How to cause an earthquake: Inject fluids into a fault

Pump large amounts of fluids — such as "produced water" from fracked oil and gas wells — down an injection well and into an existing fault. It happened at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, causing earthquakes in and around Denver back in the l960's. Geologists are concerned it could begin happening again, given the huge amount of shale gas and oil production. 

For one, they have proof that the number of medium-sized earthquakes has increased in recent years:

Induction of earthquakes

A new study from the USGS links this to the huge upsurge in fracking. (Again, it's not the fracking that's the problem, but the injection wells.) Lead author Bill Ellsworth calls for seismic monitoring to avoid disasters. Haven't yet heard a response from the industry. 

Hurricanes to be stronger AND more frequent: Emanuel

Kerry Emanuel, a leading analyst of hurricane behavior at MIT, has for years taken the position that hurricanes in the 21st century will be stronger, thanks to the global warming, but not necessarily more frequent. In fact, back in 2006, he published a paper arguing that no decadal shift could be detected in frequency of tropical cyclone generation, casting doubt on the idea. 

So when now he he publishes a study arguing that this century we will see greater numbers of hurricanes, as well as stronger ones, that's big news in the field. Even if it is mostly, near as I can tell, based on advances in modeling. 

From Andrew Freedman at Climate Central:

A new study by Kerry Emanuel, a prominent hurricane researcher at MIT, found that contrary to previous findings, tropical cyclones are likely to become both stronger and more frequent in the years to come, especially in the western North Pacific, where storms can devastate the heavily populated coastlines of Asian nations. Emanuel's research showed the same holds true for the North Atlantic, where about 12 percent of the world's tropical cyclones spin each year.

Emanuel's study casts doubt on what had been the consensus view of most climate scientists — that in most ocean basins, tropical cyclones are likely to become less frequent as the world warms, but that the storms that do occur are likely to contain stronger winds and heavier rains. That view was expressed most recently in a 2012 report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Hurricaneactivity

Full study is not yet available: Will be interesting to see response from Judith Curry and the natural variability crowd.  

How to save the California condor: Earth Island Institute

Back in the 1980's, the population of the California Condor plummeted to a mere 22 birds. Wildlife advocates and officials had to make a choice: allow the population to wink out, or capture all the birds and put them in a breeding program. 

David Phillips, director of the Earth Island Institute, ruminates out loud about the fate of the endangered species, one of the rarest birds in the world. Still doesn't like the idea of putting a wild bird in a zoo, even in an attempt to save it. His advice was ignored — perhaps rightly. 

I still think we were right about the condors. But I also think that some compromise, some sort of middle-ground strategy, might have worked. When they determined that, if carefully done, the birds would double-clutch; that if the first egg was lost or removed, the condors would lay a second egg — the program could have bult a captive population without sacrificing the wild population. They could have let the wild population slowly rebild by protecting its habitat, while still building a captive population…There could have been focus on the habitat issues that are still unresolved. Lead poisoning in the condor's home range is no better now than it was when we blew the whistle on it. The captive-breeding people had just given up on the habitat. They basically didn't care. If the release of captive birds didn't work in California, they figured, then they would just release them in the Grand Canyon, or in Mexico. They didn't care about the condor's home range the way that we did. 

We lost. They captured all twenty-one remaining wild condors and put them in cages in zoos and breeding programs. They've had mixed success. They've raised a lot of birds. But the birds that they've release have had lots of problems. They swoop down on picnic tables and grab people's sandwiches. Wild condors would never do that in a million years. They sip antifreeze in puddles. Things that no self-respecting wld condor would ever do. I still think we were right. I still think that hte program's failure to concentrate on the habitat has hurt us in a lot of ways. The emphasis they giave to the zoos as the placs to save the endangered species — what a misguided message! To think that we're ever going to solve the roblems of extnction through zoos!

[From a thoughtful book of interviews with some of David Brower's countless friends on many of our most pressing issues.]

Must say, if we haven't reduced the amount of lead in the condor's habitat its not for lack of trying. In 2007 the governor of California signed a law that banned the use of lead ammunition in the area. 

On the other hand…can imagine that wild birds might be smarter, warier.

But is it true? 

[Here's #161 of the Southern California flock, hatched in the San Diego Zoo in l999, and released in the Ventana Wildernessl]

161

NASA researcher dreams of army of polar robots

NASA is testing a robot designed by students to explore Greenland called GROVER (For Greenland Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research). 

Early results look promising:

GROVER’s radar emits a signal that bounces off the different layers of the ice sheet, allowing scientists to study how snow and ice accumulates in Greenland. The team wanted to check whether the robot could see a layer in the ice sheet that formed after an extreme melt event in the summer of 2012. Marshall said a first analysis of GROVER’s radar data revealed it was sufficient to detect the melt layer and potentially estimate its thickness.

Gotta love the look of the Arctic vehicle.

Groverrobotingreenland

Researchers dream of many more such robots, capable of surviving Greenland's brutal conditions.

"When you work at the poles, on the ice, it's cold, it's tiring, it's expensive and there's a limit to how much ground you can cover on snowmobiles," said Lora Koenig, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It would be great if autonomous robotic platforms could do part of this work — especially the part where high winds and blowing snow try to freeze your skin.”

“An army of polar robots – that would be neat,” Koenig said.

No such thing as a benevolent dictatorship: Orwell

What does the overthrow of the elected government in Egypt by the military mean? Wouldn't it be interesting to hear what George Orwell had to say about it? 

This month the New York Review of Books helpfully publishes an old letter of Orwell's, to leading critic and thinker Dwight MacDonald, on a related subject: Dictatorship. 

Orwell wrote, regarding what he meant by Animal Farm:

"Re. your query about Animal Farm. Of course I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian revolution. But I did mean it to have a wider application in so much that I meant that that kind of revolution (violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconsciously power-hungry people) can only lead to a change of masters. I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job."

When "the leaders have done their job?" When has that ever happened in Eygpt?

No matter. Orwell concludes:

"What I was trying to say was, “You can’t have a revolution unless you make it for yourself; there is no such thing as a benevolent dictat[or]ship."

Seems as if the Eygptisan people are still trying to make  a revolution themselves. 

Bonus item: Ever wondered why Eric Blair changed his name, when he began writing books, to George Orwell? Maria Popova, of Brain Pickings, says she knows:

When Eric Arthur Blair was getting ready to publish his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, he decided to use a pen name so his family wouldn’t be embarrassed by his time in poverty. He chose the name George Orwell to reflect his love of English tradition and landscape. George is the patron saint of England and the River Orwell, a popular sailing spot, was a place he loved to visit.

Here's a painting of the River Orwell from 1748, giving us some idea why he might have loved it. 

Riverorwell

A tragic consensus: Arizona Hot Shots died for houses

They say that newspapers are dead or dying, but the reporting on the death of nineteen brave wildland firefighters in Arizona has been absolutely top-notch. The LA Times has responded by sending a team of its best people, including Julie Cart from Idaho:

BOISE, Idaho — Early morning is a frenetic time at a wildfire command
post. Biologists, meteorologists, foresters and firefighters hustle
into tents and grab laptops to review overnight reports, prepping for
the day's assault. Fire behavior analysts run computer models that spit
out information crucial to putting out the blaze: how many acres a fire
will probably burn, in which direction and with what intensity.

In recent years, the models have been rendered practically
obsolete, unable to project how erratic Western fires have become,
making tactical decisions more difficult for fire bosses and the fire
lines less safe for crews in the field.

The analytical work performed by fire scientists here at the National
Interagency Fire Center also confirms what seems anecdotally evident:
Wildfires are getting bigger — the average fire is now five times as
large as it was in the 1980s — and these enormous conflagrations have a
breathtaking facility to dance and grow. Unforeseen winds are swerving
and turning on fire crews, and it's no longer unusual for fires to
double in size in a day.

The unpredictable has now become the expected.

Molly Henneske-Fiske, from Texas, and Chris Gofford, from Orange County, with two others put together a first-rate tick-tock (recounting in time):

Granite Mountain was an experienced crew, led by a supervisor old
enough to be Woyjeck's father — he called the crew his kids — and who
was known to turn down missions he didn't think were safe. The hotshots
were supremely fit and spoke with a swagger about their ability to
absorb punishment. On workouts they'd sometimes run a mile, then turn
around and do 300 sit-ups and 100 pull-ups.

And this wasn't a huge fire. It was what they call a Type III, not
even serious enough to call in one of the meteorologists who deploy on
the big blazes that can turn deadly with a turn of the weather.

Later that day, though, the winds would shift suddenly. The sky would
darken, the cool-headed supervisor would radio for help and, despite a
desperate attempt to use a helicopter to douse the suddenly advancing
flames , the Yarnell Hill fire would become one of the deadliest blazes
in the history of fighting wildfires.

The LA Times also had perhaps the most insightful news piece on the tragedy, looking at why firefighters now longer trust investigators, or the press for that matter, in Evan Halper's great piece on the aftermath of a fire known as Thirtymile, which killed fourteen wildland firefighters in Washington. 

More than a decade ago, a similar blaze whipped through a canyon 30
miles north of Winthrop, Wash. Four firefighters died in circumstances
eerily similar to those at Yarnell, killed in their emergency shelters
as a fast-moving fire burned over them.

By the time investigators had finished their work, a unit commander
was facing federal criminal charges and supervisors in firehouses across
the country found themselves on the hunt for liability insurance. The
next time federal investigators began such an inquiry, firefighters
started lawyering up.

Nobody seems happy with the
outcome of the exhaustive, years-long investigation into that blaze,
known as the Thirtymile fire. Firefighters call the investigation a
witch hunt that unfairly sought to hold humans accountable for acts of
nature, and they have resisted some new rules added after tragedies.
Politicians and regulators who demanded firefighters change their ways
and take greater precautions have been frustrated by what they see as
excessive risk-taking and stubbornness.

The New York Times is just getting started on the story, but already published a characteristically tough essay on the subject by Timothy Egan, who wrote a great book on wildland fires, called The Big Burn. Egan pointed the finger at homeowners such as myself, living in the wildland-urban interface:

…every homeowner in the arid lands owes these fallen men an answer. More than ever, wild land firefighters die for people’s summer homes and year-round retreats. They die protecting property, kitchen views, dreams cast in stucco and timber.

And so it was in Yarnell, Ariz., on Sunday: the Hotshots were sent to the advance guard of a tricky fire in order to protect a former gold-mining community that had become a haven for retirees. After an evacuation order, most of the homes were empty. They were just fuel at that point.

Sunday’s fatal toll from the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona was the greatest loss of firefighter lives in the United States since Sept. 11. But those who died in New York that terrible day were not rushing into a building in order to protect property — they were trying to save lives.

And an expert writing in the Washington Post today sums up simply:  

No one should ever die to save a house.

The 19 firefighters
killed in Arizona this past week should be honored as the fallen heroes
they are. Members of an elite unit, they were trained to hike for miles
across remote, difficult terrain with 40 pounds of gear and clear
vegetation to keep fires from spreading. The Granite Mountain Hotshots
were caught by an advancing wildfire near Yarnell, Ariz., the town they
were trying to save, when they were overrun by flames.

They should
never have been put in that position. Since Yarnell had already been
evacuated, these men were lost trying to save not lives but houses.
Homeowners who live in wildfire-prone areas shouldn’t expect their
highly flammable property to be rescued during extreme fires.

Sounds like a concensus we can stand behind — even (I hope) homeowners. 

Yarnell_Hill_Fire_with_firefighters_in_the_foreground

Related articles

11:45 p.m. update: 19 Prescott firefighters die after deploying shelters
Arizona wildfire kills 19 firefighters
Investigators to examine why Ariz. blaze killed 19
PHOTOJOURNALISM: 19 Firefighters Killed And 200 Homes Destroyed In Arizona Wildfire

International Read Naked Day: A communion in Chicago

In Chicago, Valya Vupescu sounds enthralled by a reading and award show by the Naked Girls:

Ngrta

"The ladies on the stage disrobed at the start of each of the three reading sessions of the night. They did it gracefully, naturally, comfortably, at home in their skin and on the stage. Then they breathed the stories into life, charging each one with emotion, weaving the web of words around them. The crowd was rapt.  One word kept coming to mind: communion: a sense of intimate fellowship or rapport.

The word “communion” has an interesting etymology, a little different than its more modern and ecclesiastical definition.  It comes from the late 14th century Old French  comunion, meaning “community, communion” (12c.),  and from the Latin communionem (nom. communio) “fellowship, mutual participation, a sharing.”

The act of reading someone a story, or having a story read to you, is intimate."

 

Today is International Read Naked Day. It's not too late…

 

In 1776, if Paul Revere were warning of climate change…

Scientists can be funny, and physicist Mark Boslough proves it with a column imagining how things might have been back in 1776 if Paul Revere had set out to warn the nation of climate change, instead of the arrival of the British. Boslough writes:  

"On this Independence Day, it is worth reflecting on the willingness of our founding fathers to sacrifice their own comforts for the future–for many generations to come, including ours.

They didn't argue about discount rates, or how expensive it would be, or if fighting the British would be cost effective in the long run. Imagine what would have happened if the "skeptics" had been given equal time, or if the patriots had lacked the will to "mitigate the threat". 

"The weight of evidence suggests that it is 'very likely' (probability greater than 90%) that the British are coming. I am not advocating any specific mitigation or adaptation response." (Paul Revere, if he had been a climate scientist)" 

The nerve! He mocks not just deniers, but the language of climatology too! And there's more. 

Paulrevere

New Mexico conifer forests gone by 2050: Scientist

The pine forests of New Mexico have been around since the Pleistocene, but they're not going to be around much longer, according to a scientist named Nate McDowell at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

For as long as there have been forests, there have been droughts,” [McDowell] said. “But the droughts we’re experiencing now are very novel because they’re warmer.”

And after just a year monitoring the trees [in his experiment duplicating a future climate], McDowell has come to a sobering conclusion: Within about 40 years, most of New Mexico’s pine, juniper and pinon trees will have dried up and died out.

“(By) about year 2050, we shouldn’t have conifer forests in the Southwest,” he said.

Certainly the idea that the heat waves are getting hotter makes sense. McDowell phrases the idea of drought and heat in a way I hadn't heard before from a scientist, but it makes a lot of sense:

“Warmer air can hold more water,” McDowell said. “So the more water it can hold, the more it will suck out of the Earth.”

Could use some cool air around here myself.