Climate Change: Whole Lot of Shaking Going On ...
Update: I will be inserting additional information about the new Earthquakes and Tsunamis that were triggered since Tuesday...
In the recent climate change debate, some of our leaders, like Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, are still insisting that these are cyclical, natural changes, or that global warming is not real because "God is still up there".
I foresee that a decade from now -- when we see all the damage that has happened -- Sen. Inhofe's comments on climate change will be viewed as some of the most misguided statements ever made by a senator.
Why?
There was a significant development that occurred yesterday, as an 8.3 earthquake struck Samoa and set off tsunami warnings in the South Pacific. Comparisons were being made to the Indian Ocean earthquake, which was the worst earthquake ever recorded at over 9 on the Richter scale.
With up to 20 deaths reported so far, the people of the South Pacific islands have been more fortunate than the people of Indonesia, but these types of earthquakes and equally dangerous volcanoes are likely to increase in frequency worldwide -- and the reason is climate change.
Update it seems the same fault line in Indonesia has become active - from Huffington Post
A powerful earthquake struck western Indonesia on Wednesday, triggering landslides and trapping thousands under collapsed buildings - including two hospitals, an official said. At least 75 bodies were found, but the toll was expected to be far higher.The temblor started fires, severed roads and cut off power and communications to Padang, a coastal city of 900,000 on Sumatra island. Thousands fled in panic, fearing a tsunami.
Buildings swayed hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.
In the sprawling low-lying city of Padang, the shaking was so intense that people crouched or sat on the street to avoid falling. Children screamed as an exodus of thousands tried to get away from the coast in cars and motorbikes, honking horns.
The magnitude 7.6 quake occurred at 5:15 p.m. (1015GMT, 6:15 a.m. EDT), just off the coast of Padang, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. It occurred a day after killer tsunami hit islands in the South Pacific and was along the same fault line that spawned the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed 230,000 people in 11 nations.
...and the damage in Samoa was worse than previously reported
From Huffington Post
APIA, Samoa -- Disaster officials rushed food, medicine and a temporary morgue to the Samoas on Wednesday after a powerful earthquake unleashed a tsunami that flattened villages and swept cars and people out to sea. At least 119 people were killed. Survivors fled to higher ground on the South Pacific islands after the magnitude 8.0 quake struck at 6:48 a.m. local time (1:48 p.m. EDT; 1748 GMT) Tuesday
Scientists are reporting that these events are unrelated - which very well may be true, however, as you will read below, there is a common denominator to the tectonic instability that is being witnessed.
How can this be? Well, the Earth's tectonic plates have sensitive fault lines, which when triggered to move, cause earthquakes and volcanoes. As a sphere, the Earth 'reflects' vibration internally, so that an earthquake in the South Pacific is picked up by seismologists across the world -- say in Alaska. The Indonesian quake resonated so strongly that it set off quakes in Alaska. (Samoa also had a 7.9 earthquake in March.)
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Now, add in this to the equation. In Greenland, and to a lesser extent, Antarctica, ice sheets and glaciers are melting and more importantly, sliding in rapid bursts. This is caused by moulins, which are holes that melting water form from the top of a glacier to the bottom. The water then lubricates and melts the underside of the glacier, causing them to detach from the bedrock -- and creating a 'slip-n-slide' for glaciers that weigh in the megatons -- some the size of Manhattan.
Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat [Greenland] yesterday: "We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 meters an hour on a front 5km [3 miles] long and 1,500 meters deep. That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one year to provide drinking water for a city the size of London for a year." The glacier is now moving at 15km a year into the sea although in surges it moves even faster. He measured one surge at 5km in 90 minutes - an extraordinary event.
The result, each 'slide' of these multi-ton glaciers sets off an 'ice quake' that register an average of 3 to 5 on the Richter scale. This might sound minor, but these are occurring multiple times a year. This means that the Earth is being jolted repeatedly by these ice quakes, destabilizing faults lines which has many, many consequences.
The latest scientific discipline to enter the fray over global warming is geology. And the forecasts from some quarters are dramatic - not only will the earth shake, it will spit fire.
A number of geologists say glacial melting due to climate change will unleash pent-up pressures in the Earth's crust, causing extreme geological events such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.A cubic metre of ice weighs nearly a tonne and some glaciers are more than a kilometre thick. When the weight is removed through melting, the suppressed strains and stresses of the underlying rock come to life.
(from Alan Glazner, a volcano specialist at the University of North Carolina)
"When you melt glacial ice, several hundred metres to a kilometre thick . . . you've decreased the load on the crust and so you've decreased the pressure holding the volcanic conduits closed.
"They're cracks, that's how magmas gets to the surface . . . and where they hit the surface, that's where you get a volcano."
And it is not likely to slow down, but may instead speed up:
...quakes ranged from six to 15 per year from 1993 to 2002, then jumped to 20 in 2003, 23 in 2004, and 32 in the first 10 months of 2005 - matching an increase in Greenland temperatures.
LET ME REPEAT THAT STATISTIC...
...quakes ranged from six to 15 per year from 1993 to 2002, then jumped to 20 in 2003, 23 in 2004, and 32 in the first 10 months of 2005 - matching an increase in Greenland temperatures.
That is tripling of earthquakes in a 15 year period and more importantly an exponential change in the activity.
This trend is causing changes exponentially. For instance, since the Arctic has opened an ice free passage, the Arctic is no longer a stationary sea -- currents from the Pacific and the Atlantic are encroaching into the Arctic circle and creating an additional heating feedback loop -- which is as equally dangerous as a heating feedback loop as the loss of reflective ice.
This video highlights the feedback loop that scientists are seeing in Greenland.
And, sadly, the latest report from the IPCC reflects this exponential change, as scientists report now that even if the world's countries commit to all of the recommendations to reach by 2050 -- (which the U.S. Senate is likely to block) the Earth's temperature will rise 6.3 degrees by 2100.
This is not good, since scientists worldwide have agreed that to survive climate change, we must limit the temperature rise to 2 degrees.
So, not only are we on a path that with displace as many as 75 million people by 2050, many of them islanders, but we are also putting many more people in peril due to the threat of this increased tectonic activity.
The industrialized countries must change their polluting policies and begin to think about their responsibility for the Indonesian earthquake that resulted in 229,866 people lost, including 186,983 dead and 42,883 missing.
These may have been the first wave of people who have died in a widespread fashion from the unintended effects of climate change.
And yes, even though as some will argue, tectonic plates have been moving for thousands of years, it is a fact, that the climate is changing, the Arctic is heating, and Ice Quakes are increasing, all due to human made pollution.
Since writing this story Tuesday, I feel both vindicated and horrified to see the very things I am worried about happening - and to see that our Senate is still waffling on the middling, do little, but necessary ACES Climate bill. We must do pass much, much more effective legislation and recognize the legal status of Environmental Refugees.
There are many changes that are going to happen, and we are going to have to realize, globally, that we are all in this together. Most importantly, we must begin to talk openly about adaptation to these global changes, and not act in merely a reactionary approach.
Wade Norris: Defining Justice for Environmental Refugees
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Alex Higgins: The Spectator Is Hot for Global Warming Denial
Global warming denial is not a set of scientific ideas -- it's a collection of bogus factoids which have a zombie-like ability to keep returning to life, seeking new brains to feed on no matter how many times they are shot down.
Perry Garfinkel: Costa Rica Green Report Card: Arenal Volcano Region
Look, it's nearly impossible for a 114-room upscale hotel nestled into 750 acres of rainforest not to leave some footprint. But, under Wagner's guidance since 2006, not only has the hotel raised its luxury bar and won a handful of awards and stars but it also has tightened up on its various eco-programs.
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Good news! The Chamber of Commerce is backing off its hardline denial approach!
"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has seen several of its members publicly withdraw from its ranks recently, in response to the ogranization’s position on climate change, issued the following statement from its president and chief executive, Thomas J. Donohue, on Tuesday."
"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce continues to support strong federal legislation and a binding international agreement to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change."
http://gre
The religion is all powerful.
There was an earthquake on the other side of the world because you ate a hamburger.
It just gets funnier all the time.
I thinks mother nature is really pissded.
At first blush I didn't think there could be any relationship between tectonic activity and global climate change. But this is an interesting hypotheses. I have learned to keep an open mind because things that seem unrelated in nature often end up being related in subtle ways. When I studied geology in college, some of the profs thought the idea of plates of earth moving around to be crazy talk yet here we are.
Now deniers will come along to tell us none of this article is true!
suv's are causing earthquakes now rp?
is there anything humans can't cause..
just curious!
We can not prove the existence of God!
This is junk science at its worst. "Climate Change: Whole Lot of Shaking Going On." Wish the article named the geologists who supposidly are suggesting this link between climate change and seismic activity. You would think the author might have interviewed a few real geologists, and identified them, to obtain their varied opinions on this subject.
Our planet has experienced earthquakes and tsunamis this week. Earthquakes and tsunamis are real threats to human lives, they are not the product of some computer programmer's imagination. Many people died this week because of them.
In contrast, no one died from global warming this week. Also, over a 100 year period, a gradual increase in sea level of 6 inches per century would not kill anyone, or even be noticed.
It is strange that the U.N. wants our leaders to focus on, and spend our treasure on, an imaginery risk, global warming, rather than prepare for real risks such as earthquakes, and tsunamis.
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"Also, over a 100 year period, a gradual increase in sea level of 6 inches per century would not kill anyone, or even be noticed."
The increases predicted for this century are now at 6 feet (or more) not 6 inches.
For the millions of people living on islands under 6 feet, (yes millions)
while they might not die, they certainly will have a very difficult time with losing their entire way of life.
Richard, try to read the article again for understanding, although it is slightly complicated. As for climate deaths....
"The last 50 years have borne witness to a spate of climate-related disasters across the world causing over 800,000 fatalities and $1 trillion in economic losses."
"Those stark facts come from the Economics of Climate Adaptation (ECA) Working Group, a group of NGOs and corporatio
"According to the ECA report published on September 14, climate catastrophes have risen in direct proportion to global temperatures over the last several years."
"Developing nations are especially under threat, according to Cristina Rumbaitis Del Rio, Associate Director of the Rockefeller Foundation
"By 2030 they stand to lose between one and 12 percent of GDP, given current weather patterns. Higher global temperatures are likely to exacerbate future climate disasters, falling crop yields and lack of water availabili
"When future economic growth and climate change are factored into these figures, the total potential climate-related loss to 2030 rises to as much as 19 percent of GDP in certain countries such as Guyana (one of the countries studies in the report)."
http://us.
RP--this is wild a** speculation. My theory of the earth quakes in Indonesia is that the Indonesia is a meeting place of two tectonic plates, Australia and Asia. The Australian plate was moved northward and subducted under the Eurasian plate. The subduction zone can be traced from northern tip of Sumatra until the Lesser Islands, that creates deep submarine trench. Most of the earthquake also concentrate in this subduction zone. This subduction also trigger the formation of volcanic range from Sumatra, Java to Lesser Islands.
The Eastern Indonesia also experienced another subduction of Pacific plate that move southwesterly under the Eurasian plate. This subduction create the formation of volcanoes in the North Sulawesi, Sangihe and Halmahera.
Actually I can't take total credit for this speculation since I copied it from
http://en.
You are missing the entire point of the article and no one cares about your theories since you are not a scientist. Big quakes set off nearby little quakes, as the article makes clear. "As a sphere, the Earth 'reflects' vibration internally, so that an earthquake in the South Pacific is picked up by seismologists across the world -- say in Alaska. The Indonesian quake resonated so strongly that it set off quakes in Alaska."
Now another thing that causes quake-like activity is 3-mile chunks of ice falling into the sea. As said. "The result, each 'slide' of these multi-ton glaciers sets off an 'ice quake' that register an average of 3 to 5 on the Richter scale. This might sound minor, but these are occurring multiple times a year. This means that the Earth is being jolted repeatedly by these ice quakes, destabilizing faults lines which has many, many consequenc
Do you understand at all? Did you even read the article?
rp..
calving glaciers are setting off seismograp
and causing sympathetic earth quakes now?
and i thought science was pushing it with rampaging CO2 lol..
The earthquakes that occurred this week were not caused by human activity. They were caused by movements of tectonic plates, movements that have occurred for millions of years. The record of these movements is found on the ocean bottoms around the world.
The argument that the activities of man are somehow responsible for these tectonic movements, which have caused the damaging earthquakes, is without any scientific basis.
The falling of huge 3-mile glaciers in the sea also cause seismic activity, as would a meteor hitting the earth. Even a childwould understand that. After all, the seismic activity is easily measureable by Richter graphs. Just tell scientists their measurements are wrong and you are right!
They are casued by butterflies?
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