Oklahoma suffered at least seven earthquakes in the past couple
of days and the most severe quake was of a magnitude of 4.3 near
Langston, the U. S. Geological Survey reported….Last month, Oklahoma surpassed California in the number of
earthquakes. As of June 16 this year, the Golden State recorded
fewer then 140 quakes of 3.0-magnitude or higher; while the state
suffered 207 earthquakes.Oklahoma might have become habitual to frequent quakes, which
many believe are being caused by the controversial practice of
hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which is used to released oil
and gas trapped under rocks deep in the earth.
“Many believe” lots of things, but is fracking responsible for a
widely observed increase in earthquakes of 3.0 magnitudes and
higher?
A 2012 report from the Department of Interior using United
States Geological Survey (USGS) states
USGS’s studies do not suggest that hydraulic fracturing,
commonly known as “fracking,” causes the increased rate of
earthquakes [of magnitude 3.0 and larger]. USGS’s scientists have
found, however, that at some locations the increase in seismicity
coincides with the injection of wastewater in deep disposal
wells.
The translation? Fracking may well cause rumbling in and around
areas when the water used in it is disposed of, but it doesn’t have
a connection to the increase in the sorts of earthquakes people are
talking about in Oklahoma and elsewhere.
Even activists at green groups such as Clean Water Action
acknowledge that fracking isn’t linked to serious earthquake
activity. Earlier this year after a 4.4 earthquake in Los Angeles,
Mother Jones asked Andrew Grinberg of Clean Water Action
about that quake’s connection to fracking. “We are not saying that
this quake is a result of an injection” of wastewater, Grinberg
said in an article tendentiously titled “Was the Los Angeles
Earthquake Caused by Fracking Techniques?”
Given the animus against fracking, which is an old technique,
once-beloved by environmentalists, and
largely responsible for decreases in American greenhouse-gas
emissions, expect fracking to be spuriously linked to more and more
problems, real and imagined.
And keep that in mind when people start going on
and on about how the Obama admin and liberals and leftys more
generally say they are all about science. It’s true that
many on the right are anti-science whenever that science fails to
prove their point (think climate change and evolution).
But that’s also how the left tends to play it when it gets in
the way of constituents’ preferences (think vaccines and biotech).
Science (with a Thomas Dolby-style
exclamation point) is a powerful ally when you can use it to
advance your agenda. But if that same supposedly authortiative
process gets in the way of what you want? Then it can screw
off.
Consider this mini-episode, courtesy of The Los Angeles
Times. The title “Study
Links Oklahoma earthquake swarm with fracking operations” is a
bit misleading off the bat since the study is about trying to
establish a link between the two phenomena. In the first
“Shareline” about the story, the paper notes “Oil and gas drilling
in Oklahoma increases pressure in underground rocks, prompting
recent spate of quakes.” In fact,
the abstract of the study the article is based on reads:
Subsurface pressure data required to unequivocally link
earthquakes to injection are rarely accessible. Here we use
seismicity and hydrogeological models to show that fluid migration
from high-rate disposal wells in Oklahoma is potentially
responsible for the largest swarm. [emphasis added]
There’s a helluva lot of difference between saying something
prompted earthquakes and that it’s potentially responsible for
them. Just sayin’. The whole point of the study (and other ongoing
research) is precisely to move out of the hunch phase and into
something a little more definitive.
Read Reason Science Correspondent
Ronald Bailey on “The
Top 5 Lies About Fracking.” And watch him tell “The Truth
About Fracking” here:
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