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
Time for a structural geologist – those of us rock jocks who study rock deformation and mechanisms.
I am preparing a thread on this at my blog In suspect terrane http://suspectterrane.blogspot.com/
and will have it ready in a couple hours
DesertYote says:
February 27, 2012 at 9:35 am
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!
=======
Want to read something really crazy yet maybe real? Read Chris Dunn’s Giza Power and Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt. Here’s a link to get a taste of his writing – http://www.gizapower.com/LoTeAnArticle.htm and the pyramids may be at least 10,000 years old! That’s not to say that Chariots is real but makes you wonder if parts of it are real?
So another person who ignores the fact that the Alaskan glaciers that have had significant melting are relatively new. Their bulk was formed during the Little Ice Age, go back 1000 years and no glaciers.
“…go back a couple years to April 2010, when the word on everyone’s lips was Eyjafjallajökull…”
Oh, sure – but did anyone know how to pronounce it? Talk about overblown rhetoric! 😉
The guy is in the alarmist big league, burning up our UK taxes. This was the title of an article he wrote in the Guardian in 2008:
“Do believe the hype on climate change: when it comes to the science of climate change – if it reads like a disaster novel, then it really is that bad”.
Please do keep believing the hype: it keeps one in a very lucrative job, and it helps one sell loads of books. Among his published books (redolent of disaster novels, no doubt) are
‘A Guide to the End of the World: Everything You Never Wanted to Know’
‘Surviving Armageddon’
‘Apocalypse’
I can see why ‘Chariots of the Gods?’ came to mind!
And this guy teaches in UK universities!
Is it April 1 already?
I note that “Waking the Giant” doesn’t seem to have made the discussion at: Eruptions [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/welcome-to-eruptions-4-0/] Volcano-Blog.com [http://www.volcano-blog.com/index.html] or The Vulcanism Blog [http://volcanism.wordpress.com/]. I guess that means that serious volcano freaks have decided that its not worth talking about.
W^3
Hey, it’s all possible.
NASA can do.
Some 3 years ago our Dr. Svalgaard was questioning why I have in ‘my now infamous’ solar formula factor pi/3.
I had no idea.
Then I had a quick ‘Gleick’ email from my NASA (Not Astrology Science Accepted) contact with just an enigmatic link:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPROCESSING/Completed/2009/mdimag/20090330/20090330_0628_mdimag_512.jpg
here is magnified part of image located at 10 o’clock.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Pi.gif
my answer was clear :’because the NASA said so’.
I’m sure Dr. S should remember, he even quoted his colleague (I think it was Dr. Kenneth Schatten) that Chinese have ‘developed’ similar technology for “writing on the sun’s surface”.
(strange but partially true).
On behalf of the once Great Britain I would like to apolagise for the Guardian and their readers. Never in the history of human endeavour has so much stupidity been written by so many for so few…..
I’ve barely started in on the comments and already doubt I’ll see one better than AC1’s – ” doubt we will ever see Peak Stupid.”
I can imagine the next siren alarm headline:
“CO2 Effects Seen Sending Earth Spiraling Out of Solar System”
The scientist kooks will come up with a convoluted argument pointing to man causing it all based on a new unfalsifiable science theory linking CO2 to:
Quantum Flux Disturbance, Ether Turbulence, Black Hole Spontaneous Event,
Gaia Getaway Manifestation, Gravity Leak Effect, etc.,etc. Loosening Earth from its Orbit.
A Big Tax will fix it (cash preferred), and postpone doomsday.
Thank god we invented money…
The stuff that’s coming out of the AGW religion is schizophrenic lunacy.
Watch for a movie based upon this book. Another “Day After Tomorrow” from the leftists in Hollywood. Earthquakes and volcanos, great stuff! Just watched “Grapes of Wrath” the 1940 film where the rich farmers are abusing the po folk and with the government operated campground where they are treated just swell by the federal government. The book written by the left wing Steinbeck and starring Hanoi Jane’s old man. Joe McCarthy was right. And the beat goes on.
I’m convinced now that most of mass media are just real life brick-and-mortar trolls. There’s really no reason to publish clearly unsubstantiated articles like this other than to provoke and earn page views.
I almost forgot. “The Day The Earth Stood Still”. The old version was anti-military/ anti-war and the new version is a propaganda piece for the warmists. Good old Hollywood.
Myrrh said @ur momisugly February 27, 2012 at 4:02 am
Unfortunately for Supermolecule, his evil nemesis, The Green Slime, is eating him for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner.
I think the relevance to climate might be thus:
1. Extreme winter snowfall like December/January 2011/12 in Eurasia and Alaska.
2. Extreme volcanic eruption triggered in, say, late February/early March prior to snowpack melting.
3. A ‘year without a summer’ a la 1816 triggering lack of snowpack melt, heightened albedo and significant cooling.
4. A Maunder-style minimum occurring for 50 years leading to increasing mass balance on glaciers etc etc.
No doubt those far more qualified than I could comment on whether that is possible, has happened in the past or whether ice ages are triggered differently.
Steve from Rockwood says:
February 27, 2012 at 6:02 am
I once read that Albert Einstein had a copy of Velikovsky’s “Worlds in Collision” on his desk when he died.
Not surprising. Albert and Immanuel were friends and corresponded often. They did not necessarily agree. Velikovsly’s main purpose was to use catastrophic events to link the Bible with Egyptian history. He was a catastrophist (based on natural events) in a time of uniformity thinking.
I first heard of the frozen mammoths, with undigested plants, which now only grow 400 miles south of the finds, in their stomach. Indicates to me that “climate change happened pretty suddenly then.
Venus as a comet is a little hard to accept, but it shows we know a lot less than we think.
There was a programme on BBC about 18 months ago (I think) discussing a big earthquake in Turkey (not totally sure – it’s a good while ago) with a panel of scientists mostly. One of their number who is well-known here in the UK, Adam Hart-Davis, an historian (sort of) said “I feel sure that the increase in earthquakes is due to Global Warming. I can’t yet see exactly how, but I am sure it is.” The other panelist said nothing but looked thoughtful. Did this start this particular ball rolling, I wonder?
Danny Glover (has he even played a scientist or stayed at a HI Express?) was the first to make the connection between global warming and earthquates (TMK), even more specifically the lack of action on global warming and a particular earthquake:
correlation ≠ cause
Indeed. How come that CAGW soothsayers of doom think it is then? The Mannian Hockey Stick is all about correlation = cause (man did it). How does he get away with that as a scientist?
We really should stop giving succour to these half wits at the grauniad. The paper is going bust we should just leave it in peace to die quietly
Mr. McGuire has made quite a reputation of promoting, as TinyCo2 indicated, large scale disasters associated with an earthslide from a small volcano on a tiny little island in the Atlantic near the coast of Africa. He has made many appearances on The Discover Channel and other pushing this doomsday prediction of the destruction of the whole East Coast of the US from this earthslide.
I always thought that is was pure sensationalism.
And the hits to real science continue. Each time one of these “sky is falling’ stories comes out and then fizzles out the public think less of science and scientists. It is way past time for real scientists to speak out against this BS.
With these two Guardian articles…..I’m not so sure the Guardian is pro-global warming after all