Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Earthquakes are now quite frequent

Saturday, March 06, 2010

Earthquakes are now quite frequent

I saw these news reports in Channel News Asia:

a. Taiwan quake causes millions of dollars in damage. A powerful earthquake that rocked southern Taiwan caused millions of dollars in damage to infrastructure and business operations, officials and companies said Friday.

b. Strong earthquake strikes off Indonesia. A 6.5-magnitude quake struck late Friday off the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia, seismologists said, but no tsunami alert was issued and there were no reports of damage or injuries.

We seem to have many earthquakes in recent years - starting form the earthquake that caused the Asian Tsunami in 2005 followed the big earthquakes in Sichuan, Haiti and Chile.

Any comments?

22 comments:

Anonymous said...: It's just a sign from Heaven :)
You may want to read this:

http://frankdimora.typepad.com/; March 06, 2010 9:28 AM
Anonymous said...: Jesus Christ told us in Matthew 24:7 to watch for many earthquakes and we also know “great earthquakes” is another sign from Luke 21:11.; March 06, 2010 9:30 AM
Anonymous said...: Due to easy access to info, we become more conscious on these natural disasters.; March 06, 2010 9:36 AM
Anonymous said...: Singapore should be shaken up by an earth quake too to warn her of the many iniquities she committed lately.
From gay issues to casino , to greed and dishonesty that have become the values of business.; March 06, 2010 10:00 AM
Anonymous said...: Asian tsunami happened on the boxing day, 26 Dec 04.; March 06, 2010 10:21 AM
Anonymous said...: We have to believe that what happen to this world is all human creations. What harbor in our minds have materialized and we have to harvest what we have seeded. Good return with good deeds and otherwise.

Human being have lost direction and what we done today all pointed to the world destruction.

ALLAN THAM; March 06, 2010 10:24 AM
Anonymous said...: Natural disasters won't happen to Singapore lah, I believe.

Only man made ones maybe, and most probably on the economic aspect. But it will also not affect a special group of people no matter how bad.; March 06, 2010 11:06 AM
xor said...: In the distant past, the world is not as connected as we do now, so even if earthquakes do strike frequently, people from the other parts of the planet may not know. Primal emotions such as fear and despair is being mass produced by the media daily due to our connectivity. As the old adage goes, ignorance is bliss and I believe that this too shall pass.; March 06, 2010 12:15 PM
Pro- business said...: The disasters are very real.

Imagine if you were the one that is out in the open with 20C temp, wet and hungry with fear and homeless.

Yes, there have been an increase in these natural disasters. Singapore is very blessed to be unaffected by these events. Many here are also very complacent and live their lives with not a worry. Food courts galore, shopping malls aplenty, air-conditioning almost everywhere.

This can be our most compelling advantage in getting companies to set up shop here.. we offer a stable geographic land with a history of stability unmatched.

Despite low birth rates, we do not need a large migrant workforce. Better designed job scopes and innovative solutions to every day work loads is sufficient to improve the quality of living here.

The advantage of zero earthquakes, zero flooding,zero political unrest
and large swings in weather.. is attractive enough for investors.; March 06, 2010 12:47 PM
Anonymous said...: Anonymous 9.28am wants us to go to http://frankdimora.typepad.com/

The website is nothing more than an anti-muslim site...... supposedly predicting `anti-Christ Muslims attacking jews and Christians as signs of the end of the world.

Anyone who has knowledge of Islam would know that Muslims can never disparage Jesus, because Jesus or Isa is a prophet of the Muslims. In the Muslim holy book, there is a whole chapter on Mary, the mother of Jesus.

This reminds me of a parable told to me by a Hindu friend. Two men were sent into a village to look for some people. The first man, who sees only good things in others, was told to look for the best person in the village. The 2nd, who could see only the bad things in others, was told to look for the worst villager.

Both came back empty handed. The first said: All the villagers are so good that it is impossible to find the best. The 2nd said: All of them are so bad, that I can't find the worst!; March 06, 2010 1:06 PM
jamesneo said...: From a scientific perspective, there are no evidence of man make influence on earth quakes. Earth-quakes are a natural response to the shifting of tectonic plates which are always happening at a very slow pace.(of course i may be wrong)

My view is that we are just entering an era of more frequent earthquakes. These different era of more earthquake and less earthquake occur at time scales that are hundreds or even thousands of year due to the slow shifting of the tectonic plates.

Moreover, as record of earthquakes might not be so precisely recorded in ancient times especially if they are located far from civilization. Thus the so called perceived more frequent earth quakes might also be due to better information and greater density of human nearer to the pacific ring of fire.; March 06, 2010 1:11 PM
Anonymous said...: Life still goes on. It's how we handle the situation that matters. Things from heaven we cannot control but how we live we can. Save more, give more and consume less. The world might be a better place.; March 06, 2010 1:21 PM
michael said...: God is telling NOT to be too greedy. What we only have is NOW. Please remember the following:
"Every day we do our best and to God, we leave the rest. We know that we cannot do better than our best, so we will do whatever we can and rest."; March 06, 2010 2:49 PM
Anonymous said...: I think the signs are showing that the continental plates are moving more markedly and we can expect earthquakes to be more intense and frequent.

They are still waiting for the big one to come in San Francisco, California and also in Tokyo, Japan.

Isn't it ironical that mankind can produce weapons of mass destruction of all sorts, go into space and the moon, yet we are still unable to conquer nature. So, a country may be superior in dominating others, but mother nature still has the last say.; March 06, 2010 3:40 PM
Anonymous said...: "Isn't it ironical that mankind can produce weapons of mass destruction of all sorts, go into space and the moon, yet we are still unable to conquer nature. So, a country may be superior in dominating others, but mother nature still has the last say."

A Richter 9.3 earthquake like the one that caused the Asian Tsunami is the equivalent of 89.1 gigatons nuclear blast. The biggest nuclear bomb, Tsar Bomba had a payload of 50 megatons, so the Asian Tsunami quake is equal to 1780 biggest nuclear bomb going off at the same time.

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Richter_magnitude_scale

However, none beats the end of dinosaur asteroid hit that generated 100 teratons, the equal of 2 million Tsar Bomba going off at the same time.

Best of all, the asteriod was a small one at 10km diameter, half the width of Singapore from north to south.; March 06, 2010 5:47 PM
Anonymous said...: I rather many small earthquake happening regularly.It is is better than one very big one happen once every millennium which kills billions; March 06, 2010 10:35 PM
financialfreedom said...: Perhaps it is because we have better technology to detect earthquakes as well as better news networks to report the various earthquakes. So it might only be an illusion that there are more earthquakes recently.

Earthquakes happen all the time throughout history. With sophisticated technology, USGS can detect earthquakes like almost everywhere on planet earth. This was not possible in the past.

With worldwide news coverage through the various agencies and the linking of people through the internet, news of earthquakes get spread around much more quickly than in the past.

So there might have been the same amount of earthquakes as in the past. The only difference is that we now have the technology to detect them and at the same time the networks to find out about them almost simultaneously as they occur.; March 06, 2010 11:12 PM
Anonymous said...: As more highrise buildings are built, there are now more earthquarke.
Is it a warning sign that there should be a limit to the highrise buildings?; March 07, 2010 7:51 AM
Anonymous said...: WE might be putting a lot of weight on the island and this weight was not native to Singapore.Singapore might give way and might be sinking and cause a shift in the earth plate.
The shift might cause a fault to develop and you know what will happen.; March 07, 2010 1:05 PM
Anonymous said...: You asleep, wake-up, attend to nature...take a train...report to office...having lunch...

The universal is active as usual..

The Chinese history literature can
tell you earthquake was happening..

The Buddhism literature also tell you earthquake was happening...nothing superficial !; March 07, 2010 5:19 PM
Anonymous said...: Global Warming will lead to the melting of ice and the rise of water levels that will affect coastal cities like Shanghai / Singapore / NY etc. to be under water!..........Instead of watching the Underwater World at Sentosa, we will experience it one day not too far away!!!; March 07, 2010 6:15 PM
Anonymous said...: Perhaps now with internet, we have seamless inflow of information when things happen in the world. Whats happen during the age without internet? Such news do not even reach the ears of the common people.; March 07, 2010 11:29 PM