Posts by SteveH
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Herald story on Whisky Galore
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Hard News: The First Draft, in reply to Ross Mason,
Tsar = 7.1 Which goes to show there is a shit load of energy in the Alpine Fault when it lets go next with an 8+.
Looking again, I see that on Wikipedia's Richter Scale page it's listed as slightly less than a 8.5. The Tsar Bomba page and the formula on the Moment Magnitude page give 7.1. The 7.1Mw figure assumes 0.5% of the total energy gets converted to seismic waves, which is a ballpark figure for an underground test. The 8.5 is based on the total energy released. Take your pick, I guess - neither figure makes much sense for a comparison.
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Hard News: The First Draft, in reply to Ross Mason,
No, it is Nukes to TNT. Here is a link that gives the equivalent tonnage of TNT V Richter Scale. Christchurch 2011 6.3 = 42.4 kiloton
I realised that's what he meant, I was more wondering why he decided to use TNT equivalent tonnage. It's a confusing measurement - moment magnitude is much more useful and familiar (even if people do still refer to it as "Richter Scale", which is something different).
The Oaklahoma Bombing was the equivalent of 2,200 kg of TNT (2.2 kiloton about a 5.5 earthquake). Pretty brutal bomb but a piddler to the Ruskie’s Tsar H Bomb of 57 MILLION tons of TNT.
This is why using equivalent tonnes of TNT is a bad idea. It gets used for incorrect and meaningless comparisons. The Mw equivalent of 2.3t of TNT is around 3.5 (you've accidentally converted 2200kg to 2200t and got 5.5 from that). The Oklahoma bombing was actually measured as 3.0 Mw, which doesn't sound like much difference, but the equivalent tonnage of a 3.0 is only 474kg of TNT. Since the Oklahoma bomb wasn't carefully set underground it didn't all get converted to seismic energy.
You can't really compare earthquakes to nuclear weapons at all as the effects are totally different, but it's interesting that Tsar Bomba had a theoretical equivalence to a 7.1Mw earthquake, i.e. the September quake. The actual seismic wave was measured at approx. 5.1 (which is 1/1000th of the energy of a 7.1). And obviously the September quake was nothing like a 50Mt nuclear blast - Tsar Bomba levelled every building, wood and brick, in a village 55km from ground zero and broke window panes 900km away.
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Hard News: The First Draft, in reply to recordari,
It appears he’s not entirely alone.
No, and there is also this guy who is at least attempting to measure his accuracy (though I suspect his predictions are too close to normal rates of activity to be meaningful).
I think it's fairly well accepted that the gravitational influence of the moon can trigger earthquakes. But for that to happen there has to be the potential for an earthquake to occur in the first place: the necessary stress must have built up. So to predict a specific earthquake it's not enough to just look at the moon, you've got to also know that a particular area is primed for a quake. I.e. you've got to have already predicted the likelihood of a quake in order for the moon's position to be useful as a predictor of the quake.
But Ken Ring doesn't actually predict specific quakes - his predictions are extremely vague in terms of location. Look at what his prediction (or as he prefers to style it, "opinion") actually was:
The window of 15-25 February should be potent for all types of tidal action, not only kingtides but cyclone development and ground movement. The 18th may be especially prone. The possible earthquake risk areas are N/S faults until after 16 February, then E/W faults until 23rd.
He's made no prediction of location more specific than the whole country and he's made no prediction of magnitude. He said in the JC interview that he means significant quakes. Let's say Mw 5+. Geonet states that on average NZ experiences a quake of that size or large about 28 times a year: i.e. once every 13 days. So with his 10 day window Ken was very likely to be "right" purely by chance.
Later on in the same article he says:
Over the next 10 days a 7+ earthquake somewhere is very likely. ... The 7+ is sure to be somewhere in the "Ring of Fire", where 80% of all major earthquakes seem to occur, and NZ is at the lower left of this Ring. The range of risk may be within 500kms of the Alpine Fault.
So he predicted a 7+ Mw somewhere in the Pacific Ring of Fire, maybe within 500kms of the Alpine Fault. He was wrong. No such quake occurred.
He also flat out lies to support his theory. E.g.
We have seen the 4 September 7.1 event (new moon+second closest perigee) of 648 kilotons, followed by 7 October (new moon+perigee#6) which brought (8th) the next biggest event, two 4+ jolts around 6.30am totalling 96 metric tons.
This is simply false. There was a 5.1 on the 4th of October and 7 quakes between the 15 of September and the 1st of October that were larger than his "next biggest event" on the 8th of October.
The following month, on 4-6 November, new moon in perigee brought on 7th at just before 3am, the next biggest aftershock of 118 tonnes.
Again, this is bullshit. The quake on the 7th was Mw 4.6. There were 4.7s on the 15th and 24th of October and 5.1 on the 18th.
The next month? Perigee was 26-27 December, as perigeal new moon changed to perigeal full moon. On 26 December came the next biggest jolt since the last, a month ago; a 4.9mag king-hit of 346 tons. With 20 January's full moon+perigee, came the next biggest earthquake to hit Christchurch, a 5.1mag event.
These 2 months he's right (2 out of 4), though he neglects to mention the big quakes that don't fit his "pattern", e.g. the 4.8s on the 13th and 14th of November.
And, no, I don't have any idea what he's going on about with "tons" and "kilotons".
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Wasn’t one of those convicted in the last few days a Pike River contractor (not looting, but something else)? Sounds like he needs major psychological help, not condemnation.
I think you're referring to the guy who claimed to be qualified for USAR but turned out to be not qualified at all: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/natural-disasters/news/article.cfm?c_id=68&objectid=10709278
He's been charged but not convicted. -
What is so special about the ex ante price though?
While not everyone agrees that the ex ante price is fair, I don't see anyone arguing that it is too low. So what is special about it is that any higher price will appear to be profiting from other peoples' misfortune and with a disaster of this magnitude most people will find that morally reprehensible.
Surely the petrol companies were being ruthless for charging 2 dollars a litre.
You can certainly make that argument. Oil and gas companies make up 6 of the top 10 companies by revenue worldwide - that could indicate that they are charging "ruthless" prices. Certainly they've been accused of pricing collusion often enough.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to giovanni tiso,
But they’ve officially identified fewer than ten people, the rest of the recovered bodies must be those of missing persons. Somebody please tell me I’m right about this.
No, they've released the names of 8 people. There are going to be significantly more that have been identified but that have not had their names released.
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Hard News: The First Draft, in reply to recordari,
AP seems to think it was genuine, and had some email communication with her. Elaborate hoax, if so. We are talking about the same thing, aren’t we?
Yes, that's the one.
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Hard News: The First Draft, in reply to Russell Brown,
It tends to suggest something written outside New Zealand.
Good points.
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In a hurry, I didn't think hard enough before linking to a heart-rending story posted to a blog, that I can see now was a hoax.
Russell, have got info that shows it to be a hoax? There have been a couple of further mentions on the blog but definitive either way. The story seems to be generally accepted there though.
Edit: Actually there are a few disbelieving posts with serious points.