Water injection to defuse big quakes

In summary, a recent article has suggested that injection wells are to blame for the increase in earthquakes in Oklahoma. However, this theory is not fully supported by the scientific community and there may be other factors at play, such as fracking. While some suggest that injecting water into the ground could potentially prevent a major earthquake, this idea is flawed as a series of smaller earthquakes could not prevent a larger one. In fact, it could result in significant damage and lawsuits. The consequences of attempting to manipulate the earth's movements are uncertain and potentially dangerous.
  • #1
Jon Richfield
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In Science 4 July 2014, there is an item that I saw summarised online:
Injection wells blamed in Oklahoma earthquakes.
...The pressure can reduce forces acting to keep faults locked and trigger earthquakes...


Now, I don't know how likely this is, and the discussion was commendably non-committal, but the idea is not fundamentally implausible. Let us assume that there is a strong causal effect and consider the implications.

Right. Either there is
1: essentially no significant accumulation of stress energy in the region, or
2: an alarmingly growing, but still moderate amount, or
3: a dangerous accumulation, a BIG ONE in waiting. OK?

In the first case, no one cares and the tremors are irrelevant.

In the second case surely the one thing we would want is to bleed off the energy ASAP and as effectively as possible, to prevent a dangerous accumulation?

In the third case, suppose that we not only refrain from injecting water, but pump out all the excess we can find; that might delay the BIG ONE no?
But to what effect? So that all the politicians and big businessmen could quickly quake-proof every big city around?

I don't THINK so!

And the longer the delay, the bigger the BIG ONE!

And it might be a bit unnerving to tickle the dragon's tail by injecting water, but every joule we lubricate out of the BIG ONE and dissipate as tremors, will reduce the impact when it does hit. In fact wouldn't it be conceivable that if we could make the entire West Coast feel like a diesel truck on a country road for a year or so, we could bleed the BIG ONE so effectively that when it does hit, everyone complains about the fuss and wants to know why these scientists keep shouting wolf?

And although it might be too difficult to fend off the BIG ONE and all that we did would be to hasten its coming, then surely the sooner the better, because the later the bigger?

So why complain about a bit of water injection or any amount of water injection at all?
Why not start injecting a nice big slice of the Pacific in the hopes of ending the suspense with a smaller imminent BIG ONE than a deferred REALLY BIG ONE, hm?

Any comments?
 
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  • #2
Hi Jon

you have overlooked one other and the main reason for the Oklahoma ( and other regions where fluid injection is done) quakes

The term is called fracking ... This is where fluid is injected into the rock fracturing it to release natural gas and oil to be recovered.
The quakes are a direct result of the rock being fractured

The other fluid injection process is purely for waste disposal, but the result is the same, causing the fracturing of the rock

I have fellow seismology friends in the USA and a couple of them in the OK region that are regularly recording quakes caused by the fracking and waste disposal processes. Its a worry and a subject that is regularly discussed on our Public Seismic Net email forum.

here is a reference to fracking in CA and the calls to ban the process ...


In response to concerns about this issue Santa Cruz County became the first California county to ban fracking and any future exploration that might cross county lines such as slant drilling from other counties.

http://rt.com/usa/160316-santa-cruz-ban-fracking/ We have a very active and progressive Board of Supervisors that really stay on top of the real issues.


here's another reference for you to have a look at ...
[/PLAIN] [Broken]
http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/man-made-earthquakes/[/URL] [Broken]

regards
Dave
 
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  • #3
You are saying that blaming injection wells, as in the article, is silly on all levels?
I'm going to agree - scientifically.

Socially and politically there is a blame + litigation game going on for short-term gain.
This looks like the usual snafu to me.

... there is the fracking issue though... did the article cover that?
 
  • #4
And it might be a bit unnerving to tickle the dragon's tail by injecting water, but every joule we lubricate out of the BIG ONE and dissipate as tremors, will reduce the impact when it does hit. In fact wouldn't it be conceivable that if we could make the entire West Coast feel like a diesel truck on a country road for a year or so, we could bleed the BIG ONE so effectively that when it does hit, everyone complains about the fuss and wants to know why these scientists keep shouting wolf?

And although it might be too difficult to fend off the BIG ONE and all that we did would be to hasten its coming, then surely the sooner the better, because the later the bigger?

So why complain about a bit of water injection or any amount of water injection at all?
Why not start injecting a nice big slice of the Pacific in the hopes of ending the suspense with a smaller imminent BIG ONE than a deferred REALLY BIG ONE, hm?
Unfortunately its really a bad idea and false logic.

A few dozen smaller events isn't going to fend off a major event
Consider this ...
10 x Mag 2.0 events = 1 x M3
10 x M3 = 1 x M4
100 x M3 = 1 x M5
1000 x M3 = 1 x M6
10,000 x M3 = 1 x M7
100,000 x M3 = M8 ( 1906 San Francisco = M7.9)
1000 x M5 = 1 x M8

You definitely don't want 1000 x M5 events occurring anywhere around any urban area
The damage is going to be significant

That's going to result in $billions in lawsuits for deaths and damage against whoever allowed this hairbrain scheme to be initiated

Since we have no real idea of how big a quake will be caused by lubricating a major fault line like the San Andreas Fault up through California. It may be that the section that was decided on to start the process was on the verge of letting loose and suddenly you have a M8 event starting that you cannot stop and all hell is going to occur

cheers
Dave
 
  • #5
Simon Bridge said:
You are saying that blaming injection wells, as in the article, is silly on all levels?
I'm going to agree - scientifically.

Whatever you "blame", something has clearly changed, from a statistical analysis:
From http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/man-made-earthquakes/: [Broken]
2013-hockey-stick.jpg

Cumulative count of earthquakes with a magnitude ≥ 3.0 in the central and eastern United States,1970-2013. The dashed line corresponds to the long-term rate of 20.2 earthquakes per year, with an increase in the rate of earthquake events starting around 2009.

From http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6142/1225942 it seems nobody even knows what is being done, at the right level of detail to do any modeling:
The current regulatory frameworks for wastewater disposal wells were designed to protect potable water sources from contamination and do not address seismic safety. One consequence is that both the quantity and timeliness of information on injection volumes and pressures reported to regulatory agencies are far from ideal for managing earthquake risk from injection activities.
 
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  • #6
You are saying that blaming injection wells, as in the article, is silly on all levels?
I'm going to agree - scientifically.

Not sure how to take that, Simon ??

There is no doubt that fluid injection induces seismicity
You only need to ask my fellow seiosmo guys. They can tell you when the injection processes start and stop by watching the coming and going of recorded events

The real worry is if a significant event is induced, say an M5+
M0 - M3's can be lived with, bigger ones could cause damage.

cheers
Dave
 
  • #7
davenn said:
Unfortunately its really a bad idea and false logic.

A few dozen smaller events isn't going to fend off a major event
Consider this ...
10 x Mag 2.0 events = 1 x M3
10 x M3 = 1 x M4
100 x M3 = 1 x M5
1000 x M3 = 1 x M6
10,000 x M3 = 1 x M7
100,000 x M3 = M8 ( 1906 San Francisco = M7.9)
1000 x M5 = 1 x M8

You definitely don't want 1000 x M5 events occurring anywhere around any urban area
The damage is going to be significant
Smaller earthquakes also have smaller areas of influence - out of those 1000 M5 events, most won't influence you at all. If you could produce 30 M3 events per day in a controlled way (hypothetical example), you would get rid of the energy of an M7 within a year or an M8 within 10 years (so basically all the energy released in major earthquakes), the influence range would be limited to the fault line and damage to buildings would be rare.

Even a (somewhat) controlled release of the same magnitude as a "natural" earthquake could be interesting, then you can prepare for the results.
Sure, there is no way this would get allowed...@AlephZero: What is the detection rate for those earthquakes? Did they find all M3 quakes in 1970?
 
  • #8
mfb said:
Smaller earthquakes also have smaller areas of influence - out of those 1000 M5 events, most won't influence you at all. If you could produce 30 M3 events per day in a controlled way (hypothetical example), you would get rid of the energy of an M7 within a year or an M8 within 10 years (so basically all the energy released in major earthquakes), the influence range would be limited to the fault line and damage to buildings would be rare.

Even a (somewhat) controlled release of the same magnitude as a "natural" earthquake could be interesting, then you can prepare for the results.
Sure, there is no way this would get allowed...

The whole problem is... you have no control over what the size of the quake you produce is going to be or of its exact location. You have no way of knowing if the next quake you set off will be a M2 a M3 or the big M7 that's been getting closer to striking and you have just changed the stress field patterns just enough to tip it over the edge
M5 quakes can cause a lot of damage ... .as was widely experienced in my old home city of Dunedin, NZ, back in 1974. It was the quake that got me into seismology.
As I said earlier, you really don't want M5 quakes going off anywhere near an urban area

Dave
 
  • #10
davenn said:
The whole problem is... you have no control over what the size of the quake you produce is going to be or of its exact location. You have no way of knowing if the next quake you set off will be a M2 a M3 or the big M7 that's been getting closer to striking and you have just changed the stress field patterns just enough to tip it over the edge

You are perfectly right on some level, at the same time I have a feeling you are ignoring the big picture - if the energy is there, it is going to be released. And the later it hits, the larger it will be. So while yes, series of smaller ones is dangerous, the final one will be even worse.

If the injections can work (which we don't know), it would be a matter of choice. Not doing anything to avoid smaller ones is a sure way of having to deal with a huge one sooner or later.
 
  • #11
Phew! I seem to have tickled the tail of quite a few dragons! :bugeye: Thank you folks for your thoughtful responses. Clearly however, I do need to clarify, not so much the points I intended, as those that I did not intend. I won't quote the texts, because they overlapped multiple responses.

1: I specifically do NOT address fracking as a theme. I am deeply nervous of fracking, not so much because of its short-term potential for harm as because it seems to be heading for one hell of a short-term energy bubble, followed by a long-term energy crisis. (But don't get me started! :rolleyes:) However, the main reason for avoiding the topic here is that it is too fraught and off the earthquake point.

2: I do NOT address the question of whether injection promotes quakes; I accept that it could, but am not equipped to deal with the technical aspects on a quantitative and analytical basis. Even if it could be shown that injection has no effect, the same question remains in force as long as it can be shown that SOME accessible process, injection or not, exists that can promote quakes.

3: I do NOT discuss the political/commercial considerations. I accept that even if we could bleed off the energy with imperceptible magnitude 2 quakes and even if nothing bad happened, it got into the press, there would be hell popping as all the office chasers and ambulance chasers and notoriety chasers and snake-oil merchants and similar social parasites got word of it. I limit myself to the question of the rational course of action in a region like the USA west coast, or parts of Japan or a few similar places: how much better might it be to sit on the lid of the cooker, than let off steam, and what would it cost and how fast should we let it off?

4: @Simon & others, I do not have access to the original article but only to an on-line teaser and I don't remember fracking being mentioned one way or another anyway. My thanks to Dave and Aleph for links to more detail that added a bit more substance to my comprehension, though without affecting the fundamental point, one that does not affect me personally, living, as I do, in an area of very low seismicity. However, the real question is independent of all that. The fundamentals are:
a: There are various regions, possibly most dramatically the USA West, where everyone knows that there is a BIG ONE building.
b: We don't know exactly where or when.
c: There is a good likelihood that the longer it holds off, the bigger the bang when the elastic snaps. Certainly there is always a possibility that a slow, natural slippage could avert it, and in some places does, and rationally, even along the western Rockies we know that huge amounts of energy regularly are leaked in quakelets, even in sizable quakes, but afaik, the general trend is towards continuing accumulation of ever-increasing amounts of strain energy.
d: The longer the accumulation the bigger the bang to expect, and the greater the probability of a cataclysm rather than a disaster or even a mere inconvenience.
e: Irrespective of politics etc, even if tickling the dragon leads to a totally unacceptable disaster, the rational expectation is that to delay the blast simply would amplify that disaster.
f: Whether we could do better to deal with a much larger quake (say one to two magnitudes larger) after twenty years, during which we prepared for the blow by quake-proofing everything from hen houses to the Hollywood walk of fame, or to deal ill-prepared with the consequences of a much smaller, but still disastrously large, quake right now, is something we could model, but not predict reliably. But I know how I would bet!

5: I like mfb's remarks: "Smaller earthquakes also have smaller areas of influence - out of those 1000 M5 events, most won't influence you at all. If you could produce 30 M3 events per day in a controlled way (hypothetical example), you would get rid of the energy of an M7 within a year or an M8 within 10 years (so basically all the energy released in major earthquakes), the influence range would be limited to the fault line and damage to buildings would be rare."
I admit that I had overlooked the significance of the range, and had in effect assumed that the only variable was intensity.

6: @Dave, you said i.a. "The whole problem is... you have no control over what the size of the quake you produce is going to be or of its exact location. You have no way of knowing if the next quake you set off will be a M2 a M3 or the big M7 that's been getting closer to striking and you have just changed the stress field patterns just enough to tip it over the edge"
and I agree, in fact, even as a non-seismologist I had anticipated this. But the thing is that it would take less frequent circumstances for your M7 to anneal to say a bunch of M4s if left to itself; it would be likelier either to blow as an M7 anyway, or to build itself up to an M8. IOW, I am arguing, and inviting refutation, that no matter WHAT happens if you grease a possible quake, it was likely to happen anyway, only a bit later and probably worse or a LOT worse. In fact, if a really big quake accumulates, it is likely to entrain a lot of smaller quakes that would have occurred separately and relatively benignly if pre-empted. I do not represent this as inevitable, but I sure reckon it is the smart bet.

7: And if you do prick the balloon early, you stand a good chance of not releasing large parts of the event that had not yet matured, making it go "Ssss..." instead of "Bang!" so to speak.

8: As I see it this is one of those cases where the public interest is best served by grasping the nettle and taking what comes, but it also is a case where, no matter what happens, whoever throws the switch need not fash himself seeking hero badges from those he had benefited. So forget trying to persuade Big Business or City Hall to seek for favourable publicity or re-election that way! :biggrin:

OK, anyone: what would be more rational than throwing the switch, no matter where in the cycle one starts. but as early and often as possible?
 
  • #12
Borek said:
You are perfectly right on some level, at the same time I have a feeling you are ignoring the big picture - if the energy is there, it is going to be released. And the later it hits, the larger it will be. So while yes, series of smaller ones is dangerous, the final one will be even worse.

If the injections can work (which we don't know), it would be a matter of choice. Not doing anything to avoid smaller ones is a sure way of having to deal with a huge one sooner or later.

no, not ignoring the big pic :smile:
just looking at the current realities of not being able to control the sizes of the events that may be produced. As in that last article, in one situation a M 5.7 was produced. " In 2011, a small number of people were injured and 14 houses were destroyed in the town of Prague, Oklahoma by a 5.7 tremor".

They have no way of knowing exactly what is occurring several km's down. I see it as just way too risky to "play with fire" like that.

cheers
Dave
 
  • #13
davenn said:
no, not ignoring the big pic :smile:
just looking at the current realities of not being able to control the sizes of the events that may be produced. As in that last article, in one situation a M 5.7 was produced. " In 2011, a small number of people were injured and 14 houses were destroyed in the town of Prague, Oklahoma by a 5.7 tremor".

They have no way of knowing exactly what is occurring several km's down. I see it as just way too risky to "play with fire" like that.

cheers
Dave

I agree with dave on this. How exactly do you propose to trigger 30 Mw 5.0 events/day? We don't have the knowledge/technology to do it. Who would be prepared to risk being held responsible for triggering a destructive Mw 7.0+? The incentives are not there. If you get it right, you're just doing your job, if you get it wrong you've killed and likely face severe penalty .
 
  • #14
billiards said:
How exactly do you propose to trigger 30 Mw 5.0 events/day? We don't have the knowledge/technology to do it.

No doubt about that part. But we are surrounded by technologies that didn't exist before, aren't we?

If you get it right, you're just doing your job, if you get it wrong you've killed and likely face severe penalty .

And if you do nothing, kilodeaths when the huge one comes are just not your problem? I guess that means you don't live in Italy :wink:

I do believe it makes sense to consider the idea and to run it through some checks with people knowing physics behind. Could be it won't survive discussion over a beer stage for reasons I am not aware of. Could be the cure would be worse than the disease. Could be it was already proposed/analyzed/rejected/put on shelf till we get more data. But rejecting the idea because someone can get hurt when we know people WILL get hurt, is putting head in the sand.
 
  • #15
Borek said:
I do believe it makes sense to consider the idea and to run it through some checks with people knowing physics behind. Could be it won't survive discussion over a beer stage for reasons I am not aware of. Could be the cure would be worse than the disease. Could be it was already proposed/analyzed/rejected/put on shelf till we get more data. But rejecting the idea because someone can get hurt when we know people WILL get hurt, is putting head in the sand.

Agree. But how do you incentivize someone to do it? The reward that you might save lives in the future is not enough IMO, at least not on a personal level, because you have to offset that with the risk that you could inadvertently take lives.

Fair enough if we had the technology to make it 100% risk free. But I would argue it could never be risk free until we could 100% predict earthquakes. In that case we could take other strategies, like evacuation, to avoid disaster.
 
  • #16
mfb said:
@AlephZero: What is the detection rate for those earthquakes? Did they find all M3 quakes in 1970?

I have no idea, but I assume the US Geological Survey would know if they suddenly changed the detection or reporting system in 2009.

You don't need any high technology to detect a M3 earthquake. Members of the public can feel them, though they don't usually cause much damage. I've experienced several in the UK.
 
  • #17
@billiards: That's the political side. Certainly a big issue for a possible practical application, but not the scope of this thread I think.Sure, the 30 M3-quakes per day are a purely hypothetical example, but the general idea is independent of it: earthquake damages are nonlinear with the released energy. For a given energy to dissipate, some intensities are better than others.
I would expect that damage rises faster than linear in a large energy range until it reaches a point where many buildings get destroyed - afterwards the curve changes because you cannot destroy a building more than once.

There is another nonlinear effect afterwards:
A few broken houses are easy to fix, you have enough hospitals to care for a few injured persons and the remaining infrastructure is in place to clean up.
If a town gets destroyed and thousands (or more) get injured, your local hospitals can't handle it any more, you can get problems with the supply of clean water, food, shelter, with diseases and so on.
 
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  • #18
I guess the other technical issue is what effect does doing this have on the stress regime somewhere further down the line? Are you not just shifting the problem onto someone else's doorstep?
 
  • #19
billiards said:
I guess the other technical issue is what effect does doing this have on the stress regime somewhere further down the line? Are you not just shifting the problem onto someone else's doorstep?
How would that be different from natural earthquakes?
 
  • #20
@Billiards. "...shifting the problem onto someone else's doorstep? "
Reasonable thought, but not persuasive, I'd say. Once energy is spent, it is spent, so whatever has been removed by rattling one backyard cannot harm another backyard. Sure, distorting (or removing the distortion from) the rocks under my yard might permit (or force) your rocks to perform somewhat, but they would do so anyway if the BIG ONE struck as a result of my doing nothing, and your rocks would then have the un-bled energy to deal with all at once. They would perform more violently from a full sledgehammer blow than from energy bleeding from your neighbour's rocks a jiggle at a time. Bottom line remains: it looks very much as though ANYTHING we do is likelier to be beneficial than whatever we neglect to do.
 
  • #21
mfb said:
How would that be different from natural earthquakes?

The point is that if action you take does not fundamentally deal with the problem, then you are wasting your time.

Jon Richfield said:
@Billiards. "...shifting the problem onto someone else's doorstep? "
Reasonable thought, but not persuasive, I'd say. Once energy is spent, it is spent, so whatever has been removed by rattling one backyard cannot harm another backyard. Sure, distorting (or removing the distortion from) the rocks under my yard might permit (or force) your rocks to perform somewhat, but they would do so anyway if the BIG ONE struck as a result of my doing nothing, and your rocks would then have the un-bled energy to deal with all at once. They would perform more violently from a full sledgehammer blow than from energy bleeding from your neighbour's rocks a jiggle at a time. Bottom line remains: it looks very much as though ANYTHING we do is likelier to be beneficial than whatever we neglect to do.

What if we live along the same fault line and my backyard is preloaded with stress. You unzip the stress in your backyard and bring the stress in my back yard closer to failure. I'm now at risk from the big one happening in my back yard. Are you going to lubricate the whole fault line? Then what happens on the other side of the tectonic plate?
 
  • #22
davenn said:
They have no way of knowing exactly what is occurring several km's down. I see it as just way too risky to "play with fire" like that.
Dave, the point I am trying to convey is that knowing the little that we already know about what is happening next-door-but-straight-down leaves us confident that something big is brewing. We just don't know HOW big and precisely where and when. We also know that whatever large amount of energy is allowed to accumulate into catastrophe-prone stress is a certain disaster in waiting. Playing with fire in that mode can do no greater harm than what is certain anyway, and might very likely reduce the stress accumulation by leaking the energy elsewhere.

Whether we can do enough to make the effort worth while is a separate question, but the scenarios are believable enough to make it irresponsible to close our eyes to the options and neglect to play with that particular fire.

I am alive to the possibility, in fact the reasonable likelihood, that we are close to a BIG ONE and that some of our quakelets might trigger it, but if there happens to be nothing to trigger, there is nothing dreadful under the bed and nothing we could do would cause a serious quake. If something horrible happens in response to our fire games, it was going to happen anyway. and worse, just a bit later. The longer we wait the smaller the profit and the greater the harm either by us or by beneficent mother Nature.

Could you suggest a physical scenario in which our meddling creates something worse than the consequences of waiting for the maximal, natural, inevitable quake? Such an instance is probably the main thing I am fishing for, and so far I haven't had a nibble. :frown:
 
  • #23
billiards said:
The point is that if action you take does not fundamentally deal with the problem, then you are wasting your time.

Billiards, what you say here may be a truism, but is ninety degrees out of phase both with the topic and mfb's question:"How would that be different from natural earthquakes? ". Remember?
Firstly your response does not in any way deal with the question of whether either energy bleeding or triggering deals fundamentally with the problem, which in fact both patently do; they reduce the destructive energy available, and reduce the expected concentration of the energy into extra-destructive super-quakes or even into mid-sized quakes. Mostly you wind up with quakelets. And they even give you more options for bleeding the energy preferentially from vulnerable regions. For example, a few rural M7 quakes during the stress-building phase might snuff out city quakes further along the fault entirely, or reduce them to localised, moderate quakes. The effective bottom-line difference could be trillions of dollars per quake swarm in a region like Tokyo or SF.

In short, if your action has a reasonable prospect of fundamentally dealing with a problem on such a scale, then you had better risk wasting a bit of time!



What if we live along the same fault line and my backyard is preloaded with stress. You unzip the stress in your backyard and bring the stress in my back yard closer to failure. I'm now at risk from the big one happening in my back yard. Are you going to lubricate the whole fault line? Then what happens on the other side of the tectonic plate?

Bringing your back yard closer to failure is part of the point. Causing your rock to fail either piecemeal or gradually is at worst no worse than the BIG ONE that had been on its way, and might cause effects that even you would be prepared to accept, such as an aftershock swarm of benign quakelets. Lubricating the whole fault line would be ill-advised and pointless, but lubricating it in planned sections would be more like the appropriate strategy. Cheaper and safer. Don't you think? And anyway, I stand at least as great a chance that your backyard goes first and bring mine closer to the BIG ONE. You don't hear me complain do you? You see, I realize that I am probably better off than I otherwise would have been. :approve:

Errr... the other side of the tectonic plate? Riiight... :uhh:

Would you care to elaborate? Are you referring to some effect where the other side does nothing in a natural quake, but does something dreadful in a provoked quake? I don't know about losing me, but you certainly have lost someone there!
 
  • #24
billiards said:
Agree. But how do you incentivize someone to do it? The reward that you might save lives in the future is not enough IMO, at least not on a personal level, because you have to offset that with the risk that you could inadvertently take lives..

Selling never was my long suit, as you can tell. I leave incentives to other people to deal with. Doing my bit to ensure that at least a few informed people pass on the meme is all I can try for. (After all, I cannot possibly be the first to appreciate this obvious and unalterable truth about preempting the BIG ONE. :shy:)

But I am far from agreeing with your assertion " ...that you might save lives in the future is not enough". Rushing to warn people that a dam was failing might take a life either in a traffic accident, or in frantically shoring up the dam wall or evacuating the town. So, are we instead to sit on our hands because someone might get hurt in stopping the BIG ONE?

Not in THESE shoes! :bugeye:


Fair enough if we had the technology to make it 100% risk free.

Joke, right? We don't have the technology to make it risk free for me to drive to work or eat brekker. So risking saving lives just isn't on?

But I would argue it could never be risk free until we could 100% predict earthquakes.
Fussy, fussy! 90% won't do, huh? How about 99%?

In that case we could take other strategies, like evacuation, to avoid disaster
Get real, man! Evacuating say, SF or LA IS a disaster from waaay back! Let's hear you estimate the death toll, the cost? How long would it take? How long would you allow before everyone trooped back, hale and hearty with their picnic baskets, to the smoking ruin? You think 9/11 was bad?
Watch this space!
 
  • #25
Oh BTW folks, a few of us have been concentrating on the injections with all their associated uncertainties as the only or main way to massage the quakelets into existence. Actually, I suspect that injection might be important in practice, but my entire discussion and proposal hardly nod in that direction; I don't care what means we use, and I suspect that I have better proposals for the initiative.

However, I don't want to hobble your collective creativeness, so before discussing any of my own thoughts on the subject, here is a challenge in the hopes of a flash of genius:
What would YOU propose as a means of affordably tickling the earthquake dragon? :devil:
 
  • #26
Dave, the point I am trying to convey is that knowing the little that we already know about what is happening next-door-but-straight-down leaves us confident that something big is brewing. We just don't know HOW big and precisely where and when. We also know that whatever large amount of energy is allowed to accumulate into catastrophe-prone stress is a certain disaster in waiting. Playing with fire in that mode can do no greater harm than what is certain anyway, and might very likely reduce the stress accumulation by leaking the energy elsewhere.

and the point I'm making is that "no one in their right mind would want to be responsible for the death of 1000's and the major destruction that ensued

Billiards, what you say here may be a truism, but is ninety degrees out of phase both with the topic and mfb's question:"How would that be different from natural earthquakes? ". Remember?
Firstly your response does not in any way deal with the question of whether either energy bleeding or triggering deals fundamentally with the problem, which in fact both patently do; they reduce the destructive energy available, and reduce the expected concentration of the energy into extra-destructive super-quakes or even into mid-sized quakes.


Unfortunately, I can't give you specific references, It was in a USGS video of some years ago after the Northridge, CA quake. Stress release on one section of the fault does transfer stress along the fault. So you really can be causing problems for some one else along the fault.


For example, a few rural M7 quakes during the stress-building phase might snuff out city quakes further along the fault entirely, or reduce them to localised, moderate quakes. The effective bottom-line difference could be trillions of dollars per quake swarm in a region like Tokyo or SF

see above

The only way injection to reduce stress could be done without the risk of setting off a major event is if it was started at the same time as the tectonics started ---> a couple of billion of years ago so that unknown high levels of stress never had a chance to build up in the first place.

Because you want to start injecting faults in the present day, you have no real idea of where a particular section of a fault sits in its stress range ... is it at a low range ... where injecting would be a safe thing and only produce quakes less that say ... M4, ? or somewhere intermediate where is could produce damaging events in the M4 - M6 range, or is it already at a point where its close to snapping and any minor lubrication of the locked section of fault will result in a major M7+ quake with catastrophic results ?

Currently, there are just too many unknown variables about what is occurring underground.


cheers
Dave
 
  • #27
This long stopped to follow the forum rules. I am guilty as well.

Topic locked.
 

1. What is water injection for defusing big quakes?

Water injection for defusing big quakes is a technique used in geothermal energy production that involves the injection of large volumes of water into the Earth's crust. The aim of this technique is to reduce the pressure of underground steam and prevent it from causing seismic activity.

2. How does water injection help to prevent big earthquakes?

The injection of water into the Earth's crust helps to reduce the pressure of underground steam, which is often a major cause of big earthquakes. By reducing the pressure, the likelihood of a major earthquake occurring is decreased.

3. What are the potential risks of water injection for defusing big quakes?

There are some potential risks associated with water injection for defusing big quakes, such as induced seismicity, where the injection of water can trigger smaller earthquakes. There is also the risk of contamination of groundwater and surface water sources.

4. How effective is water injection for defusing big quakes?

The effectiveness of water injection for defusing big quakes depends on various factors, such as the location and depth of the injection, the amount of water injected, and the geological conditions of the area. In some cases, it has been found to be successful in reducing the likelihood of big earthquakes, but it is not a foolproof method.

5. Are there any alternatives to water injection for defusing big quakes?

Yes, there are alternative techniques for defusing big quakes, such as hydraulic fracturing, which involves pumping high-pressure fluids into the Earth's crust to create fractures and release built-up pressure. However, this technique is also controversial and has its own set of potential risks and limitations.

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