Click image for the story. h/t to WUWT reader “Eric”.
I’m always amazed at the lack of historical perspective some people have related to natural disasters. It’s doubly amazing when reporters who work in newspapers, who have huge archive resources at their disposal, don’t even bother to look. Here’s some excerpts from the story:
“There is certainly some literature that talks about the increased occurrence of volcanic eruptions and the removing of load from the crust by deglaciation,” said Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta. “It changes the stress load in the crust and maybe it opens up routes for lava to come to the surface.
“It is conceivable that there would be some increase in earthquake activity during periods of rapid changes on the Earth’s crust.”
Other scientists, however, believe that tectonic movements similar to the one that caused the Japanese quake are too deep in the Earth to be affected by the pressure releases caused by glacier melt.
…
Some experts claim that jump can be explained by the increased number of seismograph stations — more than 8,000 now, up from 350 in 1931 — allowing scientists to pinpoint earthquakes that would otherwise have been missed.
But this does not explain the recent increase in major earthquakes, which are defined as above 6 on the Richter magnitude scale. Japan’s earthquake was a 9.
Scientists have been tracking these powerful quakes for well over a century and it’s unlikely that they have missed any during at least the last 60 years.
According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey there were 1,085 major earthquakes in the 1980s. This increased in the 1990s by about 50 per cent to 1,492 and to 1,611 from 2000 to 2009. Last year, and up to and including the Japanese quake, there were 247 major earthquakes.
There has been also a noticeable increase in the sort of extreme quakes that hit Japan. In the 1980s, there were four mega-quakes, six in the 1990s and 13 in the last decade. So far this decade we have had two. This increase, however, could be temporary.
======================================================
A couple of faults in the argument, from the NYT, 1879:
As many as 200,000 people died in the 1855 quake.
And again in 1896:
and also….1923
h/t to Steve Goddard, who has been doing a lot of historical research here: http://news.google.com/newspapers
You forgot the part where it was conservative firebrands that actually accused scientists of blaming global warming for the earthquakes in Japan. They manufactured an issue and statement that just wasn’t there to beat environmentalists over the head with it. All they were saying is that isostatic adjustment can lead to increased seismic activity, which is possible. I’m not sure how any of your recent historical information applies to the pretty well understood process of isostatic rebound.
Never question a liberal arts or media majors religion, its all they have as they have yet to develope reasoning ability.Talking points, must have talking points…..Canadian education system is a shining example of nanny state education, please note cousins to the south, this is where federal run education will take you, save your children, defund the state.
Of course global warming is causing these earthquakes! It’s obvious. Just the Chile and Alaska ones were caused by global cooling. When the earth heats up it expands and that causes earthquakes and when it cools down it contracts and causes earthquakes and we humans are to blame but we can pay penance in the form of a carbon tax and all feel good again. /sarc
I’m embarrassed to be on the same planet as those people much less the same city. God help us all.
Not to speak about the even more tenuous claims that the increase in solar activity causes mega-earthquakes.
TreeHugger did a similar article, where they tried to link climate change and tsunamis. I wrote about it here:
http://climatequotes.com/2011/03/12/why-i-dismiss-environmentalists-a-close-reading-of-the-treehugger-tsunami-article/
Typical environmental ‘journalism’.
Japan is a land of Earthquakes and Tsunamis. Geez ,folks, let’s have a bit of perspective
Warmists think history began 30 years ago…
My guess is that if one side or section of the ring of fire moves a lot (slips down, slips over, or slides), adjacent and opposite sides of a plate would respond to that movement at least in some domino fashion. When a plate slips up or down on one edge, or slides this way or that way against the edge of another plate, physical science theories relating to plate tectonics seems the place to go for the null hypothesis regarding the notion that global warming has any connection to swarms of earthquakes. The energy behind that movement, a calculable amount, is WAY, WAY, WAY more powerful than these other wild guesses.
I’m surpirsed they didn’t say that global warming causes an increase in atmospheric moisture with increased precipitation that “greases” the fault lines to slip, causing more earthquakes.
Quite so.
I am always amazed how people think something is new: there is nothing new under the sun.
Dr. Pielke Jr. has an excellent chart on this here:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/03/recent-big-earthquakes.html
Looks pretty random to me, but if you doubt your eyeballing no doubt with Matlab and the rest to torture the data you can probably get some sort of correlation to something: if I could be bothered I would try shipping movements. I am sure Smokey would prefer pirates. Whatever.
Kindest Regards
ej
Isostatic adjustment from what exactly?
If the warmistas are really going to blame isostatic rebound as a reason behind the Japan quake, then I’ll be the first person to blame the Greenies for their insistence on such schemes as Geothermal heat extraction which is far more likely to cause rumblings from below.
Everything is blamed on global warming or whatever the phrase of the day is. ‘Hoomans’ are silly. This blue marble just proved it.
Oh well.. that’s life.
Par for the course when it comes to the AGW ideologists. Soon, everything will be caused by ‘man-made global warming,’ which is mathematically impossible to ever occur on Earth.
Once again, the failure of the mainstream media and AGW ideologists to look up – at the Sun – for it is there that they will find the answers. But, don’t hold your breath until AGW is nailed completely shut in the coffin in which it always belonged.
One of the largest earthquakes ever was off of the Washington coast on January 26, about 9 P. M. in 1700. An M 9.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1707/
When can we see a graph of this increase in earthquakes? In the shape of a hockey stick no doubt.
It’s my understanding that much of the glacier recession we’ve seen since the LIA occurred before 1950. If that’s the case, the worst of the rebounding should have occurred then, not 60 years later.
ej
I am not sure where you are getting the “conservative firebrands” from…I dont see any mention of it in the article. In fact the first 3 paragraphs set up the reporters agenda perfectly…What could possibly be causing all of these big quakes? Why, climate change, of course!
“Lubricating plates…” please…the Japan quake was located 1000’s of feet underwater, I dont think some glacial melt water is having any effect there.
Speaking as a college teacher, all I can say is that when it comes to Canadian education, it really is “worse than we thought.”
As a geologist and a amateur meteorologist, this article makes me want to cry , laugh & hurl , all at the same time. I mean – come on – where do I start? 10,000 years since the last melt down & we are just seeing the effects now ??? And using the title (global warming is synonymous with AGW in the public’s mind) to imply mankind has something to do with it …. And as correctly pointed out, where’s the historical perspective??? And has anyone actually related stress field changes to rebound & related those stress field changes to earthquakes & volcanic eruptions. Last time I checked, neither were predictable but it is suggested the cause is known. I am not convinced, to say the least.
When the Washington Naval Treaty was signed in 1923, the Imperial Japanese Navy had the four Amagi class battlecruisers planned and under construction. The terms of the treaty meant that none of these ships could be completed as designed, but the treaty allowed for a certain amount of this tonnage to be completed as aircraft carriers.
The Amagi and the Akagi were selected for this purpose, and both were a-building when the Great Kantō earthquake hit Tokyo on 1 September 1923. The hull of the Amagi was so badly damaged that it had to be declared a total loss. In its place, the incomplete Tosa-class battleship Kaga was constructed as an aircraft carrier, and together the Kaga and Akagi made up the First Carrier Division of the Kido Butai (the Mobile Force carrying the 1st Air Fleet in the strike on Pearl Harbor).
The international response to the Kantō earthquake in 1923 was immediate and unprecedented, particularly on the part of both the U.S. government and the American people.
And it should surprise nobody that in 1923 the Asiatic Fleet – the predecessor of today’s U.S. Seventh Fleet – figured swiftly in the response to that devastating loss of life suffered by the Japanese people.
Here we go again. Blame the public school. What if it’s the adults who become stupid AFTER they grow up????? I know of more than one person who was pretty smart all through school and then got really stupid as an adult.
Remember, children spend their time constantly learning new things (and questioning adults). Adults spend their time telling others what they know, and usually don’t spend much time questioning it.
So for all those folks who think they know what public school teachers are telling their students, my instruction to you, as a teacher, is to question that assumption. Or else you paint yourself with the same color you are slopping on others.
I’m from Calgary and trust me, there is probably NO city in the western hemisphere where the people are LESS bought into global warming alarmism. The major industry is oil and gas and it’s the most small-c conservative city in Canada. I’m actually kind of shocked to see that article appear in the Herald.
There’s been an increase in moronic journalists and gullible readers, as well. Likely caused by Global Warming … and evil spirits.
Sure isostatic rebound can and will change stress in the upper crust leading to possible earthquakes when huge inlandsis are disappearing as per Martin Sharp correct statement. However, a generalization of this supposed to blame the regional warmings -remember there are zones cooling too- is simply preposterous. Moreover, one would imagine that this would concern intraplate quakes where ice sheets are located as opposed to plate boundary quakes that are related to plate cinematic and internal processes. Like it or not, molten rock convection occurs in the Mantle and drives plate tectonic regardless of the IPCC…
The following link shows that virtually all of the 16 strongest magnitude quakes have been located around the Pacific since 1900. This distribution and the fact that the more powerful the quake, the least often it will happen, suggest that none of these are linked to a “Global Warming 0.7C surface temperature according to GHCN data” induced isostatic rebound but simply are due to the internal dynamics of the planet. One would have to worry about seasonal quakes between summer and winter temperatures…
Japan statistical facts also make a moquery of this latest alarmism:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usc0001xgp/#summary
“The Japan Trench subduction zone has hosted nine events of magnitude 7 or greater since 1973. The largest of these, a M 7.8 earthquake approximately 260 km to the north of the March 11 epicenter, caused 3 fatalities and almost 700 injuries in December 1994. In June of 1978, a M 7.7 earthquake 35 km to the southwest of the March 11 epicenter caused 22 fatalities and over 400 injuries. Large offshore earthquakes have occurred in the same subduction zone in 1611, 1896 and 1933 that each produced devastating tsunami waves on the Sanriku coast of Pacific NE Japan. That coastline is particularly vulnerable to tsunami waves because it has many deep coastal embayments that amplify tsunami waves and cause great wave inundations. The M 7.6 subduction earthquake of 1896 created tsunami waves as high 38 m and a reported death toll of 22,000. The M 8.6 earthquake of March 2, 1933 produced tsunami waves as high as 29 m on the Sanriku coast and caused more than 3000 fatalities.
The March 11, 2011 earthquake was an infrequent catastrophe. It far surpassed other earthquakes in the southern Japan Trench of the 20th century, none of which attained M8. A predecessor may have occurred on July 13, 869, when the Sendai area was swept by a large tsunami that Japanese scientists have identified from written records and a sand sheet. ”
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/10_largest_world.php
(sarc on) Geez, 1611 is in the middle of the LIA…
And finally since runaway Global warming is happening we all know the upper crust is also melting and becoming much less crusty, therefore a warming globe should see much less quakes since the crust is becoming less brittle… (sarc off).
The stoopid. It just never quits.
Errr,
The “increase in major earthquakes (above 6 on the Richter scale)” couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that the actual Richter scale only goes up to 7 could it? The Richter scale was only reasonably accurate to 6.8 then became meaningless.
Since 1979 seismic activity has actually been measured on the Moment Magnitude Scale (MW) and expressed as MW units, and goes to a maximum of 10.
True, the two scales are roughly equivalent (but only up to 7 obviously), but that is no good reason for the press to go saying “X on the Richter scale” when it has been defunct for 32 years now.
I think you are missing their point, earthquakes are increasing in numbers over the last few decades…. wait a second, thinking, thinking, no…YES…. hey couldn’t the increase in earthquakes over the past few decades explain the rise in global temperatures?
Good grief! I’m seldom ashamed to say I’m a geologist.
The mere fact that they can find people form my profession to even speculate on such a connection is downright embarrassing.
At least I passed graduate level earthquake seismology. I doubt they can claim the same.
Didn’t the glaciers across North America like recede back when we were rubbing sticks together and so this “rebound” has been going on for like, um, 1000’s of years? I’m not knowledgeable about such things. Maybe the good folks can clue me in. Thanks!
About BC 5200, past Earth’s 1,500-year impact-induced Younger Dryas “cold shock” that definitively ended the last Ice Age, isostatic forces resulting from melting Scandinavian glaciers precipitated an earthquake that sent a huge tsunami down the English Channel, eastward through the Mediterranean, then towering up the Dardanelles to Marmara where it breached the sill protecting the mile-deep Euxine Basin.
The resulting Black Sea Flood filled the entire Euxine in no more than forty days, scattering immemorial populations which had taken refuge there for thirty thousand years. Ethnographic, genomic, linguistic evidence agrees that the subsequent diaspora spread Indo-European cultures from Mesopotamia and Egypt east to the Indus Valley, northwest to Caucasus regions and southern Scandinavia.
So climate shifts indeed may entail regional catastrophe. But AGW Global Warming is a fool’s hypothesis, lacking any demonstrable scientific rationale whatever. Cataclysms even on massive Black Sea scales are brute-force natural phenomena, and that is all.
Given that the plates are not homogenous, nor smooth nor oiled, it is not surprising that as they move relative to one another, frictional forces will be generated of a totally random nature.
Data going back 60 or 100 years is meaningless in the geographical time scale and cannot show a trend. Can one imagine what forces were generated when there was the breakup of the continents and for example when the Himalayas were formed?
Whilst I cannot imagine that there is any merit in this wild speculation, has anyone who puts forward the proposal that it has something to do with the reduction of pressure caused by glacier melt checked to see the pattern of earthquakes and to what extent this involves plates affected by glacier melt. Unless there is at least a first blush correlation, it is difficult to take such suggestion with any degree of seriousness.
It’s fine to ask this question as long as the answer you come up with is “no”, but the premise of the question is silly.
I hope that someone has written to the author pointing out that she really made a fool of herself here.
While the crust may suffer from problems of weight of tremendous glacial ice sheets, I don’t think there were any at the location of this particular earthquake.. and I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how the plate that Greenland sits on perturbs the pacific plate so much as to cause this kind of problem..
*sigh* I just know the aliens above watching all this are just laughing their asses off. The ad rates they must charge for this must see TV have to be phenomenal..
I would be pretty skeptical of anyone who claimed to have established a link between global warming and increased earthquakes, but framed less generally and more specifically, there could be legitimate questions asked here.
Setting aside for the moment the contentious question of whether and how much net land-based glacier melting has actually occurred in the past few decades, *assuming* there has been x amount of glacier melting in a particular location, how much isostatic rebound is estimated to have occurred, to what depth does such rebound reach, and what stresses are placed on the adjacent plates as a result? Lots of open questions to be sure and my sense is that we don’t have anywhere near enough data to draw any conclusions yet, but these are legitimate things to study.
It is of course an entirely separate question whether man’s activities have had any meaningful influence on the assumed glacier melt in recent decades, and even if so, whether there is anything to be done about it. If the melting trend is due to natural causes, or if man’s influence is swamped by natural causes, then there is nothing to be done about it. The best course of action may be to adapt by continuing and extending the already-existing trend of building more earthquake-resistant structures and, please, if you are located right next to the sea, put some of the key safety components in a place where they can’t become inoperative just by getting flooded.
Where did the matter that the glaciers consist of go to? I thought matter could not be created or destroyed? Obviously the weight is still present on the crust, just shifted from the form of snow and ice, to water and its in the sea.
I believe we need to sacrifice quite a few virgins into volcanoes so as to stop this. These AGW’s desperately need to know at least a little something about human nature but I’m not optimistic.
And those weren’t the Great Ansei Earthquakes of 1854 and 1855. Two 8.4s and one 6.9. The Ansei Edo, the 6.9, was DIRECTLY under the city of Edo. Today the town is known as “Tokyo.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansei_Great_Earthquakes
“It is conceivable that there would be some increase in earthquake activity during periods of rapid changes on the Earth’s crust.”
It is conceivable that melting glaciers do as claimed. Canada must have been shaking steady as the Continental Ice Sheets receded.
It is also conceivable that masturbation causes earthquakes.
Really, just about anything is “conceivable.
This story is seriously pathetic. How do these ‘journalist’ find such ‘experts’ to say what they want to hear to make up their stories?
Provenance once again proves that nature dishes out disasters irregardless of current technological sophistication or lack thereof.
Kudos to you, Steve, for getting out ahead of the curveball, for as we have been reminded of by the dooming of the drums…
Global Warming causes everything….. NOT.
I think our opponents have serious issues with scale, they forgot all about the poor old Kiwi’s as well in that piece of rubbish article.
Eric Anderson says:
March 15, 2011 at 9:14 pm
It would seem logical to assume that Global Warming would cause the crust to become more plastic, whereas Global Cooling would cause it to contract and become more brittle, if in fact Warming and Cooling of the crust is accomplished by Climate.
Hey, didn’t we just witness the SSTs go from anomalously warm to cool in Japan the past 2 weeks?
Send $$$ and I will look into it.
possibly Cosmic Rays
Yesterday a CCTV interviewer/anchor asked an “expert” on earthquakes if there was a connection between the earthquakes and tsunami in the Ring of Fire and “human interaction with the environment”
Mercifully the expert simply ignored this utter stupidity and talked past her.
I follow a few geology and volcanic oriented blogs. Whenever something interesting happens, a person will show up an start harping “doom.” What doesn’t help is when a “respectable” news outlet runs stock footage of an eruption to go along with a report that a particular volcano had an eruption. Then they try to equate the new eruption with the earthquake. Too bad that particular volcano had sprung back to life several weeks ago. Through all the reading, the sifting through B/S, and the doom… one thing has become pretty clear. The Japanese don’t sweat Mt Fuji very much. They do sweat a repeat of the Tōkai quake. It’s like… beat into them from kindergarten onwards.
Something that weighs that heavy in the social fabric has to have been pretty significant. Seeing as it happened in 1854, I don’t think it fits the global warming mantra.
I gave up reading the Calgary Herald many years ago. No regrets.
I don’t think our idiots are any worse overall than any other countries idiots.
While we are home (ugh!) to David Suziki. And GreenPeace was started here in Vancouver. We also can claim Steve McIntrye and Ross McKitrick. So hopefully things even out in the end.
@bhr – 8:55
I’m finding that the Herald is becoming more and more of a rag of late – carrying water for the warmists – in spite of the truth of your assessment of the general view of AGW within Calgary
I haven’t noticed too many glaciers extending off the east coast of Japan disappearing recently. But there again, I have not been keeping an eye on that!
I hope Calgary, where there are more geologists per square foot than any place on earth, will hammer the Calgary Herald for such rubbish
Everyone knows CO2 causes quakes. When very large amounts of liquid CO2 are pumped down deep boreholes quakes happen. ;-p pg
removing of load from the crust by deglaciation,” said Martin Sharp
Melting glaciers in Indonesia?
Doug says:
March 15, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Good grief! I’m seldom ashamed to say I’m a geologist.
The mere fact that they can find people from my profession to even speculate on such a connection is downright embarrassing.
At least I passed graduate level earthquake seismology. I doubt they can claim the same.
Anyone who passed crayons at kindergarten would be embarrassed.
Obviously it’s the lack of human sacrifice that causes everything bad. We need more stone knives ripping out entrails on the temple altars.
Do we have a “consensus “yet?
No problem until we do 🙂
TRM says:
March 15, 2011 at 8:08 pm
“Of course global warming is causing these earthquakes! It’s obvious. Just the Chile and Alaska ones were caused by global cooling. When the earth heats up it expands and that causes earthquakes and when it cools down it contracts and causes earthquakes and we humans are to blame but we can pay penance in the form of a carbon tax and all feel good again.”
He he, yes, and, you forgot;
We need ONE strong leader we can follow . ( A watermellon )
We need ONE country.
We need ONE people.
/sarc off
I didn’t want to say that it would happen, but of course is did. This is really sad and disappointing. Anyone who would speak insane BS like this should be put on the no-trust list for life.
What, +0.7 degree causes earthquakes, you have to be joking.
Hardly worth a post.
Sorry to be cynical but the journalist probably attracted a few more eyeballs and thus helped increase advertising revenue.
WOW! If the ice cubes in my drink melt, that will make my glass heavier. Now THIS is science!
Many things are theoretically possible. Global warming could possibly cause earthquakes in the same way a butterfly can cause a tornado. Possible yes. Credible no. A better question is whether anthropogenic global warming can end the ice age. That’s not just possible it’s credible. Maybe not likely but at least credible.
Quote from NASA’s paper:
There is strong evidence of electromagnetic processes responsible for earthquake triggering, that we study extensively. We will focus here on one correlation between power in solar wind compressional fluctuations and power in magnetospheric pulsations and ground H component fluctuations…..The connection of earthquake activity to possible solar or solar wind drivers is not well understood; many authors have attempted correlations in the past with mixed results.
Two weeks ago I started daily observation of available data. Results and link to the above paper are here :
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
rbateman says:
March 15, 2011 at 9:35 pm
“Provenance once again proves that nature dishes out disasters [snip]regardless of current technological sophistication or lack thereof.
Kudos to you, Steve, for getting out ahead of the curveball, for as we have been reminded of by the dooming of the drums…
Global Warming causes everything….. NOT.”
Agreed… but it’s worse than we thought!
The real intent of this, and other assorted media pseudo-science clap-trap, is to push the meme that mankind is responsible for EVERYTHING bad which happens on our beautiful plant, directly or not.
In the meantime, a quick look through the history books show that Earth has had a multitude of catastrophes before mankind had even evolved. It is a stupid meme suitable only for those without even a smidgen or critical reasoning.
Hello All
just to give my opinion this really is the case. One very important perspective that has not been noticed in this is the historical SO4. So when we examine this topic, we realize that S04 concentration varies with CO2 concentration. As the only SO4 source is defacto crustal activity, i.e. vulcanic activity, we can qualitatively immediately make the conclusion:
higher temperature ->
higher amouth of biomass (higher CO2) ->
less ice/glaciers and sea current changes ->
increased crustal activity ->
more vulcanoes ->
higher SO4
As higher crustal activity also means more earth quakes, this relation is quite clear. And it is also visible in recent data already, so it is easy to see that periods are different: 1900 -> 1940, 1940 -> 1970, 1970 – 2000.
But the case is not always directly related, but some areas also show inverse relation. If you are interested to see more samples, please check pages from 69 to 86.
http://climatecompass.com/page9.php
or direct download link:
http://climatecompass.com/page4.php
Br Markku
Maybe the relationship is the other way round, the increasing number of earthquakes around the world is what is causing the global warming…… so global warming is due to nature not humans, publish that tabloid papers!!!
It’s not surprising that a Montreal newspaper would publish this. There has been a lot of isostatic rebound in that region since the last glaciation — nearly 200 meters. That’s pretty impressive when you think about it. And it is probably still going on albeit not too quickly. A magnitude 5.0 earthquake in the Montreal/Ottawa area last year was attributed to isostatic rebound.
The climate change that might have a causal relationship to the quake in the St Lawrence valley took place 12000 years ago (give or take).
Last Friday’s Japanese earthquake was almost certainly a slip along a subduction zone located East of the Japanese Island Arc where the Pacific Plate is descending under,of all things, an isolated arm of the North American Plate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plates_tect2_en.svg . It’s no more related to climate than it is to the revolution in Libya.
Is not an equally valid correlation that increased incidence of earthquakes cause global climate change?
Since 1979 seismic activity has actually been measured on the Moment Magnitude Scale (MW) and expressed as MW units, and goes to a maximum of 10.
We at the ST Institute of Earth Science have developed a new measure of seismic activity that goes to a maximum of 11.
Put yourself in their position. You have to come up with a sensational story everyday of the week. Half the time they just make it up – “scientists are now saying” – ” many scientist now agree” etc etc Its all just made up hogwash.
The good old ‘Australian’ newspaper at least was lamenting the the other day the comment from a journo on the Oz ABC radio that ” the earth must be sending us a message” or words to that effect. It’s pathetic.
Now we know why the “Team” was so keen on getting rid of the LIA. They knew that when a major earthquake hit somewhere, they were going to need some way of blaming AGW. It was going to be difficult explaining the 1755 Lisbon earthquake otherwise. It couldn’t have been in the middle of a non-existent cold period no, could it. /sarc
All I can say to the global warming movement go and smoke another cone you will wake up one day
FFS!
All these earthquakes are happening around the Ring of Fire. There’s no ice masses close enough to possibly be able to influence the crust there.
It´s not true that have increased seismic magnitude, if you look at the USGS data…
How about earthquakes causing global warming? (just joking) It seems to me that the “typhoon” mentioned in one of the clippings refers actually to a tsunami, a word that would have been virtually unknown in the West at the time.
Isostatic adjustment as cause of changing stress in the crust presumes that the continental ice mass is changing. Changes to the Artic sea ice wouldn’t make any difference for the well-known reasons. In the Northern Hemisphere only Greenland has an ice shield. As far as I know there have been no large changes in its thickness over the last half century. Reported changes are of order 1-10 meters on an ice depth of 1-3 km, hence at most at the 1% level, probably much less.
I am slightly reluctant to add to this round of silliness but if there is any connection between ice and earthquakes would you not look to Antarctica? Over the recent period when major earthquakes have increased there has been an increase in ice thickness over millions of square kilometres and according to the research reported last week it is still going on but from the bottom up. The resultant increase in pressure must dwarf any localised glacier melting that has taken place and because it is focused in one geographical area it might just have the power to move the tectonic plates. It is open sea between Antarctica and New Zealand and Japan so this might have been going on for some time without being noticed. I am not a geologist and I am happy to be told this is rubbish but since talking rubbish is obviously the in thing I did not want to be left out.
It must be the extra weight of all that extra CO2 weighing down the tectonic plates that causes these earthquakes. There are thousands of gigatons of it!
/sarc off!
Lake Taupo, in New Zealand’s North Island, is that country’s largest lake. It was created in c186AD as the result of a large volcanic eruption, the red skies from which were recorded by European and Chinese historians. The lake is the centre of an active volcanic region, with volcanos and boiling mud pools all doing their thing. Kiwis are accustomed to the region, but whenever I drive past the lake and see the snow-capped volcanoes in the distance (which takes quite some travelling time) I am always reminded of the incredible power of nature and how puny and insignificant Man is. The drive through that eerily beautiful landscape gets the relative power and importance of Man and the natural world into a fairly healthy perspective; the idea of AGW becomes even more ridiculous there.
I think the poor lass needs to get out a little bit more than she does at present! It’s called living in the real world! Isn’t there some charity you guys can put her in touch with to help? Sarc off.
[it was written by a guy . . William Marsden]
“According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey there were 1,085 major earthquakes in the 1980s. This increased in the 1990s by about 50 per cent to 1,492 and to 1,611 from 2000 to 2009. Last year, and up to and including the Japanese quake, there were 247 major earthquakes.”
There are less Mag 7.0+ events worldwide from 2000-2009 than there were from 1990-1999:
http://neic.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/epic/epic.cgi?SEARCHMETHOD=1&FILEFORMAT=4&SEARCHRANGE=HH&SYEAR=&SMONTH=&SDAY=&EYEAR=&EMONTH=&EDAY=&LMAG=7.0&UMAG=9.9&NDEP1=&NDEP2=&IO1=&IO2=&CLAT=0.0&CLON=0.0&CRAD=0.0&SUBMIT=Submit+Search
Great quakes (8.0+) were massively higher in the decades 1900-1909 and 1910-1919:
http://neic.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/epic/epic.cgi?SEARCHMETHOD=1&FILEFORMAT=4&SEARCHRANGE=NO&SYEAR=1900&SMONTH=01&SDAY=01&EYEAR=2011&EMONTH=03&EDAY=14&LMAG=8.0&UMAG=9.9&NDEP1=&NDEP2=&IO1=&IO2=&CLAT=0.0&CLON=0.0&CRAD=0.0&SUBMIT=Submit+Search
http://neic.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/epic/epic.cgi?SEARCHMETHOD=1&FILEFORMAT=4&SEARCHRANGE=HH&SYEAR=&SMONTH=&SDAY=&EYEAR=&EMONTH=&EDAY=&LMAG=8.0&UMAG=9.9&NDEP1=&NDEP2=&IO1=&IO2=&CLAT=0.0&CLON=0.0&CRAD=0.0&SUBMIT=Submit+Search
Lookit here, there were no catastrophes before humans came to be, and started messing with Mother Gaia!
Also – there are now far far too many of us, therefore it is conceivable that these many people are now annoying Mother Gaia.
You’ve only got to look at how many Japanese there are – right where the earthquakes happen!
So it is conceivable that their weight causes the earthquakes.
After all, there weren’t so many bad earthquakes and tsunamis when there were fewer people around, no?
Perhaps someone could make up a nice model, so we can be really frightened!
/ very heavy sarc – but I expect some idiot to come up with this idiotic hypothesis any time soon.
Maybe all that snow in the UK and USA has made the tectonic plates shrink a bit, thus causing problems near Japan and NZ . Yep, I definitely blame global warming !!
I know I have many shirts that have shruck over time from washing in cold water 😉
At a ever increased rate, mankind has also been drilling holes and sucking material out of the earth’s crust, could these actions contribute to an imbalance of stresses? How about deep rock, and even strip mining? Ever see how huge office towers are sited on boggy shorelines ie Hong Kong, New York etc. The engineering requirements are to drive massive piles deep into the bedrock. Ever see spliting of granite or marble(the old fashioned way), you get the idea? have a stone chip on one side of your windshield that develops into a xmas tree like fracture on the other side?
Ever hear of the “uncertainty principle” [ever heard about how thick the Earth’s crust is?]
vukcevic says:
March 15, 2011 at 11:44 pm
Quote from NASA’s paper:
There is strong evidence of electromagnetic processes responsible for earthquake triggering, that we study extensively.
There’s the keyword: triggering
How many faults are just sitting there, ready to snap at any given time?
It wouldn’t matter what change in pressure came from which source, as long as it was sufficient to start the quake.
To understand these quakes we have to look for patterns. Recent quakes have hit Haiti, Turkey, New Zealand, Chile, and Japan. Using their two letter abbreviations, that’s “ht, tk, nz, cl, jp” or “httknzcljp” which initially looked like something my cat would spell, but then I realized the mantle is trying to send us a message.
“hot thankz. Clujop?”
Mystery solved.
Rock is dumb. Rock hurts when it falls on you, and never ever says it’s sorry.
We humans marvel at its complexity of types and how much energy goes into moving it around. Rock doesn’t know whether it is magma or sediments, ready to go on a short journey. The same thing goes for that other rock orbiting the Earth, tugging and pulling. Ditto for the oceans sloshing about.
But somehow, this puny mass of bacterial fungus called the biosphere, which inhabits the narrowest of margins between the atmosphere and the rest of the planet, is supposed to drive the energies that shape the place.
Man, for all his accomplishments, is but dust on the surface, ready for wiping.
Terragenic Global Dwarfing.
This is clearly evidence how our media industry is shifting. In the past it was about the truth and explanation of events. Now it is about getting the readers attention to sell as many papers as possible.
This is not only done by showing closeup pictures of people suffering (dignity?) and revealing everything from nudity (and more) to private personal details of celebs.
Not to mention the creation of end-time scenarios like global greenhouse effects, climate change and now world wide earth quakes.
Why? To makes us to subscribe to more media sources, buy newspapers, create/get funding for these media and money hungry scientists?
The only problem is that this not science any more! It’s actually not pursuing the truth, everything is allowed – including lying and distortion!
But the forgot that people are not that dumb, they are still educated enough to know what is true and false and they can look up the truth.
That is a shot in their own foot for the media – once a bad reputation – never be trusted again!
I am continuously reevaluating whom I trust, I hope so do you!
It’s the self annointed intelligenzia who are believing the most stupid of superstitions.
The obvious thing to do would be to get the data on earthquakes, draw a graph and look for any trends. Quite possibly there is no trend.
Several days ago an earthquake expert on the BBC stated very clearly that there is no trend in the global incidence of earthquakes.
Chris
Steve Goddard has been doing a lot of historical weather disaster searches which puts todays ‘unprecedented’ nonsense into perspective. Here are a few of his posts on Tsunamis [click. Apparently the Japanese invented the word Tsunami and Tsunamis are a frequent occurrence in Japan with around 195 events on the record.
On previous threads some of us commenters quickly assumed that the media would soon speculate about global warming being the cause of the underwater earthquake and sadly events have shown us to be correct. Expect a paper in a few months dismissing this piece of speculation.
Here are some more Tsunami’s in Japan’s history.
10 worst tsunamis of all time [9 out of 10 prior to 1897]
Tsunamis and Japan – 1840 to 1974
Japan Tsunami History
I wish to inform the media about some other things ’caused’ by global warming. ;O) Never ask questions!
Plants move uphill
Plants move downhill
Sahel to get less rain
Sahel to get more rain
Sahel to get more or less rain!
San Francisco less foggy
San Francisco more foggy
Squids get smaller
Squids get larger
‘Stone age’ hunters may have triggered past global warming
‘Stone age’ hunters may have triggered past global cooling
The earthquakes are caused by the weighty comments RC has been throwing down the borehole.
More Earthquakes or less Earthquakes some “expert” will be found to “prove” its all down to Global Warming either way.
With the decline in traditional Christian religious belief the IPCC have stepped in to fill the void.
Al Gore is about to give a “sermon” touching on the issue, the faithful will need guidence.
Using the USGS data we have this.
i think is clear
Anthropogenic Continental Drift
We joked about it for years and the crazies finally delivered
Groping my way to a darkened room clutching a damp towel to ease my fevered brow.
I expect the IPCC is already consulting Green Peace, Fiends of the Earth and Earth First to cococt their ‘proof’ that AGW has led to ‘isostatic bounce’ and the earthquakes everywhere …
Or maybe it’s the Mayan Calendar thingy starting up…
The apparent increasing frequency looks REALLY weird to this geologist. Could it be explained by
a) replicated EQs from catalog to catalog (duplicates)
b) USGS change from Richter (amplitude) to Magnitude (moment) scale?
c) change in instrumentation
d) change in installation techniques (better coupling) or
e) change in areal of seismographs (say …. more in China or Russia)?
Pielke Jr’s chart (visually) doesn’t look to show the increases cited above…
Its weird.
I think the time is rapidly approaching when all Greenies and extreme Enviromentalists should be considered as enemies of the state. Their ability to manipulate the minds of the ignorant with so many assumptions, false scientific facts and lies that they are becoming equal to the worst of the Third Reich in the 1930s.
Anthony,
My study of expertise is circular motion. Huge area never explored due to physics restrictions of boundaries and laws that I am suppose to follow and stay in.
Without going into an extremely complex explanation from the creation of this planet and changing densities and speed factors.
The simple explanation is that with less atmospheric pressure exerting on the planet surface, centrifugal force under the planets crust exerts out. A balance of pressures and gravity in a physical mechanical format. This area is not understood by scientists as now engineering is involved with mechanics.
Recreation is not difficult to show compression and energy storage.
The truth is that this piece of journalistic claptrap is nothing more than a positive reinforcement sound-byte, or read-byte for the believer. It’s believer feed just as fire and brimstone was for the frightened congregation. Hallelujah.
Look for sun, it’s magnetic field or the sun-storms as possible reasons for earthquakes.
On the other hand it’s known, that Japan will disappear under the Asian continent.
“Krishna Gans says:
March 16, 2011 at 3:32 am
On the other hand it’s known, that Japan will disappear under the Asian continent.”
Not before “humanity” is eraszed from the surface.
Statistically speaking, half of all people are below average intelligence.
Tsunami is a Japanese word. Japan is also known as the “land of the tsunami”.
http://individual.utoronto.ca/fkrauss/tsunami/word.html :
“The term “Tsunami” comes from the Japanese word for harbor (tsu) and wave (nami). The origins of the word are not surprising given that the majority of tsunamis occur within the Pacific Ocean and vicinity of Japan.
The term is said to have Originated with Fishermen when, upon returning to port, found the area surrounding the harbour devastated, even though they had not been aware of anything out of the ordinary while fishing in the open ocean”
As an example of the poor understanding of the public on this issue, see this letter to the Daily Telegraph today:
“SIR – Boris Johnson (Comment, March 14) should not dismiss the idea that mankind’s extraction of coal and oil from the Earth’s crust could be affecting seismic activity.
Global warming due to increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere – resulting mainly from the combustion of oil and coal – is melting the ice caps. As the polar ice melts where it rests on the earth’s crust, the pressure is reduced. Magma previously held in check then fluidises in ways that can lead to volcanic eruptions.
Professor Bill McGuire, a vulcanologist at University College, London, says we can expect more seismic activity as a consequence of global warming.”
Whatever the melt state of the polar ice caps, no amount of melting of the Arctic ice cap would have any impact on the earth’s crust – Greenland perhaps, but not the ice cap.
The lint to the letter in the Telegraph is:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/8383860/Fukushima-crisis-in-Japan-is-no-reason-to-drop-our-nuclear-programme.html
I’ve heard everything from global warming, melting ice caps, nuclear tests in the 50s and 60s, and oil and gas extraction. [snip]
I guess the idea of continental sized sheets of the earth’s crust grinding against, shooting over, and running under each other isn’t dramatic enough. All you need to do is look at Japan’s geography to know that it is going to get hammered by volcanos, earthquakes and tsunamis… and of course it has for ages eternal.
Maybe the earth is getting ready for the massive pole shift of >50 degrees that will exterminate all life as we know it in 2012? :>)
The self-centered mind is limited only by its perspective.
Absolutely agree. If geomagnetic storms play any part, and that is by no way certain, at least they are predictable anything up to 48 hours in advance. Not much of a help if location of a fault gone ‘critical’ is not known, but every additional information is a step forward, and that is what science should be about.
I shall update info as often as possible and eventually it will become clearer one way or the other, or not at all.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKOv45euGxU&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0%5D
I’m beginning to believe that “fear of Global Warming” will become a legitimitate mental illness (at least a phobia http://phobialist.com/) that will appear in future editions of the DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).
It was a dark and stormy night.
I plugged the center of the road, pulled him over peaceable, and put it to him fast: “License and registration.”
“What’s the problem officer” he said, wallet digging – like he didn’t know.
“You know your gas mileage?” I asked.
“I think it’s about 10.” said the perp, starting to look scared.
There it was – planet death by warming – right in my face. So I ran him in, accessory to tsunami.
It was a bad business and the night was young.
ej: Just how many glaciers are in northern Japan, and how much have they melted?
“Several days ago an earthquake expert on the BBC stated very clearly that there is no trend in the global incidence of earthquakes.” Chris Wright
That would be more reassuring if I hadn’t spent the last four days listening to “experts” tell me that Japan’s nuclear power plants are blowing up, and it’s out of control, and we’re all gonna turn pink, bleed from all our orifices and die a slow, painful death.
I don’t know if the trend in earthquakes is significant. The numbers sort of look that way, but my mastery of statistics is no where near the level that would allow me to tell if that sequence is possibly due to chance. What I do know is that the vast majority of earth motion and probably virtually all large quakes are caused by the slow, inexorable motion of tectonic plates. And I don’t see how current human activity can significantly affect those motions.
Someday we might possibly be able to induce quakes on some faults and thereby convert a large earthquake into a number of smaller ones spread out over many years. But that day looks to be many decades away.
I blame George Bush.
Since time began, tidal activity has moved trillions of tonnes of the oceans water twice a day across the surface of the earth, a weight movement which might in itself affect what is happening beneath the earths surface. We cannot change that, and any variation of weight through a relatively minor ice melt, which has in itself being going on since time began, will therefore have no impact whatsoever on whats going on beneath the earths surface.
Yes it could all be due to global warming!!
(dodge some rotten eggs and boos)
Seriously there’s more to this than normal stupid alarmist rubbish and if anyone doubts me I did some calculations which you can see here:
http://scottishsceptic.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/global-warming-and-earthquakes/
It really is undeniable that a warming globe would not suffer from earthquakes … it just takes an awful long time.
” AGW causes earthquakes ”
Nah, it’s aliens
sarc/
ej:
“I’m not sure how any of your recent historical information applies to the pretty well understood process of isostatic rebound.”
And that, young Skywalker, is why you fail.
For the record, climate change also causes male pattern baldness and hemorrhoids.
IT”S THE PLATE TECTONICS PEOPLE!
http://www2.nau.edu/rcb7/globaltext2.html
Stupidity knows no bounds.
Once again, scientists are trying to explain something that is normal…
….by first describing it as abby-normal
“The resulting Black Sea Flood filled the entire Euxine in no more than forty days,…”
Where have I heard that 40 days stuff before?
Suppose that it is theoretically possible that glacial melt could trigger more earthquakes by adding marginally more weight to the ocean’s waters.
If that is true, then the people who study volcanos (by looking as volcanic ash layers) should be able to tell us, if not now then fairly soon, whether there was a very large increase in volcanos in the period about 13,000 years ago when the huge ice caps in North America and Scandanavia melted and raised sea levels about 300 feet (not the one foot per century of the 1900s, which is also the current rate).
Let’s let science settle this one.
George Lawson says:
March 16, 2011 at 4:54 am
Since time began, tidal activity has moved trillions of tonnes of the oceans water…
You forgotten to factor in that the moon has been steadily moving away from this planet. So, the exertion from the moon is weaker and weaker over billions of years.
and also… 1928
It should read 1923, not 1928.
REPLY: fixed thanks-A
There is perhaps a glimpse of sanity, http://www.detnews.com/article/20110316/AUTO01/103160336/1148/auto01/House-gets-bill-to-bar-EPA–Calif.-from-limiting-emissions
The Washington Times has a solid editorial on the question today:
More here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/15/justifying-japanese-judgment-day/print/
/Mr Lynn
Wouldn’t be the effect of rifts spewing out lava and expanding anywhere from 1 to 20 cm a year and smashing Japan’s little slice of the North American Plate between the Pacific and Eurasian Plates? Nah, couldn’t be that.
—-
Scottish Sceptic says:
March 16, 2011 at 4:56 am
Yes it could all be due to global warming!!
(dodge some rotten eggs and boos)
Seriously there’s more to this than normal stupid alarmist rubbish and if anyone doubts me I did some calculations which you can see here:
http://scottishsceptic.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/global-warming-and-earthquakes/
From the article:
““There is certainly some literature that talks about the increased occurrence of volcanic eruptions and the removing of load from the crust by deglaciation,” said Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta.”
And there is literature that suggests this was an act of God, or gods, as a form of punishment on the Japanese people. Of course that doesn’t make it right, and neither is the idea that the earthquakes are a result of AGW. One can only shake one’s head.
Judd says @9:27-I believe we need to sacrifice quite a few virgins into volcanoes so as to stop this.
Hahaha….if we could only find any virgins. If you think it’s bad now, think how pissed Gaia would get if we substituted a bunch of sluts. M10s would break out everywhere, and the temperature…straight up by 5 degrees C.
My theory is that sluttiness is causing global warming. Think about it and you’ll come around to my way of thinking.
I’m waiting for them to say that nuclear disasters are caused by ACC. And later of course, the claims would be supported by peer reviewed papers published in Nature. Yup if only Japan had erected more wind turbines, they could have avoided all of this.
Mike D. says: “Obviously it’s the lack of human sacrifice that causes everything bad. We need more stone knives ripping out entrails on the temple altars.”
I’ll start making a list of names for you . . .
I got the distinct impression reading the original Calgary Herald story that the reporter heavily redacted what was stated by the experts.
Phrases like “it’s conceivable” are often followed by “but highly unlikely” when geologists speak of poorly known earth processes. I suspect the latter phrase was edited out the story.
vukcevic says:
March 15, 2011 at 11:44 pm
Quote from NASA’s paper: There is strong evidence of electromagnetic processes responsible for earthquake triggering,
This is not a ‘NASA’ paper. The authors just happen to work at NASA and the ‘paper’ is just a non-reviewed abstract. and there is no strong evidence for such a connection. On the contrary, every time a specific connection is claimed, it turns out not to be supported by the evidence. A good example is:
http://geomag.usgs.gov/downloads/publications/Thomas_et_al_Guam_GRL_2009.pdf
It is a very legitimate question to ask whether melting ice on a continental scale (not localized glaciers) can cause seismic activity. I am completely convinced that it does.
I’ll ignore the attribution to global warming and continue with the legitimate question.
The first thing is to separate which earthquakes are caused by tectonic plate movement and which are not. Otherwise you would have to believe that melting ice had an effect at the plate boundaries and then you would have to advance a method of separating the effects of melting ice from plate movement.
During this treatment of the data (easily done by spatial correlation of epicenters to plate boundaries) it is useful to ask if most or all of the extreme events (>7 magnitude) are located along tectonic margins or not. I suspect they are but have been wrong many times before. Has a major earthquake ever occurred away from a plate boundary?
Then take the earthquakes not associated with major tectonic plates and try to establish a correlation between their position and major continental ice masses where isostatic rebound would be greatest.
I would be very interested to read such work. I suspect that the time scale between melt and quake would be on the scale of several hundred years because the earth would rebound very slowly.
Journalism is dead. The MSM is the propaganda adjunct of the “progressive” elites. The Narrative = The Party Line
And they’re not even honest propagandists.
Prediction: There will be a big increase in the number of lame CAGW press releases over the course of 2011. This is because the government/academic climate elites are about to see their Climate Ca$h gravy train come to a screeching halt as people begin to realize they’ve wasted millions of our tax dollars on frivolous and dubious “science”.
The article ran in both the Calgary and Montreal papers. It was distributed by Post Media. I sent an email complaint to key editors at the papers, the Post, and author — citing the numerous ‘could’ ‘speculate’ ‘conceivable’ hedges and that the story was better served in their Religion section.
The email addresses for the editors are readily available at their websites. I did not include the NY Times and Gridley papers which are facsimile’d in the posts above, but encourage anyone else to pass along.
Isostatic rebound doesn’t happen overnight. Ice age ended thousands of years ago, but the whole Northern Europe is still rising. Occasionally some “intraplate earthquakes” happen here but those rarely exceed M3.
R. Kessel, F. Freund, G. Duma of
Lab for Solar and Space Physics, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt,
Department of Physics, San Jose State University and Ecosystem Science and Technology, NASA Ames Research Center
Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, Department of Geophysics, Hohe Warte 38, A-1190 Vienna
say:
There is strong evidence of electromagnetic processes responsible for earthquake triggering, that we study extensively.
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU06/01705/EGU06-J-01705.pdf
Dr. Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University
says:
there is no strong evidence for such a connection.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/15/really-you-had-to-ask-this-question/#comment-621778
vukcevic (of nowhere in particular)
says:
Let’s have another look.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
It is as if these people have never looked at a question critically in their lives.
The earthquake was manmade seismic activity – Charlie Sheen was banging 7 gram rocks
It’s even worse than I thought. After a full read of the article I realize the glaciologist is proposing the loss of ice is having an effect on mantle material near plate boundaries.
“Some scientists theorize that the sudden melting of glaciers due to man-made climate change is lightening the load on the Earth’s surface, allowing its mantle to rebound upwards and causing plates to become unstuck.”
First, I didn’t know the plates were stuck. Second, I was unaware that this “sudden” melting had just started in the last 50-60 years. And third, I didn’t know how silly the study of glaciology had become.
“…Hahaha….if we could only find any virgins. If you think it’s bad now, think how pissed Gaia would get if we substituted a bunch of sluts.”
It is however unlikely that Gaia would move for them.
Look to the sun.
vukcevic says:
March 16, 2011 at 6:35 am
“there is no strong evidence for such a connection.”
Every time specific claims are examined, no evidence is found. E.g.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2008JA013932.pdf
Regarding the comment from The Gray Monk: You are too late, if this snippet is real:
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/Latest-News/ipcc-boss-says-warming-causes-earthquakes-report.html
If correlation is causation, it’s just as likely that earthquakes cause global warming.
Journalism is chronicling of events and these journalists are attempting to write history in an area where they have no business or knowledge.
Their ability to create a headline and proceed to write the story to fit the headline and their ability to reach the public with the story places them in a unique position of public trust and influence.
What comes to mind with fibbers like these is the old schoolyard chant of “LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE”.
True journalists would not lie in their work.
About the only thing we know for sure regarding global warming is that the warming of the globe is indeed the cause of earthquakes and the resulting tsunamis– not the atmosphere surrounding the earth, but the interior of the globe where the nuclear fires fuel tectonic movement. Everything else is speculation.
So embarrassed by my compatriots. On behalf of Calgary, sorry for wasting your time.
Theo Lichacz says:
Ever see spliting of granite or marble(the old fashioned way), you get the idea? have a stone chip on one side of your windshield that develops into a xmas tree like fracture on the other side?
I saw that movie too: Crack in the World
Ever hear of the “uncertainty principle”
Yes. It has to do with determining the position and momentum of particles in quantum physics. Unless you’re referring to still more fiction?
Pamela Gray says:
Here we go again. Blame the public school. …
Remember, children spend their time constantly learning new things (and questioning adults). Adults spend their time telling others what they know, and usually don’t spend much time questioning it.
Pamela,
I don’t need to make any assumptions, since I have one child still in public school. Children in public school are not taught to question. Quite the contrary – from my experience, they are very specifically taught to NOT question what they are told by “Authority” (Authority being the teachers, the administration, and the government in general). I spend a great deal of time dealing with the crap that my child and her friends are taught – typically after tests, so that they don’t get confused and answer their biased tests with REAL facts.
You, personally, might be a good teacher, but you can’t extrapolate from that to assume that all, or even most, public school teachers are good.
I’m a bit ashamed to be Canadian today. I’m from Calgary but did not see this story because I NEVER READ THE HEARLD and nonsense like this is the reason why.
Joe Laonde: “The simple explanation is that with less atmospheric pressure exerting on the planet surface, centrifugal force under the planets crust exerts out. A balance of pressures and gravity in a physical mechanical format.”
Really where did you get that less atmospheric pressure was exerted? Read Leroux!
Doesn’t this mean that if we enter a global cooling phase that increased ice would accumulate more stress and pressure on the underlying crust leading to stronger, more frequent earthquakes? After all, if I weigh the surface down so that it’s harder move, then when it does move, it’s going to have a lot more stress built up. Global warming though causes global cooling too, so I guess in the end, it’s still global warming that’s to blame.
Oh come on Mr. Marsden! Everybody knows that the rate of earth-quakes increase when a black hole is approaching!
I am surprised that the Calgarians who commented did not catch this considering half of the city thinks the person who “reported” this is one of the greatest people ever borne there. When I saw the “journalist’s” picture in the top right corner and saw her first name, I had to go to the official site to verify her last name. With my suspicion correct, I went to her Bio on her official web site to verify. The reason that she did such a crappy job of verifying her facts is simply because she isn’t a journalist and has had no education what so ever to become one. She is a Canadian Rock star, and not a very good one in my opinion. this is just another case of a celebrity said something and we should just shut up and believe it because they are a celebrity.
[if you look at the page again you will see that the article was written by a man called William]
Leif Svalgaard says: March 16, 2011 at 7:22 am
…………….
As a scientist you should know that one always can find an exception either in favour, against or non-conclusive, as far as some event is concerned.
I am not looking for a particular case of evidence for, against or neither, but considering a regular survey of all cases above certain intensity.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
That is how science was done, before the AGWs and some others came on the scene, but again I should know that you think that no rule should have an exception.
Well of course global warming could cause earthquakes.
According to the latest in Teracomputing models, if the earth had no way to get rid of excess energy, the Temperature would go to 800,000 K in a billion years; you can bet, that would result in some earthquakes.
How much global warming, did they say in this informative article; remember that the total Temperature range on earth these days, only goes from about -90 deg C to about +60 deg C. I don’t know what the average Temperature coefficient of Expansion is over that Temperature range, for the earth.
No! It’s the moon! Locked out of free rotation by its quadrupole moment the moon takes revenge by moving huge masses of water daily and creating appreciable ripples in the earth’s crust.
Seriously though, what are the (rhythmic) forces of the moon spread over entire tectonic plates as compared to glacial redistributions?
Should we remove this offending body?
I’m shocked. Shocked that it took several days after the earthquake to blame it on global warming. Chicken Little seems to be off his game these days.
vukcevic says:
March 16, 2011 at 10:00 am
As a scientist you should know that one always can find an exception either in favour, against or non-conclusive, as far as some event is concerned.
This problem has been extensively studied by geophysicists and no solid evidence has been found [as with many other things, there are many claims, of course]. Some references here: http://geomag.usgs.gov/downloads/publications/Thomas_et_al_Loma_Prieta_PEPI_2009.pdf
vukcevic says:
March 16, 2011 at 10:00 am
As a scientist you should know that one always can find an exception
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/faq/?categoryID=6&faqID=343
Some good stuff and some quackery. For one, the Younger Dryas was about 12kBP, not 5. SO4? Pretty silly. Maximum adjustment is presently occurring south of the Great Lakes, where little seismic activity. Not so long ago Lake Michigan drained into the Mississippi, and it is likely the Caspian once drained into the Arctic. LOD (sidereal) is best (or at least easiest) secular proxy for GIA: about .3ms/century acceleration due to GIA, opposite 1.7ms/century tidal deceleration. Since atomic clocks deceleration is arrested on secular scale, suggesting insignificant loss of land based polar ice, and placing limits on possible sea level rise.
One or two possible mechanisms for solar radiation/earthquake correlation: solar influenced electromagnetic core/mantle coupling leading to “toroidal jerks”; zonal winds contribute to atmospheric coupling and have a strong seasonal effect on LOD, but probably produce instantaneous torques of orders of magnitude less than earth tides and core/mantle jerks.
Adjustment to Greenland is overwhelmed by continued adjustment to the LIA and Last Glacial Maximum, where it is easily measured, if not easily attributed to one or the other. LOD indicates ice loss at the end of the LIA but cannot distinguish between LIA and LGM rebound without guesswork. Groundwater depletion leads to considerable local subsidence, and may have triggered a quake or two–of course the continents ride on top of the plates, and surface events have no effect on the plates themselves–we’re talking triggers only–not quake frequency. We must scrupulously distinguish between the two: earthquake prediction versus quake frequency.
Leif Svalgaard says: March 16, 2011 at 11:17 am
…………..
I think you got it all wrong again.
I didn’t say ‘there is a link’, I said ‘if there is a link’
There is a difference between two. I may find out that definitely there isn’t.
Can’t understand why you are so bothered. You can look at the last fortnight data
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
it is not long enough to start speculating if there is or there is not.
You can do your own survey.
Print that Calgary article in Japanese and they’ll wonder if all “gaijin” are really so stupid.
afraid4me says:
I’m shocked. Shocked that it took several days after the earthquake to blame it on global warming. Chicken Little seems to be off his game these days
Not really. It was already being bandied about at “Grist” later the same day. Check the WUWT archives.
Idiots. Where does the word “tsunami” come from?
Careful! Don’t be a denier of Anthropogenic Earthquakes! (Also known as induced seismicity.)
In the 1960s, the U.S. Army induced many hundreds of tremors in the Denver, Colorado, area by injecting liquid chemical waste 12,000 feet under the Rocky Mountain Arsenal weapons plant. Two or three were of magnitutde 5.0 – 5.3.
– Overviews by the USGS and U.S. Army.
– Articles in Journal of Geophysical Research (pdf) and Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (abstract).
– Significant Denver earthquakes in the 1960s.
– Induced Earthquake Bibliography
– USGS Earthquake website.
vukcevic says:
March 16, 2011 at 11:56 am
it is not long enough to start speculating if there is or there is not.
Geophysicists have studied this for a hundred years and found nothing. Yours is just the usual armchair alarmism.
You know, I used to frequent this site quite a bit and have questions about global warming and climate change myself. I was able to get clear answers to those questions from some rather friendly geologists and climatologists within the UMASS Amherst geosciences department. Then I come back here and question the logic behind a post and I’m ridiculed by people for even having the audacity of speaking against what Watts might say. That doesn’t even include the misunderstanding of geology and physics included in some of those replies.
I’d say it’s you guys who have the religion and unquestionable dogma. Good luck ignoring anything you don’t agree with.
ej clairm says:
Then I come back here and question the logic behind a post and I’m ridiculed by people for even having the audacity of speaking against what Watts might say.
Your first post can hardly be characterized as “questioning the logic”. You started off with an attack of a political nature. Then you expect everyone else to NOT respond in kind?
It seems to me that you’ve used questionable logic yourself…
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 16, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Yours is just the usual armchair alarmism.
No it is not, I have initiated an innovative and new research, not done before.
Sometimes you write load of nonsense. It would be useful if you red what you are commenting on.
Quote: It is not claimed that geomagnetic storm is a primary cause of any earthquake. However if conditions for an earthquake are ‘ripe’, then solar storm could be a trigger (not the cause) for it, and bring it forward for few hours or days.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
Let me explain in simple terms what that means:
If Japanese earthquake was ‘ripe’ for occurring, i.e. geological fault has gone critical, it may have occurred instead of the last Friday on Sunday or yesterday. There was a large solar flare in mid week, geomagnetic disturbance occurred some hours later, late Thursday evening-Friday morning ( I recorded it here http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Japan.gif ). A small trigger was enough to bring whole thing down just few hours or days earlier then it would happen otherwise. So if during one solar cycle there is x of eqs, this is not going to make any noticeable difference to total number or strength.
So of what use is this?
Well, there were few pre-shocks, we were not to know that a major quake will follow, but there was a possibility. Since we knew that there was a strong geomagnetic storm going on ( I actually posted this on WUWT some 8 hours prior to the quake:
vukcevic says:
March 10, 2011 at 12:02 pm
Currently geomagnetic field is getting seriously shaken:
(WUWT link: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/sol-is-finally-waking-up/#comment-617659 )
then all areas with tremors during the previous 12-24 hours could get an alert.
Not an ‘armchair alarmism’ but a possibly useful additional information.
So your obfuscation and continuous negative attitude to any progress, is to put it mildly damaging and even deplorable.
ej clairm,
I didn’t see anyone denying the possibility that isostatic adjustment might cause earthquakes….at the time and in the area where the isostatic adjustment took place. Jeez, man, the subduction zone off the coast of Japan has no connection to the isostatic adjustments that took place at the time the glaciers and ice sheets melted in Asia and No. America. And if you are using the tortured logic that somehow melting of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica is causing subduction zone earthquakes in Japan, I tip my hat to you. You going to have to have some proof for that assertion, not just a feeling.
As for the possibility of slip fault man-made earthquakes, that is well documented, and recently there was an earthquake swarm in Faulkner Co., Arkansas, that was likely caused by two injection wells.
There is only one explenation for these recent earthquakes.. Comet Elenin a.k.a. Planet X, also known as Nibiru.. It is comming.. 🙁
[Reply: I approved this comment on the off chance that it is sarcasm. ~dbs, mod.]
vukcevic says:
March 16, 2011 at 2:08 pm
No it is not, I have initiated an innovative and new research, not done before.
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=12&month=03&year=2011
“COINCIDENCES: Many readers have asked if this week’s terrible earthquake in Japan was connected to the contemporaneous geomagnetic storms of March 10th and 11th. In short, no. There is no known, credible evidence of solar activity triggering earthquakes. Moreover, in the historical record, there are thousands of examples of geomagnetic storms without earthquakes, and similar numbers of earthquakes without geomagnetic storms. The two phenomena are not linked.”
[Reply: I approved this comment on the off chance that it is sarcasm. ~dbs, mod.]
Well, i hope i am wrong and that all i have read and seen outside of the mainstream media (wich seems to be a total black out) is complete false and just utter BS.
All i have seen is that a brown dwarf with 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter is closing in to our solar system. It will pass pass earth on 0.232 AU mid October this year. The Chili and Japan earthquake fall together with allignments in planets, the Sun and “comet” Elenin.
Here is a NASA source to view its path.. IF this is true, we are in for some nasty times and the Japan earthquake is just the beginning..
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=elenin&orb=1
Hope u let this comment through mod.
My Junior High school level child came home Monday and told me his teacher told the class that the earth has tilted by 10 degrees due to the Japan quake.
I asked him if he meant 10 inches, he told me it was not inches but degrees.
I hope it was the social studues teacher not his advanced science teacher.
It’s worse than I thought!
Belvedere,
Interesting link. You have to admit that your first comment sounded like a combination of astrology and the 2012 scare.
But 0.2 AU is far enough away. This time.
Nobody said there was a connection except the lynch mob that came out after all the people who showed that isostatic adjustment can cause an increase in seismic activity. It wasn’t the climate change crowd that said that, it was those trying to vilify them that are claiming they said “Global Warming caused the earthquakes in Japan!”. But, they said nothing of the sort. It’s not a valid argument to start with, which is why nobody ever made it.
I sent a note to the author of this article (Mr. William Marsden) suggesting that perhaps he should verify the story before printing it. Sent him some links to the U.S. Geological Survey web site to aid him in his quest for answers…got this note back (27 minutes):
———-(quote from email)———–
verified and confirmed.
always amazed at how emotional you deniers get over climate change
stories. must be tough on the old blood pressure.
———-(end quote)——-
So I did a minor bit of homework for him, went to the sites FAQ and found this tidbit on earthquake frequency vs perception which I send back to Mr. Marsden…
———-(quote from U.S. Geological Survey site)————–
FAQs – Earthquake Myths
« Previous FAQ | All FAQ’s | Next FAQ »
Q: Why are we having so many earthquakes? Has earthquake activity been increasing? Does this mean a big one is going to hit? OR We haven’t had any earthquakes in a long time; does this mean that the pressure is building up?
A: Although it may seem that we are having more earthquakes, earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant throughout this century and, according to our records, have actually seemed to decrease in recent years.
There are several reasons for the perception that the number of earthquakes, in general, and particularly destructive earthquakes is increasing.
———–(end quote)—————(lots more, good reading!)
I haven’t heard back from him after this: 2+ hours and counting.
Reality bites!
Smokey,
I am aware of that, and i am sorry for that.
It was a primary reaction to the topic i saw here on WUWT.
I just hope it is not a cover up for the devestation we might face when this comet is actually the binary star of our sun, wich is a brown dwarf and tracked by Nasa and many others.
Funny though that when u ask Nasa about this comet and the link to Nibiru, they are not shy in using the words conspiracy and theorists. That’s a way to debunk everything into false just by calling it that way..
Dr. Svalgaard
You obviously did not read my post, just fire off your ‘respected opinion’.
I did not say it has. Lot of research is required before we can have an indicative idea, one way or the other, even if turns out that probability is anything more than random.
Dismissing it out of hand only hours after the event, it is typical of self opinionated so called scientists (as your anonymous expert most likely happen to be, and some other ‘know it all’ so called experts I can think off).
Two or three NASA scientists quoted here
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU06/01705/EGU06-J-01705.pdf
are not fools or armchair alarmists.
Earthquakes make homeless or kill countless thousands of people particularly in the third world countries, just think of Haiti, Pakistan, Turkey just to mention few. Evidence may or may not be there, but it is worth taking a look in another way, not done before. So any line of research, especially if it is done without public funds involved, however minute contribution it may eventually make (if it does) in saving even one child from getting maimed or killed, it is worth perusing.
That is why I find all these pronouncements about ‘certainty’ that there is no link, that nothing should be researched any further, so reprehensible and deplorable.
It is so called ‘certainty’ of your climate fraternity from the Stanford and elsewhere, that has brought not only climate science into disrepute, but is undermining confidence in the science generaly.
Smokey says:
March 16, 2011 at 3:26 pm
But 0.2 AU is far enough away. This time.
Not if the mass of the comet is 2.5 Jupiter’s. But the masses of comets are not that great, so not to worry. Perhaps Vuk should make this his next great innovative research project for the benefit of all mankind.
@ Belvedere:
A Russian astronomer comments about comet Elanin from SpaceObs.org:
“At now we can’t tall accurate size of comet nucleus. By my estimate about 3-4 km in diameter, perhaps less…
But comet nucleus surrounding by extensive gaseous coma in many times larger than nucleus.”
Doesn’t sound like a brown dwarf to me, just a small comet, definitely not 2.5x the mass of Jupiter. Where are you getting your information? Surely you are not just trying to scare are you?
vukcevic says:
March 16, 2011 at 3:56 pm
That is why I find all these pronouncements about ‘certainty’ that there is no link, that nothing should be researched any further, so reprehensible and deplorable.
People have been looking at this for decades and no solid evidence has been found. In order to do research you must first learn something about the subject and be familiar with what has been done in the field already. The geomagnetic activity you referred to was nothing special and not particular strong. It was the expected result of the passage of co-rotating interaction regions in front of solar magnetic sectors. There are many hundreds of such passages [most of which are eminently predictable weeks or even months in advance] in every solar cycle. They show a strong 27-day recurrence. A list of such passages can be found here http://www.leif.org/research/sblist.txt . Earthquakes do not show 27-day or 11-yr cycles. This is well-trodden ground.
Two or three NASA scientists quoted here
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU06/01705/EGU06-J-01705.pdf
are not fools.
Reading their abstract does not inspire much confidence in them. Using phrases like ‘amazing correlations’ is a give-away. You have actually not even read the paper as only the abstract is available. A paper by one of the authors http://www.isfep.com/website%2014_013-G.Duma.pdf gives more information, but is equally weak. The incessant references to ‘NASA scientists’ try to appeal to authority that isn’t there. This is not NASA research, any more than Hathaway’s personal prediction of solar cycles is.
but is undermining confidence in the science generally
Self-aggrandizing pseudo-science seems to be doing just fine.
I’m voting for Mayan end of days in 2012, makes as much sense as AGW, and it’s movie was better.
Leif Svalgaard wrote, “Not to speak about the even more tenuous claims that the increase in solar activity causes mega-earthquakes.”
The relationship between solar wind speed & global seismicity (Centennial Earthquake Catalog) is nonrandom.
vukcevic says:
March 16, 2011 at 3:56 pm
that nothing should be researched any further
It is always a good idea from time to time to re-assess old results. The problem is that you have not done that. Find a catalog of a lot of quakes and of magnetic storms or sector boundaries [e.g. my list] and do a proper analysis [e.g. a superposed epoch] to convince yourself there is nothing there.
Paul Vaughan says:
March 16, 2011 at 7:52 pm
The relationship between solar wind speed & global seismicity (Centennial Earthquake Catalog) is nonrandom.
What relationship?
The AccuWeather Climate Blog also has an article about the Montreal Gazette piece relating climate change and earthquakes.
http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/climatechange/story/47084/link-between-severe-earthquake-1.asp
Following is from the ESA in 2003 about volcanic activity. Maybe it applies to earthquakes too:
Possible correlation between solar and volcanic activity in a long-term scale
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?2003ESASP.535..393S&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf
ABSTRACT
Volcanic activity on the Earth is described by special
annual indices available since 1500. These indices have
been compared with annual sunspot numbers. Volcanic
activity displays no 11 -yr periodicity. Using 2 1-yr
running averages a striking similarity between these
two time series is clearly seen. Volcanic activity is
generally lower in periods of prolonged maxima of
solar activity and higher in periods of prolonged solar
minima. There is also a similarity between the spectra
of these two series in the long-period range. Main
peaks are located in the same periods in both series
(200-215 yr. 100-105 yr, 80-90 yr). The influence of
volcanic activity on the climate is indubitable. Annual
means of surface air temperature display similar long-term
periodicity as the volcanic activity.
This wriggle matching correlation talk used to be the province of women. Now men see all kinds of connections between this, that, and the other thing. We women figured out a long time ago that things that just happened to be nonrandom meant absolutely nothing. So catch up.
“It is conceivable that there would be some increase in earthquake activity during periods of rapid changes on the Earth’s crust.”
How rapid are we talking about?
“Ed Zuiderwijk says:
March 16, 2011 at 1:42 am
As far as I know there have been no large changes in its thickness over the last half century. Reported changes are of order 1-10 meters on an ice depth of 1-3 km, hence at most at the 1% level, probably much less.”
Am I interpreting this correctly to mean a maximum of 10 m in 50 years? If so, that means a maximum of 20 cm per year. Isn’t a larger amount than this both added to and removed from most mountain ranges every six months with the changing of the seasons? If so, then to blame melting glaciers for earthquakes seems rather inappropriate.
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=325&c=5
Yeah, but Corbyn is just as nutso, right?
Leif Svalgaard says:
….
If you red my posts or the web page http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm (just updated) you would realise you comments are irrelevant
Just get one simple point (I have repeated number of times): If conditions for an earthquake are ‘ripe’, i.e. geological fault has ‘gone critical’ then a solar storm could be a trigger (not the cause) for it, and bring it forward for few hours or days. I am plotting number of parameters, not just intensity, current indication from the graph is that intensity although critical, on its own is not the closest correlation. No tables or data from the past have all information required.
No expertise in tectonics of the solar physics is essential to record and plot 3-4 values of data, readily available. Time will tell if data I am recording is of any relevance or not.
p.s.
Ms Gray
My sincere apologies for misspelling your name.
Japan earthquake:
2011/03/11 05:46:24
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usc0001xgp.php
Geomagnetic Ap index for 2011/03/11 day’s max 94, not exceptionally high, but the highest for at least year or two. http://www.solen.info/solar/indices.html
Virtually everyone in the United States and Canada who died from cancer ate carrots at some time in their lives.
Using the extensive data analysis and brilliant logic displayed in that article, it must follow that carrots cause cancer.
If you’re gonna go down the ‘man-made’ road you might as well start blaimng HAARP – at least there’s actual evidence to back gthat up – including the Tokyo Uni readouts of the HAARp frequency changes over the last 2 weeks.
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 15, 2011 at 8:08 pm
Not to speak about the even more tenuous claims that the increase in solar activity causes mega-earthquakes.
Actually it’s teh opposite. The Solar minimums cause the earthquakes. Published on March 10th – new peer review paper linking the two – unknown mechanism though
vukcevic says:
March 16, 2011 at 4:42 am
Absolutely agree. If geomagnetic storms play any part, and that is by no way certain, at least they are predictable anything up to 48 hours in advance. Not much of a help if location of a fault gone ‘critical’ is not known, but every additional information is a step forward, and that is what science should be about.
I shall update info as often as possible and eventually it will become clearer one way or the other, or not at all.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
~
Vuks..noticed the magnetometer chain used for your study is Tromso. Why wouldn’t you use Asian or Japanese magnetometers? More specific to the region of your study?
Hmm..solar activity..under certain conditions.. a trigger for earthquakes..hmm. Were we above or below the solar ecliptic that day .. oh so many conditions..
Has Leif done the flat tire thing yet? Well time to pick up on this thread where I left off..
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 16, 2011 at 2:58 pm
..There is no known, credible evidence of solar activity triggering earthquakes. Moreover, in the historical record, there are thousands of examples of geomagnetic storms without earthquakes, and similar numbers of earthquakes without geomagnetic storms. The two phenomena are not linked.”..
~
Leif, if ..solar activity is ongoing ah perpetual and Earth’s tectonics are ongoing, how can we seperate..where an influence might begin and end? Why might we see a correlation in volcanic activity and not tectonic?
You don’t have to answer that just thinking out loud..
Vuks .. any follow ups on this paper, “ULF energy transfer in the solar wind – magnetosphere- ionosphere – solid Earth system.”
R. Kessel, F. Freund, G. Duma 2006
European Geosciences Union 2006
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU06/01705/EGU06-J-01705.pdf
Energy transfer is interesting in and of itself. On any planet or star..
vukcevic says:
March 17, 2011 at 1:22 am
No expertise in tectonics of the solar physics is essential to record and plot 3-4 values of data, readily available. Time will tell if data I am recording is of any relevance or not.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php
Magnitude Average Annually
8+ 1
7 – 7.9 15
6 – 6.9 134
5 – 5.9 1319
4 – 4.9 13,000
There are many earthquakes every day greater than 4.5, so you can always find some that occur after any geomagnetic activity, hence your plots are of little value. BTW, the ‘NASA’ research you quote is concerned not with magnetic storms but with the regular diurnal variation Sq due to the effect of solar UV. Some knowledge of the subject is handy.
Carla
Number of earthquake plotted is all around the globe (m>=4.5), Japan happened after I started regular update (2nd March) prompted by the N. Zealand’s eq.
Tromso is within Arctic circle, for the global perspective, the data web page is good, but there are also one or two more general indices plotted.
At 4:31 AM on 17 March, Richard writes:
Then there’s George Carlin:
Are we going to discuss Aspergillus flavus, aflatoxin B1, and the increased risks of liver and breast cancer associated with the ingestion of peanuts and peanut butter?
From a pure public health perspective, more people in Japan – and all across the rest of the planet – will die as the result of psychological stress induced by the idiot illiterate hyperbole of the media root weevils than by malignant metaplasia induced by the release of ionizing radiation from these reactors.
And we’re not yet discussing the deaths which are, with probabilities approaching absolute certainty, being caused by the lack of clean water, safe foodstuffs, sanitation, and housing all across northern Japan.
Before and during World War II, American strategic planning took into consideration the fact that at most only about 20% of Japan’s land surface area is suitable for use in agriculture. Of industrial raw materials there is virtually nothing in the home islands. These facts figured acutely in planning the operations undertaken to starve the Empire into submission.
How much of Japanese agricultural land has, since the late 1930s, been occupied by industry and residential housing? How much of their penny-packet rice farming has been wiped out by the earthquake and the tsunami? How many of their farmers have been killed or injured or displaced?
The bloody fools out there hear “radiation” and they go bugnuts. The “journalists” understand that stupid people have eyeballs, and will tune in.
But the focus is not on what will with near certainty kill thousands of real human beings, and wholly upon the fantasies of what will almost certainly not kill or injure as many people as are involved in motor vehicle accidents in a single U.S. state on any given day.
If only there were some way to make sure that “journalists” can be prevented from reproducing….
@ wayne,
No i am not trying to scare, i just wanted to share what i have been reding outside msm. This comet is lurked in mystery and black out on the msm.
I will get back to you this evening, after i finish my work, i have some links for you, but not via my mobile phone. Shame is, my boss blocked internet so i have to answer to you in this was.
Let me make this very clear for now: my pupose is not to scare but to inform myself and others. If amateur astronomers look for the comet, and find a brown dwarf with planets hoovering around it, with a much bigger telescope than the, in my eyes, phoney astronomer Leonid (funny) Elenin, than a bell starts to ring and i want to investigate this.
I posted my comment on this topic because of the circumstantial alignment of planets, sun and this ‘comet’ and the big earthquakes in Japan and Chili..
I’ll get back at this ok wayne?
Lets hope i am wrong..
I sent a link to a young researcher who works in a hot-bed of Liberalism (Canadian Style) She had this to say about the Calgary Herald Article…
Humans keep jumping up and down and farting and breathing so it makes the ice melt and then the tectonic plates heave-ho?
I expected better analysis from the conservative capital of Canada.
I think that sums it up…
vukcevic says:
March 16, 2011 at 10:00 am
Leif Svalgaard says: March 16, 2011 at 7:22 am
…………….
As a scientist you should know that one always can find an exception either in favour, against or non-conclusive, as far as some event is concerned.
I am not looking for a particular case of evidence for, against or neither, but considering a regular survey of all cases above certain intensity.
Our company uses (Conducts, designs, interprets) magnetic surveys. I only skimmed the papers provided by Leif and Vukcevic. The only comment I can reasonably make is that Vukcevic has a point that the science in the papers is not conclusive — one way or the other… If those surveys had been designed to say look for an ore body, a fault or a structure they would be considered defective. The data would be “interesting” but regarded as anecdotal. That some objects (but not all) under stress might provide a magnetic signature does not stretch my imagination in the least. So there could well be signatures for some events but not others. In one survey I noticed that the method for removing the diurnal drift signature was a a bit suspect — to be charitable.
It’s an interesting thought is all I can say. I have heard it raised many times over the years and I neither accept nor reject either position — same as Vukcevic. fwiw
Now, Vukcevic — label your graphs a little better so I know what the signals are and don’t have to guess… 😉
Carla says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 17, 2011 at 5:51 am
Vuks .. any follow ups on this paper, “ULF energy transfer in the solar wind – magnetosphere- ionosphere – solid Earth system.”
R. Kessel, F. Freund, G. Duma 2006
European Geosciences Union 2006
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU06/01705/EGU06-J-01705.pdf
Energy transfer is interesting in and of itself. On any planet or star..
~
Looks like studies of this kind are ongoing for other reasons in the geophysical world.
“””Generation of ULF geomagnetic pulsations during early stage of earthquake preparation “””
V.M. Sorokina, , and O.A. Pokhotelovb
a Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation (IZMIRAN), Russian Academy of Sciences, 142190 Troitsk, Moscow Region, Russian Federation
b Institute of Physics of the Earth (IFZ), Russian Academy of Sciences, 123995 Moscow, 10 B. Gruzinskaya, Russian Federation
Received 26 November 2009; revised 17 March 2010; accepted 24 March 2010. Available online 27 March 2010.
“””Correlation of Solar Activities with the Telluric Currents Level in the Northern Region of Malaysia
Issue Date: 7 July 2010
Mazlina M. Razelan,a N. Masdiana Md Said,a A. H. A. Aziz,a H. Y. Chong,a and M. Nawawib
aAstronomy & Atmospheric Science Research Unit, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 P.Pinang
bSchool Of Physics, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 P.Pinang
The relation between solar activities and the geomagnetic field induced currents (GIC) have been well studied in the auroral region and it usually occurs most frequently at high latitudes. However, during major geomagnetic storms, the auroral zone can extend substantially towards lower latitudes. Disturbance caused by solar activities can disrupt power grids and also increase the corrosion rate of buried natural gas pipelines. GIC are driven by the geomagnetic field induced by a geomagnetic disturbance. In this paper, we investigated the correlation between solar activities using the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) and geomagnetic disturbance storm time (DST) index data with the telluric currents (also referred to as geomagnetic induced currents GIC) level through the disturbance pattern of geomagnetic field. The research areas are from Lunas in Kedah to Perlis. The pattern of geomagnetic field disturbance had been identified and analyzed to investigate the harmful effect of geomagnetic storms towards the performance of complex power grid in Malaysia. ©2010 American Institute of Physics “””
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APCPCS001250000001000464000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes&ref=no
WillR says: March 17, 2011 at 6:59 am
………….
If there is an effect than it is more likely to be the energy released from induced currents rather than the magnetic signature of the lithosphere.
Quote: ‘Scientists have been tracking and studying solar substorms for more than a century, yet these phenomena remained mostly unknown until THEMIS went into action.
Even more impressive was the substorm’s power. Angelopoulos estimates the total energy of the two-hour event at five hundred thousand billion (5 x 1014) Joules. That’s approximately equivalent to the energy of a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.’
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/11dec_themis/
Bear in mind that geomagnetic storm 10-11 March lasted nearly 24 hours.
See also: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GD.gif
It is likely that in the electrical terms the tectonic fault is also the weakest point.
On the graph http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
there are number of data plotted , which I am testing at the moment, and I will eventually (perhaps after couple of months) scale down to one or two that happen to be most relevant.
vukcevic says:
March 17, 2011 at 7:38 am
Quote: ‘Scientists have been tracking and studying solar substorms for more than a century, yet these phenomena remained mostly unknown until THEMIS went into action.
Even more impressive was the substorm’s power. Angelopoulos estimates the total energy of the two-hour event at five hundred thousand billion (5 x 1014) Joules. That’s approximately equivalent to the energy of a magnitude 5.5 earthquake.’
This was not ‘mostly unknown’. On page 33 of my old 1973 paper http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf I estimated the substorm energy to be 5×10^14 Joules [or a 6.6 Richter earthquake].
But that energy is in the high atmosphere and spread over a large area. There is no evidence of any effect on triggering earthquakes.
Here in the land of arches one falls down now and then. Since they are tens and hundreds of thousands of years old, if not millions, it behooves us to explain the timing of their collapse. Of course the cause is erosion, but it’s slow, and you expect some trigger other than erosion to determine precisely when the structure comes down. Erosion is higher in colder, wetter climate conditions, but we learn of the arches tumbling on hot summer days during this long interstadial of relatively slow erosion. Wall Arch fell on a hot day after a rainy day. Temperature stress, added to tidal stress, might have contributed, but the previous rainy day seems to have been more anamolous, suggesting, maybe, a greater temp differential due to a wet underbelly?? At any rate, GW might be involved, maybe not AGW. Ice age erosion sets the arches up to collapse during interstadials.
old44 says:
March 15, 2011 at 10:42 pm
That’ll teach you not to eat crayons! 😉
DaveE.
Leif Svalgaard says: March 17, 2011 at 7:59 am
………….
Except you conveniently ignored electric current induction effect etc; known to exist just as long. But then, it appears you would do anything to obstruct any progress in finding even a smallest forewarning indicator, which is so badly needed; and even if it worked once, even if it saved one life it is worth the effort.
If you are not keen, or even willing to help then step aside and take your bellyache to your erstwhile colleagues.
vukcevic says:
March 17, 2011 at 10:45 am
But then, it appears you would do anything to obstruct any progress in finding even a smallest forewarning indicator, which is so badly needed; and even if it worked once, even if it saved one life it is worth the effort.
This has been researched many times and no effect has been found. Giving false hope is worse than no hope. But to show you the result of a proper analysis, the storms you were looking at were at the front of a solar sector [where such storms are often found], so one could make a superposed epoch analysis [lining up data on the boundary] for all about 2000 boundaries observed since 1926 of the number of strong earthquakes per day [from the ‘centennial list’ at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/data/centennial.php ].
Also, one could make a superposed epoch analysis for all geomagnetic storms. The result results are here: http://www.leif.org/research/Earthquake-Activity.png
As you can see there is no effect for either case. This is what all such proper analyses have always shown, based on thousands of cases.
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 17, 2011 at 11:46 am
the storms you were looking at were at the front of a solar sector [where such storms are often found], so one could make a superposed epoch analysis [lining up data on the boundary]
The sector boundaries organize the solar wind. Below are plots of superposed epochs of several solar wind properties around sector boundaries. Note the large compressional density spike right at the boundary. That shows the shock wave that is hitting the Earth:
http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Wind-Sector-Boundaries.png
As you could see from the previous comment. There is no increase of earthquakes related to this, nor to geomagnetic storms in general.
I am doing a totally different analysis, based on more than what Dr. Svalgaard’s estimates are based on the solar magnetic boundaries.
Our old friend ‘tallbloke’ has realised that the conversation here is being drowned by the Dr. Svalgaard’s persistent negativity and decided to open a:
thread on his blog .
Anyone wishes to engage in a sensible discussion is welcomed, whatever the opinion on the matter is.
vukcevic says:
March 17, 2011 at 12:37 pm
I am doing a totally different analysis, based on more than what Dr. Svalgaard’s estimates are based on the solar magnetic boundaries.
I made an analysis specifically of geomagnetic storms as well which shows no effect. You have not even described your ‘analysis’. All geomagnetic storms during 1900-1993, a total of 2613 storms, were included and no earthquakes more than the average number happened within a 100-day window of the storm, and in particular not on the day or the day after the storm. This is what all valid analyses of this have always shown. No effect, not even a tiny one.
vukcevic says:
March 16, 2011 at 2:08 pm
..However if conditions for an earthquake are ‘ripe’, then solar storm could be a trigger (not the cause) for it, and bring it forward for few hours or days.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
Let me explain in simple terms what that means:
If Japanese earthquake was ‘ripe’ for occurring, i.e. geological fault has gone critical, it may have occurred instead of the last Friday on Sunday or yesterday. There was a large solar flare in mid week, geomagnetic disturbance occurred some hours later, late Thursday evening-Friday morning ( I recorded it here http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Japan.gif ). A small trigger was enough to bring whole thing down just few hours or days earlier then it would happen otherwise. So if during one solar cycle there is x of eqs, this is not going to make any noticeable difference to total number or strength.
So of what use is this?
Well, there were few pre-shocks, we were not to know that a major quake will follow, but there was a possibility. Since we knew that there was a strong geomagnetic storm going on ( I actually posted this on WUWT some 8 hours prior to the quake:
vukcevic says:
March 10, 2011 at 12:02 pm
~
I went looking for regional magnetometers. Two Russian magnetometers just north on the same pacific ridge one off chart other disturbed. Further down ridge chain in Japan two of theirs go offline others disturbed. Don’t get a flat tire on me now here there ..could that been some ground level current travelling down from auroral zone field line, on the ridge?
Here’s the magnetometer plots for the n/s Pacific ridge Japan region on 3.11.2011.
http://kogma.nict.go.jp/cgi-bin/geomag-viewer?typePlot=Each+station&function=Start+time+%26+day&startTime=2011031000&numberHour=48&stationSTC=on&stationPTK=on&stationMMB=on&stationKAK=on&stationOKI=on&stationPKT=on&stationYAP=on&stationSLZ=on&scaleXhigh=&scaleXlow=&scaleYhigh=&scaleYlow=&scaleDhigh=&scaleDlow=&scaleZhigh=&scaleZlow=&submit=ViewImage
Magnetometer location and observatory code.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www2.nict.go.jp/y/y223/sept/swgparts/gmo/geomag.html&ei=xF6CTde-A8q80QGA96DGCA&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFwQ7gEwCA&prev=/search%3Fq%3DSTC%2BNICT%2Bmagnetometer%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us%26prmd%3Divns
Geomagnetic Field Data Plot
http://kogma.nict.go.jp/cgi-bin/geomag-interface
Hey Vuks .. this sounds just like what you were saying up there somewhere ..
“””Modelling the impact of telluric currents on earthquake
activity
G. Duma
Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, Department of Geophysics, Vienna,
Austria (gerald.duma@zamg.ac.at / Phone: +43-1-36026-2503)
Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 8, 01730, 2006
SRef-ID: 1607-7962/gra/EGU06-A-01730
© European Geosciences Union 2006
In several studies performed in recent years (e.g. Duma, Ruzhin, 2003; Duma, 2005;
Lipovics, 2005; Duma, Freund, Kessel, 2006) it turned out that the induced electric
currents in the Earth’s lithosphere play an important role in earthquake activity: so
called Lorentz forces and mechanic torques are generated, which act on the lithosphere
and add stress to an active seismic rupture zone. Many examples of regional
earthquake activity indicate this very close relation between the variations of the ‘telluric’
currents, which can easily be monitored by geomagnetic observatories, and the
temporal variations of seismic activity. This applies to the earthquake frequency with
respect to the time of day, in the seasonal range as well as in the long term (years,
decades). Since such an interaction is rather astonishing and has rarely been considered
in scientific studies, there is a strong need of a sound interpretation of this
mechanism, the ‘Magneto-Seismic Effect MSE’. The presentation deals with details
of the electromagnetic model, the involved energy, and the model’s capability to fit the
observed seismic performance of several strong earthquake regions in the three time
domains: diurnal, seasonal, long term. This is demonstrated for seismoactive regions
in Asia (Japan, Taiwan, China, Sumatra), in the USA (California) and in Europe (Italy,
Austria, Greece), even for earthquake activity with event magnitudes M greater 6. The
results confirm the validity of the model and the important role of this geodynamic
and electromagnetic process on strong earthquake activity, i.e. acting as a powerful
trigger mechanism. Since the process is a systematic one, this makes possible predictions
of seismic activity which deserve special attention for improved earthquake
hazard assessments, earthquake awareness and preventive measures.”””
http://meetings.copernicus.org/www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU06/01730/EGU06-J-01730.pdf
Leif, the last couple of sentences in y last post, seem to be what Vuks was trying to say. Lots of material to sort thru. I’d rather be reloading the interstellar catapult.. beware..
Carla says:
March 17, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Leif, the last couple of sentences in y last post, seem to be what Vuks was trying to say.
You mean:
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 17, 2011 at 12:55 pm
“All geomagnetic storms during 1900-1993, a total of 2613 storms, were included and no earthquakes more than the average number happened within a 100-day window of the storm, and in particular not on the day or the day after the storm. This is what all valid analyses of this have always shown. No effect, not even a tiny one.”
is what Vuk was trying yo say?
I think my analysis is conclusive. There is no hint of any increase in earthquake activity following geomagnetic storms, so ‘ripe’ or not, the storm do not trigger anything, because if they did, there would be a larger number of earthquakes on the day of the storm [or the next day], and there isn’t.
Carla says:
March 17, 2011 at 1:25 pm
………….
Thanks Carla.
Coincidence or not it looks very interesting, and may be indicative of a possible ‘ triger’ cause.
vukcevic says:
March 17, 2011 at 2:18 pm
Coincidence or not it looks very interesting, and may be indicative of a possible ‘ trigger’ cause.
Coincidences are not interesting.
My analysis http://www.leif.org/research/Earthquake-Activity.png is conclusive. There is no hint of any increase in earthquake activity following geomagnetic storms, so ‘ripe’ or not, the storms do not trigger anything, because if they did, there would be a larger number of earthquakes on the day of the storm [or the next day], and there isn’t. This is what all valid analyses of this have always shown. No effect, not even a tiny one.
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 17, 2011 at 7:59 am
This was not ‘mostly unknown’. On page 33 of my old 1973 paper http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf I estimated the substorm energy to be 5×10^14 Joules [or a 6.6 Richter earthquake].
~
argggggggggh, another we already knew this. But..that’s all cool Leif, Happy Friday. I’ll get over it. Estimated at 6.6 on the Richter though.. pretty impressive.
Now where did I put that catapult..
What is your current understanding of:
Magnetotellurics or tellurics
And their role in producing surface fields and atmospheric interactions.
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 17, 2011 at 3:01 pm
No effect, not even a tiny one.
~
We can’t say that Leif. Solar effect is part of the “WHOLE” ongoing process.
“””Solar energy and lightning cause natural variations in the earth’s magnetic field, inducing electric currents (known as telluric currents) under the Earth’s surface.”””
From Wiki
“””Magnetotellurics
Magnetotellurics (MT) is an electromagnetic geophysical method of imaging the earth’s subsurface by measuring natural variations of electrical and magnetic fields at the Earth’s surface. Investigation depth ranges from 300m by recording higher frequencies down to 10,000m or more with long-period soundings. Developed in Russia and France during the 1950s, MT is now an international academic discipline and is used in exploration surveys around the world.
..Energy sources
Solar energy and lightning cause natural variations in the earth’s magnetic field, inducing electric currents (known as telluric currents) under the Earth’s surface. Simultaneous measurements of orthogonal components of the electric and magnetic fields are recorded, with the results calculated as the impedance tensor.[35] A subsurface resistivity model is then created using this tensor.[36]
Different rocks, sediments and geological structures have a wide range of different electrical conductivities. Measuring electrical resistivity allows different materials and structures to be distinguished from one another and can improve knowledge of tectonic processes and geologic structures.
The Earth’s naturally varying electric and magnetic fields are measured over a wide range of magnetotelluric frequencies from 10,000 Hz to 0.0001 Hz (10,000s). These fields are due to electric currents flowing in the Earth and the magnetic fields that induce these currents. The magnetic fields are produced mainly by the interaction between the solar wind and the magnetosphere. In addition, worldwide thunderstorm activity causes magnetic fields at frequencies above 1 Hz. Combined, these natural phenomena create strong MT source signals over the entire frequency spectrum.
The ratio of the electric field to magnetic field provides simple information about subsurface conductivity. Because the skin effect phenomenon affects the electromagnetic fields, the ratio at higher frequency ranges gives information on the shallow Earth, whereas deeper information is provided by the low-frequency range. The ratio is usually represented as both apparent resistivity as a function of frequency and phase as a function of frequency…”””
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetotellurics#Energy_sources
You haven’t seen my catapult have you?
Carla says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:15 am
Magnetotellurics or tellurics
And their role in producing surface fields and atmospheric interactions.
They produce fields at the surface of a magnitude of the order of 1/1000 to 1/10,000 of the normal fields and have no atmospheric interactions.
Carla says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:07 am
“No effect, not even a tiny one.”
We can’t say that Leif. Solar effect is part of the “WHOLE” ongoing process.
Regardless, the observations simply show that there is no effect. Perhaps you do not understand what is plotted, or you haven’t thought about it. So, let me explain: It is claimed that solar effects somehow trigger an earthquake ‘before its time’. This means that there should be more earthquakes just after a solar storm. Examining ALL such storms over the last 100 years shows that there is no such increase in the number of earthquakes on the day of the storm [or on any other day for that matter]. As simple as that: http://www.leif.org/research/Earthquake-Activity.png which shows the number of earthquakes on the day of the storm at 0, one day after the storm at 1, etc.
The blue and the red points are from two different Earthquake Catalogs [the red going to slightly lower energy 5.5 Richter than the blue 6, hence the higher number].
Perhaps a tincy-wincy effect as shown here:
http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/2246/earthquakeelectric14013.jpg
vukcevic says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:36 am
Perhaps a tincy-wincy effect as shown here:
http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/2246/earthquakeelectric14013.jpg
Coincidental wiggle-matching.
If solar effects somehow trigger an earthquake ‘before its time’. It would mean that there should be more earthquakes just after a solar storm. Examining ALL such storms over the last 100 years shows that there is no such increase in the number of earthquakes on the day of the storm [or on any other day for that matter].
So direct observations show no effect whatsoever.
vukcevic says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:36 am
Perhaps a tincy-wincy effect as shown here:
http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/2246/earthquakeelectric14013.jpg
The magnetic intensity [even apart from the sign] plotted does not match the actual intensity observed: http://www.leif.org/research/Horz-Int-Tokyo.png
Another example of uncritical confirmation bias. Know the subject before commenting.
http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/2246/earthquakeelectric14013.jpg
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:50 am
vukcevic says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:36 am
Perhaps a tincy-wincy effect as shown here:
http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/2246/earthquakeelectric14013.jpg
Coincidental wiggle-matching.
If solar effects somehow trigger an earthquake ‘before its time’. It would mean that there should be more earthquakes just after a solar storm. Examining ALL such storms over the last 100 years shows that there is no such increase in the number of earthquakes on the day of the storm [or on any other day for that matter].
So direct observations show no effect whatsoever.
~
Slow down..time out..wait just a minute.
ahh Vuks are we talking about an INCREASE in seismic activity due to solar activity? Or are we talking that certain solar magnetic field coupling events, that induce currents, that might travel down a field line out of its auroral location, to a lower latitude, there by triggering an already waiting to happen Earth quake? Or a solar shock induced triggering of an already slippery plate?
Dr. S. you were kinda confusing me with all the talk about no real increases of EQ activity due to solar events.
So much stuff going on with the tectonic plates, with all that corylosis, extensional, compression, convergence zone, GIA, atmospheric waves, tides, shocks, currents, magnetic fields etc……
Hmm whats this folder window, Helium Focusing Cone? Piece of the catapult..
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:50 am
Dr. S. you were kinda confusing me with all the talk about no real increases of EQ activity due to solar events.
It is really quite simple. If a solar storm were to trigger an earthquake then on the day of the storm [or at most a very few days thereafter] that earthquake would happen, rather than later on. This means that on the day of the storm here would be one [or more] more earthquake than if the storm had not happened. So by simply counting how many earthquakes happened on ‘storm days’, we would predict a spike in the count compared to any other day. No such spike is observed, hence the storm did not trigger any earthquakes.
Carla
I think it was perfectly clear what I was doing the test for, not making a claim, but suggesting a possibility. But if Dr. S. wants to interpret it his way then let him try this test: plot number of earthquakes M5 and above against the intensity and number of magnetic storms from 01/01/ 2010- 18/03/2011. Hardly can claim cherry picking since period called ‘now’ is not recognised by science as such, ‘now’ may be unusual, but ‘now’ is not cherry picking!
vukcevic says:
March 18, 2011 at 2:12 pm
I think it was perfectly clear what I was doing the test for, not making a claim, but suggesting a possibility.
The data has shown again and again that the possibility does not pan out. The plot you suggest is not well-defined. For any time period the number of earthquakes and the intensity and number of storms are just three numbers. A plot using ALL storms as I made shows the lack of any relation.
vukcevic says:
March 18, 2011 at 2:12 pm
I think it was perfectly clear what I was doing the test for, not making a claim, but suggesting a possibility.
There are 1500 earthquakes per year of magnitude 5 or greater, so there will be many hits on every day, making it a meaningless exercise, as you can always find an earthquake after any storm. The proper analysis [using as much data as possible – 100 years] is to see if there are more earthquakes on or just after a geomagnetic storm. If you do the analysis, you find that there are not.
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 18, 2011 at 6:21 pm
vukcevic says:
March 18, 2011 at 2:12 pm
I think it was perfectly clear what I was doing the test for, not making a claim, but suggesting a possibility.
There are 1500 earthquakes per year of magnitude 5 or greater, so there will be many hits on every day, making it a meaningless exercise, as you can always find an earthquake after any storm..
~
That is an interesting stat.
I’m not so into stats as, location of the storms impact (Asia, Canada, etc) on existing surface fields and currents wrt the already ongoing tectonic process it is coupled. Not every storm impacts exactly the same.
They spun Voyager 1 around looking for the solar wind out there in the turbulent heliosheath.
Voyager Seeks the Answer Blowin’ in the Wind 03.08.11
..The two Voyager spacecraft are traveling through a turbulent area known as the heliosheath. The heliosheath is the outer shell of a bubble around our solar system created by the solar wind, a stream of ions blowing radially outward from the sun at a million miles per hour. The wind must turn as it approaches the outer edge of the bubble where it makes contact with the interstellar wind, which originates in the region between stars and blows by our solar bubble.
In June 2010, when Voyager 1 was about 17 billion kilometers (about 11 billion miles) away from the sun, data from the Low Energy Charged Particle instrument began to show that the net outward flow of the solar wind was zero. That zero reading has continued since. The Voyager science team doesn’t think the wind has disappeared in that area. It has likely just turned a corner. But does it go up, down or to the side?
“Because the direction of the solar wind has changed and its radial speed has dropped to zero, we have to change the orientation of Voyager 1 so the Low Energy Charged Particle instrument can act like a kind of weather vane to see which way the wind is now blowing,” said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist, based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. “Knowing the strength and direction of the wind is critical to understanding the shape of our solar bubble and estimating how much farther it is to the edge of interstellar space.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/voyager20110308.html
Carla says:
March 19, 2011 at 6:00 am
I’m not so into stats as, location of the storms impact (Asia, Canada, etc) on existing surface fields and currents wrt the already ongoing tectonic process it is coupled. Not every storm impacts exactly the same.
You have not understood the analysis. Even if only SOME storms have impact, the number of EQs on those storm days would be higher and there would still be a spike on day 0, albeit a bit smaller. If even fewer storms have impact, the spike would be smaller still. As there is no spike, it means that no storms have any impact.
They spun Voyager 1 around looking for the solar wind out there in the turbulent heliosheath.
Is OT and irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Dr.S.
Your results don’t show anything, hence irrelevant.
My results (regular daily updates) are here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
Come back in a month or so.
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 19, 2011 at 7:57 am
Carla says:
March 19, 2011 at 6:00 am
I’m not so into stats as, location of the storms impact (Asia, Canada, etc) on existing surface fields and currents wrt the already ongoing tectonic process it is coupled. Not every storm impacts exactly the same.
You have not understood the analysis. Even if only SOME storms have impact, the number of EQs on those storm days would be higher and there would still be a spike on day 0, albeit a bit smaller. If even fewer storms have impact, the spike would be smaller still. As there is no spike, it means that no storms have any impact.
~
“”You have not understood the analysis.””
Yes I have, (both) thank you.
But.. not what I am looking at.
Leif, if I am only looking for spikes, then I wont be able to see the continuum ‘part’ of the ongoing processes. If this is just a part of an ongoing process, coupling IMF, MF, SF, there wont be spikes on any given days, storms or no. Doesn’t mean the triggering does not occur due to shocks and ground currents that were solar induced.
And I hear tell that the more ice on the planet the fewer ground current and lower over all surface field.
vukcevic says:
March 19, 2011 at 9:47 am
Your results don’t show anything, hence irrelevant.
Because there is nothing there. No effect.
Carla says:
March 19, 2011 at 10:03 am
If this is just a part of an ongoing process, coupling IMF, MF, SF, there wont be spikes on any given days, storms or no.
What it means is that you cannot use solar storms as a predictor for the EQ. Which is the whole point.
Doesn’t mean the triggering does not occur due to shocks and ground currents that were solar induced.
If triggering occurred there would be a spike. If a storm on day X triggers an EQ on day X [or any other day just after X] there would be a spike on that day(s).