Don’t worry, this guy is just trying to sell a book conveniently located on the left sidebar of the Guardian. I hear there’s a two for one special with Chariots of the Gods on Amazon.
Get a load of some of this rubbish:
The world we inhabit has an outer rind that is extraordinarily sensitive to change. While the Earth’s crust may seem safe and secure, the geological calamities that happen with alarming regularity confirm that this is not the case. Here in the UK, we only have to go back a couple years to April 2010, when the word on everyone’s lips was Eyjafjallajökull – the ice-covered Icelandic volcano that brought UK and European air traffic to a grinding halt. Less than a year ago, our planet’s ability to shock and awe headed the news once again as the east coast of Japan was bludgeoned by a cataclysmic combination of megaquake and tsunami, resulting – at a quarter of a trillion dollars or so – in the biggest natural-catastrophe bill ever.
…
Could it be then, that if we continue to allow greenhouse gas emissions to rise unchecked and fuel serious warming, our planet’s crust will begin to toss and turn once again?
The signs are that this is already happening. In the detached US state of Alaska, where climate change has propelled temperatures upwards by more than 3C in the last half century, the glaciers are melting at a staggering rate, some losing up to 1km in thickness in the last 100 years. The reduction in weight on the crust beneath is allowing faults contained therein to slide more easily, promoting increased earthquake activity in recent decades. The permafrost that helps hold the state’s mountain peaks together is also thawing rapidly, leading to a rise in the number of giant rock and ice avalanches. In fact, in mountainous areas around the world, landslide activity is on the up; a reaction both to a general ramping-up of global temperatures and to the increasingly frequent summer heatwaves.
Whether or not Alaska proves to be the “canary in the cage” – the geological shenanigans there heralding far worse to come – depends largely upon the degree to which we are successful in reducing the ballooning greenhouse gas burden arising from our civilisation’s increasingly polluting activities, thereby keeping rising global temperatures to a couple of degrees centigrade at most.
Alaska has detached OMG!
Yeah right, that ~0.8°C of atmospheric warming in the past century reached all the way down to the bottom of the ocean and disturbed the fault off Japan. Of course if Mr. McGuire doesn’t do anything but let himself get scared by computer model predictions instead of examining measured reality, I can see how he’d be driven to write a book like this.
This Guardian article is even less credible when you pitch a sensational book in the “news” article at the Guardian right alongside it. I may nominate this guy for idiot of the year, he may beat Peter Gleick for this honor.
Here’s the book:
Waking the Giant: How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes by Bill McGuire
Buy it from the Guardian bookshop
UPDATE: 9:00AM 2/27 Anonymous whiner “The Power of X” complains in comments that I “didn’t use enough science” in this post. I didn’t realize that when mocking such absurd claims I had to worry about it that much, especially when I tag the story with “GLOC” and “ridiculae”. I figured hey, I just won Best Science Blog for the second year in a row and Lifetime Achievement Award in the 2012 Bloggies, plus the post went up at 3:30AM PST, so I though maybe I’d get a little slack. Oh well, that’s what updates are for. Steve Goddard helpfully points out what the USGS has to say about this nonsense. They write on their website:
Are Earthquakes Really on the Increase?
We continue to be asked by many people throughout the world if earthquakes are on the increase. Although it may seem that we are having more earthquakes, earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant.
A partial explanation may lie in the fact that in the last twenty years, we have definitely had an increase in the number of earthquakes we have been able to locate each year. This is because of the tremendous increase in the number of seismograph stations in the world and the many improvements in global communications. In 1931, there were about 350 stations operating in the world; today, there are more than 8,000 stations and the data now comes in rapidly from these stations by electronic mail, internet and satellite. This increase in the number of stations and the more timely receipt of data has allowed us and other seismological centers to locate earthquakes more rapidly and to locate many small earthquakes which were undetected in earlier years. The NEIC now locates about 20,000 earthquakes each year or approximately 50 per day. Also, because of the improvements in communications and the increased interest in the environment and natural disasters, the public now learns about more earthquakes.
According to long-term records (since about 1900), we expect about 17 major earthquakes (7.0 – 7.9) and one great earthquake (8.0 or above) in any given year.
They make the exact same argument that I do about severe weather, another favorite worry-wail of the CAGW camp:
Oh, the GRACE data isn’t the definitive answer on ice loss=earthquakes
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/22/greenland-ice-not-responding-as-predicted/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/why-im-not-worried-about-greenlands-icecap/
correlation ≠ cause
Solar activity/inactivity causing it? Possibly. Lets see some predictions and falsifiable hypothesis.
CO2? Ya gotta be having me on! Seriously? CO2 and a warming Earth (even if there was a huge link which there isn’t) wouldn’t warm enough to even have the difference measured compared to the inner molten parts. They fret over 1 degree per century and that is what percent of the temp of the material below the lithosphere?
dccowboy says:
February 27, 2012 at 5:37 am
“Sounds like we need to induce another ice age so we can put about a mile of ice on top of Alaska to hold that place down.”
🙂
Ah, but you see, infinitesimally small variations cause catastrophes, so anything man does, even flushing the toilet, can cause earthquakes and volcanoes. As McGuire says (page 269, penultimate page before bibliography):
“earthquakes can be induced by infinitesimally small variations…the pressure of a handshake could be sufficient to trigger its rupture and set the ground shaking…many potentially hazardous geological systems may be teetering on the edge of stability…a tiny nudge…may initiate a reaction out of all proportion to the size of the trigger – the pressure of the handshake analogy comes once again to mind. Substitute anthropogenic climate change…Through our climate-changing activities we are loading the dice in favour of increased geological mayhem…”
So, there is his thesis: an infinitesimally small variation such as the contribution of man to climate change can bring geological mayhem. That is the sum of his wisdom after 270 pages recounting all the natural causes of geological disasters.
Well, if infinitesimal variations can cause disasters, then natural variations, which are non-zero in magnitude, must be the cause of much bigger ones. And so we find that natural variations are the cause of natural variations, and geological events are natural after all.
This is an extremely cynically-contrived book with a fatuous conclusion. He must be short of money because the science is bankrupt.
Wow – the warmists have finally made the complete leap into shamanism.
This is now nothing but an old-time Hellfire and Brimstone religion for people who tell themselves they’re too smart to believe in Hellfire and Brimstone religions.
“earthquakes can be induced by infinitesimally small variations…the pressure of a handshake could be sufficient to trigger its rupture and set the ground shaking…many potentially hazardous geological systems may be teetering on the edge of stability…a tiny nudge…may initiate a reaction out of all proportion to the size of the trigger – the pressure of the handshake analogy comes once again to mind. Substitute anthropogenic climate change…Through our climate-changing activities we are loading the dice in favour of increased geological mayhem…” Patently false. How many handshakes happen every day with no corresponding earthquake?
This author is a dumb as the rocks he wishes he understood.
Experts on earthquakes tell us “strain can build up for hundreds of years”–yet such great stores of energy are not released just by the shake of someone’s hand. (This guy’s a wanker but it isn’t the earth he’s jerking.)
I’m pretty sure the volcano picture is a closeup of the one at the Mirage in Las Vegas.
Goes off on the hour (unless its raining too heavily….or there is CO2 alert…or tsunami warning that day) to celebrate all the people in the world who have bet on the wrong horse….or am I just making this stuff up as I write? Yeah…that’s the ticket…. 😉
Didn’t I see this plot on the scifi channel?
I know I will see this mentioned when I read the comments but two things require my comment now so my head does not explode:
“The permafrost that helps hold the state’s mountain peaks together is also thawing rapidly, leading to a rise in the number of giant rock and ice avalanches.”
If this is true I have been grossly misinformed about what permafrost is. Aren’t mountain peaks composed largely of non soil-like material?
And “canary in the cage”? Is he unable to say the term “coal mine” without eco-psycho trauma? I mean *further* eco-psycho trauma.
Mr Watts, really, for the first time ever I question your judgement! “may nominate this man for idiot of the year”.? Please, just give the award to him anyway it will save an awful lot of hand wringing & head scratching! I am sure you’ll manage to find some more idiots throughout the year with which he can share that most coveted of prizes 😉
What a wonderful man this McGuire must be. All we have to do is burn less coal, cycle to work and avoid too much farting to reduce our carbon output and all the volcanoes, tsunamis and tornadoes across the world will come to an end. Who’d have thought it. If only Mr McGuire had been born a few thousand years ago and everyone had been made aware of his mind blowing discovery, then all earthly catastrophies would have been avoided years ago. And what a shame the Japanese people weren’t told this before their devastating catastrophe last year, they would have been eternaly grateful. I think you Bill should be given a Nobel prize pretty quickly for such work, I’d like to see your working papers soon just to see how you did it. Just one thing bugs me though Bill. Can you tell me whether that Km of ice which you say has melted in the last 100 years started off as ice a km high, or was it below the surface and that the place at where it melted is now a kilometer deep? Perhaps it’s half a Km up and down. A bit puzzling to a simple brain like mine, but I’m sure you will have a very good and lucid explanation. I can’t wait for your reply Bill, so do blog soon.
Lessee here….. Earth’s core is maybe between 4,000-10,000deg C.
A change in the earth’s outer atmosphere of 0.6deg C will destabilize the entire system.
Ok.
One thing certain, the size of some scientist’s brains is decreasing due to thinking about global warming. Maybe an invasion of aliens would be a good thing.
I will look into how much units McGuire sells. I’m interested in becoming a science writer as well. Germans love doomsday scenarios.
Anybody come across any recent scientific papers that have anything to do with climate?
Oldseadog says:
February 27, 2012 at 3:37 am
You could’t make this stuff up.
Oh, wait a minute………………. .
H.G.Wells would be so envious of the imaginations of these folk.
###
No way! H.G. Well grounded his stories in the science of his days.
I thought the volcano looks a lot like the cover of “Dianetics”. Could global warming have something to to with engrams and Thetans?
From a physics standpoint……
As the temperature difference between the atmosphere and the core become closer, would not the system become MORE stable, not less???
..just wonderin’.
I read “Chariots” when I was still in elementary school. It had a huge impact on my understanding of what science is all about. I am very glad I read it. I can now recognize the signs of pseudo science at 20 meters without my glasses!
Vince Causey says:
“Next week in the Grauniad: “How climate change makes the Earth more vulnerable to asteroid impacts.”
In addition to the tiny asteroid threat, there’s the threat of alien civilizations determining we’re too dangerous to allow to exist as evidenced by our increasing atmospheric CO2 and start hurling really, really, really, huge asteroids towards Earth.
I propose we evacuate Earth ASAP, starting with the alarmists. Of course after they’re gone we’ll realize the evacuation wasn’t quite as urgent as we thought and just enjoy the lack of prolific pathetic precautionary principle proclamations for a change.
AC1 says:
“I don’t think we’ll ever see Peak Stupid.”
Hilarious, QOTW material.
Immensely shoddy. Here is what he writes on page 202:
“Together, the weight of all the Earth’s surface water adds up to an unimaginable number of tonnes – something like 1.35 followed by 16 zeros in fact”.
No, it’s not anything like that, in fact. Is he a mathematical illiterate? 1.35 followed by 16 zeros is 1.350000000000000000, i.e. 1.35 tonnes for the weight of the whole of earth’s surface water! 1.35 tonnes is quite imaginable, and horribly wrong.
The true figure is somewhat greater than 1.35 x 10^18, or 135 x 10^16, or 1,350,000,000,000,000,000. But what is the non-technical reader to make of 1.35 followed by 16 zeros. None of the above.
He could possibly have got away with ‘135 followed by 16 zeros’, but ‘1.35 followed by 16 zeros’ is ridiculous. Who could write such a daft thing, and who checked this rubbish?
“DirkH says:
February 27, 2012 at 9:23 am
I will look into how much units McGuire sells. I’m interested in becoming a science writer as well. Germans love doomsday scenarios.”
DirkH: Keep us posted. This could be a very lucrative opportunity. And fun. All the aspiring writer has to do is open a bottle of chilled chardonnay from Gleick Vineyards and turn on the laptop. Whatever comes out can be posted as a Kindle-ready text at say $0.10 a page. The rantier the better!
Snake Oil, “Canary in a coal mine” is an unsustainable metaphor.
Past few days, I had been catching up with older posts by Watts since 2006. I came across this – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/05/lieberman-warner-debate-senator-rohrabacher-do-you-really-think-the-world-is-filled-with-morons/. I guess this fits in with that ridiculous article by Guardian…
The detached state of Alaska has seen a rise of 3 degrees Farenheit over 60 years. This was due to the phase shift of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation in 1976. Does Mr. McGuire comment on the PDO or the Pacific Climate Shift of 1976?
The Arctic Climate Research Center at the University of Alaska provides a nice summary:
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/TempChange.html
Backwards again. Volcanic activity is correlated with temperature, but with cooling. And with solar cycles.
Perhaps magma is affected like the atmosphere over the oceans. Or magnetic activity can act as a trigger, or a combination as CRF may ionize molecules and magnetic field can affect circulation patterns.
Looks and reads like the classic case of either not enough, or too many drugs.