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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Doug says:
March 15, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Good grief! I’m seldom ashamed to say I’m a geologist.
The mere fact that they can find people from 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.
Anyone who passed crayons at kindergarten would be embarrassed.
Obviously it’s the lack of human sacrifice that causes everything bad. We need more stone knives ripping out entrails on the temple altars.
Do we have a “consensus “yet?
No problem until we do 🙂
TRM says:
March 15, 2011 at 8:08 pm
“Of course global warming is causing these earthquakes! It’s obvious. Just the Chile and Alaska ones were caused by global cooling. When the earth heats up it expands and that causes earthquakes and when it cools down it contracts and causes earthquakes and we humans are to blame but we can pay penance in the form of a carbon tax and all feel good again.”
He he, yes, and, you forgot;
We need ONE strong leader we can follow . ( A watermellon )
We need ONE country.
We need ONE people.
/sarc off
I didn’t want to say that it would happen, but of course is did. This is really sad and disappointing. Anyone who would speak insane BS like this should be put on the no-trust list for life.
What, +0.7 degree causes earthquakes, you have to be joking.
Hardly worth a post.
Sorry to be cynical but the journalist probably attracted a few more eyeballs and thus helped increase advertising revenue.
WOW! If the ice cubes in my drink melt, that will make my glass heavier. Now THIS is science!
Many things are theoretically possible. Global warming could possibly cause earthquakes in the same way a butterfly can cause a tornado. Possible yes. Credible no. A better question is whether anthropogenic global warming can end the ice age. That’s not just possible it’s credible. Maybe not likely but at least credible.
Quote from NASA’s paper:
There is strong evidence of electromagnetic processes responsible for earthquake triggering, that we study extensively. We will focus here on one correlation between power in solar wind compressional fluctuations and power in magnetospheric pulsations and ground H component fluctuations…..The connection of earthquake activity to possible solar or solar wind drivers is not well understood; many authors have attempted correlations in the past with mixed results.
Two weeks ago I started daily observation of available data. Results and link to the above paper are here :
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/gms.htm
rbateman says:
March 15, 2011 at 9:35 pm
“Provenance once again proves that nature dishes out disasters [snip]regardless 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.”
Agreed… but it’s worse than we thought!
The real intent of this, and other assorted media pseudo-science clap-trap, is to push the meme that mankind is responsible for EVERYTHING bad which happens on our beautiful plant, directly or not.
In the meantime, a quick look through the history books show that Earth has had a multitude of catastrophes before mankind had even evolved. It is a stupid meme suitable only for those without even a smidgen or critical reasoning.
Hello All
just to give my opinion this really is the case. One very important perspective that has not been noticed in this is the historical SO4. So when we examine this topic, we realize that S04 concentration varies with CO2 concentration. As the only SO4 source is defacto crustal activity, i.e. vulcanic activity, we can qualitatively immediately make the conclusion:
higher temperature ->
higher amouth of biomass (higher CO2) ->
less ice/glaciers and sea current changes ->
increased crustal activity ->
more vulcanoes ->
higher SO4
As higher crustal activity also means more earth quakes, this relation is quite clear. And it is also visible in recent data already, so it is easy to see that periods are different: 1900 -> 1940, 1940 -> 1970, 1970 – 2000.
But the case is not always directly related, but some areas also show inverse relation. If you are interested to see more samples, please check pages from 69 to 86.
http://climatecompass.com/page9.php
or direct download link:
http://climatecompass.com/page4.php
Br Markku
Maybe the relationship is the other way round, the increasing number of earthquakes around the world is what is causing the global warming…… so global warming is due to nature not humans, publish that tabloid papers!!!
It’s not surprising that a Montreal newspaper would publish this. There has been a lot of isostatic rebound in that region since the last glaciation — nearly 200 meters. That’s pretty impressive when you think about it. And it is probably still going on albeit not too quickly. A magnitude 5.0 earthquake in the Montreal/Ottawa area last year was attributed to isostatic rebound.
The climate change that might have a causal relationship to the quake in the St Lawrence valley took place 12000 years ago (give or take).
Last Friday’s Japanese earthquake was almost certainly a slip along a subduction zone located East of the Japanese Island Arc where the Pacific Plate is descending under,of all things, an isolated arm of the North American Plate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plates_tect2_en.svg . It’s no more related to climate than it is to the revolution in Libya.
Is not an equally valid correlation that increased incidence of earthquakes cause global climate change?
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.
We at the ST Institute of Earth Science have developed a new measure of seismic activity that goes to a maximum of 11.
Put yourself in their position. You have to come up with a sensational story everyday of the week. Half the time they just make it up – “scientists are now saying” – ” many scientist now agree” etc etc Its all just made up hogwash.
The good old ‘Australian’ newspaper at least was lamenting the the other day the comment from a journo on the Oz ABC radio that ” the earth must be sending us a message” or words to that effect. It’s pathetic.
Now we know why the “Team” was so keen on getting rid of the LIA. They knew that when a major earthquake hit somewhere, they were going to need some way of blaming AGW. It was going to be difficult explaining the 1755 Lisbon earthquake otherwise. It couldn’t have been in the middle of a non-existent cold period no, could it. /sarc
All I can say to the global warming movement go and smoke another cone you will wake up one day
FFS!
All these earthquakes are happening around the Ring of Fire. There’s no ice masses close enough to possibly be able to influence the crust there.
It´s not true that have increased seismic magnitude, if you look at the USGS data…
How about earthquakes causing global warming? (just joking) It seems to me that the “typhoon” mentioned in one of the clippings refers actually to a tsunami, a word that would have been virtually unknown in the West at the time.
Isostatic adjustment as cause of changing stress in the crust presumes that the continental ice mass is changing. Changes to the Artic sea ice wouldn’t make any difference for the well-known reasons. In the Northern Hemisphere only Greenland has an ice shield. As far as I know there have been no large changes in its thickness over the last half century. Reported changes are of order 1-10 meters on an ice depth of 1-3 km, hence at most at the 1% level, probably much less.
I am slightly reluctant to add to this round of silliness but if there is any connection between ice and earthquakes would you not look to Antarctica? Over the recent period when major earthquakes have increased there has been an increase in ice thickness over millions of square kilometres and according to the research reported last week it is still going on but from the bottom up. The resultant increase in pressure must dwarf any localised glacier melting that has taken place and because it is focused in one geographical area it might just have the power to move the tectonic plates. It is open sea between Antarctica and New Zealand and Japan so this might have been going on for some time without being noticed. I am not a geologist and I am happy to be told this is rubbish but since talking rubbish is obviously the in thing I did not want to be left out.
It must be the extra weight of all that extra CO2 weighing down the tectonic plates that causes these earthquakes. There are thousands of gigatons of it!
/sarc off!