Study Says Humans (Hello, Oil & Gas) Probably Trigger Earthquakes

Scientists are so darned skeptical.

Seems they didn’t blindly accept the Texas Railroad Commission’s claim that all those pesky earthquakes occurring in North Texas have nothing to do with injection wells used by the natural gas drillers, led by Fort Worth-based XTO, a subsidiary of ExxonMobile.

The railroad commission aids and abets, er, oversees oil and gas activities. The agency hired its own seismologist to kick a few rocks around and say something to the effect of, “Well, just because North Texas hasn’t had earthquakes in hundreds of millions of years and then has more than 100 of them since 2008 after energy producers began injecting spent fluids deep into the earth, doesn’t necessarily mean the two things are connected. For instance, the bat of a butterfly’s wings could trigger a sneeze from an armadillo that could set off an entire series of natural events that could culminate in an earthquake. Stranger things have happened. Remember when Julia Roberts dated Lyle Lovett? Why is everybody always picking on the oil and gas industry, anyway? Without gas you couldn’t drive to the store and buy beer. Where would you be then? It’s not fair. People are bullies!”

A story in The Dallas Morning News says scientists are presenting new evidence that says, in effect, “Au contraire Mr. Bought And Paid For State Seismologist. These quakes aren’t normal. They must be caused by human activity. We can’t exactly say which human activity is causing them yet, but we doubt it’s the jumping jacks being done by the football team at Azle High School. There’s a rumor floating around that little Becky Sue Jordan dug a hole in her backyard and buried her pet gerbil, Bella. This activity might have caused the quakes. But, again, that doesn’t seem as plausible as shooting hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic mud and sludge deep into the earth’s crevices.”