Doesn't the arrival of man-made earthquakes signify the departure of even larger natural earthquakes? This would oddly strike me as possibly a valid use of fracking technology -- forcing earthquakes before tension builds to catastrophic levels.<p>(If so, I'd prefer we did this without pulling up more petroleum products.)<p>Disclaimer: I skimmed the article. Also, I'm against a future built on petroleum and fracking in general.
Dam can also cause earthquake.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake</a>
WTF is with the abrupt money talk in the middle of the article? The author just can't resist the urge to bash on the evil oil men? This really spoiled the article for me.
Oklahoma is a seismically active region that has <i>always</i> had a lot of earthquakes in the magnitude 5 range. USGS even has dedicated seismic hazard maps for Oklahoma. This has been going on long before anyone was fracking in Oklahoma.<p>Most Americans are unaware that Oklahoma is an active seismic zone and articles like this prey on that ignorance by implying that these earthquakes arrived with fracking. There is a lot of fracking in places do not naturally have a lot of earthquakes but the fact that they always pick Oklahoma suggests that they are trying to construct a false correlation.<p>A lot of fracking occurs in California too but most people understand that earthquakes in California are going to happen whether you frack or not. Same with Oklahoma.