And, stick with me here, linked to globull warming. Now, Christopher Mims at Grist is very worried about the primarily natural earthquakes in the Arkansas region, a regions he points out that has had many, many earthquakes. In fact, the area is prone to huge earthquakes every couple hundred years or so. Ones that make the Mississippi run backwards. Obviously, this must all be the fault of the oil and natural gas companies, though
I don’t mean to alarm you, but the 4.7 magnitude temblors felt last Sunday in Arkansas, part of a recent “swarm” of earthquakes in the area, could be just a prelude to something much more devastating. The threat would be lessened if oil and gas companies are barred from injecting post-fracking wastewater into the earth, but — surprise! — that has yet to happen.
See? Must be Mankind’s fault
Earthquakes aren’t just a side effect; they’re literally how the process of fracking for natural gas works: Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, requires that you inject fluid at high pressure deep into rocks in order to split them asunder. The micro-earthquakes this process causes are how you know it’s working. Generally, they’re too slight for anyone to feel. The United States Geological Survey doesn’t think the production wells used for fracking in the Arkansas are causing the most recent large earthquakes. Rather, they think the problem is “re-injection” wells, in which fracking wastewater is forced under pressure into the ground beneath small towns.
Obviously, this is bad, so America must give up it’s attempts to provide natural gas for its citizens, and we can all use….wait, what can we use? Petroleum is bad, burning wood is bad, solar might blight the landscape and harm a lizard, wind power kills birds, hydrothermal bothers fish….maybe geothermal?
If you want to know what an earthquake “swarm” looks like, the USGS has provided this helpful graphic: This isn’t a conventional earthquake swarm, but it is a three-dimensional image of all the earthquakes that happen under The Geysers, a site of geothermal power generation and fluid re-injection in California. So pretty! Mother earth: awesome in her power… to DESTROY!
Well, I guess geothermal is out, too.
Now, the climate moron above says the earthquakes are caused by natural gas exploration. Natural gas is only slightly less worse than oil and coal for “climate change.” Therefore, the earthquakes are linked to globull warming! Huzzah!
