<b>Seismic Boom</b>

I guess it just seems like a lot because the quakes in the last three months have hit populated areas, and because of the fatalities in this cluster.

In the previous century there were four earthquakes with loss of life more than 100,000 people. There have been two such in the last decade - Sumatra and Haiti. In the previous century, two devastating quakes hit China and Japan in the early 1920's. So even the tragedies in this decade are not abnormal to any pattern, and there is no reason to believe there is anything unusual expected.

I found this table going back to 1970 showing the number of quakes per magnitude per year. Above 7.0 there's a low of six and a high of twenty. The average expected is 17 in a year according to USGS.

I didn't find that data on 1943 though - 32 sounds huge - a 7.0 quake every two weeks or so! That was not correlated with high fatalities in the records - only a handful from 1943 were considered 'historic' and listed on USGS page.

I had a guy at work tell me that there would be an alignment of the planets in Dec, 2012 and I said no. Directed him to a NASA article debunking the myth. After reading it, he said: "Yeah, but NASA is part of the government". _{(overweigh, lots of tattoos, thinks he's very smart)}

The USGS news article referenced the 32 major earthquakes in 1943, defined as magnitude 7.0 or greater on the richter scale. This may be in part of estimating in some of the earlier data as on-line records are only avaiable dating back to 1990.

It is however interesting that active tectonic processes, including the volcanoe erruption in Iceland, seem to be quite active this year. You might winder if some other well overdue faults are ready to give way.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/

Like seismic events, a variety of alignments of the planets occur with remarkable regularity, whether on short or longer time scales. If there is a predictive value for seismic events in the positions of the planets, prior data should confirm it in fact.

It is pretty amazing that the position of planets and even newly discovered asteroids especially the Kuiper Belt objects can pretty well be precisely determined both ahead and backward in time - given enough data on the orbit of the object (some question marks arise for irregular orbits). There's never been a better time to look at real data to evaluate an astrological prediction.

The one thing you'll never find in that wealth of data is a chart for "the end of the world". Nope. It seems this puppy can outwit and outlast. Hopefully all that will end will be those people's delusions. Nice planet, we got here.

HARPA>>>>

Nikolai Tesla

Don't major quakes tend to come in clusters just because when one fault line shifts it may increase pressure on another fault line?

Or are they caused by the intense gravity of all those black holes the new super collider is creating?

That's quite a theory, and it is highly unlikely that these rigid bodies are that responsive. Stress builds between adjacent plates. Strain or displacement locally relieves the stress and movement is not linear across any fault zone. Furthermore, historical digs show regular intervals where we can with some confidence level of either decades or centuries predict a major earthquake...

The whole process is just a theory. what is the predominate force driving plate tectonics, Basal push? Slab Pull? ... the MOR seems like a range of thin elevated crustal segments and the subducted Slab seem like the predominat force acting along with gravity..... The only other thoery that makes since to me is Basal drag along the asthenosphere... and periods of fluctuation to those currents could cause increased activity...? But again this is just the norm...

Although earthquakes are devastating when they occur near populated portions of the world, a greater world concern may occur with underwater slides. There is a tremendous amount of methane contained in underwater hydrates. Clathrates may be more prevalant in the tundra areas but hydrates would dominate ocean formed and trapped methane. Whenever earthquakes occur there is a disturbing of these trapped hydrates and a resulting release. It is even thought that the submarine hydrates , in the shallower parts of the ocean, were a key to ending ice-ages. As the ice advanced, the ocean levels dropped and released pressures within the sediments holding hydrates in position. The result was a release of the methane contained by hydrates and an introduction of greenhouse gases to start a warming of the planet resulting in an end to the ice age period. Evidence of a major slide called the Storegga slide occurred 8000 BP off the coast of Norway and extended almost to Greenland. It is believed this slide was a result of an earthquake. This is also the proximity of Iceland where a lot of geo activity is now. Methane and CO2 are still being released from this slide after 8000 years. We have confirmed clathrate/hydrate deposits off most coastlines of North America and oceans of the world.

If current seismic activity is considered near average, I would guess that the chance of another Storegga slide happening soon is the same as any average period in history. If the seismic activity is abnormal then maybe we should be concerned about the release of methane that may cause a new global warming. All in all I think we can worry too much about something we would be hard pressed to stop even if we wanted to stop it.

Hydrate/clathrate release is the one unknown factor in climate change models. A sudden burb of methane can change things quickly and these can occur as a result of an earthquake. If it happens we can either accept it and observe the results or engineer the climate to offset the effects.

I just thought I would add my 2 cents on seismic activity and consequences.

Volcanic effects on weather (as opposed to climate) are another story. Remember Pinatubo? There was so much ash spewed, it affected the weather everywhere. We had no summer that year!! Very cold.