Can someone help me? Is the number of earthquakes in the world increasing or not?

Geophisicists from the USGS say NO:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/03/08/DI2010030802570.html

The Institute for Creation Research says NO:
http://www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_sa_r06/

As someone who posted a reply here said, earthquake activity on a global basis may be “average” but on a regional basis it appears to not be “average”. He refers to a LA Times article:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/20...ter-rumors.html

After analyzing the data, what do you think about this?

The last link didn't go anywhere. What would it mean to say that on a regional basis it does not appear to be "average"? Of course if you look at things on a regional basis, you'll find anomalies. That always happens.

For example, if you look at global temperatures, you'll find regions where areas are warmer than usual, or colder than usual; wetter than usual, or dryer than usual, etc. Similarly you'll see areas with more earthquakes than usual, and others with less, even if earthquakes as a whole remain the same throughout the world, so it would be interesting to know that this means.

It is reasonable to assume that the USGS would know. Also, Jesus words do not require or foresee an increase in earthquake frequency. Possibly they foretell the increased knowledge about the earthquakes that the interview in washington post tells about. The frequency of reports of earthquakes has been increasing.

I've tried to correct the link. Try it now. The article speaks about a great increase in earthquakes in California this year. The article says:

We can see here that this year has been atypical in earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 to 7.9.
Also 2007 was atypical in all magnitudes.

A great increase in California earthquakes means nothing (unless you happen to be of the mind that only America counts as far as prophecy is concerned) when the world average is not changing. Also, a list of 10 samples is much to small to say anything about "atpyical".

My impression is that what Hal Lindsey and others say is completely inaccurate, but that there has been a slight but steady trend upwards in the last two decades, as the following graph shows:

Along the y-axis is the average number of earthquakes of magnitude at or above 6.0 globally per year as monitored by the USGS, and along the x-axis are the years 1980 to 2009. The line is the 10-year rolling average of such earthquakes.

Some may point out that this is a consequence of greater monitoring, but it might equally be pointed out that better detection makes a difference only for small quakes.

And the explanation given by the USGS spokesperson that the apparent increase is based in a huge increase in measurement accuracy during those 30 years?
The detection 30 years ago of >=6.0 earthquakes in populated areas is of course unchanged, but was it equally well monitored in uninhabited areas back then?

Today a sysmometer located in any country can detect >=6.0 earthquakes anywhere in the world. Probably sysmometers were less sensitive 30 years ago, but very probably an earthquake which occurred in an uninhabited area could at least be detected by the sysmometers located nearer it.

I would agree, that from the graph, it does seem apparent that there are more earthquakes the last 20 years than the first 10 years of the 30 year time period. One could even conclude that the number is increasing from the first 10 years. But, can any other conclusions be made?

Suppose the graph started around 1995 when it was 2000? Or even during the first 10 years or during the last 20 years separately. Conversely, consider the late 80s to the mid 90s. What would we be saying then? This is similar to global warming. If the earth was only 30 years old, there'd be a great concern. But the earth is over 6,000 years old for creationists and presents an even bigger problem for evolutionists. Is 30 years adequate to conclude anything about the earth in the grand scale of things? I would think they have data older than 1980. However, there are measurement and accuracy problems. So, since that's all the data we have, should we go with it and conclude things?

Consider if a new weather station was put into place this summer. If we look at the trend of the available data, we could conclude that in a few years, glaciers will be covering most of the continents. However, we would not conclude that because we know the earth is older than that and data/history exists, though we may not have it. If all you have is limited data, you cannot conclude very much.

So, is the number of earthquakes increasing? I would say 30 years worth of data is not adequate to conclude that. But, how many? How accurate? Is this a question that is impossible to answer?