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
tarpon (11:40:56) :
“The scientists have no one to blame for this crap but themselves. Taking grant money to reinforce a hoax has consequences. Money corrupts, it’s intoxicating, but when you throw your own reputation overboard, it’s your problem alone.
What has happened to science.”
tarpon, the problem is that the scientists lie to themselves, to everybody else, and smear anybody else that disagrees with them.
Even when they are forced to admit they don’t “understand” some process or another they still claim that those who disagree with them are pseudo-scientific.
It’s sick — and scientists in the highest perches of the ivory tower engage in this kind of stuff.
Like I said, “It’s sick.”
Michael J. Bentley (07:18:45),
Hey, I live in the Salt Lake Valley. Growing up, I was made well aware of the Wasatch Fault’s presence. In High School Summer Science we were driven to the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon to view the 50′ (or was it 75′, I can’t remember) quake scar. I have never encountered any mention of stresses left from Lake Bonneville, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility. While in Guayaquil, Ecuador many years ago, I felt a moderate earthquake and was told that they regularly have shallow seasonal quakes at the beginning and end of the Wet season. They sit above the subduction zone of the Nazca Plate, so they may be more susceptible to variances in weight, or there may be no real relationship whatsoever — but isn’t it fun to theorize?
To keep things in perspective, I was always a little worried about a major earthquake, but it was always overshadowed by the real immediate threat of annihilation by nuclear war. Iirc the Salt Lake City area was considered to be fairly high on the list of targets. I think the anticipated number was about 30 multi-megaton warheads. Kind of gives meaning to the word “overkill”. At least with a massive earthquake there is a very good chance of living to tell the tale.
I think that today’s youth feel that they have somehow missed out on the specter of nuclear armageddon, so they have replaced it with AGW armageddon.
@ur momisugly Michael J Bentley
I would not dare take aim or fire.
My understanding, for what its worth is earthquakes are caused when the tectonic plates lock so if you are unlucky to live on a fault line then the thing you want to happen is the plates to keep moving otherwise your all Doomed.
The example you gave probably demonstrates my lack of knowledge on Geological processes and we need someone to help.
@ur momisuglyJohn Egan
Keep on posting at Cif and if you cant then you now what to do?
I wish Anthony would use GMT on his clock:-)
Tomorrow is a very sad day and in a way it brings home the dangers of extremism wherever it comes from.
And from my countryman Dylan Thomas I leave you with these words. Nos Da
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
E.M. Smith, I see a lot of my own experience in what you just posted… the whole attitude of wanting, needing to get OUT of school, then later in life discovering genuine interest in things that school seemed designed to make me hate.
And Crosspatch, the Earth talks to me. It says “drive a bigger car, FASTER”. And I obey.
Hubris used to be a crime.
” Nogw (11:59:27) :
Alexej Buergin (10:48:47) :
“Those were the days, my friend,
we thought they’d never end…”
But those were the days when physics became methaphysics, a time that saw the last experiments in science…to become what it is today: statistics instead of logic, random searching instead of real research. ”
When they finally solve the engineering problems, they will do some serious work in Geneva.
Increased volcanism due to rapid deglaciation is not wild speculation but a phenomenon studied for over a decade – see for example:
Jull, M., and D. McKenzie (1996), The effect of deglaciation on mantle melting beneath Iceland, J. Geophys. Res., 101(B10), 21,815–21,828.
“The spreading ridge on Iceland shows large variations in eruption rate over the last 10,000 years. An increase of about 30 times the steady state value, between 10,000 and 8000 years ago, coincides with the disappearance of ice at the end of the last ice age.”
I suspect Professor David Pyle, as one of the world’s leading volcanologists (he literally wrote the book on the subject), might know what he is talking about here.
Are you serious???
“Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something,” added McGuire
Sounds more like a greenpeace heckler after money!
They are comparing the end of the last ice age (when there was huge overburden pressure on parts of the earths crust) to the current ice mass which is tiny in comparison! The ice has been there for millions of years and will take at least thousands of years to recede, what are they talking about? Climate change over 100,000 year time scales? I think we can deal with that!
Increased erosion due to rainfall? Yes, but also less erosion due to frost thaw action! Erosion from rainfall is also factor of land use, soil saturation, river channel dimension etc…also wind. Sounds like complete alarmist spin!
JER0ME (08:10:27) : I have tried to post comments here before, but […] and that was deleted. I ask you…
When you post something and it just evaporates (no ‘awaiting moderation’) that is the spam filter. You have some ‘forbidden’ or ‘trigger’ word in your text (maybe even just in a quote; as yours had an F variant… ) or you have ‘too many’ links.
spam is handled in a different screen from regular moderation, so only gets looked at cyclically. Eventually your post will be freed, just give it some time…
I see four posts from JEROME that have made it through on 9/8.
E.M.Smith (12:08:55) :
It is much easier to get a Ph.D. if you are a lemming. ……
Basically, if you can survive formal government run education and still function, you probably have a decent mind and can start getting a decent education on your own.
How true… remembering back to my days in prep school (seriously it was called Wallop), military boarding school (learning to kill from the age of 11) and a myopic welsh comprehensive school (that wanted to teach everything to English speakers in the medium of Welsh)
They always felt like insane asylums run by power crazed raving lunatics… but the real shock came when I studied Political Economy for my degree because I believed universities were a bastion of intelligence and ethics… luckily the first lecture in economics cured me of that false belief…
Unfortunately, the same economic bull is still being promulgated to this day… so I have little hope that science will ever recover it’s integrity… I just hope I am wrong…
“Since the NY Post never was a great newspaper, …”
It was founded by Alexander Hamilton, so it probably was OK back in the day.
Oh gads… now you will all see why I was told to stop asking questions in school…
Rhys Jaggar (08:39:06) : 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.
Rhys, I’m going to point out a couple of “issues” with these points; but it isn’t in the form of ‘baiting’ or being cantankerous… it’s an Aspe thing, the need for completeness and precision…
While *I* think getting rid of nukes might be a good idea, it has “issues”.
For one, it grants hegemony to the country with the largest conventional force. Is that what you want? Even if in 20 years that country is China? A “nuke” is an asymmetrical threat. It lets even the little guy say “Don’t even think of crossing that line”. In some very important ways, the threat of nuclear war reduces the risks of conventional wars breaking out. Very few nuclear powers have risked conventional war with nuclear neighbors…
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.
This ignores the “teach a man to fish” issue.
Flood a poor African country with food, put the farmers out of business. Next year will be a worse famine. Now subsidize those farmers for a year or two, help them build pumped wells and irrigation, teach them modern farming techniques and industrial fertilizer use: THEN you can make them dependent on the western industrialized base, foreign money lenders, foreign exchange, and spare parts… Ooops…
Economics is called “The Dismal Science” for a reason. Food price supports is one of the big issues with lots of hand wringing, but few good answers.
So I must protest that “no, we can not all agree” on that. Nor ought we.
E.M.Smith (13:09:02) :
So I must protest that “no, we can not all agree” on that. Nor ought we.
What can i say… wonderful response.
I for one welcome our armageddon preaching cosmic overlords.
As I see it the more ludicrous these fantasy stories become the more the general public is going to see them for what they are; the increasingly desperate outpourings of a dying cargo-cult movement.
Bring them on I say.
Cheers
Mark
Rhys Jaggar (08:39:06) : 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?
You talk funny, drink warm beer, and have no idea what football really is. Of course we doubt your sanity. We don’t doubt our own; we never had any!!!!
ctm, JEROME may have been referring to posts at the guardian.
This Prof. McGuire cannot do maths but he does have three cats called Jetsam, Driftwood, and Dave listed under “Expertise” on his WEB site.
I am sure this makes him highly qualified in:
– geodetic monitoring of active volcanoes
– volcano instability and collapse
– volcanoes and environmental change
– volcanic hazards and their mitigation
– volcanic emergency protocols and procedures
– low frequency-high magnitude geophysical hazards
– climate forcing of geological hazards
– identification and characterisation of megatsunami deposits
– feeding cats
To me this appears to be a clever ploy to relate every natural disaster or natural weather event even if only slightly more than normal to climate change and then blame it on mankind and their generated carbon dioxide and thus justify a new world wide false carbon tax. Since many of the AGW predictions have proven to be wanting, they urgently needed to find predictable events and tie them to global warming to give them more legitimacy.These natural disasters and weather events have their own causes and cycles but the public may not always be sufficiently informed about their true causes and if you tell half truths a thousand times they will remember them and accept them as fact .[ remember the weapons of mass destruction and the false link to Iraq] . That is why it is is important to challenge questionable science in public as it happens. It is more difficult to correct the public’s beliefs after .
“earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions”
They left out dogs and cats sleeping together.
I guess that will be for another “conference”.
Jeff Alberts (09:59:49) :
“I can nay change the laws of physics, Jim!”
I don’t think Scotty ever called him “Jim”. It was always “Captain”, “Sir”, or later “Admiral”. 😉
OK, you caught me 😉
In the original I think it was
“Cap’n, I can’nay change the laws o’physics!”
The version I posted is a slightly modified form from the song that was bouncing around in my head: “Star Trekkin Across the Universe”:
Lyrics at:
http://www.trekkieguy.com/startrekkin.shtml
A very infectious parody so do not listen to it nor watch in on U-Tube unless you are prepared to be warped and have your trek melded! 😎
Sung to a catchy ditty:
Engine Room, Mr. Scott:
Ye canna change the laws of physics, laws of physics, laws of physics;
ye canna change the laws of physics, laws of physics, Jim.
Ah! We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill;
we come in peace, shoot to kill; Scotty beam me up!
So, click at your own peril and be prepared to have your brain folded, spindled, and… trekked upon …
Oh, and the “straight” video without lyrics added:
FWIW, I think the quality of information in much or our modern ‘news’ is lower than that in this video… Satire can carry real truths very effectively.
Once the catastrophic hyperbole is removed, I believe their speculation of a tectonic response to degalciation is valid. Isostatic rebound is well known and is likely responsible for some part of geologic activity. So in a few thousand years, if the sheets substantially melt, we’ll have to worry about increased vulcanism, earthquakes and subaqueous slides in and around Antarctica and maybe Greenland. Warning noted.
Doom and Gloom, Gloom and Doom
Oh … The Pain, the PAIN
One February 1, 2009 Gavin said on RC:
“The impact of climate change on seismic events/volcanoes/tsunamis etc. is not something one needs to worry about – the forces controlling those phenomena are vastly in excess of anything we will be able to do to the Earth’s crust.”
Phew! We are safe…
Jeff Alberts:
“I don’t think Scotty ever called him “Jim”.”
Bones called him “Jim”. Or, Dr. McCoy.
Scottie’s best line, IMHO, “The di-lithium crystals cannae stand th’ strain.”