Hi Penny, thanks for the comments. Yes, it is appalling that critical thinking is so often lacking. Which explains not only the easy acceptance of that bogus article, but also the acceptance of the demagogues you and I listed.

But though you're right that so often in discussions of supposed increases in earthquake activity, improved monitoring is the explanation, I don't think that's the case here. That explanation would apply to an increase in numbers of earthquakes, but here the data are concerned with total energy released. As John Vidale's and Brian's later post make clear, this energy is overwhelmingly due to a few high-magnitude quakes which were easily detected by the instruments in existence at the beginning of the period in question.

Mike Williams