I mean, it could have been centered on the mining operation simply because of the fact the coal is there in the first place, which is a significantly weaker material than normal rock. But everything here is speculation. Correlation in science does not mean causation, its just a strong indicator. Look at the US for example, we have earthquakes all over the continent. Washington DC isn't known for earthquakes, but it got hit by one not but a few years ago.
@@goldenhate6649Definitely no to the first part - the earthquake occurred at a depth of 8.1km, and I'm not aware of anywhere in the world where productive coal measures are anything like 8km thick. As for the rest, deloading/increased loading earthquakes are a well known phenomenon so while it is probably impossible to prove that this earthquake was or wasn't one of them, it does seem pretty likely.
Thank you for confirming and putting some geoscience behind what many of us suspected. As your footage noted the Hunter Valley is one of the largest disturbed areas in the country. Thanks
Very well put together presentation. I especially like how you informed everyone that if they can figure out how to stop induce earthquakes they would be rich from selling the information, because it's true. I myself have no idea how to stop induse earthquakes in this scenario. But you have gotten the idea section of my brain working on it.
There's no economic incentive for mining companies to stop the earthquakes because they're not liable for the damage caused. As a result there's no incentive for them to pay for a solution, which means there is no incentive for anyone to research a solution. That doesn't mean that there is a solution, it just means that the public will be compensated for the damage by the mining company and the people who create demand for coal.
You like how he lies because humans can’t cause earth quakes it’s not HUMANLY possible we can’t dig down far enough into the earth to interact with the tectonic plates we would literally die from the heat
It's no volcano sadly, but we'll take it. I know your association with Australia from our conversations at the start of the channel and appreciate your interest. If the Mount Gambier maar complex ever goes active, I expect to see you down here! 😄
NZer here - very interesting video! We get our fair share of quakes but most of ours are good old "100 percent natural", not "induced". Over here, a Mag 4 or 5 quake is just good fun - it makes life interesting!
Thank them for this misinformation they lie earth quakes are caused by the shifting of the earths crust the tectonic plates and there is nothing humans can do to prevent or cause them from shifting they are 100s of miles deep under the earth and humans can’t possibly dig down past a few miles we would die
Earthquakes can occur in lots of places and not even tectonically related so the best option is to make buildings resistant to shaking. Yes it’s more expensive but instead of spending gobs of money to fix the mine you can distribute that money to homeowners for retrofitting which would increase their property value.
What kind of coal mining are they doing there dang. The connection seems pretty clear, the shaking is centered around the mine. Really interesting processes behind these quakes
If the earthquake was triggered by the removal of mass, then indeed *the company who removed that mass is liable for causing the event.* This is a known issue for any property owner, that is, they are liable for changing the property to such an extent that it causes harm to others.
Wow, that's huge. In the North of the Netherlands we have earthquakes due to gas mining, but the biggest was 3.6. The mining company had to stop and compensate the victims.
In some cases, once a section of the mine is mined out, the overburden ( dirt and rock removed above the coal to get to it) is placed back into the pit. In some cases, if there is not enough overburden, the resulting depression will become a pond or lake. Also, refilling the pit may result in a rolling plain.
Based on the images in the video (assuming they are of the actual mine) it looks like they are doing that. As they mine one area, they are backfilling the part that has already been mined.
Australia may not be well known for earthquakes especially since we dont straddle tectonic plate boundaries. But apparently we do actually have a lot of them, they are just minor in magnitude.
i dont live anywhere near it but for a while it felt like we were in a time loop where the same earthquake happened over and over lol. i kept seeing "preliminary magnitude 5 earthquake outside sydney" on the news
As an Aussie, I thought I was going to live my whole life without experiencing an earthquake, until 2021 when one hit near Mansfield and holy shit. I was in a 150 year old brick building at the time and after a moment of disbelief, I turned into The Flash and have never moved so quick in my life to get outside.
Sounds like the miners have figured out another way of externalising their costs onto society. (Making a change and that change having consequences is the very definition of "causing". It's just that in Australia, successive governments try their damn hardest to make sure mining companies don't ever get impeded in their relentless desire for expansion at mere human cost)
The mining company did cause the earthquakes by the very means you described, so they are responsible. There's a very simple way to prevent such earthquakes. Don't mine near a fault line.
From what I have read and heard on this the quake was probably only partly human induced i.e. the strain what already mounting in the area which has multiple lines of evidence for slow ongoing crustal extension. The OzGeology channel did a good ground investigation to show that the region consists of a number of graben and horst topographical features and they appear to be at a greatly reduced level still active in response to the same tectonic forces which split Tasmania from Australia and the back arc extension and forcing due to the New Zealand archipelago and Zealandia. There was also a paper I remember reading about looking into the region by seismic tomography which identified features they believe to be associated slab induced mantle upwelling. Basically this was a trigger for already mounting strain which likely caused the quake earlier than it would have otherwise occurred but the mine alone would not have been able to generate the quake if that seismic stress regime of that fault was not already close to the threshold of slipping.
@@billwilson-es5yn Seems the big quake came from a depth of 5 kilometers so yeah more than 3 miles deep. There were a number of smaller quakes of ~ magnitude 2 which were much more shallow in depth that could have had a mine induced component but yeah I doubt this quake was caused by the mine even if the mine may have played a role in providing a strain outlet to initiate this quake earlier than it might have otherwise been though even that is uncertain. Some additional context is there was a 5.8 earthquake in the region back in 1989 around Newcastle.
I would love for you to talk about all the earthquakes that have happened in Alberta the last few years due to oil and gas activity. I don’t think there has been anything as damaging as this earthquake but it’s still surprising to me.
Some would be very happy with no mines. While Mt Arthur is thermal coal (burned for energy) some coal mines are metallurgical coal (for steel production). Imagine no steel and then no bridges, rails, skyscrapers and so on. So many are unaware that mining is the source of the metals that drive their structures, plumbing, electricity, vehicles, appliances and technology is surprising. I ask some folks if they'd give up their car or tech to stop the demand for mining and guess what they say.
Metallurgical coal is not necessary for coke to make steel. One can do "Direct Reduced Iron" with natural gas or hydrogen, then electric arc furnaces to make the steel. See the HYBRIT project (which has demonstrated this with hydrogen), now building an industrial scale plant. Also, Boston Metal is developing a process of electrolysis of molten metal oxide to reduce iron and other ores.
That was my first thought when I heard about it. The coal mines in that area are absolutely massive, so it seems very likely given we dont get terribly many earthquakes in Aus.
About induced earthquakes there's also a laboratory in the alps which induces earthquakes artificially in a local fault line by pumping water into it, it is a research project co-financed by the Italian INGV
Like to apologize, I grew up in Scranton, Pa that was heavily mined for coal and back in the 70's it was not uncommon for someone to go to sleep and wake up with a deep hole opening up somewhere on their property, if they were really unlucky it was under their house, overnight. But that was shaft mining, not open pit or strip mining. Completely different animal.
Yes to both! Though the extent to which they do surveys for environment and social impacts, as opposed to purely for their own economic benefit, varies enormously according to the strength (or lack) of environmental protection laws in the country concerned.
For those who are confused at the seemingly rather utilitarian "not cost-effective", you need to keep in mind two things: First, induced earthquakes are virtually always too small to cause more than minor injuries, meaning loss of life is very unlikely (and thus there is no 'priceless' cost to them). And second, the cost effectiveness is not measured for the mining company, but rather the economy as a whole. It would cost the mining company (or government, or whoever) more money to prevent the earthquakes than the earthquakes cause in total damage. So whoever pays would rather pay for the damage than for the earthquake prevention.
Great, so how do we sue the mining company when they damage our property, given our government bail them out every time? Pretty much every resident of Melbourne and Sydney have suffered from some at-least minor property damage in the past few years from these small mining-induced earthquakes. The 2012 Morwell open cut mine earthquake that caused damage in Melbourne. The 1989 Newcastle earthquake that caused $4B damage and killed 13 people.
I just wish they weren’t doing quite so much, and so rapid extraction …my main concern is the conversion of good food production land… we don’t have much in Aus.
So what was the level of involvement of the hundereds of millions of tons of iron ore from the Pilbara on the 2004 Indonesian earthquake and tsunamis???
I wasn't aware the 3 September 2016 5.8M earthquake was 'human-induced'. While the vast majority of Oklahoma earthquakes since 2009 were due to water injection wells, the 5.8M in Pawnee Oklahoma was on a known fault with a surface expression. Despite being 72 miles from the epicenter, this earthquake shook my home fairly intensely. This is a video taken from one of our security cams in the back yard (it's just a TH-cam video). Watch the water.
@@MarcusBP It's tricky because of the long buried Nemaha uplift and Humboldt fault that runs though Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, but the induced earthquakes are generally to the west of that fault zone. It may be that those injection wells are helping to trigger things that were eventually going to happen anyway. That's why Kansas put limits on how much volume they could inject at any one area, and I think Oklahoma reluctantly followed several years later. Though earthquakes were happening in the region well before injection operations, just very infrequently.
@@briebel2684 you said and articulated it better than I could! That area around Pawnee is what we called 'crooked hole country', and would be a poor place to put an injection well. As you said, they tend to be placed west (and some south), but not in that part of the state. I agree also there's a possibility that in such an area with an established fault, the nearest injection wells may be the final trigger of a rupture that has been in the making for decades. The same is also probably true for the Wilzetta Fault Zone in eastern Lincoln County. I won't speculate on the Meer's Fault System; as I'm somewhat ignorant of the information on it...other than it's very conspicuous and potentially dangerous.
I disagree with this ... experts say (insert "expert" tone of voice here) ... "most earthquakes hit along plate boundaries ..." Well, if you look deeper, you will find an ancient plate boundary (a terrane boundary) nearby this location. Any so called "odd" intraplate earthquakes usually happen near terrane collisional boundaries or ancient rifting region. I've been mapping this for a few years, and pretty much, most intraplate earthquakes or sequences are near such boundaries. Mines and fracking are just an outer manifestation of the more important geology below. Resources geology knows where the "good stuff" is and that's at tectonic boundary regions. So if you see high fracking or mining, just look deeper and you'll find the true reason why these so called intraplate earthquakes happen. Always look deeper into the geology of an epicenter area -- its fascinating what is found!
And here i was thinking the Earth Quakes were caused by the fault lines that run through the area . If this theory was right Western Australia would have some of the biggest Earth Quakes in the world
Thank you for yet another interesting video on the subject. I am a bit disappointed to see that you are using 3D computer simulations to illustrate the effects of the trembles. Those simulations are obviously not realistic and - in my opinion - tends to undermine the realistic an scientific approach you are known for. It should be possible to find actual footage or actual photos and naming their origin. Or if it is not possible, don't simulate - just present facts! Thats the reason I am here ;-)
mebbe, more than likely not. I live in an earthquake zone with copper mines all over. No earthquakes. I used to live in an area all undermined by deep coal mines. No earthquakes. The coal mine owners switched to deep pit mining. No earthquakes. Same up on the big rez, Navajo. Deep pit, no earthquakes.
Fill it with water or tailings to replace the mass removed. If they can remove that much rock, they can move it back when they are done. If rehabilitation is not economically viable, then the mine should NEVER be approved in the first place.
A lot of money you say? I propose we start fracking fault lines. Just keep pumpin' slippy juice in them to keep them popping at a low energy state. I know it's an incredibly impractical joke idea, but I would have to assume that if your only goal is to pump water into fault lines, not even frack sand, you could probably do it to a decent effect so long as your borehole wasn't sheared (shorn?) every time the fault slips. Like a fella can't tell me we can't have reverse-pumpjacks up on the ocean's surface with a big ol' raft of floating solar panels to run a pump and the seawater treatment systems. Obviously contingent on being oceanic, because burning that much fresh water is absurd.
That's what happens when you get too greedy and dig too deep. Really though removing millions of tons of material from any area is going to cause earthquakes and it's one of many reasons why strip mining is a bad idea. There's no technological solution for it except putting the mass back in the hole. You can have cheap fuel and ore or you can have safe and environmentally responsible mining, not both. If your system relies on creating ever more profit your only choice is the former. Robotic keyhole mining is the future but it's by no means a cheap future.
I think if this only happens when a mine is in proximity to an existing fault, that fault would slip whether a mine were present or not. The scale of any mine is dwarfed by the fault and surrounding crust. A fault so fragile that it slips if material is added or removed, was already primed to slip regardless. The mine likely only modifies when and where it will slip, but the slip is inevitable eventually.
How do you say that means it's not their fault? Clearly if you are right that the earthquake was from that, then the way to prevent it is to not mine there, and any profit they made needs to go to reparation of the environment and community.
Make companies liable for the negative externalities caused by the mining and use of mined materials. That includes charging the mining companies for the earthquakes and environmental damage caused by mining, the coal burners for the climate and health impact of burning the coal, etc. That way, the cost to the public is factored in to the cost of the coal and products produced, and the market will sort it out. People will be incentivized to choose products and energy sources that are less damaging because they will cost less. For things that don't have safer and cleaner alternatives, there will be increased investment in research to make them safer and cleaner, or to find alternatives. In cases where there aren't alternatives, the money charged will compensate the public for the increased costs. On average, it'll be break-even for the public. Those who choose alternatives will come out ahead.
Seems like the only way to offset the weight of all of the material removed by mining, would be to build a giant water reservoir somewhere nearby. Though that in itself would probably put more pressure on the mine. So not a great solution there either. The bigger problem is open pit mining in the first place.
It could actually make it worse if the resevoir cased increased tilt/strain on the fault. A lot of times faults exist and we have no idea about the until suddenly there is an earthquake from them. We tend to think of the ground as solid but it really isnt.
@@dralord1307 I guess you didn't watch to know that the challenge for which there was allegedly no answer was to find any way to stop this manner of earthquake. Thus my smartass offer to which your reply is quite irrelevant.
Thanks for the video. It's clear humanity needs to stop mining and burning coal for the sake of our stable climate, food security and biodiversity. Since the mine here was a coal mine, then the mining company is entirely to blame for the earthquake since they are just trying to get rich off a product that should be illegal. They should have ceased operations long ago. It is very interesting that the mass displacement is probably what caused it.
Coal has the highest energy density at the lowest cost of all energy sources except nuclear. If you like all the nice things you have, thank a coal miner.
Water makes it difficult for miners to breathe. The fluid will lube any faults and promote EQs. But, perhaps put the tailings back in. Although quite costly.
@@edwardlulofs444 If you watch the video you can see they are putting the tailings back, thats what those wavy sections are. But there is never as much as what is removed in a coal mine. When that sight is finished they will have to re-naturalize the area.
@@dralord1307 wow, that’s so good. Do they optimize the refill? I am guessing that just filling it would leave a lot of space near the entrance. But it might be more stable to leave small pockets and distribute the support of the fill. Anyway, thank you very much for posting. I love learning something new.
@@edwardlulofs444 By look into it I mean research. Other comments on this video mention a channel that did a detailed look at the area and its geologic history.
@@alanbiancardi2531 the UK shut it's last coal power station down last month. Many other countries will soon follow. Coal is a shit power source. Dirty, inefficient, and expensive.
To prevent sudden earthquakes from happening, we could try lubricating the existing faults preemptively with some sort of fracking before operation and then monitor the tensions that exist at these faults throughout operation.
With regard to fracking, I have always wondered if some of the small earthquakes are due to underground landslides. All that fracturing and all that removed volume.
I disagree, it is obvious that the amount of weight from all that extra rain we have had is causing it. Did you look into that? We have had more earthquakes all over the country lately. Please this is false information saying a mine did this.
Obvious? Without any knowledge of the local geology, or indeed whether the recent rainfall really is seriously abnormal in that particular area? A conceivable alternative possibly. GH's argument is sensible and knowledge-based - he may still be wrong, but this is NOT misinformation.
@@davidcranstone9044 it is obvious when you just look at all of the earthquakes that have recently occurred in Australia and you will see that there is earthquake swarms exactly like this one happening right around the country. In fact there was an earthquake swarm happening to the same magnitude and amount at the same time this happened. If it was due to mining it would have been a localised event, not happening in multiple locations around the country. They built the mine on the same fault line that caused the Newcastle earthquake which is remembered as one of the most destructive in our history.
@@davidcranstone9044 in addition, Australia is currently greener than it has been in our recent history due to all of the increased rain we have had. They have accepted recently that these events are due to the VEI6 eruptions in Tonga which has not only increased the amount of moisture in the upper atmosphere but acted like a greenhouse over us. We had a recent decent cold snap due to another volcanic eruptions in Indonesia which registered as a VEI5. This sent decent ash cloud right across Australia towards NZ. These conditions have been absolutely perfect for not only some major flooding events, strange cyclone migrations into central Australia and a consistent band of rain migrating right across the desert areas of Australia but for the foliage to grow. There are barely any people in these areas so things do grow wild out there. You can see on the satellite imagery that Australia not only has a green tinge all over it and areas that normally have sparse forestry, are now so dense and lush. The amount of extra weight of that is surely going to cause some kind of uplift especially once the main body of water arrives at the lowest point in fault line areas. We also have to factor in that Australia is honey combed with underground lakes and rivers that take up a very large combined area of central Australia that lead into the lowest point below the lake on the surface we call Kati Thanda or Lake Eyre. Kati Thanda is below sea level so water from inland Australia does not drain out into the ocean but will eventually end up here. The majority of water though, goes underground to feed these massive underground lakes instead. To me, it explains the majority of the earthquakes we are having because of the leverage effect the water would be causing by pushing down on the centre which causes the outer edges to lift. The earthquake swarm in Western Australia is not linked to this event but to a catastrophic flood event they had 6 months ago that dumped so much water on a massive area of the desert regions in WA were there are areas so flat that the water has to evaporate because it cannot drain. We also didn’t just have a spat of unprecedented rain events, they are still happening right across the country because to add more to the mix, we are also in a solar maximum with some serious geomagnetic storms that have headed our way recently and more to come so Australia is likely to see an increase in earthquake activity which also increases our likelihood that we will see some much bigger ones.
@@davidcranstone9044 my 2 deleted responses, TH-cam, had very valid information as to why this is occurring but since you have deleted it, there are people out there who will have no idea that the earthquake risk in Australia is increasing due to uplift. I’m not going to waste my time more but I am a bit shocked that censorship is so bad now that people’s lives could be put at risk. I know I can sleep at night knowing that I have a long list of being proven correct on these things even though every time I try and say something I am ridiculed or simply silenced, I still try to and help people. It’s sad being able to see the things I can see so easily and I just want to give people a chance to know what is coming. Isn’t that the right thing to do or is the climate change narrative so important that you will destroy yourselves instead? I enjoyed life in the days without social media and all of this technology, it’s not hard to go back. But what will you do TH-cam? What will you all do? Will your AI bot apologise and say oh yeah this chick tried to tell us what is happening but we deleted it instead because it was considered misinformation to tell people about something you learn about at school. No I must accept this made up version someone who should know better came up with. Something already proven false in Australia. What an absolute joke this has all become! I can find everything I want to watch on rumble now. I’m done with TH-cam.
@@davidcranstone9044 and if it’s this channel deleting my comments because they cannot handle the facts and will still push this misinformation in order to get views, than it only makes it more valid to unsubscribe and waste no further time on it. An educated person would welcome the debate not just delete it. I’ll forever remember this channel as the one that didn’t even know the basics when it comes to geology and geography and that the people sucked into watching it just became more stupid than anyone thought possible. I rest my case.
@@harrynac6017Precisely - quite a few videos where you can see him speaking and it is clearly his own voice, most recently the ones from Iceland a month or so ago. And the real emotion in his voice occasionally when he sees people at real risk that is not being addressed - most recently only two days ago in the Ethiopia video. And he has also explained a couple of times why his voice can sound a bit monotone - it is due to the effects of autism, especially when he is reading from a prepared script.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I hadn't previously realised that open-cast mining can also cause earthquakes.
I mean, it could have been centered on the mining operation simply because of the fact the coal is there in the first place, which is a significantly weaker material than normal rock. But everything here is speculation. Correlation in science does not mean causation, its just a strong indicator. Look at the US for example, we have earthquakes all over the continent. Washington DC isn't known for earthquakes, but it got hit by one not but a few years ago.
@@goldenhate6649Definitely no to the first part - the earthquake occurred at a depth of 8.1km, and I'm not aware of anywhere in the world where productive coal measures are anything like 8km thick. As for the rest, deloading/increased loading earthquakes are a well known phenomenon so while it is probably impossible to prove that this earthquake was or wasn't one of them, it does seem pretty likely.
It can not mining can not cause earth quakes period earth quakes are caused by the earths crust 100s of miles underground
Not surprised, removing all that overburden, there have to be a rebalancing as the range gets back to isostatic equilibrium.
Overburden is the stuff on top, not underneath
Thank you for confirming and putting some geoscience behind what many of us suspected. As your footage noted the Hunter Valley is one of the largest disturbed areas in the country. Thanks
This man is a liar there is no geoscience here it’s all just speculation and flagrant ignorance
Thank you for your continuing efforts to keep us updated.
Thanks as always, Geology Hub!
Thanks for all the hard work on these videos!
Very well put together presentation.
I especially like how you informed everyone that if they can figure out how to stop induce earthquakes they would be rich from selling the information, because it's true.
I myself have no idea how to stop induse earthquakes in this scenario.
But you have gotten the idea section of my brain working on it.
There's no economic incentive for mining companies to stop the earthquakes because they're not liable for the damage caused. As a result there's no incentive for them to pay for a solution, which means there is no incentive for anyone to research a solution.
That doesn't mean that there is a solution, it just means that the public will be compensated for the damage by the mining company and the people who create demand for coal.
@@fwiffo think bigger than just coal mining
You like how he lies because humans can’t cause earth quakes it’s not HUMANLY possible we can’t dig down far enough into the earth to interact with the tectonic plates we would literally die from the heat
@@Justthemow wow you don't know anything about geology
Makes sense. It's similar to earthquakes caused by seasonal ice melting which we see in places like Mt. Ranier, Mt. Katla, etc.
It's no volcano sadly, but we'll take it. I know your association with Australia from our conversations at the start of the channel and appreciate your interest. If the Mount Gambier maar complex ever goes active, I expect to see you down here! 😄
Don't worry, I would fly down if Gambier ever decided to erupt again.
Thank you for this channel. It is very informative. You keep making theses videos, I'll keep watching. I live on the island of Oahu ❤❤❤, 💯.
NZer here - very interesting video!
We get our fair share of quakes but most of ours are good old "100 percent natural", not "induced".
Over here, a Mag 4 or 5 quake is just good fun - it makes life interesting!
Likewise here in Seattle.
All earth quakes are natural this person is lying because they believe mining is bad this is propaganda
Really interesting. I didn't know these issues with mining.
Thankyou for this information
Thank them for this misinformation they lie earth quakes are caused by the shifting of the earths crust the tectonic plates and there is nothing humans can do to prevent or cause them from shifting they are 100s of miles deep under the earth and humans can’t possibly dig down past a few miles we would die
Earthquakes can occur in lots of places and not even tectonically related so the best option is to make buildings resistant to shaking. Yes it’s more expensive but instead of spending gobs of money to fix the mine you can distribute that money to homeowners for retrofitting which would increase their property value.
Similar quakes occurs from time to time near Bełchatów Coal Mine in Poland.
Nie tylko w Bełchatowie, także na Śląsku,okolice Katowic, Rybnika.
What kind of coal mining are they doing there dang. The connection seems pretty clear, the shaking is centered around the mine. Really interesting processes behind these quakes
Bituminous (2nd highest of the 4 grades of coal)
It feeds into the world's largest coal export terminal in Newcastle, NSW.
I can remember year's a go I think in the 1980's we had an earthquake in the uk but that turned out to be an old mine collapsing.
Thank you.
Copper Pedy in South Australia is a open cut gold mine and also has produced earthquakes lately as well around the 3.00 Mg range
If the earthquake was triggered by the removal of mass, then indeed *the company who removed that mass is liable for causing the event.* This is a known issue for any property owner, that is, they are liable for changing the property to such an extent that it causes harm to others.
Yet when your cat craps in my yard, somehow you aren't responsible.
There were some fracking quakes in northern Alberta as well
Wow, that's huge. In the North of the Netherlands we have earthquakes due to gas mining, but the biggest was 3.6. The mining company had to stop and compensate the victims.
You should do a video on the earthquakes caused by The Hoover dam if there are any
In some cases, once a section of the mine is mined out, the overburden ( dirt and rock removed above the coal to get to it) is placed back into the pit. In some cases, if there is not enough overburden, the resulting depression will become a pond or lake. Also, refilling the pit may result in a rolling plain.
Based on the images in the video (assuming they are of the actual mine) it looks like they are doing that. As they mine one area, they are backfilling the part that has already been mined.
Australia may not be well known for earthquakes especially since we dont straddle tectonic plate boundaries. But apparently we do actually have a lot of them, they are just minor in magnitude.
Not mining, though I highly doubt that a mining company would be willing to halt all mining :P
i dont live anywhere near it but for a while it felt like we were in a time loop where the same earthquake happened over and over lol. i kept seeing "preliminary magnitude 5 earthquake outside sydney" on the news
As an Aussie, I thought I was going to live my whole life without experiencing an earthquake, until 2021 when one hit near Mansfield and holy shit. I was in a 150 year old brick building at the time and after a moment of disbelief, I turned into The Flash and have never moved so quick in my life to get outside.
Thanks.
When mining companies cause damages, they must pay for them instead of paying lawyers to avoid it. It's only justice.
Sounds like the miners have figured out another way of externalising their costs onto society.
(Making a change and that change having consequences is the very definition of "causing". It's just that in Australia, successive governments try their damn hardest to make sure mining companies don't ever get impeded in their relentless desire for expansion at mere human cost)
that's crazy!! iirc Australia isn't equiped for earthquakes, they probably got really shaken
They tell you to cut back and pay more while showing off their environmentally friendly mining operations and laughing all the way to the bank.
The mining company did cause the earthquakes by the very means you described, so they are responsible.
There's a very simple way to prevent such earthquakes.
Don't mine near a fault line.
From what I have read and heard on this the quake was probably only partly human induced i.e. the strain what already mounting in the area which has multiple lines of evidence for slow ongoing crustal extension. The OzGeology channel did a good ground investigation to show that the region consists of a number of graben and horst topographical features and they appear to be at a greatly reduced level still active in response to the same tectonic forces which split Tasmania from Australia and the back arc extension and forcing due to the New Zealand archipelago and Zealandia. There was also a paper I remember reading about looking into the region by seismic tomography which identified features they believe to be associated slab induced mantle upwelling.
Basically this was a trigger for already mounting strain which likely caused the quake earlier than it would have otherwise occurred but the mine alone would not have been able to generate the quake if that seismic stress regime of that fault was not already close to the threshold of slipping.
How deep was the epicenter of each tremor? I doubt if the removal of 200 to 300 feet of the ground would induce faults 3 to 5 miles deep to shift.
@@billwilson-es5yn Seems the big quake came from a depth of 5 kilometers so yeah more than 3 miles deep. There were a number of smaller quakes of ~ magnitude 2 which were much more shallow in depth that could have had a mine induced component but yeah I doubt this quake was caused by the mine even if the mine may have played a role in providing a strain outlet to initiate this quake earlier than it might have otherwise been though even that is uncertain.
Some additional context is there was a 5.8 earthquake in the region back in 1989 around Newcastle.
I just saw a news report on increased activity at Iceland's Geysur geothermal area. Might be a future video topic?
I would love for you to talk about all the earthquakes that have happened in Alberta the last few years due to oil and gas activity. I don’t think there has been anything as damaging as this earthquake but it’s still surprising to me.
Some would be very happy with no mines. While Mt Arthur is thermal coal (burned for energy) some coal mines are metallurgical coal (for steel production). Imagine no steel and then no bridges, rails, skyscrapers and so on. So many are unaware that mining is the source of the metals that drive their structures, plumbing, electricity, vehicles, appliances and technology is surprising. I ask some folks if they'd give up their car or tech to stop the demand for mining and guess what they say.
Metallurgical coal is not necessary for coke to make steel. One can do "Direct Reduced Iron" with natural gas or hydrogen, then electric arc furnaces to make the steel. See the HYBRIT project (which has demonstrated this with hydrogen), now building an industrial scale plant. Also, Boston Metal is developing a process of electrolysis of molten metal oxide to reduce iron and other ores.
Hope they do another seismic survey and compare with the previous one that would be interesting and prove what caused the little shake
That was my first thought when I heard about it. The coal mines in that area are absolutely massive, so it seems very likely given we dont get terribly many earthquakes in Aus.
Could the mechanism be isostatic rebound from the removal of overburden?
Or just a fault line inside the coal and long term stress relief due to increased water infiltration
About induced earthquakes there's also a laboratory in the alps which induces earthquakes artificially in a local fault line by pumping water into it, it is a research project co-financed by the Italian INGV
Like to apologize, I grew up in Scranton, Pa that was heavily mined for coal and back in the 70's it was not uncommon for someone to go to sleep and wake up with a deep hole opening up somewhere on their property, if they were really unlucky it was under their house, overnight.
But that was shaft mining, not open pit or strip mining.
Completely different animal.
Do mining companies do surveys to determine if there are fault lines where they will open a mine, or is that something they only discover later?
Yes to both! Though the extent to which they do surveys for environment and social impacts, as opposed to purely for their own economic benefit, varies enormously according to the strength (or lack) of environmental protection laws in the country concerned.
I’ve heard that the earthquakes experienced in nearby Newcastle are caused by coal mining too.
For those who are confused at the seemingly rather utilitarian "not cost-effective", you need to keep in mind two things: First, induced earthquakes are virtually always too small to cause more than minor injuries, meaning loss of life is very unlikely (and thus there is no 'priceless' cost to them). And second, the cost effectiveness is not measured for the mining company, but rather the economy as a whole. It would cost the mining company (or government, or whoever) more money to prevent the earthquakes than the earthquakes cause in total damage. So whoever pays would rather pay for the damage than for the earthquake prevention.
Great, so how do we sue the mining company when they damage our property, given our government bail them out every time? Pretty much every resident of Melbourne and Sydney have suffered from some at-least minor property damage in the past few years from these small mining-induced earthquakes. The 2012 Morwell open cut mine earthquake that caused damage in Melbourne. The 1989 Newcastle earthquake that caused $4B damage and killed 13 people.
Cleanest coal in the world.
I just wish they weren’t doing quite so much, and so rapid extraction …my main concern is the conversion of good food production land… we don’t have much in Aus.
I'm going to go listen to my Darren Hayes playlist, now.
🎵Working in a Coal Mine🎶
To my knowledge there are no earthquakes around Windmills…
Get the transition to green energy done ….!💚
Can it be called an earthquake when tectonic plates don't move? Or is it all combined together?
Is an induced earthquake the same thing as a mine bump?
This is the danger that now also happens in the north of Holland due to gas mining of the slochteren gas reservoir in approx 60 years time.
So what was the level of involvement of the hundereds of millions of tons of iron ore from the Pilbara on the 2004 Indonesian earthquake and tsunamis???
I wasn't aware the 3 September 2016 5.8M earthquake was 'human-induced'. While the vast majority of Oklahoma earthquakes since 2009 were due to water injection wells, the 5.8M in Pawnee Oklahoma was on a known fault with a surface expression. Despite being 72 miles from the epicenter, this earthquake shook my home fairly intensely. This is a video taken from one of our security cams in the back yard (it's just a TH-cam video). Watch the water.
@@MarcusBP It's tricky because of the long buried Nemaha uplift and Humboldt fault that runs though Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, but the induced earthquakes are generally to the west of that fault zone. It may be that those injection wells are helping to trigger things that were eventually going to happen anyway. That's why Kansas put limits on how much volume they could inject at any one area, and I think Oklahoma reluctantly followed several years later.
Though earthquakes were happening in the region well before injection operations, just very infrequently.
@@briebel2684 you said and articulated it better than I could! That area around Pawnee is what we called 'crooked hole country', and would be a poor place to put an injection well. As you said, they tend to be placed west (and some south), but not in that part of the state. I agree also there's a possibility that in such an area with an established fault, the nearest injection wells may be the final trigger of a rupture that has been in the making for decades. The same is also probably true for the Wilzetta Fault Zone in eastern Lincoln County. I won't speculate on the Meer's Fault System; as I'm somewhat ignorant of the information on it...other than it's very conspicuous and potentially dangerous.
I disagree with this ... experts say (insert "expert" tone of voice here) ... "most earthquakes hit along plate boundaries ..." Well, if you look deeper, you will find an ancient plate boundary (a terrane boundary) nearby this location. Any so called "odd" intraplate earthquakes usually happen near terrane collisional boundaries or ancient rifting region. I've been mapping this for a few years, and pretty much, most intraplate earthquakes or sequences are near such boundaries. Mines and fracking are just an outer manifestation of the more important geology below. Resources geology knows where the "good stuff" is and that's at tectonic boundary regions. So if you see high fracking or mining, just look deeper and you'll find the true reason why these so called intraplate earthquakes happen. Always look deeper into the geology of an epicenter area -- its fascinating what is found!
why can't we replace the mass we take out with green waste?
Seems like those listed people's fault to me. If its impossible to be done safely it shouldnt be done.
And here i was thinking the Earth Quakes were caused by the fault lines that run through the area .
If this theory was right Western Australia would have some of the biggest Earth Quakes in the world
Simply the cost of existence. Rock and roll baby.
Don’t dig up coal
How little I know.
Obviously these earthquakes could be prevented by not allowing these mines to be excavated.
Here in the Netherlands we have stopped mining to prevent further earthquakes and the resulting damage.
Hope you enjoy paying more for those materials
Yes, get other countries to do the mining for you.
MAYBE...For every load of coal OUT, bring a load of construction waste IN (road/house/cement etc)
Thank you for yet another interesting video on the subject. I am a bit disappointed to see that you are using 3D computer simulations to illustrate the effects of the trembles. Those simulations are obviously not realistic and - in my opinion - tends to undermine the realistic an scientific approach you are known for.
It should be possible to find actual footage or actual photos and naming their origin. Or if it is not possible, don't simulate - just present facts! Thats the reason I am here ;-)
All the kangaroos jumped at the same time.
mebbe, more than likely not. I live in an earthquake zone with copper mines all over. No earthquakes. I used to live in an area all undermined by deep coal mines. No earthquakes. The coal mine owners switched to deep pit mining. No earthquakes. Same up on the big rez, Navajo. Deep pit, no earthquakes.
They delved too greedily, and too deep.
Taking out underground tunnels... LIke in 20220 when they occurred all around AU.
What was the biggest earthquake that occured in germany due to coal mining? We've managed to dig the biggest hole world-wide xD
China 🇨🇳 needs that coal !
Um they are called Dollary Doo's here.
2:32 Anyone remember Jon Stewart's "Ok-lahoma where the ground shakes twice a day"?
Fill it with water or tailings to replace the mass removed.
If they can remove that much rock, they can move it back when they are done.
If rehabilitation is not economically viable, then the mine should NEVER be approved in the first place.
backfill mines with campaign flyers
Sounds similar to glacial retreat.
A lot of money you say?
I propose we start fracking fault lines. Just keep pumpin' slippy juice in them to keep them popping at a low energy state.
I know it's an incredibly impractical joke idea, but I would have to assume that if your only goal is to pump water into fault lines, not even frack sand, you could probably do it to a decent effect so long as your borehole wasn't sheared (shorn?) every time the fault slips. Like a fella can't tell me we can't have reverse-pumpjacks up on the ocean's surface with a big ol' raft of floating solar panels to run a pump and the seawater treatment systems. Obviously contingent on being oceanic, because burning that much fresh water is absurd.
That's bs man. It's definitely their fault for doing the blasting extracting and digging that contributed to this.
That's what happens when you get too greedy and dig too deep. Really though removing millions of tons of material from any area is going to cause earthquakes and it's one of many reasons why strip mining is a bad idea. There's no technological solution for it except putting the mass back in the hole. You can have cheap fuel and ore or you can have safe and environmentally responsible mining, not both. If your system relies on creating ever more profit your only choice is the former. Robotic keyhole mining is the future but it's by no means a cheap future.
I think if this only happens when a mine is in proximity to an existing fault, that fault would slip whether a mine were present or not.
The scale of any mine is dwarfed by the fault and surrounding crust. A fault so fragile that it slips if material is added or removed, was already primed to slip regardless. The mine likely only modifies when and where it will slip, but the slip is inevitable eventually.
Turns out moving massive amounts of rock has consequences
How do you say that means it's not their fault? Clearly if you are right that the earthquake was from that, then the way to prevent it is to not mine there, and any profit they made needs to go to reparation of the environment and community.
Make companies liable for the negative externalities caused by the mining and use of mined materials. That includes charging the mining companies for the earthquakes and environmental damage caused by mining, the coal burners for the climate and health impact of burning the coal, etc.
That way, the cost to the public is factored in to the cost of the coal and products produced, and the market will sort it out. People will be incentivized to choose products and energy sources that are less damaging because they will cost less. For things that don't have safer and cleaner alternatives, there will be increased investment in research to make them safer and cleaner, or to find alternatives. In cases where there aren't alternatives, the money charged will compensate the public for the increased costs. On average, it'll be break-even for the public. Those who choose alternatives will come out ahead.
That makes sense. Then the people can complain that the coal costs more and so does their power
Seems like the only way to offset the weight of all of the material removed by mining, would be to build a giant water reservoir somewhere nearby. Though that in itself would probably put more pressure on the mine. So not a great solution there either. The bigger problem is open pit mining in the first place.
It could actually make it worse if the resevoir cased increased tilt/strain on the fault. A lot of times faults exist and we have no idea about the until suddenly there is an earthquake from them. We tend to think of the ground as solid but it really isnt.
I see many confused looks at work but there isn't an earthquake 😂
Dig all the coal.
At the risk of being a smartass to the question prompt, and not giving an answer the mining companies would be interested in: Stop mining coal.
Hmm great idea! and let huge parts of the population lose power/heat/and all the products we make from coal!
@@dralord1307 I guess you didn't watch to know that the challenge for which there was allegedly no answer was to find any way to stop this manner of earthquake. Thus my smartass offer to which your reply is quite irrelevant.
@@Ifyoucanreadthisgooglebroke I guess you didnt realize I was replying with sarcasm. It said in your post it was "smartass"
Thanks for the video. It's clear humanity needs to stop mining and burning coal for the sake of our stable climate, food security and biodiversity. Since the mine here was a coal mine, then the mining company is entirely to blame for the earthquake since they are just trying to get rich off a product that should be illegal. They should have ceased operations long ago. It is very interesting that the mass displacement is probably what caused it.
Easy. Don't mine.
Coperate greed at work
Coal has the highest energy density at the lowest cost of all energy sources except nuclear.
If you like all the nice things you have, thank a coal miner.
@@slartybarfastb3648 not blaming the miners they aren't the ones reaping the benefits they're the slaves doing the hard dirty work!!!
@@slartybarfastb3648 And Coal is dying breed, it is time for Aussies to invest in better energy sources.
@@sharlarae9719 the people working that mine are not 'slaves'. That's absurd! Probably some of the best paying jobs in that area of Australia.
@@HelezhelmDo you mean nuclear? That's the only energy production that matches coal. Wind and solar can only ever be supplementary.
Fill it with water?
Water makes it difficult for miners to breathe. The fluid will lube any faults and promote EQs.
But, perhaps put the tailings back in. Although quite costly.
@@edwardlulofs444 If you watch the video you can see they are putting the tailings back, thats what those wavy sections are. But there is never as much as what is removed in a coal mine. When that sight is finished they will have to re-naturalize the area.
@@dralord1307 wow, that’s so good.
Do they optimize the refill? I am guessing that just filling it would leave a lot of space near the entrance. But it might be more stable to leave small pockets and distribute the support of the fill.
Anyway, thank you very much for posting. I love learning something new.
@@dralord1307 I’m watching on a 2” screen of my phone so I have no detail.
@@edwardlulofs444 By look into it I mean research. Other comments on this video mention a channel that did a detailed look at the area and its geologic history.
I can think of a way to stop those earthquakes. Stop mining coal.
And when you have no power? A different subject for you to complain about
@@alanbiancardi2531 the UK shut it's last coal power station down last month. Many other countries will soon follow. Coal is a shit power source. Dirty, inefficient, and expensive.
@@alanbiancardi2531 "And when you have no power? "
To prevent sudden earthquakes from happening, we could try lubricating the existing faults preemptively with some sort of fracking before operation and then monitor the tensions that exist at these faults throughout operation.
Society’s getting more overweight too, that’s going to put strain on the earth..
Day 19 of requesting
The Meers fault in Oklahoma and talk about other intraplate faults and how large earthquakes can hit away from plate boundaries
With regard to fracking, I have always wondered if some of the small earthquakes are due to underground landslides. All that fracturing and all that removed volume.
I disagree, it is obvious that the amount of weight from all that extra rain we have had is causing it. Did you look into that? We have had more earthquakes all over the country lately. Please this is false information saying a mine did this.
Obvious? Without any knowledge of the local geology, or indeed whether the recent rainfall really is seriously abnormal in that particular area? A conceivable alternative possibly. GH's argument is sensible and knowledge-based - he may still be wrong, but this is NOT misinformation.
@@davidcranstone9044 it is obvious when you just look at all of the earthquakes that have recently occurred in Australia and you will see that there is earthquake swarms exactly like this one happening right around the country. In fact there was an earthquake swarm happening to the same magnitude and amount at the same time this happened. If it was due to mining it would have been a localised event, not happening in multiple locations around the country. They built the mine on the same fault line that caused the Newcastle earthquake which is remembered as one of the most destructive in our history.
@@davidcranstone9044 in addition, Australia is currently greener than it has been in our recent history due to all of the increased rain we have had. They have accepted recently that these events are due to the VEI6 eruptions in Tonga which has not only increased the amount of moisture in the upper atmosphere but acted like a greenhouse over us. We had a recent decent cold snap due to another volcanic eruptions in Indonesia which registered as a VEI5. This sent decent ash cloud right across Australia towards NZ. These conditions have been absolutely perfect for not only some major flooding events, strange cyclone migrations into central Australia and a consistent band of rain migrating right across the desert areas of Australia but for the foliage to grow. There are barely any people in these areas so things do grow wild out there. You can see on the satellite imagery that Australia not only has a green tinge all over it and areas that normally have sparse forestry, are now so dense and lush. The amount of extra weight of that is surely going to cause some kind of uplift especially once the main body of water arrives at the lowest point in fault line areas. We also have to factor in that Australia is honey combed with underground lakes and rivers that take up a very large combined area of central Australia that lead into the lowest point below the lake on the surface we call Kati Thanda or Lake Eyre. Kati Thanda is below sea level so water from inland Australia does not drain out into the ocean but will eventually end up here. The majority of water though, goes underground to feed these massive underground lakes instead. To me, it explains the majority of the earthquakes we are having because of the leverage effect the water would be causing by pushing down on the centre which causes the outer edges to lift. The earthquake swarm in Western Australia is not linked to this event but to a catastrophic flood event they had 6 months ago that dumped so much water on a massive area of the desert regions in WA were there are areas so flat that the water has to evaporate because it cannot drain. We also didn’t just have a spat of unprecedented rain events, they are still happening right across the country because to add more to the mix, we are also in a solar maximum with some serious geomagnetic storms that have headed our way recently and more to come so Australia is likely to see an increase in earthquake activity which also increases our likelihood that we will see some much bigger ones.
@@davidcranstone9044 my 2 deleted responses, TH-cam, had very valid information as to why this is occurring but since you have deleted it, there are people out there who will have no idea that the earthquake risk in Australia is increasing due to uplift. I’m not going to waste my time more but I am a bit shocked that censorship is so bad now that people’s lives could be put at risk. I know I can sleep at night knowing that I have a long list of being proven correct on these things even though every time I try and say something I am ridiculed or simply silenced, I still try to and help people. It’s sad being able to see the things I can see so easily and I just want to give people a chance to know what is coming. Isn’t that the right thing to do or is the climate change narrative so important that you will destroy yourselves instead? I enjoyed life in the days without social media and all of this technology, it’s not hard to go back. But what will you do TH-cam? What will you all do? Will your AI bot apologise and say oh yeah this chick tried to tell us what is happening but we deleted it instead because it was considered misinformation to tell people about something you learn about at school. No I must accept this made up version someone who should know better came up with. Something already proven false in Australia. What an absolute joke this has all become! I can find everything I want to watch on rumble now. I’m done with TH-cam.
@@davidcranstone9044 and if it’s this channel deleting my comments because they cannot handle the facts and will still push this misinformation in order to get views, than it only makes it more valid to unsubscribe and waste no further time on it. An educated person would welcome the debate not just delete it. I’ll forever remember this channel as the one that didn’t even know the basics when it comes to geology and geography and that the people sucked into watching it just became more stupid than anyone thought possible. I rest my case.
Is the narration AI generated?
No, there are a few videos where you can see him. I had to get used to his voice, but now I like it.
@@harrynac6017Precisely - quite a few videos where you can see him speaking and it is clearly his own voice, most recently the ones from Iceland a month or so ago. And the real emotion in his voice occasionally when he sees people at real risk that is not being addressed - most recently only two days ago in the Ethiopia video. And he has also explained a couple of times why his voice can sound a bit monotone - it is due to the effects of autism, especially when he is reading from a prepared script.
Hahahaj