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
Lake Taupo, in New Zealand’s North Island, is that country’s largest lake. It was created in c186AD as the result of a large volcanic eruption, the red skies from which were recorded by European and Chinese historians. The lake is the centre of an active volcanic region, with volcanos and boiling mud pools all doing their thing. Kiwis are accustomed to the region, but whenever I drive past the lake and see the snow-capped volcanoes in the distance (which takes quite some travelling time) I am always reminded of the incredible power of nature and how puny and insignificant Man is. The drive through that eerily beautiful landscape gets the relative power and importance of Man and the natural world into a fairly healthy perspective; the idea of AGW becomes even more ridiculous there.
I think the poor lass needs to get out a little bit more than she does at present! It’s called living in the real world! Isn’t there some charity you guys can put her in touch with to help? Sarc off.
[it was written by a guy . . William Marsden]
“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 are less Mag 7.0+ events worldwide from 2000-2009 than there were from 1990-1999:
http://neic.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/epic/epic.cgi?SEARCHMETHOD=1&FILEFORMAT=4&SEARCHRANGE=HH&SYEAR=&SMONTH=&SDAY=&EYEAR=&EMONTH=&EDAY=&LMAG=7.0&UMAG=9.9&NDEP1=&NDEP2=&IO1=&IO2=&CLAT=0.0&CLON=0.0&CRAD=0.0&SUBMIT=Submit+Search
Great quakes (8.0+) were massively higher in the decades 1900-1909 and 1910-1919:
http://neic.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/epic/epic.cgi?SEARCHMETHOD=1&FILEFORMAT=4&SEARCHRANGE=NO&SYEAR=1900&SMONTH=01&SDAY=01&EYEAR=2011&EMONTH=03&EDAY=14&LMAG=8.0&UMAG=9.9&NDEP1=&NDEP2=&IO1=&IO2=&CLAT=0.0&CLON=0.0&CRAD=0.0&SUBMIT=Submit+Search
http://neic.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/epic/epic.cgi?SEARCHMETHOD=1&FILEFORMAT=4&SEARCHRANGE=HH&SYEAR=&SMONTH=&SDAY=&EYEAR=&EMONTH=&EDAY=&LMAG=8.0&UMAG=9.9&NDEP1=&NDEP2=&IO1=&IO2=&CLAT=0.0&CLON=0.0&CRAD=0.0&SUBMIT=Submit+Search
Lookit here, there were no catastrophes before humans came to be, and started messing with Mother Gaia!
Also – there are now far far too many of us, therefore it is conceivable that these many people are now annoying Mother Gaia.
You’ve only got to look at how many Japanese there are – right where the earthquakes happen!
So it is conceivable that their weight causes the earthquakes.
After all, there weren’t so many bad earthquakes and tsunamis when there were fewer people around, no?
Perhaps someone could make up a nice model, so we can be really frightened!
/ very heavy sarc – but I expect some idiot to come up with this idiotic hypothesis any time soon.
Maybe all that snow in the UK and USA has made the tectonic plates shrink a bit, thus causing problems near Japan and NZ . Yep, I definitely blame global warming !!
I know I have many shirts that have shruck over time from washing in cold water 😉
At a ever increased rate, mankind has also been drilling holes and sucking material out of the earth’s crust, could these actions contribute to an imbalance of stresses? How about deep rock, and even strip mining? Ever see how huge office towers are sited on boggy shorelines ie Hong Kong, New York etc. The engineering requirements are to drive massive piles deep into the bedrock. Ever see spliting of granite or marble(the old fashioned way), you get the idea? have a stone chip on one side of your windshield that develops into a xmas tree like fracture on the other side?
Ever hear of the “uncertainty principle” [ever heard about how thick the Earth’s crust is?]
vukcevic says:
March 15, 2011 at 11:44 pm
Quote from NASA’s paper:
There is strong evidence of electromagnetic processes responsible for earthquake triggering, that we study extensively.
There’s the keyword: triggering
How many faults are just sitting there, ready to snap at any given time?
It wouldn’t matter what change in pressure came from which source, as long as it was sufficient to start the quake.
To understand these quakes we have to look for patterns. Recent quakes have hit Haiti, Turkey, New Zealand, Chile, and Japan. Using their two letter abbreviations, that’s “ht, tk, nz, cl, jp” or “httknzcljp” which initially looked like something my cat would spell, but then I realized the mantle is trying to send us a message.
“hot thankz. Clujop?”
Mystery solved.
Rock is dumb. Rock hurts when it falls on you, and never ever says it’s sorry.
We humans marvel at its complexity of types and how much energy goes into moving it around. Rock doesn’t know whether it is magma or sediments, ready to go on a short journey. The same thing goes for that other rock orbiting the Earth, tugging and pulling. Ditto for the oceans sloshing about.
But somehow, this puny mass of bacterial fungus called the biosphere, which inhabits the narrowest of margins between the atmosphere and the rest of the planet, is supposed to drive the energies that shape the place.
Man, for all his accomplishments, is but dust on the surface, ready for wiping.
Terragenic Global Dwarfing.
This is clearly evidence how our media industry is shifting. In the past it was about the truth and explanation of events. Now it is about getting the readers attention to sell as many papers as possible.
This is not only done by showing closeup pictures of people suffering (dignity?) and revealing everything from nudity (and more) to private personal details of celebs.
Not to mention the creation of end-time scenarios like global greenhouse effects, climate change and now world wide earth quakes.
Why? To makes us to subscribe to more media sources, buy newspapers, create/get funding for these media and money hungry scientists?
The only problem is that this not science any more! It’s actually not pursuing the truth, everything is allowed – including lying and distortion!
But the forgot that people are not that dumb, they are still educated enough to know what is true and false and they can look up the truth.
That is a shot in their own foot for the media – once a bad reputation – never be trusted again!
I am continuously reevaluating whom I trust, I hope so do you!
It’s the self annointed intelligenzia who are believing the most stupid of superstitions.
The obvious thing to do would be to get the data on earthquakes, draw a graph and look for any trends. Quite possibly there is no trend.
Several days ago an earthquake expert on the BBC stated very clearly that there is no trend in the global incidence of earthquakes.
Chris
Steve Goddard has been doing a lot of historical weather disaster searches which puts todays ‘unprecedented’ nonsense into perspective. Here are a few of his posts on Tsunamis [click. Apparently the Japanese invented the word Tsunami and Tsunamis are a frequent occurrence in Japan with around 195 events on the record.
On previous threads some of us commenters quickly assumed that the media would soon speculate about global warming being the cause of the underwater earthquake and sadly events have shown us to be correct. Expect a paper in a few months dismissing this piece of speculation.
Here are some more Tsunami’s in Japan’s history.
10 worst tsunamis of all time [9 out of 10 prior to 1897]
Tsunamis and Japan – 1840 to 1974
Japan Tsunami History
I wish to inform the media about some other things ’caused’ by global warming. ;O) Never ask questions!
Plants move uphill
Plants move downhill
Sahel to get less rain
Sahel to get more rain
Sahel to get more or less rain!
San Francisco less foggy
San Francisco more foggy
Squids get smaller
Squids get larger
‘Stone age’ hunters may have triggered past global warming
‘Stone age’ hunters may have triggered past global cooling
The earthquakes are caused by the weighty comments RC has been throwing down the borehole.
More Earthquakes or less Earthquakes some “expert” will be found to “prove” its all down to Global Warming either way.
With the decline in traditional Christian religious belief the IPCC have stepped in to fill the void.
Al Gore is about to give a “sermon” touching on the issue, the faithful will need guidence.
Using the USGS data we have this.
i think is clear
Anthropogenic Continental Drift
We joked about it for years and the crazies finally delivered
Groping my way to a darkened room clutching a damp towel to ease my fevered brow.
I expect the IPCC is already consulting Green Peace, Fiends of the Earth and Earth First to cococt their ‘proof’ that AGW has led to ‘isostatic bounce’ and the earthquakes everywhere …
Or maybe it’s the Mayan Calendar thingy starting up…
The apparent increasing frequency looks REALLY weird to this geologist. Could it be explained by
a) replicated EQs from catalog to catalog (duplicates)
b) USGS change from Richter (amplitude) to Magnitude (moment) scale?
c) change in instrumentation
d) change in installation techniques (better coupling) or
e) change in areal of seismographs (say …. more in China or Russia)?
Pielke Jr’s chart (visually) doesn’t look to show the increases cited above…
Its weird.
I think the time is rapidly approaching when all Greenies and extreme Enviromentalists should be considered as enemies of the state. Their ability to manipulate the minds of the ignorant with so many assumptions, false scientific facts and lies that they are becoming equal to the worst of the Third Reich in the 1930s.
Anthony,
My study of expertise is circular motion. Huge area never explored due to physics restrictions of boundaries and laws that I am suppose to follow and stay in.
Without going into an extremely complex explanation from the creation of this planet and changing densities and speed factors.
The simple explanation is that with less atmospheric pressure exerting on the planet surface, centrifugal force under the planets crust exerts out. A balance of pressures and gravity in a physical mechanical format. This area is not understood by scientists as now engineering is involved with mechanics.
Recreation is not difficult to show compression and energy storage.
The truth is that this piece of journalistic claptrap is nothing more than a positive reinforcement sound-byte, or read-byte for the believer. It’s believer feed just as fire and brimstone was for the frightened congregation. Hallelujah.
Look for sun, it’s magnetic field or the sun-storms as possible reasons for earthquakes.
On the other hand it’s known, that Japan will disappear under the Asian continent.
“Krishna Gans says:
March 16, 2011 at 3:32 am
On the other hand it’s known, that Japan will disappear under the Asian continent.”
Not before “humanity” is eraszed from the surface.
Statistically speaking, half of all people are below average intelligence.