Indonesia:Padang Earthquake (September 30, 2009) Explained

Padang Earthquake (September 30, 2009) and Banda Aceh quake (December 26, 2004) Explained

Indonesia lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Consequently it is an area great crustal instability. Today's earthquake of magnitude 7.6 struck at sea at 10:16 UTC at a depth of 87 kilometres (54 miles), 53 kilometres northwest of Padang city in West Sumatra province, the United States Geological Survey reported. This was followed by another quake of magnitude 5.5 at 10:38 UTC.
The great Indo-Australian Plate (Indian Plate) underlies the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal and is drifting north-east at an average of 6 cm/year (2 inches per year). The Indo-Australian Plate (Indian Plate) subducts the Burma Plate (Eurasian Plate) at the Sunda Trench. Padang city lies close to this subduction zone. A megathrust fault is the boundary between a subducting and an overriding plate. A megathrust earthquake is produced by a sudden slip along this fault.

The town of Padang has been devastated. At the time of writing 75 people are reported dead with thousands of people trapped under collapsed buildings.

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra (off Banda Aceh). The 9.15 magnitude quake, had its epicentre roughly 600km northwest of Padang.
c 1,600 km (994 mi) of faultline slipped (or ruptured) about 15 m (50 ft) along the subduction zone where the India Plate slides (or subducts) under the overriding Burma Plate (Eurasian Plate). The earthquake triggered a series of devastating tsunami along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing nearly 230,000 people in eleven countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 30 meters (100 feet) high. Coastal locations in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand suffered most.

Earthquake strikes northeast tip of Indonesia's Sulawesi Island (11/2/09)-geological background

A strong earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter struck off the northeast tip of Sulawesi island Indonesia. Indonesia -a country of over 230 million people-suffers frequent earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire. The Ring of Fire has 452 volcanoes and is home to over 75% of the world’s active and dormant volcanoes. The epicenter was located about 320 kilometers north-northeast of the town of Manado, the US Geological Survey said.

Northeastern Indonesia is characterized by complex tectonics in which motions of numerous small plates are accommodating large-scale convergence between the Philippine Sea and Sunda plates. In the region of today's earthquake, the Philippine Sea plate moves west-northwest with respect to the Sunda plate at a velocity of about 62 mm/year. Locally, arc-arc collision is occurring between the Sangihe and Halmahera micro plates, wedging between them the Molucca Sea micro plate, which subducts beneath both (i.e. to the east and west) and forms an inverted-U-shaped seismic zone. Seismicity within the Molucca Sea plate is active to depths of approximately 260 km to the east and 400 km to the west. The tectonic setting of this region is unique in that it is the only global example of an active arc-arc collision consuming an oceanic basin via subduction in two directions.
The earthquake occurred approximately 30 km off the western coast of the Pulau Salebabu (Indonesia) in an area that has seen large earthquakes in the past. Since 1986, there have been two earthquakes with magnitude greater than 7 in this region.(USGS)

UN Climate Conference fudge

The United Nations climate conference in Bali, Indonesia ended with a compromise deal to move forward on negotiating a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. No specific targets are included in the "roadmap" document. In reality this is a fudge which commits countries to negotiate. Under the deal it is proposed that a new treaty should be negotiated by 2009 to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The portents for a new treaty are not good. Watery promises from China and India to tackle CO2 emissions mean little. At the conference China and India emphasized their determination to pursue aggressive economic development policies. Coal will continue to play a major role in power generation in India, China and Russia and the US. Yet all the emphasis is on the US as the villain of the peace. China appears to have overtaken the U.S. as the world's largest total emitter of CO2 because of its huge population, strong economic growth and heavy dependence on coal to generate electricity. China creates 25% of the worlds CO2.

Any new treaty- without binding commitments from China , Russia, India and Japan- is practically worthless.
Such a treaty must address the destruction of the Amazonian Rain forests. The EU must alter its hypocritical stance whereby it imports beef produced on ranches carved out of the rain forests. Perhaps Al Gore will now savage Chinese environmental policy. This is unlikely to happen as Gore is more interested in embarrassing the Bush administration.

Al Gore and Global Warming Hypocrisy

Negotiations are deadlocked at the UN conference on global warming being held in NUSA DUA, Indonesia. At the conference Al Gore told delegates in a speech that “My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali.” “Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now,” Mr. Gore said to loud applause. “You must anticipate that.” Gore is playing domestic US politics. He cannot resist a swipe at Bush and the Republican Party.

Gores approach is blinkered and hypocritical. China’s representative Su Wei said that there was absolutely no reason for China to do anything about its C02 emissions. He argued that China was a poor country with a large population and needed more time to develop economically. In essence the Chinese have told Al Gore to get stuffed. They realize that he is a wimp. The Russians and Indians are no more accommodating. If Gore were consistent he would have launched blistering attacks on China, India and Russia.

The EU is apparently unhappy with the US approach also and has threatened to boycott separate talks proposed by the Bush administration in Hawaii next month.This is a fine example of EU hypocrisy. The EU favours large scale importation of beef from Brazil. Expanding cattle herds in Brazil contribute to global warming. The Methane level increases. There has been large scale burning of Amazonian rain forests to make way for cattle ranches supplying the EU market. This increases CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Germany imports Russian gas. It cynically turns a blind eye to Russian excesses on the environment. At the EU conference it is a case of the kettle calling the pot black.