You can’t make this stuff up. It’s worse than we thought. Related: Why the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are Not Collapsing
Climate change: melting ice will trigger wave of natural disasters
Scientists at a London conference next week will warn of earthquakes, avalanches and volcanic eruptions as the atmosphere heats up and geology is altered. Even Britain could face being struck by tsunamis
Robin McKie The Observer, Sunday 6 September 2009
Scientists are to outline dramatic evidence that global warming threatens the planet in a new and unexpected way – by triggering earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions.
Reports by international groups of researchers – to be presented at a London conference next week – will show that climate change, caused by rising outputs of carbon dioxide from vehicles, factories and power stations, will not only affect the atmosphere and the sea but will alter the geology of the Earth.
Melting glaciers will set off avalanches, floods and mud flows in the Alps and other mountain ranges; torrential rainfall in the UK is likely to cause widespread erosion; while disappearing Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets threaten to let loose underwater landslides, triggering tsunamis that could even strike the seas around Britain.
At the same time the disappearance of ice caps will change the pressures acting on the Earth’s crust and set off volcanic eruptions across the globe. Life on Earth faces a warm future – and a fiery one.
“Not only are the oceans and atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms and floods, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in too,” said Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre, at University College London (UCL).
“Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something,” added McGuire, who is one of the organisers of UCL’s Climate Forcing of Geological Hazards conference, which will open on 15 September. Some of the key evidence to be presented at the conference will come from studies of past volcanic activity. These indicate that when ice sheets disappear the number of eruptions increases, said Professor David Pyle, of Oxford University’s earth sciences department.
“The last ice age came to an end between 12,000 to 15,000 years ago and the ice sheets that once covered central Europe shrank dramatically,” added Pyle. “The impact on the continent’s geology can by measured by the jump in volcanic activity that occurred at this time.”
Read the rest here at the Guardian
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A question for Douglas Adams: Do purple sharks jump the googly tsunamis in Gangaftlyaglay Galactia?
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Chaos and crisis is the opportunity for change.
Hope and change. One world governemnt, one world currency. One world leader, the antichrist
Look East, it’s coming before he arrives in power.
Copied from the tips & Notes discussion now that this has a home:
McGuire seems to get around!
Ric Werme (17:38:34) :
Aron (13:46:31) :
“Even Britain could face being struck by tsunamis”
LOL, created by which fault line??
I would’ve guessed a undersea landslide at the Canary Islands, those may be behind some American tsunamis. I wouldn’t have thought the Lisbon quake would affect Britain, but a quick Google yields
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070507-tsunami-britain_2.html
“An active fault zone lies off the coast of Ireland, and second-hand reports mention a tremor felt on the morning of January 30, 1607,” Haslett said.
[Being the current NatGeo, it mentions the Canaries, but goes the extra step:]
“Our research has shown that the world’s biggest active landslide is occurring on the flanks of Cumbre Vieja, a volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma,” said Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London. (See a map of the Canary Islands and Morocco.)
When this volcano erupts, McGuire and his colleagues predict, half of the island will slide into the ocean, precipitating an Atlantic Ocean tsunami.
The East Coast of the United States and large swaths of Western Europe will be swamped with wave heights of up to 33 feet (10 meters), the experts said.
“One day this eruption will occur. It is a case of when, not if,” McGuire said.
About 2 percent of tsunamis occur in the Atlantic Ocean, but this figure could become higher in the future, he added.
“If global warming causes catastrophic melting of the Greenland ice sheet, then we can expect large landslides to occur from the glacial sediment sitting offshore,” McGuire said.
http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Could-tsunami-really-hit-Britain.4558454.jp
We already know that Britain can be affected by tsunamis: one hit our shores as recently as 1755, when a massive earthquake reduced Lisbon in Portugal to smoke and rubble. The quake sent a wave charging across the Atlantic and into the English Channel, travelling as fast as a modern aeroplane and hurling giant slabs of rock from the sea bed far up the beach at Lamorna Cove in Cornwall. But the professors say that wasn’t a unique event; in fact, they claim we have experienced an array of tsunamis, and, for the past 300 years, they have struck once every century.
However, Haslett and Bryant have three other tsunamis in their armoury: in 1580, an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.8 hit Kent. Contemporary accounts talk of ships grounding on the sea floor and widespread panic on both sides of the Channel. While most academics put this down to a normal process called “seiching”, Haslett and Bryant argue the waves and flooding were due to a tsunami, triggered by the earthquake causing an undersea landslide.
In 1884, they claim the “Great British Earthquake”, with its epicentre in Essex, triggered a giant wave that swamped Mersea Island and surrounding areas, leaving a signature layer of sand in the soil profile. Again, the sand layer dates from this time, but Professor Bill McGuire, from University College London, claims that this is far more likely to be the result of the water sloshing on shore as the Earth’s crust deformed with the shock of the quake.
In France in 1833, a Lithograph of a volcanic eruption was used to promote “FREEDOM”.
http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/saturday-volcano-art-auguste-desperret-troisieme-eruption-du-volcan-de-1789-1833/
Today volcanic eruptions are used to suppress freedom and promote the Global Warming myth.
During the LIA volcanic eruptions and a long SOLAR MINIMUM triggered the Maunder and Dalton Minimum.
The Midieval Warmth Period, when temperatures were much higher than today, saw a lul in tectonic activity, earthquakes and volcanic eruption.
Also our last century is regarded as a relative quiet period in regard to volcanic eruptions.
Anthony is right, you can’t make this stuff up!
This is pure alarmism based on….nothing and call it science.
I am flabbergasted about the lack of journalism that allow the publication of this kind of BS.
Come to think of it, ever since global warming really took off according to “scientists”, I have had to go to the bathroom more. You see, it is hotter outside. This causes me to drink more. Since I drink more to keep myself cooler, I have to urinate more. (Hey, I’m pining for funding! I need to use official terminology to make people think I know something they don’t.) As another side-effect, more trips to the toilet mean more flushes. Therefore, global warming will also cause a huge reduction in potable water as well.
Sarcasm aside, do you see how easy it is to tie something to global warming. Correlation does not imply causation. That is Logic 101. Furthermore, who is to say they have the order right? They say: global warming causes more volcanic eruptions. But could it be: more volcanic eruptions causes global warming. More basic logic: if A implies B, that does not mean B implies A. In their zeal to blame everything on our lifestyle, they start with the premise that we are causing global warming and then go from there. They start with what they want to be true, never considering that what they blame global warming for causing could possibly be causing global warming.
On a related note, the definition of stupidity is to do the same failed action again but expect a different result. I saw a commercial yesterday urging me to call my congressman and tell them to support cap-and-trade because it will create jobs. They used the same tactic: blame Big Oil, vilify their record profits. It gave a website, which I forgot. But if I see it again, I will send them a note and ask how they can be so stupid.
Volcanoes, cap-and-trade, earthquakes … we will look back and go “these people truly were stupid.”
“… Ack (02:14:51) :
The Guardian is England’s version of the National Enquirer? Reading some of the comments from that link are…disturbing. I thought Europeans were better educated.”
…The Guardian is more Britain’s version of The New York Post, which was once a great newspaper that used to be taken seriously, but is now the home of daily hysterical ravings and fantasy.
Re Stephen Wilde: “where are the intelligent politicians ?”
Thanks for the chuckle over my morning cereal. My nominee for oxymoron of the week.
So apparently it’s OK for climatologists to speculate on geological / geophysical phenomena but it’s not OK for Geoscientist to hypothesize on issues of climatology. And it’s really not OK for anyone else to speculate on climatology. Nice double standard guys!
They are going far beyond discrediting climatology & are going into the realm of discrediting all science.
This is a disservice to all humanity & it is an outrage!
H.R. (02:42:47) “And do you think that in 11,000 years they can finally get the clock to stop blinking 12:00 after power is restored?)”
That’s the big question, H.R.. I admire someone who can get right down to relevance…
IanP (23:46:07) :
These are reported to “show that if we don’t take action by 2080 the temperature for the hottest day of the year in the West Midlands could increase by a scorching 100 C by 2080 … ”
My vote for quote of the week. Doesn’t water BOIL at 100c? I know I’m American and don’t get metrics…silly me.
There is nothing that cannot be blamed on global warming — even global cooling is caused by global warming — so this should not surprise anybody.
Is there any doubt that our education systems have failed?
We also need to make “jumping up and down” illegal if we are to save the planet from earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions.
So I expect to see UK legislation soon that will ban skipping ropes, hop-scotch, high jumping, long jumping, shot putting and vigorous sex…. with appropriate politically correct exceptions for the Olympic Games, MPs, Gays and bungee jumping…
Rumour has it that there is an EU funded scientific research station based on Ipanema beach that is monitoring the established relationship between butterflies beating their butterfly wings in Brazil with the number of earthquakes in Japan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect_in_popular_culture
PS And don’t even think about getting hopping mad… just be good sheeple…
The UK was an empire. Look how far down has fallen. It seems that when some generations die or emigrate, they are not replaced by similarly gifted people. If we were to search for the english people genetically, perhaps we could not find them in contemporary England, not even in their “new age” monarchy. It is a lost species.
OT: There is a new storm forming and it has been called “Fred”, as far as these are not named with female names these do not pose any real danger 🙂
Maybe the melting of the glaciers will cause enough seismic activity to raise Atlantis from beneath the waves. I mean, that could be cool.
Altantis, baby!!!
“Not only are the oceans and atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms and floods, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in too,” said Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre, at University College London (UCL).”
Great, now scientists are animating the forces of nature, and as conspirators. What we need is a Saturday morning cartoon series so as to really understand this effect.
I already know the solution though. Build a temple.
The New Scientist reported on September 4, 2009 and I quote here partly only,
“Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. One of the world’s top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.
Latif predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).
Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. “But how much? The jury is still out,” he told the conference. The NAO is now moving into a colder phase.
Latif said NAO cycles also explained the recent recovery of the Sahel region of Africa from the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. James Murphy, head of climate prediction at the Met Office, agreed and linked the NAO to Indian monsoons, Atlantic hurricanes and sea ice in the Arctic. “The oceans are key to decadal natural variability,” he said.
Another favourite climate nostrum was upturned when Pope warned that the dramatic Arctic ice loss in recent summers was partly a product of natural cycles rather than global warming. Preliminary reports suggest there has been much less melting this year than in 2007 or 2008″
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17742-worlds-climate-could-cool-first-warm-later.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
So it would appear that even AGW scientists admit that some of their past doom and gloom forcasts may have been wrong . This article will prove to be the same .
PPS Don’t you know we are at the tipping point… one more fluid ounce of water added to our globally connected oceanic infrastructure could cause all the tectonic plates to move catastrophically… please remember this the next time you go to the bathroom…. just flushing the toilet once may kill hundreds of thousand of people and destroy the lives of millions…. so best read the small print on your personal indemnity insurance before flushing… you have be warned…
Ah More volcanic ativity _lowers_ the atmospheric temps.Tambora,anyone?…
The icecap of biggest glacier in Europe, Vatnajokull, Iceland, has decreased for the last decates, and there are signs of more volcanic activity under the icecap.
When the vikings settled in Iceland 1.100 years ago, the climate was much warmer and therefore the glaciers smaller, and at that time, volcanic activity was more than today.
It´s a sign! It´s a sign!…. isn’t it?
It’s a veritable tsunami of doom-mongering pseudo-scientific “climate change” nonsense, all in preparation for Copenhagen, which will likely be the AGWers’ Last Hurrah.
“Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something,” added McGuire. Wow. As idiotic (and non sequitur) Warmist statements go, they just don’t get any more idiotic than that.
Though this one is equally dumb: ““Not only are the oceans and atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms and floods, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in too,” said Professor Bill McGuire.
So, now the Earth is CONSPIRING against us, AND it’s “trying to tell us something”? Do tell us more, Mr. McGuire.
It’s not April 1st is it?
nope………..
Then it can only be the result of a free educational system. A population doesn’t get this dumb on it’s own.
I doesn’t take long to find that this isn’t the first time Bill McGuire has made big claims before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_McGuire (not that I like Wiki for a reference)
if true, he also said this….
McGuire, in the 2006 History Channel program “Last Days on Earth” discussing Global Warming said, “I find it extraordinary that anybody can regard global warming (climate change) as a debate. Clearly it isn’t a debate.”
He also wrote the book “A Guide to the end of the world”
http://books.google.ca/books?id=RY-LWN6OdGMC&dq=A+guide+to+the+end+of+the+world&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=YGCmSta6HZmc8Qbhr7DjDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=&f=false
“Every time you address the Holocaust, you don’t bring somebody who says it didn’t happen. And we’re at that stage now, we have, we have Holocaust deniers and we have climate change deniers…and to be honest, I don’t see a great deal of difference.”
My cynical mind suspects Hazard Research was in danger of losing their funding to Climate change studies. Time to invent an angle and secure that funding.
“You can’t make this stuff up. It’s worse than we thought. “
Yes, they can make this stuff up. And it is is worse than we thought – the state of science that is.