Huge Rise in Earthquakes

The sources used are the Centennial Catalog that purports to be a complete record for the 1965 to 2001 for earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 5.5 and before that till 1930 for earthquakes greater than 6.5 . The missing data after 2001 I obtained from the NEIC (PDE) database that is current from 1973 to the present for all earthquakes. Lets have a look at the results for all earthquakes with a magnitude > 5.0.

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 Notice carefully the huge explosion in the number of earthquakes after the year 2000. Remember that the data after 2001 comes from the NEIC database and it shows an almost linear increase from 2002 to 2007. While 2008 and 2009 ahave come down from the 2007 peak they are still well above the average for this decade. This is not due to having better seismographs each year they have been using essentially the same seismographs since the 1980’s.

Maybe you want to argue that since the Centennial database from where the pre2001 data comes from does not go down to a magnitude of 5.0 that somehow the chart above is invalid. So lets look at just those earthquakes with magnitude 6.0 to 6.9  that have been accurately detected and measured since 1965. What do we find? Another almost linear increase, again more than tripling the incidence since then.  What year was it when they improved those instruments?

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Here is another chart of the same period this time including all earthquakes greater than 6.0.

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Of course geologists love to tell us that the number of magnitude 7 and up earthquakes stays the same or even has been going down. Maybe but what about earthquakes greater than 8.0? As you can see from the following chart plotted over five year periods we can again see that they have also doubled. You can’t argue our ability to detect  magnitude 8.0 earthquakes that are equivalent to a 1000 megaton nuclear explosion or greater is better now than forty years ago. The only thing that has changed in the last forty years is the ability to accurately localise the earthquakes in 3D space; latitude, longitude and depth.

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So there you have it a fairly consistent rise in the number of earthquakes of almost every magnitude since about 1965. We now have three times as many earthquakes as there were thirty years ago. Can this be explained away as the official sources attempt to do by saying that its because the population has increased, or that it only seems like it because earthquake awareness is a psychological phenomenon? My favourite has to be that it is because the instruments were improved 30 years ago, that some how that has made the number of earthquakes go up almost every year since then. Perhaps its because 80 years ago there were only 350 seismographs each one of which could detect an earthquake almost anywhere in the world and now because there are 4000 seismographs the number of earthquakes have gone up to keep pace! Even if an angel came down from heaven many would still be bind to see and deaf to hear the evidence of their own sensors.