Man's Eternal Need to Explore for Resources

This article is adapted from an Al Fin Energy posting

Eternal Landscape

Humans have always needed to explore for new resources -- new hunting grounds, new sources for tool-making flint, new sources of salt, of wild herbs and food plants, new sources of clay for pottery, of iron for blades.

Modern industrial societies have a driving need for energy. Humans stand at a fuzzy boundary between the age of large-scale hydrocarbon energy, and the approaching age of advanced nuclear fission, and fusion energy -- along with a tantalizing possibility of LENR energy.

Many restless and roving eyes are looking outward to space resources, to fulfill man's eternal needs. That is not a bad idea, but we are still taking baby steps in space. The need for resources exists here and now, which means that we will have to step our exploratory skills up a notch or two.

The geological substrate of Earth has barely been explored for its vast energy and mineral riches. The tools for geological exploration of the planet are still in the early stages of development, just as the tools for economical mining and production of the planet's mineral wealth are still being developed.

Fortunately, a few political leaders see the need for a comprehensive survey of energy resources, and have laid out plans to carry out such a crucial enterprise.

Although, the U.S. Geological Survey, a scientific bureau within the United States Department of Interior, does a remarkable job assessing domestic energy resources, much of its analysis and assessment is based upon scant, decades old data that possesses a high degree of uncertainty.

The complicated scheme of describing our estimated resource base combines statistical assessment, technological capability, and the economics of production only to baffle the public and confuse government officials tasked to divine an energy strategy.

If we are going to make sound decisions about our energy future, we sorely need credible, scientifically reliable data about the country’s resource base. The data gathering should not only include oil & gas, but also coal, uranium, water, wind, and geothermal resources. _JohnHRitcko

One example of an aggressive approach to exploration of North American energy reserves comes from US presidential candidate Mitt Romney:

Romney's oil and gas plan is often deemed one of the most aggressive in presidential history, which is great for energy investors, at least.

According to the PDF summary of his plan:

Directs the Department of the Interior to undertake a comprehensive survey of American energy reserves in partnership with exploration companies and initiates leasing in all areas currently approved for exploration... Directs the Department of the Interior to implement a process for rapid issuance of drilling permits to developers with established safety records seeking to use pre-approved techniques in pre-approved areas

Companies poised to benefit from this include, well, oil and gas companies, especially service companies. Rig Zone explains:

Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney's proposed energy plan could be positive for the oil services and drilling industry, with its goals of streamlining and improving the permitting process, opening up new areas for drilling and boosting overall drilling activity, according to a recent research note from Barclays Capital.

Seismic companies and eventually offshore drillers could benefit from Romney's plan to open acreage offshore Virginia and the Carolinas for exploration, Barclays analyst James C. West said in the Aug. 24 research note.

_Seeking Alpha

Many politicians are timid about energy in the age of a media-driven carbon hysteria. Some like to play it safe to avoid media and faux environmental criticism, investing taxpayer funds in intermittent unreliable forms of energy such as big wind and big solar. But that is the path to energy starvation.

Smarter and wiser leaders understand that in order for advanced societies to survive to reach an age of clean abundant energy from advanced nuclear engineering designs, they will need to efficiently utilise existing plentiful sources of reliable energy -- such as conventional and unconventional oil & gas, coal, bitumens, kerogens, gas hydrates etc -- while at the same time developing next generations of energy and fuels of all kinds, particularly advanced nuclear.

The faux environmental path of carbon hysteria is the path of energy starvation, decline, and a world in decay. Citizens of democratic societies must make a choice as to the path their societies will follow.

Do Oil Wells Re-Charge Themselves?

There have been numerous reports in recent times, of oil and gas fields not running out at the expected time, but instead showing a higher content of hydrocarbons after they had already produced more than the initially estimated amount. This has been seen in the Middle East, in the deep gas wells of Oklahoma, on the Gulf of Mexico coast, and in other places. It is this apparent refilling during production that has been responsible for the series of gross underestimate of reserves that have been published time and again, the most memorable being the one in the early seventies that firmly predicted the end of oil and gas globally by 1987, a prediction which produced an energy crisis and with that a huge shift in the wealth of nations. Refilling is an item of the greatest economic significance, and also a key to understanding what the sources of all this petroleum had been. It is also of practical engineering importance, since we may be able to exercise some control over the refilling process. _Recharging of Oil & Gas Fields

RigzoneOf course we all understand the concept of "repressurising oil fields" using gas injection and other means.

As the oil or natural gas in a formation is produced, the hydrocarbons remaining in the reservoir may become trapped because the pressure in the formation has lessened, making production either slow dramatically or stop altogether.

...gas injection is used on a well to enhance waning pressure within the formation. Systematically spread throughout the field, gas-injection wells are used to inject gas and effectively sweep the formation for remaining petroleum, boosting production.... gas injection can serve as an economical way to dispose of uneconomical gas production on an oil reservoir. While in the past, low levels of natural gas that were produced from oil fields were flared or burned off, that practice is discouraged in some countries and against the law in others.

...Gas Injection, Gas Lift & Gas Miscible Process
Although the terms are sometimes interchanged, gas injection and gas lift are two separate processes that are used to increase production. While gas injection is a secondary production method, gas lift is a type of artificial lift.

Artificial lift is another way to increase production from a well by increasing pressure within the reservoir. The main types of artificial lift include gas lift and pumping systems, such as beam pumps, hydraulic pumps and electric submersible pumps.

While gas injection is achieved by injecting gas through its own injection well, gas lift occurs through the production wells. In gas lift, compressed gas is injected down the casing tubing annulus of a production well, entering the well at numerous entry points called gas-lift valves. As the gas enters the tubing at these different stages, it forms bubbles, lightens the fluids and lowers the pressure, thus increasing the production rate of the well.

Furthermore, a type of EOR employed on a well in the tertiary production process, a gas miscible process can be used to increase production. The difference in this recovery method is that the gases introduced into the reservoir are not naturally occurring. In a gas miscible process, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and LPG are injected into the reservoir. _Rigzone Gas Injection

Most of the oil in existing wells remains underground, waiting for people to become smart enough to retrieve it. Better enhanced oil recovery techniques will inevitably be developed to extract more and more of the residual hydrocarbon -- until it is no longer economical to do so. Then the remaining oil will wait for further developments.

Thomas Gold argues (here and here for example) that oil wells are charged and re-charged with new oil & gas from below. He claimed that most new hydrocarbons are generated deep in the crust, rising into geological traps at several different depths for particular parts of the crust. That is the abiogenic theory of hydrocarbon production, which is supported by astronomical data and by lab data simulating conditions in the deep crust and upper mantle.

Rapid charging of oil fields -- such as is suggested here -- would require deeper secondary reservoirs under pressure, feeding into the primary reservoirs as they are depleted.

There is another way in which oil & gas fields are re-charged -- via the biogenic production of oil & gas. But biogenic production via geologic heat and pressure is generally a much slower method of re-charging than Gold's abiogenic method. But it inevitably occurs all the same. Biogenic oil is a renewable resource, but it is renewable on a different time scale than humans generally use.

And yet, there is a way in which biogenic oil can "rapidly" recharge a depleted oil field. In the case of multiple communicating oil reservoirs at different depths, heat, and pressure, a deeper biogenic reservoir could re-fill a more superficial reservoir at variable rates, depending upon a number of factors. Oil & gas migrate upwardly, when given the opportunity. In this case, instead of "turtles all the way down," it is "oil & gas reservoirs all the way down." ;-)

Biogenic Oil FormationThis image illustrates the conventional idea of biogenic formation of oil. Imagine it taking place over and over again, during the 3 billion + years that photosynthetic life has been converting CO2 into various biological carbon polymers, layer stacked upon layer etc etc . . . . .

Abiogenic Hydrocarbons Forming in the Mantle

This image illustrates the likely abiogenic formation of hydrocarbons in the upper mantle. These hydrocarbons then can migrate upward into the crust, and become trapped under impermeable minerals. Abiogenic hydrocarbons almost certainly mix with biogenic hydrocarbons.

Abiogenic hydrocarbons are also modified in various ways by deep crust microbial populations. In other words, the predominately short-chain abiogenic hydrocarbons from the mantle can be converted to longer chain hydrocarbons on the way up.

Finally, there is the ocean crustal tectonic activity which feeds a constant supply of partially processed organic material to the deep crust and mantle via constant subduction of ocean crust beneath continental crust. This is a slow but steady pipeline which supplies feedstock for production of oil & gas on a constant basis. The Earth's huge gas hydrate resource likely owes a great deal to this tectonic process.

Previously published on Al Fin Energy

How Humans Cause Earthquakes

The best-known case is the earthquake caused by the Zipingpu Dam, in China’s Sichuan province, in 2008. Zipingpu held 42.3 billion cubic feet of water, the weight of which precipitated what Klose says is the largest human-triggered earthquake to date: a 7.9-magnitude quake that killed nearly 80,000 people. Klose estimates that Zipingpu, with nearly 320 million tons of water pressing down on a fault line, contributed enough stress to trigger the quake through a process called impoundment. “If you push your finger on top of a paper plate, the plate will bend,” he says. “That same effect works on all the tectonic plates on the Earth’s crust.” The quake occurred two years after the dam’s completion, and its epicenter was a mere three miles from the structure.

Authorities in Basel, Switzerland, shut down the city’s geothermal plant after a 3.4 quake in 2006. Tapping geothermal energy involves boring into rock miles beneath the Earth’s crust in search of steam as a source of energy. Engineers in areas without much water, such as Basel, sometimes create boreholes by way of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which involves forcefully injecting water to create fissures. Fracking can generate small tremors, but the real damage may happen as excess liquid pools in the cracks between rocks, making them less stable. Although dams have caused some 76 earthquakes, mining is responsible for at least 137 earthquakes, over half the number of man-made quakes to date.

In 1989 a 5.6-magnitude earthquake hit Newcastle, Australia, the direct result of coal mining. Extracting millions of tons of coal added stress to the fault lines, but the real danger resulted from the water that was extracted during mining. For each ton of coal produced, Klose estimates, 4.3 times as much water was pumped out of the ground, a necessary step to prevent flooding inside the mine. But removing so much water dramatically altered the stability of the earth surrounding the mine. Klose says the earthquake caused $3.5 billion in damage—an amount that nearly equaled the profit of all the coal produced by the mine over its 200-year history. _PopSci

More here

Other human-caused micro-quakes have occurred via deep well injection of fluids, and by experimental deep hydraulic fracturing into crystalline rock (such as granite) near faults. It should be noted that shale fracturing -- such as is done for oil & gas production -- has not produced a causal link to earthquakes.

The recent small quakes in the Youngstown, Ohio area are associated with deep well injection of waste fluids -- a completely different process from shale fracturing.

Unfortunately, a large part of the news media has reported the quakes as having been caused by shale fracturing -- which is not the case. This type of skanky behaviour by news media is nothing new, but one has to wonder whether it is caused by ignorance or by willful deception.

We expect the faux environmental and green sites to misreport such events -- out of both ignorance and willful deception, depending upon the outlet. But in the case of the Ohio micro-quakes, normally careful sites such as oilprice.com, slate.com, and other mainstream outlets produced news copy that was not fit for a third grade newsletter, due to the inaccuracies. This is a troubling trend that should be watched very carefully.

It has been shown for decades that deep fluid injection into the crust can induce micro-quakes, if it takes place near known and discovered faults. And of all energy-related drilling, the type most closely associated with inducing micro-quakes is geothermal -- both enhanced and the geyser type. Deep CO2 injection is likewise liable to induce micro-quakes. Shale fracturing is probably the least likely cause of micro-quakes due to the more shallow nature and due to the type of rock involved.

But if one wishes to be absolutely sure that one is not performing shale fracturing near a fault zone, a thorough seismic survey (for about $10 million) can be done prior to any drilling. Clearly a less expensive method of reassuring the panicky public, skankstream media, and less than honest environmental media is needed.

Scientific research is the best antidote to the type of superstitions being purveyed by the modern skankstream.

Some European experience:

The data generally support the view that injection in sedimentary rocks tends to be less seismogenic than in crystalline rocks. In both cases, the presence of faults near the wells that allow pressures to penetrate significant distances vertically and laterally can be expected to increase the risk of producing felt events. All cases of injection into crystalline rocks produce seismic events, albeit usually of non-damaging magnitudes, and all crystalline rock masses were found to be critically stressed, regardless of the strength of their seismogenic responses to injection. Thus, these data suggest that criticality of stress, whilst a necessary condition for producing earthquakes that would disturb (or be felt by) the local population, is not a sufficient condition. The data considered here are not fully consistent with the concept that injection into deeper crystalline formations tends to produce larger magnitude events. The data are too few to evaluate the combined effect of depth and injected fluid volume on the size of the largest events. Injection at sites with low natural seismicity, defined by the expectation that the local peak ground acceleration has less than a 10% chance of exceeding 0.07 g in 50 years, has not produced felt events. _Geothermics

Enhanced geothermal drilling is a far greater micro-earthquake hazard than is any drilling or fracturing in porous shale for oil & gas. But even so, it is best to avoid overreacting to the risk, but rather to plan deep drilling and hydraulic fracturing of crystalline rock very carefully, to minimise risks.

The risk of overreaction to the risks inherent in deep geothermal projects is very real. The establishment of an overly harsh regulatory framework would penalize the geothermal industry in comparison to other energy sectors that carry a recognized risk of inducing seismicity, such as gas extraction or coal mining.

From their outset, EGS projects need to be thought of both as pilot projects with scientific unknowns and as commercial ventures with technological and financial risks. Companies need to have allocated enough of their budget to scientific investigations not directly related to the exploitation of heat. Local authorities need to avoid being enticed by the promises of alternative energy, and to remember to ask the right questions. Risk evaluations need to be done before — not after — these projects begin. _Nature

In such cases where the risks are small but clear, appropriate care must be used in conjunction with any deep geothermal drilling, or deep well injections -- particularly near fault zones.

But the risks of shale drilling and fracturing are completely different -- and orders of magnitude smaller -- than the risks of drilling and fracturing crystalline rock such as granite. If regulatory agencies rush in to ban economically important procedures which have been demonstrated to be safe over decades of experience and geological testing, they will be doing a grave disservice to their constituents.

Cross-posted from an orignal Al Fin Energy article

It should be noted that by inducing multiple small quakes, built-up stresses within faults can be slowly dissipated over time -- theoretically reducing the devastation caused by later earthquakes. This is an area of science begging for funding. Perhaps the many billions that have been mis-allocated to carbon hysteria research would be better spent on genuinely important research such as this.

Preventing Large Earthquakes by Intentional Triggering of Small Quakes

Scientists are continuously thinking of ways to try and reduce earthquake power. Some are trying to lessen the friction between colliding plates. They poured water down a fault where two plates were grinding together. The water “lubricated” the fault, letting one piece jerk free with a number of little earthquakes and preventing a large tremor. _EarthquakePrevention

Large earthquakes have killed millions of people, and are a constant threat to hundreds of millions of people living in cities within prominent seismic zones. If there were any possible way to reduce the deadly danger in which these people are living, earth science must investigate the possibility.

Deep injection of fluids into the Earth's crust has the potential to trigger earthquakes, typically small, multiple quakes. Do not confuse this type of deep fluid injection with fracking for oil or gas. The two things are not the same at all.

"Injection induced earthquakes" are NOT caused by hydrofracturing. Injection of fluids for the purpose of waste disposal or well stimulation is NOT "fracking." Injection of fluids CAN induce earthquakes in some circumstances. Hydrofracturing has NOT been found to induce earthquakes. _Injection Induced Earthquakes Reference

An interesting case mentioned in the New York Times of 1 Jan 2012 (yesterday), is a series of small earthquakes in the Youngstown, Ohio, area, associated with the deep injection of waste fluids into the Earth's crust:

An official in Ohio said on Sunday that the underground disposal of wastewater from natural-gas drilling operations would remain halted in the Youngstown area until scientists could analyze data from the most recent of a string of earthquakes there.

The latest quake, the 11th since mid-March, occurred Saturday afternoon and with a magnitude of 4.0 was the strongest yet....a 2.7-magnitude temblor on Dec. 24, showed that it occurred less than 2,000 feet below the well. Because of a lack of data, depth estimates of earlier earthquakes had been far less precise.

... Scientists had suspected that some of the wastewater might have migrated into deeper rock formations, allowing an ancient fault to slip. Similar links between disposal wells and earthquakes have been suspected in Arkansas and Texas. _NYT

Injection-induced earthquakes have been noted in Germany in 1997, in Colorado in the 1990s, in Texas, and Arkansas.

This reference website contains over 130 references to reports of injection associated quakes. The association between deep crust fluid injection and small earthquakes appears to be well founded. But it is important to note that there is no such association between fracking and earthquakes. Keep that distinction in mind.

Geothermal power at the Geysers in Lake County, California, has been associated with thousands of tiny earthquakes above magnitude 1 since 1975 when the resource was tapped.

Earthquakes are triggered by a number of different things, including the construction of hydroelectric dams.

Depth of the reservoir is the most important factor, but the volume of water also plays a significant role in triggering earthquakes.

RIS [Reservoir Induced Seismicity] can be immediately noticed during filling periods of reservoirs.

RIS can happen immediately after the filling of a reservoir or after a certain time lag.

It would be best for humans to invest in the best accelerated research possible to clearly and unequivocally define the risks and benefits of small scale induced seismicity. One of the best ways of doing this would be for seismic scientists to work closely with deep drilling enterprises which also involve the deep injection of fluids into the earth's crust. By piggy-backing onto economic activity which is already being done, seismologists can increase the detail of their seismic maps, and can also collect abundant data on the impact of deep crustal fluid injection into different fault configurations.

The risk of causing small earthquakes associated with deep geothermal drilling for enhanced geothermal power, and in CO2 sequestration injection into the crust, are both real -- although perhaps minimal. Whether such injections will serve to reduce the risk of later larger earthquakes is something that needs to be determined.

One thing is very clear, however: While lefty-Luddite greens of the energy-starvationist persuasion are screaming about the unlikely possibility that fracking might conceivably cause small earthquakes, the very real possibility that deep injection CO2 sequestration will likely cause small quakes is ignored by the same activists.

If there is a way to prevent large, destructive earthquakes by triggering multiple smaller quakes in a prophylactic manner, such technologies should be studied very carefully and expeditiously.

Part of this article was taken from a previous article at Al Fin Energy.

A Deep Surge of Magma Shakes Yellowstone, Lifts Ground 10 Inches

More: Brian Wang at NextBigFuture has more information and some reassurances

Yellowstone National Park sits atop a subterranean chamber of molten rock and gasses so vast that the region, known for its geysers and grizzlies, is arguably one of the largest active volcanoes in the world.

Granted, it's not your typical volcano, either in scale (it's huge), appearance (it's a vast depression, not a single mountain) or frequency of eruption (at least hundreds of thousands of years apart).

But it is active, and the evidence is everywhere. _Discovery

One of the world's great supervolcanoes sits and waits beneath Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. It has erupted before and it will erupt again, someday. Recent quaking of the ground in Yellowstone, combined with ground surges as high as 10 inches, have caused some geologists to wonder if the clock may be ticking down to another big blow.

"Clearly some deep source of magma feeds Yellowstone, and since Yellowstone has erupted in the recent geological past, we know that there is magma at shallower depths too," said Dan Dzurisin, a Yellowstone expert with the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory in Washington State.

"There has to be magma in the crust, or we wouldn't have all the hydrothermal activity that we have," Dzurisin added. "There is so much heat coming out of Yellowstone right now that if it wasn't being reheated by magma, the whole system would have gone stone cold since the time of the last eruption 70,000 years ago."

The large hydrothermal system just below Yellowstone's surface, which produces many of the park's top tourist attractions, may also play a role in ground swelling, Dzurisin said, though no one is sure to what extent.

..."Big quakes [can have] a relationship to uplift and deformations caused by the intrusion of magma," he said. "How those intrusions stress the adjacent faults, or how the faults might transmit stress to the magma system, is a really important new area of study."

Overall, USGS's Dzurisin added, "the story of Yellowstone deformation has gotten more complex as we've had better and better technologies to study it." _NatGeo

It is not easy to predict a volcanic eruption. Supervolcanoes may be even more difficult to predict -- no one knows. It will take time to acquire enough experience with the immense geological processes taking place beneath our feet. The video below provides a sobering look at the aftermath of a Yellowstone super-eruption.

Massive Amounts of Water Entrained Into Earth's Mantle

SD
As oceanic crustal plates grow and butt against continental plates, they subduct under the continental plates. As they dive into the Earth's mantle for "re-cycling", these ocean crusts carry large quantities of water and sediment with them. Geologists are learning more about what happens to the subducted water.

Scientists know: many volcanoes need water for their eruption. In the upper mantle, water lowers the melting temperature of the rocks. As a consequence, it melts faster and can ascend in form of magma to the Earth's surface. In areas where an oceanic plate is pushed underneath a continent by plate tectonics processes, large quantities of water reach the interior of the Earth.

Such a region, called subduction zone, can be found at the west coast of Latin and South America. Through large cracks formed during the subduction process of the oceanic plates water penetrates, is partly captured and transported in the mantle. There, high pressure and temperatures squeeze it out of the subducting plate and the water ascends back to the surface. On the way back it supports the formation of magma. Therefore all subduction zones are characterized by volcanoes at the continental margin.

"So far we knew that the entrainment of water into the Earth's mantle in the area of subductions zones is substantial and that it is released again by volcanic process. Nevertheless, the exact path of the water down to the mantle and back to the surface had so far not been shown in one unifying context," explains Tamara Worzewski, geophysicist in the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 574 "Fluids and Volatiles in Subduction Zones -- Climate Feedback and Trigger Mechanisms for Natural Hazards" who has investigated these processes. Together with Dr. Marion Jegen and Prof. Dr. Heidrun Kopp from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel and colleagues Dr. Heinrich Brasse from the Freie Universität Berlin and Dr. Waldo Taylor from Costa Rica, she was able to show for the first time the complete water path from the seafloor down to 120 kilometre depth and back to the surface using electromagnetic methods.

The study, now published in Nature Geoscience, is also part of Worzewskis PhD Study. _SD

PBSRegular readers of Al Fin and Al Fin Energy will be aware of these blogs' interest in hydrocarbons that find themselves inside the Earth's mantle. But the fate of water in the mantle can be closely tied to the fate of much of the organic carbon which finds its way into the mantle by the same subductive process. Volcanic eruptions clear a great deal of both water and carbon from the mantle, along with other gaseous and mineral matter. It is part of the ongoing geologic cycles of the planet.

And yet, massive amounts of crustal organic carbon and mantle hydrocarbons persist long enough to migrate and transform into potentially economic reserves of "fossil fuels." Most of this resource will remain unkown to humans, despite a great deal of it settling within the growing technological and economic reach of humans.

We have barely begun to learn the basics about our planet, our climate, our solar system, our portion of the spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, and so on. How absurd it is that pseudoscientific quasi-religions such as catastrophic anthropogenic global warming orthodoxy, or peak oil DOOM!, should find such large, gullible, and enthusiastic followings.

Planet Earth Barely Notices Effect of Anthropogenic CO2

There was five times as much CO2 in the air during dinosaur years as now, and twenty times as much before that [AF: When most plants evolved].....oceans continuously absorb CO2 and tie it up as calcium carbonate and limestone. There is now too little CO2 in the atmosphere for good plant growth (385 parts per million). Humans are slightly correcting the problem. Greenhouse operators often add three times as much CO2 to the air to improve plant growth. _ClimateBasics

GlobalExtinction
A recent study reported in Nature Geoscience reminds us once again of how miniscule is the effect of human action on the planet. In fact, even huge earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have little impact on the planet's long-term fate.

Even the monstrous 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Chile in February, and which might have changed Earth's rotation and shortened days by a fraction, hardly had an impact on the planet in the long run. In fact, scientists have a hard time spotting the effect of even bigger quakes on something such as the Earth's rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

...Gross calculated that the Chilean quake shifted the Earth's figure axis by 3 inches (8 cm or 27 milliarcseconds), and shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.26 microseconds.

Few other catastrophic events besides quakes could even make the slightest impact on the Earth's rotation.

"People have looked at volcanoes, but they're just too localized," Gross said. "There's not enough mass-motion involved with a volcanic eruption."

...Glaciers that build up and retreat during ice age cycles can also affect Earth's shape. Earth has always resembled something of a pumpkin with a bulge around the equator, because of how the planet's rotation affects its mass.

Melting ice at the poles takes weight off those areas and allows the Earth to fill out more like a sphere, but ocean currents and the jet stream can redistribute mass either toward or away from the equator.

Don't discount the moon's gravitational tug on the Earth, either. That twice-daily tidal effect causes Earth's crust to flex by about 8 inches (20 cm) each day, and leads to much higher ocean tides.

...Current scientific instruments and sensors...have a hard time detecting earthquake effects on Earth's rotation, even without the normal background noise. More sensitive monitoring systems might someday allow scientists to watch a quake change the Earth's rotation in real-time — but Gross won't hold his breath.

"It's still such a small calculated signal that I'm afraid I have my doubts as to whether I can see it," Gross said. _LS

Only a catastrophic change in the status of Earth's sun, Sol, or an impact with a space body of significant size, could render Earth uninhabitable anytime within the next few billion years.

Aside from cyclic glaciation, Earth's climate has shown an amazing resilience and stability. And within the cyclic nature of Earth's natural climate change, Earth life has shown an incredible ability to adjust and adapt.

The ability of Earth's climate to maintain its relative stability -- and to resist so-called "tipping points" -- lies in its strong natural negative feedbacks. Until the rather corrupt and insular infant science of climatology learns to face the realities of natural negative climate feedbacks, anyone who takes orthodox climate catastrophe models seriously is doomed to be badly disillusioned.

Detecting the Smuggling Tunnels Under the Border

The US-Mexican border has always been a smuggler's magnet. As air and ground border enforcement grows stricter, leading up to the 2008 US national elections, smugglers turn to the underground option--tunneling. Here's how US Border Patrol agents are detecting the hidden tunnels:

Ground Penetrating Radar
• How It's Done: GPR uses pulses of radio-frequency energy to see beneath the surface. In commercial use since the 1970s, it is today's standard for detecting voids such as caves and tunnels.

Seismic Waves
• How It's Done: The way that vibrations just under the surface change as they pass through rock and dirt provides details about what's below, and can show the presence of a tunnel.

Electrical Resistivity
• How It's Done: Electrical currents can't leap across empty space at low voltages. Metal electrodes staked in the ground could form a remotely monitored system that would tell solid rock from a void.

Microgravity
• How It's Done: When underground soil is removed, it causes very subtle changes in the Earth's gravitational field. Lower gravity readings can indicate a tunnel.

Cosmic Rays
• How It's Done: Muons are subatomic particles created by cosmic rays hitting the Earth's atmosphere. The number of them detected underground varies with the mass above: If there's a tunnel, more muons are found.

Source

More information about each technology at the linked source above. Some methods work from the air. Most work using sensors embedded in the earth. The cosmic ray method requires placing your muon sensors below where suspected tunnels may be.

Tunnels that run from a building on one side of the border and exit from a building on the other side of the border, have been some of the toughest tunnels to find. Urban development and activity can make some types of sensing more difficult. Tunnels that exit within neighborhoods that are typically "no-go" for authorities, can further hamper detection efforts.

The monetary rewards are quite large for smugglers who can successfully build and maintain cross-border tunnels that allow large throughput of merchandise, with low detectability. Criminal cartels can recruit clever mining engineers and tunnel designers, and bribe officials to look the other way--particularly on the Mexican side, but also on the US side.

Hunting Buried Treasure

The surface of the earth hides much treasure, buried below. Oil, gas, precious metals, scientific findings, and potentially valuable geothermal heat. How nice it would be to have the ability to look beneath the earth, to find all the treasures there.

High-resolution images that reveal unexpected details of the Earth's internal structure are among the results reported by MIT and Purdue scientists in the March 30 issue of Science. The researchers adapted technology developed for near-surface exploration of reservoirs of oil and gas to image the core-mantle boundary some 2,900 kilometers, or 1,800 miles, beneath Central and North America.

"Rather than depth, it's the resolution and lateral scale that are unique in this work," said lead author Rob van der Hilst, professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences (EAPS) and director of MIT's Earth Resources Laboratory. "This could lead to a new era in seismology and all the other deep Earth sciences. In addition, our new expertise may be able to improve how we look for oil in or beneath geologically complex structures such as the Gulf of Mexico salt domes," he said.

The technique--akin to medical imaging such as ultrasounds and CAT scans--led to detailed new images of the boundary between the Earth's core and mantle. These images, in turn, help researchers better understand how and where the Earth's internal heat is produced and how it is transported to the surface. They also provide insight into the Earth's giant heat engine--a constant cycle of heat production, heat transfer and cooling.

Source

A recent seismic survey in California located a 50 million year old impact crater three miles in diameter, buried 4300 feet deep under sediment.

A better understanding of geologic structure would help to utilise the geothermal energy trapped in dry hot rocks.

Finally, should the a large comet or asteroid hit the planet before humans learn to utilise the lebensraum available in the greater solar system, it might be necessary to establish large scale communities underground, powered by nuclear energy. It might even be necessary to build these communities as "generation ships", suitable for long term survival until the surface of earth became livable again.

It is, after all, our planet. Understanding it better--inside and out--is simply smart thinking. Preparing for all contingencies.