I was contemplating yesterday's earthquake here in Canada in Quebec and Ontario and grateful that it wasn't worse.
I remembered the one I felt in 1985. I was working on the 8th floor of an office building in Toronto and it was the weirdest feeling - as if everything was so fragile, as if all could collapse around me, just like that. It was over in a minute probably, but I can still recall the feeling: as if solidity was just an illusion we all carried around.
And recently I had this thought, this curiosity, about the oil and not just the leaks, ALL the oil we're syphoning from the bowels of Mother Earth for the past century, billions and billions of barrels, what then happens to her displaced layers as a result of the removal of all this oil?
I've studied a tiny bit about geology and physics in my time and I marched forth upon the interwebz and found, well, zero, on this topic. Is it gasses or air that fill the vacuum created by the expelled oil? I can see water from the ocean filling the void - but that could be disruptive to the tides, right?
Could this displacement of oil cause the tetonic plates to shift?
Will earthquakes and tsunamis increase?
So apart from the devastation of the used expelled gaseous oil causing cataclysmic climate change, we have the void left by the extracted oil causing upheavals in the earth's crust?
I would love to be more educated on this topic.
UPDATE
My good friend Government Funded Blogger kindly directed me to
thiswhich confirms my speculation on the topic. My question would be: Why isn't it addressed more by governments?
We know we are slowly killing our beautiful earth, so what you say makes perfect sense.
ReplyDeleteThe quake hit my town yesterday I posted a short piece about that on my blog.
ReplyDeleteEarthquakes have rattled the globe for centuries. Ancient writers such as Dio Cassius and Tacitus mention whole towns and villages destroyed in Asia Minor and Greece by earthquakes in their life times. This was long before oil extraction.
@Marcia:
ReplyDeleteIsn't it odd that I can't find anything about it on the web? I stand to be corrected of course...
@GFB:
It is the frequency I'm thinking of mainly - surely there is some effects from oil extraction? I'm keen to find out anything!
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Makes sense to me...as they say, a flap of a butterfly's wings in central park could cause an earthquake in china.
ReplyDeleteCheck this link.
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/06/25/at-fault-does-drilling-cause-earthquakes/
PC:
ReplyDeleteAnd also the eruptions in Iceland, I would think, right?
Gaia is in complete distress!
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Thank you so much GFB: to say the matter is underwritten by MSM is to overstate the case.
ReplyDeleteI have credited you in my update on the original post.
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I'll wait a while before following that link, WWW. Have just been reading about the possibility of oily rain (and worse) being a consequence of the Gulf leak.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.commondreams.org/further/2010/06/23-4
Good question. What exactly does happen to those oil voids? Old mineshafts often collapse, along with whatever was on top of them. So shouldn't the same happen with oil?
ReplyDeleteT:
ReplyDeleteI just read, thanks. Isn't it extraordinary that these catastrophic results of our thirst for oil are kept secret. If the 'oil rain' is proved, what's next with the US Supreme Court part of the "Drill, Baby, Drill" MO?
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Nick:
ReplyDeleteAnd so little to find anywhere in the research department. Has the evidence been buried?
I would never underestimate the power of Big Oil, they have both Obama and our PM Harper as twin sock puppets.
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The engineer husband pooh-poohs the idea of oily rain, citing trillions of gallons of rain every day vs millions of gallons of oil seeping into the Gulf, plus its heaviness vs water. But I wait to be convinced ... And has anyone bothered to look into what's going on off Nigeria? I read somewhere recently that the Gulf of Mexico spill is peanuts compared to the mayhem going on there every day. It''s like the Klondike, apparently, totally unregulated.
ReplyDeleteVis-a-vis your idea about earthquakes etc., I'm wondering if the oil being siphoned out of the earth might not otherwise be lubricating the tectonic plates? Or am I daft altogether?