UPDATED 10/23/11: Earthquake activity from 1990-2011 charted. Pin for education!

As my very first post here on GLP I thought I would share some statistics I have recently gathered for myself.

Out of all the different controversy and conspiracy theories there is only one subject I've come upon where I was able to prove without any doubt whatsoever that something is seriously wrong. Earthquake activity is that subject. I used the IRIS earthquake database to chart earthquake activity from 1990-today. Here is a link to the results: [link to imageshack.us]

UPDATE: Revised statistics for 8/24/11- [link to imageshack.us]

2nd UPDATE: Revised statistics for 10/23/11-
[link to img824.imageshack.us]

I was very careful not to make any errors. Those graphs are accurate(according to the IRIS database). I in no way distorted any of these graphs to present a favorable outcome. They depict reality. A couple things are important to note:

First, no earthquake database is complete. IRIS is simply the most accurate I could find. I started out trying to use the USGS but I quickly found that many earthquakes were simply not being included. IRIS isn't innocent of this either, unfortunately. For example, as of a week ago a heck of a lot of the New Zealand quakes this year aren't showing up on IRIS.

Second, it isn't good enough to simply total up all the earthquakes 1.0 and above every year and say "Yup, we're experiencing more earthquakes!" You have to break them down by category and exclude the lesser quakes(0-4). Those are not very accurately measured over the last few decades and become extremely misleading due to varying numbers of sensors, etc). What really matters is seismic energy output and that increases exponentially with seismic magnitude.

Third, the figures for 2011 are PROJECTIONS based on 214 days of data(I updated the statistics to August 2nd). I divided those numbers by 214 and multiplied by 365 to come to estimated year-end outcomes. Unless earthquake activity just straight up stops for the next 5 months, these projections should be pretty darn accurate. Certainly they won't be so far off that the upward trend won't manifest. The graph with the highest probability of inaccuracy is the 7.0+ graph since the sample size is so much smaller.(That's just basic statistics)

If you are wondering why 4.0-4.99 quake activity is decreasing while all the rest is increasing..That's a very good question. While charting all the data I noticed a general trend showing that if 4.0-4.99 activity increased...5.0-5.99 decreased but 6.0+ increased either that year or the following year. The fact that the last couple years 4.0-4.99 has plummeted and all 5.0-10.0 activity has increased exponentially shows something is fundamentally different.

I have looked back all the way to the early to mid 1900s and nothing like this sort of recent activity has been replicated. Certainly that does not mean recent activity is unprecedented, 20 or so years in the grand scheme of things is not very long. However, I think we can agree that such a exponential increase is not normal. Whether or not it is unprecedented is fairly irrelevant when you consider that precedence does not eliminate the possibility of disastrous consequences.

If someone knows of a ACCURATE database for worldwide volcanic activity please let me know. I am dying to chart volcanic activity as well. The problem is that virtually all the popular databases are extremely inaccurate, yielding useless graphs. I have a feeling though that volcanic activity, were I able to chart it properly, would show an even greater exponential increase than earthquakes are today. That's just my opinion.

Finally, if you see a post similar to this on haters, I didn't steal from them. THEY are ME, lol. Just FYI :-) If you would like to confirm these graphs for yourself, here is a link to the IRIS database: [link to www.iris.edu]

Thanks for reading

Last Edited by Mojofabulous on 10/23/2011 09:07 PM