Academic

ARE WE ACTUALLY SEEING MORE BIG EARTHQUAKES? Probably not. The Ryukyu Islands of Japan were hit ?

By Glenn Reynolds

ARE WE ACTUALLY SEEING MORE BIG EARTHQUAKES? Probably not.

The Ryukyu Islands of Japan were hit with a 7.0-magnitude quake on Friday night. News of that tremor, the Haiti quake and now Chile may make it seem as if Earth is becoming ever more active. But in the grand scheme of things, geologists say this is just Mother Nature as usual.

“From our human perspective with our relatively short and incomplete memories and better and better communications around the world, we hear about more earthquakes and it seems like they are more frequent,” Arrowsmith said. “But this is probably not any indication of a global change in earthquake rate of significance.”

Coupled with better communication, as the human population skyrockets and we move into more hazardous regions, we’re going to hear more about the events that do occur, Arrowsmith added.

Just keep the New Madrid fault quiet, please.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on February 28, 2010 (boomark / email).