Those Who Forget The Past........

are condemned to relive it, as the old saying goes, but what is the fate of a society, a species, a planet whose dominant beings deny impacts from their own activities, clearly evident in trends, past weighed against present?

Today's 5.6 frackquake in Oklahoma, the largest so far, is nothing to scoff at, and that coming from a California native who's ridden out quite a few earthquakes of varying sizes, including the 1989 Loma Prieta that took 60 or so lives. In a place like Oklahoma, where buildings are not designed to withstand significant seismic activity due to the historic rarity of such events, we're very lucky that this one was centered in a rural area, and so only a few buildings were damaged. However, the incredible increase in seismic activity which corresponds perfectly with the increase in fracking and deep injection of fracking waste fluids in the region over the last decade and a half, along with the continued denial of culpability by the industry and politicians and others who are either impotent or unwilling in attempts to regulate the industry, or worse complicit for financial and political reasons, makes it only a matter of time before a much more destructive frackquake claims lives as well as property. It's both tragic and infuriating to know that it will take the realization and subsequent legal and financial arguments following something so predictable and avoidable as this inevitable catastrophe to finally begin to reign in this unfettered industry.

http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/oklahoma-earthquake-raises-concerns-about-possible-link-to-fracking-757682755642

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/03/492517062/earthquake-rattles-oklahoma-one-of-strongest-recorded-in-state

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/04/us/as-quakes-rattle-oklahoma-fingers-point-to-oil-and-gas-industry.html?_r=0

Next is Hermine, at the time of this writing still rejuvenating over unusually warm Gulf stream waters and preparing to lash the northeastern United States after passing through my city with fairly copious amounts of rain. While it is not expected to bring near as much destruction to the northeast as Sandy did, it still has potential to create serious flooding and other damage. Although the two storms are dissimilar due to size and differences in seasonality, they do share something that has the finger prints of global warming on it, and portends an increase in such storms in the future. I heard a couple of stories on the radio describing the unusual "blocking ridge of high pressure" off the northeast US coast that would stall this storm just off the coast or even bring it onshore, instead of allowing it to accelerate out to sea. This is similar to what happened with Sandy. It was described as being almost unheard of until recently but is something that fits in with models of global warming. I did a bit of research and found several articles mentioning a study in 2012 that described the increase in frequency of this blocking ridge over Greenland, an effect predicted by global warming, and predicted it causing more storms to take a track like Sandy's into the northeast US, among other impacts. Yet even with such detailed evidence, links, and pure science our politicians find ways to denigrate the idea of global warming.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160426215430.htm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/31/climate-change-hurricane-sandy-global-warming_n_2050516.html

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/how-global-warming-made-hurricane-sandy-worse-15190

So what is the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this post?  It's almost to frightening to seriously consider, which is the exact reason that we must.