Tag Archives | Earthquakes

Scientists Find First Evidence Climate Affects Tectonic Plate Movement

By on April 16, 2011 in News 4

Plate TectonicsVia Discover:

Geologists have known for years that tectonic plates affect climate patterns. Now they say that the opposite is also true, finding that intensifying climate events can move tectonic plates. Using models based on known monsoonal and plate movement patterns, geologists say that the Indian Plate has accelerated by about 20% over the past 10 million years. “The significance of this finding lies in recognising for the first time that long-term climate changes have the potential to act as a force and influence the motion of tectonic plates,” Australian National University researcher Giampiero Iaffaldano told COSMOS.

The researchers plugged information from research on monsoonal patterns and the Indian Plate’s movement into a model, which indicated that the monsoonal erosion that has battered the eastern Himalaya Mountains for the past 10 million years erodes enough material to account for the plate’s counter-clockwise rotation. By gradually shaving off rocks from the eastern flank and decreasing crustal thickness, the monsoonal rains essentially lighten the load on the eastern part of the Indian Plate, causing the plate to actually turn (at geological speed).

… Read the rest

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Suburban Sprawl: A Government Tactic Against Nuclear Annihilation And Natural Disaster

By on April 1, 2011 in News 1

tokyoIn the aftermath of last month’s devastation, Japanese leaders have called on urban planners to make Japan decentralized and lower density so as to be less vulnerable. It wouldn’t be the first time that sprawl has been employed as a strategy against societal annihilation; during the Cold War, American planners pushed for suburbanization as a defense against nuclear disaster. BLDGBLOG enlightens:

At the height of the Cold War, the sprawling, decentralized suburban landscape of the United States was seen by many military planners as a form of spatial self-defense. As historian David Krugler explains in This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War, “urban dispersal” was viewed as a defensive military tactic, one that would greatly increase the nation’s chance of survival in the event of nuclear attack.

Specially formatted residential landscapes such as “cluster cities” were thus proposed, “each with a maximum population of 50,000.” These smaller satellite cities would not only reshape the civilian landscape of the United States, they would make its citizens, its industrial base, and its infrastructure much harder to target.

… Read the rest

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Japan’s Safety Regulators: Fukushima No. 3 Nuclear Reactor May Have Been Breached

By on March 25, 2011 in News 0

Atomic EnergyDavid Jolly & Hiroko Tabuchi report in the NY Times:

TOKYO — Japan’s effort to contain the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant suffered a setback, an official said on Friday, citing evidence that the reactor vessel of the No. 3 unit may have been damaged.

The development, described at a news conference by Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, raises the possibility that radiation from the mox fuel in the reactor — a combination of uranium and plutonium — could be released.

One sign that a breach may have occurred in the reactor vessel, Mr. Nishiyama said, took place on Thursday when three workers who were trying to connect an electrical cable to a pump in a turbine building next to the reactor were injured when they stepped into water that was found to be significantly more radioactive than normal in a reactor.

… Read the rest

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Genpatsu-Shinsai: The Language of Disaster That Stalked Japan

By on March 21, 2011 in News 0

Japan Earthquake 03/11/2011Interesting article from Leo Lewis in the Times from 2007, about how Japan nearly avoided a “nuclear power-quake disaster” back then. It always seems when these great disasters happen there was the one lone expert who no one took seriously. Leo Lewis writes”

Japan’s turbulent history of war and natural catastrophe has already given the world a terrifying vocabulary of death: tsunami, kamikaze, Hiroshima.

But the country now stands on the brink of unleashing its most chilling phrase yet: genpatsu-shinsai — the combination of an earthquake and nuclear meltdown capable of destroying millions of lives and bringing a nation to its knees.

The phrase, derived from the Japanese words for “nuclear power” and “quake disaster”, is the creation of Katsuhiko Ishibashi, Japan’s leading seismologist and one of the Government’s top advisers on nuclear-quake safety. He said that the world may never know how close it came to its first genpatsu-shinsai this week. Luck, as much an anything else, helped to avert it.

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Russians Claim U.S. West Coast Fault Near ‘Total Failure’

By on March 20, 2011 in News 26

viewerYou have to appreciate the work that went into this “Apocalypse Soon” report in the European Union Times. Not only do they build on the “Ring Of Fire – America Is Next Great Quake” scare propagated by Fox News, they also manage to work in mass animal deaths, the Supermoon, a comet on its way to smash into Earth and more!

A grim top-secret report prepared by Moscow’s Institute of Physics of the Earth for Prime Minister Putin on the catastrophic 9.0 magnitude Sendai Megaquake and Tsunami that hit Japan on March 11th is now warning that the “balance of our planet” has been altered after the titanic forces underlying this disaster has moved the Japanese Islands at least 13-feet closer to the North American West Coast Region and shortened the day by a couple of millionths of a second and tilted the Earth’s axis slightly.

… Read the rest

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Is U.S. West Coast About To Experience The Next Great Quake?

By on March 18, 2011 in News 29

disinfo reader Aleph Omega sent along this video from Fox News’s Cavuto show, saying:

The geologist [Jim Berkland] who predicted 1989 SF earthquake within 4 days is predicting an earthquake on the west coast within the next month, but more likely between 3.19.11 through 3.26.11. His telltale signs are: rare closeness of the moon to earth (full moon is tomorrow), equinoctial tides on the 20th, earth and groundwater tides — all of which loosen pressure in the earth. Also, massive fish kills in Redondo Beach and whale beaching.

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Glenn Beck Says Japan Quake Was ‘A Message From God’

By on March 16, 2011 in News 72

Glenn BeckLet’s hope this idiotic pronouncement from Herr Beck finally makes his declining but still large radio and television audience realize that he truly is a pompous, self-absorbed moron. AFP via Raw Story:

US celebrities and media Tuesday blasted right-wing radio host and television presenter Glenn Beck for calling the monster quake that rocked Japan last week a message from God.

Actress, author and talk show host Whoopi Goldberg said Beck should “check the mirror” if he thought Friday’s 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami were signs of God’s anger with mankind.

“If this is because we’re misbehaving and God is pissed (angry), I would check the mirror, Glenn,” Goldberg said on The View talkshow, which she co-hosts with three other women.

The disaster has claimed nearly 3,400 lives and left more than 10,000 people missing in northeastern Japan.

In a rambling presentation on his radio show on Monday, Beck said God may have caused the catastrophe in Japan because he was angry with mankind, and warned people to change their ways…

[continues at AFP via Raw Story]… Read the rest

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Gilbert Gottfried Fired As Voice Of Aflac Duck Over Japan Jokes

By on March 16, 2011 in News 22

Gottfried

CNN reports:

The Aflac duck lost its voice Monday after the insurance giant fired the comedian behind the commercial quack for tweeting jokes about the earthquake and tsunami that has devastated Japan.

The Columbus, Georgia-based company fired Gilbert Gottfried less than an hour after discovering the tweets, according to a news release from Aflac.

“Gilbert’s recent comments about the crisis in Japan were lacking in humor and certainly do not represent the thoughts and feelings of anyone at Aflac,” Michael Zunda, the company’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said in a statement.

So far, the earthquake and tsunami have left more than 2,400 people dead, and thousands more in shelters or missing. Most of the tweets attributed to Gottfried make light of the natural disaster in either a flippant or sexual manner…

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Earthquake Moved Japan Closer to U.S., Shifted Earth’s Axis, Shortened Day

By on March 15, 2011 in News 0

Japan MovedThis is astounding. Paul Rincon reports for BBC News:

Japan’s coastline may have shifted by as much as 4m (13 ft) to the east following Friday’s 8.9 Magnitude earthquake, according to experts.

Data from the country’s Geonet network of around 1,200 GPS monitoring stations suggest a large displacement following the massive quake.

Dr Roger Musson from the British Geological Survey (BGS) told BBC News the movement observed following the quake was “in line with what you get when you have an earthquake this big”.

The quake probably shifted Earth on its axis by about 6.5 inches (16.5cm) and caused the planet to rotate somewhat faster, shortening the length of the day by about 1.8 millionths of a second.

Japan’s meteorological agency has proposed updating the magnitude of the earthquake to 9.0. [UPDATE: Has been changed to 9.0] This would make it the joint fifth biggest quake since instrumental records began, but other agencies have not yet followed suit.

… Read the rest

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Japan Nuclear Radiation Likely To Reach California

By on March 15, 2011 in News 80

Radiation warning symbolThe likes of Matt Drudge and Alex Jones have been banging the drum to create fear among U.S. citizens that radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster will reach North America. Now Neil Katz poses the same question for a mainstream outlet, CBS News. The conclusion he posts is:

“As for America, experts say for now we are in the clear. ‘It is true that radiation emanating from Japan is moving across the Pacific and it’s feasible that one could detect those radiation levels in California,’ says [Dr. Cham] Dallas. ‘But it’s certain that it wouldn’t be dangerous.’”

Do any disinformation readers have expertise in radiation safety issues? Can we be so certain that there is no danger as Dr. Dallas suggests? Please post your thoughts in the comments.

Here’s some more of Katz’s story:

As conditions worsen at four nuclear reactors in Japan, many here and abroad are worried about the health risks of radiation.

… Read the rest

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