At first, when I got an email message pointing out this topic of global warming driving more earthquake energy, I thought it was satire. Then I saw it was on CBS News, so I knew it couldn’t be satire, but something else altogether. I’ll leave deciding what that is up to you the reader.
Today’s Quakes Deadlier Than In Past
Study: Seismic Activity 5 Times More Energetic Than 20 Years Ago Because Of Global Warming
June 18th full story is here
New research compiled by Australian scientist Dr. Tom Chalko shows that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago.
Excerpt:
“The most serious environmental danger we face on Earth may not be climate change, but rapidly and systematically increasing seismic, tectonic and volcanic activity,” said Dr. Chalko.
“Increase in the annual energy of earthquakes is the strongest symptom yet of planetary overheating. “
In related news:
Energy release from earthquakes may be up since 1990, but it is still below levels early in the 1900s; see the graph from this page:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/other/quake1.html
Source data: USGS
Click for a larger image
Estimated total annual earthquake energy release (magnitude 8 earthquake = 1 = 1,000 magnitude 6 earthquakes) in red; 7-year average in grey.
Click for a larger image
Annual earthquake death rate per million population in red; smoothed rates in grey (specifically, linear smoothing with 7-year Hann window). Note logarithmic scale.
UPDATE: I resisted my primal urges of expression on this subject, figuring others with such skills would take care of that for me. Strangely, I now find myself in my first ever agreement with BigCityLib, on this issue.
UPDATE2: Junkscience.com reports that Hansen’s modeling may be the impetus for this idea:
We’ve probably had enough fun at Chalko’s expense but should point out his ‘research’ is based on totally flawed model output from none other than Hansen himself. Remember the infamous “smoking gun” release? In Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications Hansen, et al, state: “Our climate model, driven mainly by increasing human-made greenhouse gases and aerosols, among other forcings, calculates that Earth is now absorbing 0.85 ± 0.15 watts per square meter more energy from the Sun than it is emitting to space. This imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years.” This is the source of Chalko’s “NASA measurements from space confirm that Earth as a whole absorbs at least 0.85 Megawatt per square kilometer more energy from the Sun than it is able to radiate back to space. This ‘thermal imbalance’ means that heat generated in the planetary interior cannot escape and that the planetary interior must overheat. Increase in seismic, tectonic and volcanic activities is an unavoidable consequence of the observed thermal imbalance of the planet” Unfortunately for Tom, they aren’t “NASA measurements from space” but Hansen’s crappy model output and it’s quite wrong.
When the “Energy Imbalance” paper was written the model output was a fair wiggle-fit with Willis (2004) and Levitus (2004). Like all happy accidents, however, this good thing came to an end, too. We’ll let Professor Roger Pielke, Sr., do the honors:
The Correction To The Lyman Et Al 2006 Paper Is Available – The correction to the Lyman et al paper “Recent cooling of the upper ocean” is available. It is “Correction to ‘Recent Cooling of the Upper Ocean’” by Josh K. Willis, John M. Lyman, Gregory C. Johnson and John Gilson. While this correction eliminates the cooling that they reported in the 2006 paper, the warming of the 1990s and very early 2000s has not continued. This absence of global ocean warming (which is consistent with the absence of a significant global average sea surface temperature anomaly trend for the last few years) is a challenge to the modelers and to the conclusions of the IPCC with respect to the ability to skillfully predict global warming. Indeed, it appears that with respect to the challenge on Climate Science of A Litmus Test For Global Warming – A Much Overdue Requirement, the models have failed so far. (Climate Science)
UPDATE UPDATE!
AS OF 11:20AM PST 6/19/08 CBS NEWS HAS PULLED THE STORY! The link no longer works!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/18/tech/main4191556.shtml
Here is proof however of it’s existence, a small screen cap. Did anyone make any larger ones?
MORE: Associated Press (AP) has also pulled the story:
Bummer – CBS has taken down their story. Did anyone save a copy? In the comment area I mentioned P.T. Barnum was right.
Anthony – the story header is all wrong. Instead of giving Chalko top billing, the headline should be “CBS taken in by pseudo-scientific report,” and the theme should be about what media looks for and what they carry.
Perhaps you should run some of these questionable reports by people several time zones away for a first review. It’s more important that your stories represent truth than being first within the blogosphere. I’d certainly be happy to review things some mornings (Eastern US) than trying to do so when I saw only two comments on this post when I got up. Your blog is too good to give Chalko headline billing.
Oh – somewhat unrelated factoid – A Uranium deposit in Africa was found to have a smaller than usual ratio of U235::U238. The conclusion was that a couple billion years ago when the ratio was high enough, some developing Uranium ore went critical and a natural reactor ran for some time. It was modulated by water – the water thermalized the neutrons, got hot, and boiled off, stopping the fission reaction. As things cooled down more water percolated in and the reaction started again.
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
There’s no way Uranium is going to enrich in the Earth’s core and become a fission reactor now. Don’t believe everything you read from CBS.
I have a complete screenshot of the story (GIF format) if it is of any use. I happened to have an open browser window with the story, so I saved the screenshot.
I also managed to save the complete HTML page. Contact me if you want a copy.
REPLY: yes send please, check your email, thanks – Anthony
I guess Dan Rather was just the fall guy after all.
dennis ward (07:42:27) :
You shouldn’t believe everything yor read on the BBC either. If you take a look yourself you’ll find that there is actually about half a million square kilometers more ice than the same date last year, and that the melting is going markedly slower:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
And of course the Antarctic ice is more than a million square kilometers larger:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
Discussion of the “article” can also be found at:
http://climatedonkey.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/shaky-science-ap-hoaxed-on-earthquake-and-global-warming-study/
“There’s no way Uranium is going to enrich in the Earth’s core and become a fission reactor now.”
Most of the heat of the earth’s interior is due to the decay of materials such as potassium-40. Because overall the earth is a pretty good insulator, this heat builds up and eventually becomes hot enough to melt rock. It is actually why I am sort of against geothermal power. Because the heat generation is actually very slight and slow, pulling any significant amount of heat out represents BTUs that took possibly millions of years to build up … or better … to replace. As you cool the interior of the earth you risk slowing or changing volcanism and geothermal on a huge global commercial scale could shut down a lot of volcanism. The result would be that we would have an mars-like planet. Our oceans and atmosphere would outgas into space relatively quickly … even faster if the Earth’s magnetic field continues to drop.
But I suppose according to this theory … if you covered an area the size of a county of Texas with styrofoam insulation, the earth’s own heat would bore a hole right up to the surface. Somehow I doubt it would. It would be an interesting experiment to insulate a large surface area and check the temperature under the insulation for a decade or two, though.
Perhaps a runthrough on the external forces known or suspected to cause (or rather release) earthquakes might be in order.
There is very good evidence that melting glaciers cause earthquakes. There was a fair amount of earthquake activity in normally very seismically quiet Scandinavia immediately after the end of the last glaciation. Remember that we are talking of 2-3 km thick ice here. That is a lot of pressure release in fairly short time.
Pumping water into a seismically active zone can cause quakes, probably by “lubricating” fractures so that accumulated stresses are released.
Building dams can have the same effect. In this case probably both the increased weight and higher water pressure have some effect.
There is fairly convincing evidence that tides can release earthquakes.
Finally there is rather weaker evidence that heavy rainstorms and storm surges can have the same effect.
Note that except for the first case these external factors do not *cause* the earthquakes, they only release already existing tensions. As a matter of fact you might consider the effect benign, since the earthquake would certainly occur in any case, and be stronger when it actually occurred.
crosspatch:
That experiment has already been done by nature. Much of the Antarctic and Greenland icecapc are melting at the base due to geothermal heat. Since the average temperature on top of the icecap is 20-50 below centigrade that is a rather substantial warming.
Anthony: It looks like my ISP mail is very slow. There is an alternate address you can reach me on the top left of my website. It might speed things up.
Well, I guess it’s official – the term CBS News is a contradiction in terms. The world of bloggers is having a field day with this one. CBS may have yanked the story but it surely won’t go away.
I can understand CBS running with it. They love AGW and Al Gore. And after reading some of this charlatan’s other writings I’m of the opinion that Al Gore and Tom Chalko are intellectual soul-mates. All Chalko needs now is for the Nobel crew to honor him. Or perhaps have a piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine to supplement its piece on the cat that can predict when a person will die.
“Most of the heat of the earth’s interior is due to the decay of materials such as potassium-40. Because overall the earth is a pretty good insulator,”
I just don’t buy the radioactive core theory. P-40 is just .012% of all K on the Earth and an extremely small part of the Earth’s core and its half-life is very, very large. And the other radionuclides are an even smaller %. Only a handful of naturally occurring nuclear reactors have been found and most formed due to water-borne concentration of specific isotopes. All burned out fairly quickly.
Anthony: No emails received, but I have uploaded a zip file containing a GIF screenshot + HTML to
http://home.online.no/~arnholm/watts/cbsnews.zip
I sent a pdf-file of the CBS-item to surfacestations.
For the LIST…
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Two insidious biggies have unconscionably been left off: belly-button lint and toe jam.
I blogged about Chalko on June 16 and no one pays any attention until it’s picked up by major services on the 17th. And no link love either. Sheesh! 🙂
My story was better. It includes pictures of the t-shirt.
I love you lucia, I hope that helps.
Oh– I didn’t mean better than this blog post. I meant better than the newswire stories. 🙂
Awesome. The article was so poorly done, even the news agencies that mainline the AGW koolaid pull it.
It would be great if a lesson was learned. Sadly, I doubt that happens.
MSNBC still carried the story as of 4:50PM Central time. http://www.msnbc.msn.com:80/id/25222766/
I posted this comment late last night on the CBS story:
“I can’t believe CBS ran this story. I suggest you retract it now.
NU Journal of Discovery is an unknown journal, with only a handful of publications, all of them by Chalko, who happens to be on the journal editorial board. NU (or Nature University) isn’t a real university.
Here are a few more things Chalko has been involved in:
Aliens! http://thiaoouba.com/faq.htm
Auras: http://thiaoouba.com/seeau.htm
Astral Travel? http://thiaoouba.com/astr.htm
He even sells shirts: http://bioresonant.com/dress.html?PHPSESSID=1a7fd4e1219326e73544904d8d1ac67d
Sorry CBS, but Chalko is a crackpot.”
I would like to think I had something to do with CBS pulling the story. One can only hope.
Don’t they know that obesity is cause from global warming?
And parkinson’s? And ADHD? No wonder I can’t get any work done anymore!
I’m pullin’ the G-dub card for everything NOW! BOO YAH.
It’s interesting that a couple of posters have mentioned Superman, because the explosion of the planet Krypton is absolute proof that it could happen here, too! Pass the Kool-Aid, Al.
They spiked the story to make room for this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25268181/
I believe earthquakes may correlate with satellites and other probes launched since 1958.
It wouldn’t correlate perfectly but what would? And at times Gaea may get confused and mistake a UFO for a satellite and react accordingly.
Before 1958? Oh, that doesn’t count, data no good!
About this story on CBS and the other media. I am sorry they pulled it. The public should see. See, that is, how careful the instant media is about what they present.