Click image for the story. h/t to WUWT reader “Eric”.
I’m always amazed at the lack of historical perspective some people have related to natural disasters. It’s doubly amazing when reporters who work in newspapers, who have huge archive resources at their disposal, don’t even bother to look. Here’s some excerpts from the story:
“There is certainly some literature that talks about the increased occurrence of volcanic eruptions and the removing of load from the crust by deglaciation,” said Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta. “It changes the stress load in the crust and maybe it opens up routes for lava to come to the surface.
“It is conceivable that there would be some increase in earthquake activity during periods of rapid changes on the Earth’s crust.”
Other scientists, however, believe that tectonic movements similar to the one that caused the Japanese quake are too deep in the Earth to be affected by the pressure releases caused by glacier melt.
…
Some experts claim that jump can be explained by the increased number of seismograph stations — more than 8,000 now, up from 350 in 1931 — allowing scientists to pinpoint earthquakes that would otherwise have been missed.
But this does not explain the recent increase in major earthquakes, which are defined as above 6 on the Richter magnitude scale. Japan’s earthquake was a 9.
Scientists have been tracking these powerful quakes for well over a century and it’s unlikely that they have missed any during at least the last 60 years.
According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey there were 1,085 major earthquakes in the 1980s. This increased in the 1990s by about 50 per cent to 1,492 and to 1,611 from 2000 to 2009. Last year, and up to and including the Japanese quake, there were 247 major earthquakes.
There has been also a noticeable increase in the sort of extreme quakes that hit Japan. In the 1980s, there were four mega-quakes, six in the 1990s and 13 in the last decade. So far this decade we have had two. This increase, however, could be temporary.
======================================================
A couple of faults in the argument, from the NYT, 1879:
As many as 200,000 people died in the 1855 quake.
And again in 1896:
and also….1923
h/t to Steve Goddard, who has been doing a lot of historical research here: http://news.google.com/newspapers
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Errr,
The “increase in major earthquakes (above 6 on the Richter scale)” couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that the actual Richter scale only goes up to 7 could it? The Richter scale was only reasonably accurate to 6.8 then became meaningless.
Since 1979 seismic activity has actually been measured on the Moment Magnitude Scale (MW) and expressed as MW units, and goes to a maximum of 10.
True, the two scales are roughly equivalent (but only up to 7 obviously), but that is no good reason for the press to go saying “X on the Richter scale” when it has been defunct for 32 years now.
I think you are missing their point, earthquakes are increasing in numbers over the last few decades…. wait a second, thinking, thinking, no…YES…. hey couldn’t the increase in earthquakes over the past few decades explain the rise in global temperatures?
Good grief! I’m seldom ashamed to say I’m a geologist.
The mere fact that they can find people form my profession to even speculate on such a connection is downright embarrassing.
At least I passed graduate level earthquake seismology. I doubt they can claim the same.
Didn’t the glaciers across North America like recede back when we were rubbing sticks together and so this “rebound” has been going on for like, um, 1000’s of years? I’m not knowledgeable about such things. Maybe the good folks can clue me in. Thanks!
About BC 5200, past Earth’s 1,500-year impact-induced Younger Dryas “cold shock” that definitively ended the last Ice Age, isostatic forces resulting from melting Scandinavian glaciers precipitated an earthquake that sent a huge tsunami down the English Channel, eastward through the Mediterranean, then towering up the Dardanelles to Marmara where it breached the sill protecting the mile-deep Euxine Basin.
The resulting Black Sea Flood filled the entire Euxine in no more than forty days, scattering immemorial populations which had taken refuge there for thirty thousand years. Ethnographic, genomic, linguistic evidence agrees that the subsequent diaspora spread Indo-European cultures from Mesopotamia and Egypt east to the Indus Valley, northwest to Caucasus regions and southern Scandinavia.
So climate shifts indeed may entail regional catastrophe. But AGW Global Warming is a fool’s hypothesis, lacking any demonstrable scientific rationale whatever. Cataclysms even on massive Black Sea scales are brute-force natural phenomena, and that is all.
Given that the plates are not homogenous, nor smooth nor oiled, it is not surprising that as they move relative to one another, frictional forces will be generated of a totally random nature.
Data going back 60 or 100 years is meaningless in the geographical time scale and cannot show a trend. Can one imagine what forces were generated when there was the breakup of the continents and for example when the Himalayas were formed?
Whilst I cannot imagine that there is any merit in this wild speculation, has anyone who puts forward the proposal that it has something to do with the reduction of pressure caused by glacier melt checked to see the pattern of earthquakes and to what extent this involves plates affected by glacier melt. Unless there is at least a first blush correlation, it is difficult to take such suggestion with any degree of seriousness.
It’s fine to ask this question as long as the answer you come up with is “no”, but the premise of the question is silly.
I hope that someone has written to the author pointing out that she really made a fool of herself here.
While the crust may suffer from problems of weight of tremendous glacial ice sheets, I don’t think there were any at the location of this particular earthquake.. and I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how the plate that Greenland sits on perturbs the pacific plate so much as to cause this kind of problem..
*sigh* I just know the aliens above watching all this are just laughing their asses off. The ad rates they must charge for this must see TV have to be phenomenal..
I would be pretty skeptical of anyone who claimed to have established a link between global warming and increased earthquakes, but framed less generally and more specifically, there could be legitimate questions asked here.
Setting aside for the moment the contentious question of whether and how much net land-based glacier melting has actually occurred in the past few decades, *assuming* there has been x amount of glacier melting in a particular location, how much isostatic rebound is estimated to have occurred, to what depth does such rebound reach, and what stresses are placed on the adjacent plates as a result? Lots of open questions to be sure and my sense is that we don’t have anywhere near enough data to draw any conclusions yet, but these are legitimate things to study.
It is of course an entirely separate question whether man’s activities have had any meaningful influence on the assumed glacier melt in recent decades, and even if so, whether there is anything to be done about it. If the melting trend is due to natural causes, or if man’s influence is swamped by natural causes, then there is nothing to be done about it. The best course of action may be to adapt by continuing and extending the already-existing trend of building more earthquake-resistant structures and, please, if you are located right next to the sea, put some of the key safety components in a place where they can’t become inoperative just by getting flooded.
Where did the matter that the glaciers consist of go to? I thought matter could not be created or destroyed? Obviously the weight is still present on the crust, just shifted from the form of snow and ice, to water and its in the sea.
I believe we need to sacrifice quite a few virgins into volcanoes so as to stop this. These AGW’s desperately need to know at least a little something about human nature but I’m not optimistic.
And those weren’t the Great Ansei Earthquakes of 1854 and 1855. Two 8.4s and one 6.9. The Ansei Edo, the 6.9, was DIRECTLY under the city of Edo. Today the town is known as “Tokyo.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansei_Great_Earthquakes
“It is conceivable that there would be some increase in earthquake activity during periods of rapid changes on the Earth’s crust.”
It is conceivable that melting glaciers do as claimed. Canada must have been shaking steady as the Continental Ice Sheets receded.
It is also conceivable that masturbation causes earthquakes.
Really, just about anything is “conceivable.
This story is seriously pathetic. How do these ‘journalist’ find such ‘experts’ to say what they want to hear to make up their stories?
Provenance once again proves that nature dishes out disasters irregardless of current technological sophistication or lack thereof.
Kudos to you, Steve, for getting out ahead of the curveball, for as we have been reminded of by the dooming of the drums…
Global Warming causes everything….. NOT.
I think our opponents have serious issues with scale, they forgot all about the poor old Kiwi’s as well in that piece of rubbish article.
Eric Anderson says:
March 15, 2011 at 9:14 pm
It would seem logical to assume that Global Warming would cause the crust to become more plastic, whereas Global Cooling would cause it to contract and become more brittle, if in fact Warming and Cooling of the crust is accomplished by Climate.
Hey, didn’t we just witness the SSTs go from anomalously warm to cool in Japan the past 2 weeks?
Send $$$ and I will look into it.
possibly Cosmic Rays
Yesterday a CCTV interviewer/anchor asked an “expert” on earthquakes if there was a connection between the earthquakes and tsunami in the Ring of Fire and “human interaction with the environment”
Mercifully the expert simply ignored this utter stupidity and talked past her.
I follow a few geology and volcanic oriented blogs. Whenever something interesting happens, a person will show up an start harping “doom.” What doesn’t help is when a “respectable” news outlet runs stock footage of an eruption to go along with a report that a particular volcano had an eruption. Then they try to equate the new eruption with the earthquake. Too bad that particular volcano had sprung back to life several weeks ago. Through all the reading, the sifting through B/S, and the doom… one thing has become pretty clear. The Japanese don’t sweat Mt Fuji very much. They do sweat a repeat of the Tōkai quake. It’s like… beat into them from kindergarten onwards.
Something that weighs that heavy in the social fabric has to have been pretty significant. Seeing as it happened in 1854, I don’t think it fits the global warming mantra.
I gave up reading the Calgary Herald many years ago. No regrets.
I don’t think our idiots are any worse overall than any other countries idiots.
While we are home (ugh!) to David Suziki. And GreenPeace was started here in Vancouver. We also can claim Steve McIntrye and Ross McKitrick. So hopefully things even out in the end.
@bhr – 8:55
I’m finding that the Herald is becoming more and more of a rag of late – carrying water for the warmists – in spite of the truth of your assessment of the general view of AGW within Calgary
I haven’t noticed too many glaciers extending off the east coast of Japan disappearing recently. But there again, I have not been keeping an eye on that!
I hope Calgary, where there are more geologists per square foot than any place on earth, will hammer the Calgary Herald for such rubbish
Everyone knows CO2 causes quakes. When very large amounts of liquid CO2 are pumped down deep boreholes quakes happen. ;-p pg
removing of load from the crust by deglaciation,” said Martin Sharp
Melting glaciers in Indonesia?