If you think a 9.0 quake was human-induced, you are a dumbass.

[HalfManHalfBiscuit]

Realizing that the Richter scale is a California measure, there is no chance that humans can move the earth to this extent. None.

Don't even try the nuke angle. They are easily detected, and would not come within 10 orders of magnitude of the energy required.

I actually heard someone on cable news wonder if the earthquake may be related to global warming. Incredible.

[MissBrooks]

1. Thanks!

I agree!

[Ian David]

5. There is ONE way it could be caused by humans

It could have been caused by a bunch of freepers jumping up and down in a fit of temper over the impending Ohio recounts.

[illflem]

8. So does that mean when Fox News

says the quake was caused by the excess weight of too many Muslims on one particular tectonic plate that I shouldn't believe them?

[JVS]

2. I'd like to add one more thing to your post if I may

Invoking the chaos theory to justify your claim that it is man made makes you as much as a dumbass as someone saying that the quake was the result of the wrath of God.

[brainshrub]

3. "Environmentalists blame Global Warming for the earthquake"

It's a stupid rumor that's being spread by the RW media. As usual, it's a lie.
There are no serious environmental scientists that believe that the quake was caused by global warming.

[latteromden]

4. Thank you. (n/t)

[quinnox]

6. Stating the obvious

but sometimes it does have to be said.

[arwalden]

7. It's CHEMTRAILS... Chemtrails I Tell Ya!!

[Ian David]

10. UC Berkeley Seismological Lab: Nukes and Earthquakes

Can a nuclear explosion trigger an earthquake?

On January 19, 1968, a thermonuclear test, codenamed Faultless, took place in the Central Nevada Supplemental Test Area. The codename turned out to be a poor choice of words because a fresh fault rupture some 1200 meters long was produced. Seismographic records showed that the seismic waves produced by the fault movement were much less energetic than those produced directly by the nuclear explosion.

Analysis of local seismic recordings (within a couple of miles) of nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site shows that some tectonic stress is released simultaneously with the explosion. Analysis of the seismic wavefield generated by the blast shows the source can be characterized as 70-80 percent dilational (explosive-like) and 20-30 percent deviatoric (earthquake-like). The rock in the vicinity of the thermonuclear device is shattered by the passage of the explosions shock wave. This releases the elastic strain energy that was stored in the rock and adds an earthquake-like component to the seismic wavefield.

The possibility of large Nevada Test Site nuclear explosions triggering damaging earthquakes in California was publicly raised in 1969. As a test of this possibility, rate of earthquake occurrence in northern California (magnitude 3.5 and larger) and the known times of the six largest thermonuclear tests (1965-1969) were plotted and it was obvious that no peaks in the seismicity occur at the times of the explosions. This is in agreement with theoretical calculations that transient strain from underground thermonuclear explosions is not sufficiently large to trigger fault rupture at distances beyond a few tens of kilometers from the shot point.

The Indian and Pakastani test sites are approximately 1000 km from the recent Afghanistan earthquake epicenter. The question that has been asked is whether or not the occurrence of these nuclear tests influenced the occurrence of the large earthquake in Afghanistan. The most direct cause-effect relationship is that the passage of the seismic waves, generated by the thermonuclear explosion, through the epicentral region in Afghanistan somehow triggered the earthquake. For example, following the occurrence of the magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake in southern California on June 28, 1992, the rate of seismicity in several seismically active regions in the western US, as far as 1250 km from the epicenter, abruptly increased coincident with the passage of the earthquake generated seismic wavefield through each site. The abrupt increases in seismicity occurred primarily in regions of geothermal activity and recent volcanism. The mechanism by which this occurred remains unknown.

The Afghanistan earthquake occurred at 06:22:28 UT on May 30, 1998 and the thermonuclear test most closely associated in time occurred at 06:55 UT or after the occurrence of the earthquake. The other nuclear tests occurred 2-20 days before the earthquake. The elastic strains induced in the epicentral region by the passage of the seismic wavefield generated by the largest of the nuclear tests, the May 11 Indian test with an estimated yield of 40 kilotons, is about 100 times smaller than the strains induced by the Earth's semi-diurnal (12 hour) tides that are produced by the gravitational fields of the Moon and the Sun. If small nuclear tests could trigger an earthquake at a distance of 1000 km, equivalent-sized earthquakes, which occur globally at a rate of several per day, would also be expected to trigger earthquakes. No such triggering has been observed. Thus there is no evidence of a causal connection between the nuclear testing and the large earthquake in Afghanistan and it is pure coincidence that they occurred near in time and location.

One last point. The largest underground thermonuclear tests conducted by the US were detonated in Amchitka at the western end of the Aleutian Islands and the largest of these was the 5 megaton codename Cannikin test which occurred on November 6, 1971. Cannikin had a body wave magnitude of 6.9 and it did not trigger any earthquakes in the seismically active Aleutian Islands.

Suggested reading: "Nuclear Explosions and Earthquake, the Parted Veil", by Bruce A. Bolt, W. H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, 1976.

http://www.seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/faq/nuke_2.html

---
Short answer: No.

[knitter4democracy]

9. Right on!

I have been reading some of the posts, and they are so off the charts bad that I have started to cuss. Read a book, people! Take a couple of science classes! Yes, it's all one system, but that area is the most active in the world. That kind of stuff happens there all the time, just on a lower scale. Read Krakatoa. It'll shed a lot of light on it.

[Ian David]

15. Key things to keep in your head

Correlation does not prove causality.
Hasty generalization (rash generalization, insufficient sample, jumping to conclusions)
In a hasty generalization a conclusion or generalization is based on too small a sample size, sometimes on only one or a handful of examples. Of course, it is not always easy to determine how much data is needed to reach a valid conclusion. Most of the time it is more valid to assign a probability rather than make an absolute statement. Scientists and pollsters use statistics to determine the confidence limits and margins of error.
http://info-pollution.com/evidence.htm


Occam's Razor:
one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/OCCAMRAZ.html

Humans are pattern-seeking animals.
According to Shermer, one main reason people are so prone to believe all sorts of fantasies is because we are pattern-seeking animals. Throughout the history of primates (and therefore of humans), the ability to recognize nonrandom patterns in nature has meant the difference between finding and not finding food, or between escaping or dying from the jaws of a predator. However, natural selection has not endowed us with a very good way of investigating the causal basis of the patterns we observe. All that is needed for selection to operate is that recognizing the pattern is sufficient to get you out of trouble most of the time. In fact, even making mistakes and identifying patterns that are actually random will not be selected against unless such mistakes prove to be fatal too often. As Shermer puts it, humans have a certain tendency to commit one of two errors: believing a falsehood or rejecting a truth. Given that we are pattern-seeking animals, we tend more often to accept nonexistent patterns as indicatio ns of underlying truths. We are more gullible than skeptical by nature.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_3_24/ai_62102230

[TomNickell]

11. Well-said.

I haven't seen the "Bush caused the Quake" thread yet, but it's just a matter of time.

The Trees-on-Mars thread is going quite well.

[Maple]

12. Amazing

we can't predict earthquakes, nor do we know what caused a specific one until after it happens, and then we're only guessing...but we apparently know what does not cause them.

And anyone who disagrees with us gets called names.

We didn't know some countries had nukes, until they announced it openly, above ground, we don't know how close to a trigger point a quake is, and that it might take very little to set it off, and we can't find weapons we were sure were there...but we know for certain sure what does not set off a quake that's been building for years and years.

Like I said, amazing. Sigh.

[Cronus Protagonist]

13. Nukes have a signature that, AFAIK, is not present here

Nukes require two explosions - the first detonates teh second, larger one.




http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13
Buttons for brainy people - educate your local freepers today!

[HEyHEY]

14. And a conspircay fruitcake

And on my ignore list

[DS1]

16. There is no data on Global Warming's effect

so it can't be ruled out.

OTOH nukes are freaking dumb

[lenidog]

17. I believe it was the US Geologic Survey

who estimated the the earthquake was 27,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. A part of Sumatra moved 66 feet from its original point. The earth wobbled on its axis. I cannot believe that anyone could be stupid enough to believe humans could have that much power.

[JohnLocke]

18. Duh (nt)

[Moderator]

19. Locking.

Please feel free to repost without the inflammatory subject line.