Interesting earthquake talk on Bloomberg right now. Too bad my faith in "U.S. government scientists" is at its all-time low.
Earthquake Outbreak in Central U.S. Tied to Drilling Wastewater
By Mark Drajem - Apr 12, 2012 12:56 PM ET
Bloomberg.com
A spate of earthquakes across the middle of the U.S. is “almost certainly” manmade, and may coincide with wastewater from oil or gas drilling injected into the ground, U.S. government scientists said in a new study.
Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey said that for the three decades until 2000, seismic events averaged 21 a year in a central U.S. region. They jumped to 50 in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011.
Those statistics, included in the abstract of a research paper to be discussed at the Seismological Society of America conference next week in San Diego, were released a month after Ohio officials concluded that earthquakes there last year probably were caused by wastewater from hydraulic fracturing for natural gas injected into a disposal well, a state report said in March.
Full story: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-12/earthquake-outbreak-in-central-u-s-tied-to-drilling-wastewater.html