically expect a major earthquake of 7.0 magnitude; so tickling the fault where we expect a earthquake is not the best thing to do.

Slide Caption: “number of earthquakes increases…odds to be harmed or die increases by a factor of 5 and greater in comparison to natural earthquakes."

(5:05) Here’s just to show this relationship, another example was this Chinese earthquake, just to clarify:

(5:14) Here’s the water level change, we see here the monthly event rate of earthquakes—prior to the reservoir filling we see no correlation between the event rate and the filling…and then we see an increase in the water level and an increase in the seismicity; in the dry cycle the water level went down and the seismic activity went down and so on. So we have a continuation of the response of the Earth’s crust to the filling.

Slide Caption: “example: 2008 M7.9 earthquake…water level change affects seismicity."

(5:38) So, lastly, on the left side I want to point out now some statistics and numbers:

(5:47) It’s now difficult to say, or you can argue: okay, we have reservoirs—we have so many thousands of reservoirs built historical—so why is it so dangerous to have them?

(5:56) But reliable data we have, for example, in the U.S. and about 40,000 reservoirs were built, but only 1,000 to 500 reservoirs are large enough to trigger earthquakes that can be fatal.

Caption: “lifetime odds to be harmed…at least one out of 2000 citizens can expect to be harmed who live in a 50km radius of a fracking facility; the U.S. will become the world’s largest oil producer by 2015, according to the IEA.

(6:08) And, actually, if you look at historic data in the U.S. we have two earthquakes only that caused at least 1 fatality, and two earthquakes that cause fatalities in comparison to 1,000 earthquakes: we come up with statists, roughly speaking of one out of 2,000.

(6:38) At least one out of 2,000 citizens can be expected to be harmed who live in a 50 km radius of, in this case, a fracking facility or a reservoir.

(6:48) So, 50km is basically coming from this catalogue—we have an area where earthquakes get triggered in this vicinity over a certain time period and this logistic progression model that I present tomorrow, basically takes these priorities into account.

(7:05) And taking this number, basically in context to other daily hazards we have: every fourth person basically dies in the lifetime from a heat attack, one out of eight people dies of cancer, and then we have another, one out of 88 people dies of a car accident over lifetime; these are numbers from the U.S. basically.

(7:30) And here we have one out of 2,000 can expect to be harmed if they live in this area around such a facility, and in comparison the flu is one in 1,700; so we come up to numbers, basically, that are similar to a risk we can expect for flu deaths.

(7:52) And here on the right side I basically plot a hypothesis that could be tested now, is because the U.S. will become the largest oil producer by 2015; this is what the IEA basically came out with a couple of weeks ago. And this is the gas shale, and gas and oil production from these gas shales; these so called ‘fracking.’ 

(8:15) And the fracking itself is not the problem, it’s basically the waste water that gets pumped back into the earth’s crust…and these are large volumes.

(8:21) So, this is dangerous because you have the East Coast, very populated, and that’s why that should be more analyzed and basically my goal here is to raise concern that we need the energy, but we need to be aware of the risk.

(8:40) And that’s basically the message, thank you.

 

REFERENCES:

American Geophysical Union (2013). ‘AGU 2013 Fall Meeting: Natural or man-made? Triggers and limits to induced earthquakes.’ YouTube - 11 December 2013. CrossRef:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YscgdFxGxgQ

Klose C (2012). ‘Evidence for anthropogenic surface loading as trigger mechanism of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.’ Environs Earth Sci 66(5): 1439-1447. CrossRef:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12665-011-1355-7

Klose C (2010). ‘Human-Triggered Earthquakes and Their Impacts on Human Security.’ Nature Precedings - 29 September 2010. CrossRef: http://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/289405.pdf

Klose C (2013). ‘Mechanical and statistical evidence of the causality of human-made mass shifts on the Earth’s upper crust and the occurrence of earthquakes.’ J Seismol 17(1): 109-135. CrossRef: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10950-012-9321-8

LaFraniere S (2009). ‘Possible Link Between Dam and China Quake.’ The New York Times - 05 February 2009. CrossRef: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world/asia/06quake.html?fta=y&_r=0

Lovett R (2007). ‘Coal Mining Causing Earthquakes, Study Says.’ National Geographic News - 03 January 2007. CrossRef: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070103-mine-quake.html

Naik G, and Oster S (2009). ‘Scientists Link China’s Dam to Earthquake, Renewing Debate.’ The Wall Street Journal - 06 February 2009. CrossRef: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123391567210056475

Smith G (2013). ‘U.S. to Be Top Oil Producer by 2015 on Shale, IEA Says.’ Bloomberg - 12 November 2013. CrossRef: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-11-12/u-s-nears-energy-independence-by-2035-on-shale-boom-iea-says