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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There is a difference between last glaciation and now; the size of ice sheets or that doesn’t matter? LOL
If melting glaciers causes quakes and volcanoes, then surely the converse is true. Advancing glaciers and expanding ice sheets will push down on the plates and cause pressure to pop out elsewhere. Since there’s no such thing as a static climate or a static geological Earth, there’s doom either way you look at it.
And where were the tremendous catastrophes when each winter in the NH several feet of snow and ice suddenly develop over vast portions of the land masses? Why didn’t we have massive quakes? We had a LOT of snow this year in North America. Surely those trillions(?) of tons should have caused a geologic disaster. I must have missed it.
Idiots.
Also, Roger Knights @ur momisugly WUWT on Pielke (6 Sept, 20:09:44) : Why Smart People Fall for Fads is pertinent.
Anyone who’d like to repost it anyway should feel free to do so. Here’s the link to the thread (you’ll have to search for “fads”).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/05/pielke-senior-arctic-temperature-reporting-in-the-news-needs-a-reality-check/
I find it pretty funny that one of the chief criticisms of Michael Crichton’s book State of Fear was that the ecoterrorist’s plot to cause a tsunami was not a climate issue. I guess he knew it was only a matter of time before these non climate events would be linked to global warming.
Were there tsunamis in Britain during the Holocene Climate Optimum or Medieval Warm Period? :p
““Lord May, a former chief scientist to the government, said religious groups could use their influence to motivate believers into reducing the environmental impact of their lives.
The international reach of faith-based organisations and their authoritarian structures give religious groups an almost unrivalled ability to encourage a large proportion of the world’s population to go green, he said.””
And Marxism’s authoritarian structure too. We’re all going back to the Garden of Eden, from whence sinful man fell from grace. And this time we’ll be vegans and sing Bob Dylan songs and have group sex and smoke lots of weed under the benevolent eyes of a Dear Leader and Bono because apparently God Is Dead, but only if you’re white. Everyone else gets to keep God.
[snip]
Point one: the readership of the Guardian isn’t very large. You’ve got just as many loonies in the US who believe that God’s wrath will descend on earth through just the same mechanisms. None of us think that the rest of you are idiotic enough to believe such drivel. Hopefully you’ll believe the same about us Brits?
Second: the academics see Copenhagen as marvellous fuel to drive new grant funding opportunities, so they take part in the generalised media bullshit for partisan purposes. So, I guess, do US academics?
Thirdly: The Guardian is the home for sandal-wearing lefties. There’s nothing wrong with 98% of what sandal-wearing lefties believe in. Getting rid of nukes – yeah, we all agree with that, as long as everyone else gets rid of them too. Generally trying not to kill people – yeah, we agree with that too as long as some bearded bastards don’t bomb the crap out of us. Feeding Africans – yeah, we agree with that too, so long as the food isn’t sold by tinpot dictators and the money deposited in some Swiss bank account whilst the poor folks starve to death. Clean energy – yeah we agree with that so long as it doesn’t mean switching the lights out.
The problem with papers is that their bloggers get like a bunch of Kluckers after a few too many beers – they wind each other up with their fantasies and they stop realising that the rest of us folks think they’re off their rocker.
That’s why I spend plenty of time challenging journos and bloggers whose views I disagree with. At least then they have to listen to challenge and really argue their case properly.
Maybe a bunch of you folks should go onto the Guardian site and do the same to that bunch? Some to the Independent too….last bastion of the heat generation on earth transferred from the Sun to the human gaseous emissions………
Utterly shameless.
Though one wonders whether these alarmists have actually started to believe what they write; if that’s the case, I feel a shadow of pity for them. I can imagine them pulling their hair out in their cubicles, in the dark, because they unscrewed their compact florescents in an attempt to avert the apocalypse.
Does Bill McGuire have any academic credentials… besides teaching freshman Geology and running a geo-hazards school for insurance adjusters?
Just amazing. And we let this folks get science degrees…
“Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something,”
This is called “religion”. The belief in a “higher power” or earth as a living being with emotional state and sentience.
Maybe the earth is just sitting here as a big ball of rock doing what big balls of rock do as a consequence of the laws of physics. And as we all know:
“I can nay change the laws of physics, Jim!”
(Think of a very famous Scot)…
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.
Another “Given these conclusions, what assumptions can I draw?” conference.
These indicate that when ice sheets disappear the number of eruptions increases, said Professor David Pyle, of Oxford University’s earth sciences department.
And he doesn’t think that maybe lighting off a few dozens of volcanos under an ice sheet might cause some melting?
“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.”
And completely ignores the evidence that the Clovis People came to an end in N. America when a giant meteor hit the ice sheet. Gee, a giant fiery ball of high energy whacks the continent, causes widespread destruction, ice sheet melting and most likely some crustal deformation. Ya think that might just cause a we bit ‘o volcanic triggering? Nothing like a few gigatons of TNT equivalent to shake up your day.
But nooooo, these folks want the arrow of causality to run backwards. Ignore that giant impact behind the curtains…
They all ought to be required to right on the blackboard 1,000,000 times:
Coincidence, Correlation, Causality – I will not Confound them.
Okay, so we create a large number of tsunami’s and volcanic eruptions… Would not the volcanoes then cool the atmosphere? Oh wait… Never mind that would mean the planet was regulating itself while mankind continues to exist…
I am tired of people making ridiculous claims… what if the pressure does the opposite… Now we have fewer of these events? This shows more and more that this is a religious movement rather then sound science. I am so angry right now that words fail me.
How many more plagues will Al “Moses” Gore inflict on us until we relent and abandon ourselves to their control?
What bad thing could happen that would not be attributable to AGW? War? no, they got that one. Death of the Loch Ness Monster? Nope. I have it! A nearby supernova that floods the planet with X-Rays. Alarmists, start working on it! A good place to start would be with “teleconnections”.
We have a bar here in Calgary called Yuk Yuk’s, comedy bar, I believe these people would get standing ovaitions every time!
rxc (04:40:35) :
With the publication of this article, the AGW crowd is arguably “jumping the shark”.
Perfect observation.
JER0ME (08:10:27) :
I can see your comments fine. Maybe you need to wait for the moderation queue to catch up…
The sky is falling! The sky is falling ! errrrr
The sea is rising the sea is rising ! Uhhhh
The ice is melting ! The ice is melting! Ummmm
The Polar bears are drowning! The polar bears are drowning! Ahhh
The earth is quaking ! The Earth is quaking ! Yeah that’s the ticket!
(moment must check my notes to see what is next)
I must say what are these guys smoking ?
Or are they just unemployed screen writers from Hollywood trying to do a career change to cope with the down turn in video sales?
If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would be funny. Can’t these folks see that it is exactly this sort of “cry wolf” stories that is turning them into laughing stocks to the general public?
Larry
Well, we’ve always had the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse
Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. Now we have a fifth !!!
How about a competition for the best name?
This story it is a good one for making a science fiction movie!…and professor Bill Mc Guire a serious candidate for a Nobel Prize!, as laurate and as informed as BB(*) Al.
(*)Big belly.
“but doubling the utility bills of the working poor and demanding that people in India continue to drive donkey carts is hardly progressive.”
You may not realize it, but you pass as a right winger at a tea party by saying that simple sentence and nobody would question your credentials. Conservatives have been saying that for years.
One of the most nasty effects of pressure…is its release through farting. Beware when the earths farts!
Why don’t Bill McGuire’s academic credentials ever appear in any of his CV’s or bio’s?
He’s a volcanologist “by inclination and training”?
If he couldn’t handle the “maths” to be an astronomer, he surly couldn’t handle the “maths” to be a volcanologist or geophysicist.
I don’t find a “Senior Scientist” position listed for the Montserrat Volcano Observatory.
Does McGuire have any degrees in geology or geophysics? He’s never referred to as Dr. McGuire, or Bill McGuire, PhD. There’s no mention anywhere of his geoscience education apart from being a “Senior Scientist” at MVO.
Ray Boorman (00:03:47) : “It’s not April 1st is it?”
In Warmist Willie “science,” it’s always April 1st.
John Edmondson (23:35:13) : How long before raised CO2 levels have an effect on the Earth’s orbit around the sun, or on the sun itself?
Perhaps like those little glass globes with black / white vanes in them that spin in the sun? Our excess “heating” will cause more photon emissions on the dark side of the planet and this will cause the earth to spin faster and drive it out of the solar system … (or cause it to stop spinning and drive us into the sun – take your pick, I can run the argument either direction.)
IanP (23:46:07) : I think that there should be a competition to see who can come up with the most looney and desperate alarmist ’suggestion’ of what Climate Change will/or may (two categories) bring.
My contribution is this:
DNA zip / unzip replication is driven by warm / cold cycling (as demonstrated and used in PCR reactors, for example). As the climate becomes more extreme, there will be more temperature variation and cycling, leading to random DNA cycling, leading evolution to run amuck! We will all devolve into lower creatures and monsters while new and terrible beasts will develop to devour us! It is the natural and just revenge of the planet as it cleans itself of our pestilence. There will be carnivorous trees, new diseases, household pets will turn on us and devour us, as we devolve into incompetent masses of immobile cells paying for our sins with unimaginable suffering and hideous deformities, quivering, covered in painful boils and sores from new diseases.
So how did I do? I have the requisite touch of science at the beginning, the reference to a demonstrated scientific touchstone in reality, the “plausible yet wrong” leap to a bad effect that might come from it, then the launch into fantastic consequences from projecting this, completely uncontrolled, to extremes. That seems to be the “AGW Science” pattern…
I would submit it in both categories. “Will” up to the word “amuck”, and “may” from that point onward…
I suppose I could submit the “spin change’ scenario too…
When I was a child, a small child, I was read Fairy Tales from The Brothers Grimm. Other children were protected from the original versions by sanitized re-writes, but my mother read from an older book (the one where the wolf ‘wins’ and eats Little Red Riding Hood…) I learned very early that this was just fantasy and not to get too worried about it. I think I now know why I was taught that “these are just stories to scare the children”… Some other folks seem to have never learned that lesson. Only now are they experiencing the Fairy Tale with the bad ending, and they have not yet learned to control their imaginations and their fears…
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
Mark Twain
The illustration chosen is quite misleading. Not all quakes are tsunamogenic.