Don’t worry, this guy is just trying to sell a book conveniently located on the left sidebar of the Guardian. I hear there’s a two for one special with Chariots of the Gods on Amazon.
Get a load of some of this rubbish:
The world we inhabit has an outer rind that is extraordinarily sensitive to change. While the Earth’s crust may seem safe and secure, the geological calamities that happen with alarming regularity confirm that this is not the case. Here in the UK, we only have to go back a couple years to April 2010, when the word on everyone’s lips was Eyjafjallajökull – the ice-covered Icelandic volcano that brought UK and European air traffic to a grinding halt. Less than a year ago, our planet’s ability to shock and awe headed the news once again as the east coast of Japan was bludgeoned by a cataclysmic combination of megaquake and tsunami, resulting – at a quarter of a trillion dollars or so – in the biggest natural-catastrophe bill ever.
…
Could it be then, that if we continue to allow greenhouse gas emissions to rise unchecked and fuel serious warming, our planet’s crust will begin to toss and turn once again?
The signs are that this is already happening. In the detached US state of Alaska, where climate change has propelled temperatures upwards by more than 3C in the last half century, the glaciers are melting at a staggering rate, some losing up to 1km in thickness in the last 100 years. The reduction in weight on the crust beneath is allowing faults contained therein to slide more easily, promoting increased earthquake activity in recent decades. The permafrost that helps hold the state’s mountain peaks together is also thawing rapidly, leading to a rise in the number of giant rock and ice avalanches. In fact, in mountainous areas around the world, landslide activity is on the up; a reaction both to a general ramping-up of global temperatures and to the increasingly frequent summer heatwaves.
Whether or not Alaska proves to be the “canary in the cage” – the geological shenanigans there heralding far worse to come – depends largely upon the degree to which we are successful in reducing the ballooning greenhouse gas burden arising from our civilisation’s increasingly polluting activities, thereby keeping rising global temperatures to a couple of degrees centigrade at most.
Alaska has detached OMG!
Yeah right, that ~0.8°C of atmospheric warming in the past century reached all the way down to the bottom of the ocean and disturbed the fault off Japan. Of course if Mr. McGuire doesn’t do anything but let himself get scared by computer model predictions instead of examining measured reality, I can see how he’d be driven to write a book like this.
This Guardian article is even less credible when you pitch a sensational book in the “news” article at the Guardian right alongside it. I may nominate this guy for idiot of the year, he may beat Peter Gleick for this honor.
Here’s the book:
Waking the Giant: How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes by Bill McGuire
Buy it from the Guardian bookshop
UPDATE: 9:00AM 2/27 Anonymous whiner “The Power of X” complains in comments that I “didn’t use enough science” in this post. I didn’t realize that when mocking such absurd claims I had to worry about it that much, especially when I tag the story with “GLOC” and “ridiculae”. I figured hey, I just won Best Science Blog for the second year in a row and Lifetime Achievement Award in the 2012 Bloggies, plus the post went up at 3:30AM PST, so I though maybe I’d get a little slack. Oh well, that’s what updates are for. Steve Goddard helpfully points out what the USGS has to say about this nonsense. They write on their website:
Are Earthquakes Really on the Increase?
We continue to be asked by many people throughout the world if earthquakes are on the increase. Although it may seem that we are having more earthquakes, earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant.
A partial explanation may lie in the fact that in the last twenty years, we have definitely had an increase in the number of earthquakes we have been able to locate each year. This is because of the tremendous increase in the number of seismograph stations in the world and the many improvements in global communications. In 1931, there were about 350 stations operating in the world; today, there are more than 8,000 stations and the data now comes in rapidly from these stations by electronic mail, internet and satellite. This increase in the number of stations and the more timely receipt of data has allowed us and other seismological centers to locate earthquakes more rapidly and to locate many small earthquakes which were undetected in earlier years. The NEIC now locates about 20,000 earthquakes each year or approximately 50 per day. Also, because of the improvements in communications and the increased interest in the environment and natural disasters, the public now learns about more earthquakes.
According to long-term records (since about 1900), we expect about 17 major earthquakes (7.0 – 7.9) and one great earthquake (8.0 or above) in any given year.
They make the exact same argument that I do about severe weather, another favorite worry-wail of the CAGW camp:
Oh, the GRACE data isn’t the definitive answer on ice loss=earthquakes
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/22/greenland-ice-not-responding-as-predicted/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/why-im-not-worried-about-greenlands-icecap/
correlation ≠ cause
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I wonder how long it will be before the BBC picks this up and spins it.
You could’t make this stuff up.
Oh, wait a minute………………. .
H.G.Wells would be so envious of the imaginations of these folk.
I think Piers Corbyn sees links, but would link both climate and geological events with external forces such as solar forces. As we say so many times, just because 2 things are correlated doesn’t mean there’s a causal link one way or the other — in this case there may be a cause driving both of them.
Dear me Chariots of the Gods.
You are going back a bit aren’t you?
Not that gullible persons of that time didn’t rush about talking about it. Oh and the BBC made a show or two.Don’t blame me I was strictly fiction dept. Where we had real monsters you know.
Still there we are.
And congratulations on your success in the Bloggies.
Kindest Regards
That should read “couldn’t”.
My computer can’t spell.
I don’t think we’ll ever see Peak Stupid.
Included in the drivers of climate change are volcanic activity and plate tectonics amongst a host of others. These drivers work over millions of years for plate tectonics to a few weeks for a volcanic eruption of sufficient intensity. But the reverse is impossible. Earthquakes are feature of plate tectonics with the most severe occurring near subduction zones but no connection with climate.
This book sounds like typical Guardian alarmism based on fairy tales.
Do you think he believes the cr*p he writes or is he just in it for the money? I surpose you could ask the same of many-a rent-a-eco.
‘Buy it from the Guardian bookshop’ – no thanks I prefer more action in my Fiction, oh and Elves and Dwarfs.
Piers Corbyn has been saying that a quiet sun could cause more earthquakes/volcanoes for some time. This guy is betting he’s right to sell his book.
Can’t blame him , lots of other have jumped on the AGE gravy train with equally mad claims .
Oh come on! Possibly the other way round perhaps, but this is stoopid.
Oi!
Chariots of the Gods is a good book!
This is a common cause correlation here but these people are blinded by their absolute faith in the power of carbon dioxide.
There are many studies that have found statistical correlation of solar activity and earthquakes/volcanic activity. In the same way as many studies have found statistical correlations of variations in climate and solar activity (see Piers Corbyn). So there will be some common correlation between volcanic/earthquake activity and climate changes; they possibly have the same causation. This is complicated by the impact of large volcanic effects on climate of course. But then there can be no simple relationships between aspects of a chaotic system of chaotic systems.
However, as the Guardian article shows, there will always be someone who tries to draw simple causal links between correlated effects or trend lines through time series of data from stochastic processes.
It is insane… unless you are trying to sell a book to a bunch of deluded cultists and make one last smash and grab for cash before the game ends and the whole scam comes tumbling down in a heap.
This book has basically made the final claim. The one that has been too whacky for anyone else to make. But now that there are books about all other possible effects of climate change this was the last seam that could be mined and he has done it.
The only extension now would be to claim that our CO2 is messing up the Sun. It will be made soon but I don’t think that it will have quite the following needed to make a book worthwhile.
I was about to fisk this tripe myself but you’ve beaten me to the chase Anthony….
May I offer something else instead – the reaction of the True Believers to the Heartland forgery has frankly – been beyond belief, with the likes of DeSmog, the Guardian etc continuing to treat it as if it is genuine. And this McGuire bloke doesn’t seem to be cut from a different cloth himself.
So I cut a small vid (don’t worry, not a Downfall vid this time) from an amusing Star Wars parody that sums up the situation for me. There’s one mild cuss word in the vid. The first reaction I get in the comments from an alarmist on Youtube is much ruder though I’m sure it will amuse everyone….
Carbon Dioxide Supermolecule! Wears his knickers on the outside, not only can he defy gravity and stay in the sky for thousands of years, he can lift whole continents!
Well, if THIS be science, let them make the most of it.
Who the heck is Bill McGuire?
No, this is not a slur. According to Wikipedia: “Bill McGuire may refer to: Bill McGuire (volcanologist) Bill McGuire (baseball) Bill McGuire (footballer) Billy McGuire, one of the World’s Heaviest Twins.”
Assuming that the first adjective is the correct one, a vulcanologist should know that whether or not you move glaciers around, the tectonic plates are always undergoing stresses that would result in a constant rate of drift, if they were allowed to move freely. Melting glaciers, although in theory may make the plates slide more easily, cannot increase the average rate of this drift. This is because the forces driving the plates has not altered. Thus, if the plates slide more easily, as McGuire suggests, then there will be more frequent, but smaller tremors. This is actually a good thing.
McGuire is simply another one in a long list of alarmists, who make outrageous and ridiculous claims about so called climate catastrophe. Although what he is claiming, on closer inspection, appears to relate to areas currently under ice, that does not stop him from throwing in examples that have absolutely nothing to do with his theory. The Japan tsunami did not result from an area that was covered by ice, and the icelandic volcano, was in fact a volcano, and not an earthquake.
Having conflated the totally unrelated issues in the readers mind, he then makes his final leap of logic by claiming that:
“the geological shenanigans there heralding far worse to come – depends largely upon the degree to which we are successful in reducing the ballooning greenhouse gas burden arising from our civilisation’s increasingly polluting activities, thereby keeping rising global temperatures to a couple of degrees centigrade at most.”
No lack of adjectives there. Greenhouse gases are said to be “ballooning”, which implies geometric growth – also a nonsensical claim, and civilisation’s activities are “increasingly polluting” which is a non-sequitor in any case. If there is more pollution, there is likely to be more aerosols and therefore global dimming – remember that theory? Well, perhaps by pollution he is referring to CO2 emissions only, rather than actual pollution. Yet he is now out on a limb, because whether global temperatures will rise by more than a couple of degrees depends totally on the amount of positive feedback in the climate system. This is a contraversial issue, but most evidence to date suggests feedback will actually be negative, not positive.
But I guess a vulcanologist wouldn’t be expected to know much about the climate system. Maybe Peter Gleick wrote that bit for him.
Oh noes! The dreaded isostatic rebound is torquing Gaia to bits! Buy the book, soon to be a major motion picture!
Seriously, this guy may be crazy but he’s certainly cunning. His doomsday article is so carefully laced with “mights” and “coulds” and “maybes” and “possibly, somedays” that nobody can ever legally complain. He’s just writing a thriller and cashing out on popular confusion and fear.
The fact that his work is so sloppy and over-the-top suggests that the opportunists see the end of the scam as imminent, and either want to double-down on the potential consequences even as the probabilities dwindle; or they want to rush the last hysterical warnings to market and collect a check before the public wakes up.
Either way, this is most interesting.
Next week in the Grauniad: “How climate change makes the Earth more vulnerable to asteroid impacts.”
Makes me wonder if the 1964 Alaska quake (9.2 magnitude) was pre- or post-Global Warming.
And about that 2010 quake in Haiti (7.0). Melting of the Papa Doc Glacier?
If this type of nonsense isn’t confronted we’ll end up with climate trials like Oliver Reed’s in ‘The Devils’.
Not to mention all those old copies of National Geographic in everyone’s garages causing subsidence. /sarc
sarc. abandon ship ! mann the boats !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
Oldseadog says:
February 27, 2012 at 3:37 am
You could’t make this stuff up.
——————————————
A rational person couldnt make this up, but warmists can.
They couldnt give a monkeys about the truth, all theyre interested in is going for the big “scare me” story.
The bigger the scare the better they like it and will promote it, no matter how ludicrous, no matter how bizarre, no matter that its completely made up, the product of a sick imagination.
The wilder, the dumber, the more stupefyingly erm stupid the idea, there will be a warmist behind it, screeching hysterically, hair flying in the carbon dioxide “saturated” atmos, foaming at the mouth and pointing their pointy fingers at everyone hollering the “repent” the end is nigh” codswallop thats so their hallmark.
They accuse sceptics of being “anti” science- whats scientific about the british taxpayer funding a “rainman” out in africa somewhere?
Yup, theyre actually chucking cold hard cash at some voodoo loving screwball to produce rain.
Thats the level of agw “science”, complete garbage at every possible level.
Right, now onto the rapture….ha ha!