The hypothesis is that heavy rain causes landslides, which unload inclined tropical faults enough for them to move Shimon Wdowinski’s 08 December presentation at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting was novel. He said that he and a colleague had found an up to four-year temporal correlation between wet tropical cyclones and large earthquakes in [...]
Categories: Environment,Science
Tagged: American Geophysical Union 2011, cyclone, earthquake, erosion, fault, Flossie, Haiti, Herb, inclined, Morakot, Shimon Wdowinski, Taiwan, tropical, unload
- Published:
- 27 December 2011 – 14:25
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
The good fortune of being there to witness what happens Geology is often about making careful observations and exercising deductive common sense. But getting to see one’s ideas proven true in immediate time is rare. Geologist Jay Quade once noticed that some surfaces of Atacama Desert boulders were worn smooth. Given the lack of water [...]
Categories: Science
Tagged: 5.3, alpha particles, Ari Matmon, Atacama Desert, beryllium ten, boulders, Chile, Christa J. Placzek, cosmic rays, earthquake, helium, Jay Quade, Kendra Murray, magnitude, Martin Pepper, oxygen sixteen, Peter W. Reiners, rubbing, seismic, seismicity, smooth, surface exposure dating
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- 11 October 2011 – 11:08
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
When fools lead There are governance lessons for the United States contained in Japan’s poorly managed Fukushima Daiichi radiation release. I have noted aspects of these before — here, here, here, and here. The science journal, Nature, recently made a few observations that illustrate why thoughtful people are concerned about the Fukushima situation: Almost six [...]
Categories: Environment,Public Health
Tagged: cesium 137, Daiichi, David Cyranoski, earthquake, exposure, Fukushima, Geoff Brumfiel, radiation, radioactive, reactor, release, tsunami
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- 9 September 2011 – 15:30
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
“Tsunami, here, in Japan?” After Japan’s 9.0 magnitude quake, I wondered why anyone would position a nuclear power plant in a violent earthquake zone, where a tsunami might hit it. It turns out the planners and regulators were just categorically stupid: Yukinobu Okamura, a prominent seismologist, warned of a debilitating tsunami in June 2009 at [...]
Categories: Environment,Ethics,Science
Tagged: 869, 9.0. diesel, Chico Harlan, cooling system, David Nakamura, earthquake, Fukushima Daiichi, generators, Japan, Japnese nuclear plant's safety analysts brushed off risk of tsunami, meltdown, radiation, TEPCO, Tokyo Electric Power Company
- Published:
- 24 March 2011 – 08:38
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
See numbers 35 and 36 for impression of the extent of crustal movement Number 36 shows approximately a 1 meter drop, rise, or combination displacement in the middle of a road. Citation (with link) Lloyd Young, The Big Picture: Massive earthquake hits Japan, Boston Globe (11 March 2011)
Categories: Environment,Science
Tagged: Boston Globe, crustal movement, displacement, earthquake, Japan, Lloyd Young, photographs, tectonic plate
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- 14 March 2011 – 07:56
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
I may be speaking too soon, but — Why would one build a nuclear power plant in one of the most earthquake prone regions of the world, where a tsunami might hit it? And if you did build it in a vulnerable place, why would you put its cooling system’s back-up diesel generators where water [...]
Categories: Environment,Public Health
Tagged: 8.9, back-up, cooling, diesel, earthquake, Fukushima, generator, Japan, leak, nuclear power, Prefecture, radiation, seawater, tsunami, water
- Published:
- 12 March 2011 – 18:48
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Reginald R. DesRoches et al. made an exciting discovery during several trips to Haiti The research team visited Haiti and confirmed two findings upon their return to Georgia Tech: (1) Haitians “eyeball” the proportions of concrete ingredients, which leads to grossly inferior structural strength (1,300 compressive pounds per square inch), but — (2) if pieces [...]
Categories: Environment,Science
Tagged: Breaking the reconstruction logjam, earthquake, Haiti, Joshua Gresham, Kimberley Kurtis, rebuild, recycle, Reginald DesRoches, rubble
- Published:
- 6 January 2011 – 20:06
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
I’m embarrassed to live in the same state with this malevolently self-righteous clown Haiti has not received a cent of the billion dollars in post-earthquake reconstruction aid that the United States promised. Why? Senator Tom Coburn (R, Oklahoma) decided that his Republican Party honor as a two-faced deficit-spending pretend deficit-reducer outweighed (a) our national honor [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: earthquake, Haiti, Haiti Still Waiting for Pledged U.S. Aid, Jonathan M. Katz, Martha Mendoza, Oklahoma, reconstruction, Tom Coburn
- Published:
- 6 October 2010 – 16:55
- Author:
- By BrainiYak