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Obama, Earthquake Is a Wakeup Call on Dirty Energy Standards
A 5.9 earthquake — the strongest in over 100 years to strike the East Coast — forced the evacuation of personnel from the White House and U.S. Treasury. Some protesters outside the White House joked that Mother Nature was just trying to jolt President Obama awake to take action on climate change and stop relying on dirty energy. Too bad Obama was vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard and couldn’t have heard the joke first-hand.
The protestors’ comments said in jest may not be too far from the truth. In his State of the Union speech this year, President Obama declared support for a so-called “clean energy standard” which he said would include natural gas, nuclear power, and so-called “clean coal.” And the energy options being pursued under the “clean energy standard” endorsed by President Obama may have synergistic and potentially catastrophic consequences that we narrowly escaped in this quake. 
When one accounts for the vast quantity of methane — a heat-trapping gas over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide — that leaks into the atmosphere in the process of drilling for gas, the climate impact of gas may be comparable to that of coal. (photo: Marcellus Outreach Butler)
Sound farfetched? Read on. The quake’s epicenter was in Mineral, Virginia, approximately 10 miles from two nuclear power reactors at the North Anna site. According to a statement by a representative of Dominion Power, operators of the plants, the two reactors were designed to withstand a 5.9 to 6.1 quake. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ranked the North Anna Reactors as being seventh in the nation in terms of earthquake risks. At the time of this writing, both reactors were operating on diesel generators and their operators claim there is no quake damage.
But just how close did we come to catastrophe? And what could cause the quakes to rumble through a part of the United States that rarely sees such powerful quakes? Was it a mere freak of nature? Or is something else going on?
We may never know for sure, but there is a growing consensus that a natural gas drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing is linked to earthquakes. For example, Arkansas has experienced a swarm of earthquakes in the aftermath of hydraulic fracturing (also called “fracking”) for natural gas. Other regions of the country where fracking is taking place, Texas, West Virginia, and New York, have also witnessed a series of quakes in the vicinity of these drilling sites. In the process of fracking, water and toxic fluid is injected deep underground at high pressure deep into rocks in order to actually create micro-earthquakes. These mini-quakes, in turn, release the gas trapped deep in the rock, allowing it to bubble to the surface.
The United States Geological Survey thinks the earthquake swarms that follow are caused less by the fracking itself than by the reinjection of wastewater from fracking, blasted under high pressure into the ground. The wastewater can act as a lubricant, while also providing pressure that can lead to a quake.
Virginia is part of the Marcellus Shale, a rocky, underground geological formation which may contain about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas and 3.4 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas liquids, according to a new assessment by the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS). The Marcellus Shale also includes the states of New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Maryland. While Virginia has so far experienced less fracking than other states, the surrounding region —especially West Virginia — is being actively explored for natural gas, while fracking, reinjection of waste and earthquakes takes place with some regularity.
Then there is climate change and a possible connection to earthquakes. The jury is still out on the effects of climate change and rising sea levels in terms of earthquakes. Melting glaciers and rising sea levels could potentially have an impact on tectonic plates — rebounding as the weight of glaciers shifts to sea-- and volcanic activity. But the science around this is far from conclusive.
And while many label natural gas as a clean alternative to coal, a recent Cornell University study questions the common perception that natural gas is better for the climate. When one accounts for the vast quantity of methane — a heat-trapping gas over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide — that leaks into the atmosphere in the process of drilling for gas, the climate impact of gas may be comparable to that of coal.
And finally, there is the issue of mountaintop removal coal mining. The blasting of mountaintops could, theoretically, lead to a seismic shift. And a manmade small quake from fracking or mountaintop removal coal mining could in turn trigger a larger earthquake, according to Dr. Graham Kent, a seismologist answering questions on a Washington Post blog post on the quake’s aftermath.
So let’s return to the North Anna reactors and the protestors in front of the White House: North Anna’s nukes are less than 100 miles from DC, and as the wind blows, a meltdown there could contaminate the nation’s power center with deadly radiation. These reactors, online for over 30 years, have generated approximately 1,200 metric tons of nuclear spent fuel containing about 228,000 curies of highly radioactive materials — among the largest concentration of waste in the country, including long-lived Cesium-137.
The cause of the quakes may never be known, but if it turns out that hydrofracking did in fact bring Virginia –and our nation’s capitol--close to a nuclear meltdown, a la Fukushima, would this jolt the president of the United States out of his slumber on the environmental hazards of so-called “clean energy standard” options?
Sometimes, Mother Nature speaks loudly and clearly. Let’s hope this time, Obama is listening.
22 Comments so far
Show AllFor Obama the earthquake will be the tiniest of inconveniences at most; I would be surprised if it even occasions a brief paragraph in a speech. Obama's a nuclear power guy. He doesn't listen, think, or worry. Obama's not a listener; he's a taker of orders from the thieves and thugs who own him.
Mother Nature isn't among the list of people who tell Obama what to think. And neither are you, me, or the rest of the 99% of us.
In the 2005 LEAF case in Alabama wherein residents brought suit against fracking firms for destroying their drinking water wells the burden of proof was set so high that the residents could not win and the verdict was that no definite cause and effect could be proved by the plaintiffs.
Chaney's energy task force intervened in their nefarious cloak and dagger way and with the urging of these carbon promoters, language was inserted into the final judgement that "Energy development is too important to be hampered by unnecessary environmental regulation." And through executive order the EPA was prohibited from doing the due dilligence environmental research to write an unbiased environmental impact analysis of all of the many possible negative impacts of hydro-fracking.
In West Virginia the state department responsible for regulating the gas industry estimates that there are at least 5,000 old existing wellheads that the status of their caps is unknown. These wellheads were from the prior major gas plays of the late 1800's and early 1900's. It was speculated early on that gas released by this new gas play could and would escape from many of the old wellheads.
There are one or two oversimplifications in this article about how fracking might cause earthquakes. Injecting water into the ground at high pressures is intended to produce cracks (the process was originally called hydraulic fracturing by the oil industry which uses it for secondary recovery) through which gas can migrate to the drill hole and be pumped up to the surface.
But the fluids do not lubricate the rocks. Instead, the water pressure pushes the grains of rock apart slightly, reducing the resistance to fracture (and allowing faults to either develop or allowing existing faults to become active).
These may seem to be minor, nitpicking points, but the word "lubricate" bothers me, because that is not what happens.
Whether fracking caused the recent earthquake or not is certainly not clear, but eventually it could. The Army caused a number of earthquakes in the Denver area in the 1960s by pumping liquid wastes from a gas warfare plant into deep wells. The seismic activity in the area changed so much that eventually the government had to admit it was the cause, and had to stop the pumping.
One last comment. The abiltiy to stimulate earthquakes by pumping water into the ground depends on the depth of the pumping. I doubt that the fracking operations go on at depths of a few miles (which is where the earthquake occurred). So although it is possible, fracking probably should not be much of a concern to those who worry about earthquakes.
Thanks for sharing SH. (Enjoyed your comments even more than the article.)
Obama only listens to Money. Mother Nature which includes all life on Earth does not pay and so is not in play.
I've a wake up call for America- the President isn't your representative. He doesn't have to listen to you. His office and the Senate weren't designed to respond to democracy, but to the influential, rich, and powerful. So often, we little people, are wasting our trying to get the President to do the right thing. However, once upon a time there was a body of government that was democratic, that was a voice of th people; the House of Representatives. However, it now functions in the same way the Senate does, and democracy is all but dead in this country. So we can either go on screaming our head off at these all powerful corporations over and over, sometimes winning, but mostly loosing, or we can make a plan to return democracy to this country.
Ratify Article the First
http://voltairez.hubpages.com/hub/Stop-Diluting-Democracy
voltairez,
Thank you for bringing up the Ratify Article the First proposal.
In his book, "The Bill of Rights", Akhil Reed Amar provides an interesting discussion of the implications of the first two amendments of the original twelve amendments to the U.S. Constitution proposed by the First Congress for the interpretation of the other ten that were actually ratified as the Bill of Rights and the fourteenth that was ratified later. Amar's book also includes discussion of the politics surrounding the proposal and ratification of the amendments.
Expanding the size of the U.S. House of Representatives is not a bad idea.
But an exansion of the size of the House of Representatives would not be enough to establish genuine democracy in the United States.
At the very least at the federal level we need to do something about how we elect people to office including U.S. Presidents, U.S. Senators, and U.S. Representatives. This should include overturning the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizen's United v. FEC and Buckley v. Valeo decisions, and replacing Plurality Voting by a consent / dissent grading scale based voting procedure such as Yes No 'Maybe So' Voting or Category Scale Power Voting in single member district elections.
Simply expanding the size of the U.S. House of Representatives isn't going to help that much in my opinion. Much more needs to be done.
Obama to the environmentalist: "Show me the money."
Smug way of saying he knows the environmentalists can't pay because that is one of the purposes of the vast amount of wealth going to the rich, grand larceny, means they environmentalists can't out bid the rich.
Washington DC must be horribly fracked up considering the huge amounts of toxic gas emanating from the place every day.
To those of us who view Earth as a living entity, all the banging away at her Being DOES have an effect. A mosquito may be small in comparison with a human being, but its annoying buzz and potentially toxic bite will give its host cause to "neutralize" the offender
Mystics, Yogis, and Indigenous medicine people ALL view the earth as a living Being. Mountain tops blasted? Waterways wasted away? Underground areas fracked? Poisons by the tonnage poured onto soil (farmlands) and into rivers. And that's not even taking war and the detritus left behind in the ever-expanding killing fields, or the bitter tears of children and widows into account.
Yes. Mother Earth has had it!
"What have they done to the earth?
What have they done, to our fair sister..." (Jim Morrison)
I've published the prophetic words of the shamans in this forum for 14 months... they said the mountain chains are waking up, and there will be much more seismic activity. When human beings depart too far from Universal Law, the equalizing forces of the Elementals come into play. It sunk Atlantis in the great flood referred to by Plato, as well as the Bible; and if human beings don't quit their aggressive behaviors, we may share a similar fate.
If anyone would like to hear what Yogananda had to say about the relationship between human violence and nature acting in like measure, I will post it. The material comes direct from a speech given at the UN in l949.
The Earth is like a Big Rubik's cube, as one part moves, all other parts move in relation to it. We are all part of the Dance. It was said in Revelations that in the end times, if God had not stepped in, the Earth would be destroyed. Prophecies are warnings that can be changed if heeded. Unfortunately Greed drowns out the warnings.
When earthquakes the size of Rhode Island and Manhattan are falling into the
water, the likelihood that they will have an impact on the tectonic plates is high -- both in removing pressure and in putting pressure on new tectonic plates.
Fraking is an insanity that should be stopped at any rate -- more Cheney /
Halliburton destruction for money.
Too many hold the belief that the earth is indestructible -- that's not true.
""Obama, Earthquake Is a Wakeup Call on Dirty Energy Standards""
Isn't this the same euphemistic language o used in his 2008 campaign?
http://www.bredl.org/pdf3/051008_factsheet_Allegation2005A0014.pdf <<<<<>>>>>>Here's how it started, and why old US nukes will be run until they fail. Nothing has changed.
Good grief! Ms. Wysham does not have a single correct geologic or geographic fact in this article.
The nearest outcrop of the Marcellus shale is at least 80 miles from the Virginia epicenter, and the nearest buried parts of this shale formation amenable to gas drilling are in west-central West Virginia and Southwest Pennsylvania least 120-150 miles away. Virginia has no shale gas resources to speak of - or any oil and gas resources at all (most of the state is underlain by ancient metamorphic and igneous rock) they all lie further west. But, even if the earthquake occurred in the geologic basin containing the Marcellus Shale, its focal depth was about 20,000 feet - far deeper than the 8000-9000 ft. wells penetrating the shale.
Likewise, the nearest MTR operation is about 250 miles away, and while MTR is very environmental damaging, the idea that it could cause earthquakes is absurd.
Likewise, climate change could have nothing to do with earthquakes. In the distant future (thousands of years), it may contribute to small earthquakes in Greenland or Antarctica as the icecap loads re-mobilizes some faults.
The focal depth of the original quake was a half mile, putting it at about the right depth. Check again: Virginia has lots of shale formations, enough that contracts have already been put out for fracking there.
You should also do more homework on glaciers. They are melting WAY faster than you seem to think.
I was trained in geology in Virginia. There is no shale gas anywhere east/southeast of the Allegheny Front in WV and Pennsylvania, where the Devonian Shales are either removed by erosion, were never deposited, or are just a small thickness in the floors of the "poor valleys". The earthquake occurred in an area of metaorphic and granitic rocks, formerly mined for gold. The focal depth was 6 km +-3.1 km.
Ever herd of Elenin?
Google it and check it out.
Yeah, it is an ordinary, long-period comet, currently passing through the inner solar sysatem, it will pass a generous .22 AU from Earth on Oct 16. Right now, It doesn't look like it is going to put on much of a show, in fact, you need a very dark sky to see it at all.
The nuttiness, borne of scientific illiteracy, of the US left is starting to embarass me.
As if anything Obama "says" matters. I remember his about face on off shore drilling. I remember "don't give the keys to guys who drove the car into the ditch". I remember renegotiate NAFTA, pass EFCA, and something about "fundamental change". Obama is a barrier to the "right track" this country isn't on. 2012, you better hope he changes or vote third party. This fool will never get my vote again - even if that means Perry or Palin. The sooner they blow it up all, the sooner we can put it back together again.
..."Then there is climate change and a possible connection to earthquakes. The jury is still out on the effects of climate change and rising sea levels in terms of earthquakes. Melting glaciers and rising sea levels could potentially have an impact on tectonic plates — rebounding as the weight of glaciers shifts to sea-- and volcanic activity. But the science around this is far from conclusive."...
Thank you. There is a record of tectonic activity that could parallel the data taken from ice cores and ocean sediment cores over the last 650ky---it's in the magnetic striping along the Atlantic Ridge. Hello....Navy Dept?