An earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale has hit Chile killing at least 82 people. Tsunami warnings have been issued all across the Pacific Ocean.

Very scary! Wasn't the quake in Haiti 8.0 on the Richter scale? Either way, the last thing any of them need is more tragedy in the form of a Tsunami.

Photos of some of the damage from the Big Picture. Yikes.

No, the Haiti quake was "only" 7.0, or approximately the same size as the Northridge, CA quake in 1994 and the Loma Prieta quake in 1989. 8.8 is truly massive. Quakes over 8.0 only happen a handful of times a decade around the world.

How annoying was it watching any amount of footage of the "tsunami" hitting Hawaii? I loved the footage of the surfers. It only made me wish I was there. Shame on CNN and other "news" sources hoping for chaos in Hawaii.

Death toll from Chile earthquake now up to 700.

I don't think they were hoping for it. There were official warnings out. The people had to take precautions and the media has to cover it, to get the information out. Predicting the size and scope of a tsunami is far from an exact science -- even more difficult than hurricanes or blizzards. Better to be grateful that a truly damaging and deadly tsunami didn't happen than to ignore the warnings and have a catastrophe occur.

Order of news coverage in Canada

Olympics 95%

Hawaii Tsunami 3 %

Chile Earthquake 1%*

Other 1%*

This analysis contains an ~ 1% margin of error.

This is turning into the year of the earthquake. Taiwan just had a 6.4 earthquake. Watch out you people who live in earthquake zones. Make sure you have provisions in your homes.

This site concerning earthquake frequency has a chart of trend which suggests that there has been a steady increase of events of magnitude 7 or above from 1973 to 2006, supposedly based on data from the USGS, wikipedia, and the personal website of an apparent seismology enthusiast.

There is a chart on the USGS site - scroll down to the bottom one on this page - which shows that if all recorded quakes are included then the upward trend is less apparent.

Discerning any pattern would almost certainly generate a political and religious debate that would make the global warming kerfuffle seem like a tea party (not the political one which I would capitalize as "Tea Party", though I suspect they would vehemently take one side or the other of the issue regardless of professional bona fides or whether they had studied the facts objectively).

It would be useful to learn some earthquake facts to better interpret what the data mean. I find numbers "12" and "13" to be particularly interesting because the total number of detectable earthquakes is only an estimate and most of the damage is often secondary.