Should we increase research into new areas of climate science?
January 28th, 2012 | 
Author: Question: Should we increase research into new areas of climate science?
It appears that recent earthquakes and Iceland’s volcano are prompting researchers to say it may be prudent to look further into a climate/geological activity connection.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/19/climate-change-geological-hazards
Should this research be supported and if so should it be supported with extra funding or a shift of funding from current existing climate research grants?
Answer:
Answer by jim z
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Richard Betts, a climate modeller at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, said: “This is a new area of academic research with potentially interesting implications. It was previously assumed there was no link at all between climate change and these events, but it is possible to speculate that climate change might make some more likely. If we do get large amounts of climate change in the long term then we might see some impacts.”
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Notice Betts is a climate modeler. He shouldn’t pretend to provide expert opinion on things he obviously knows nothing about. We might have a sudden increase in rabid unicorns too. Should we investigate that as well.
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“He said there was no evidence that current levels of global warming were influencing events such as last week’s earthquake in China that killed hundreds of people and the volcanic eruption in Iceland that grounded flights across Europe.
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That is correct. There is no evidence. There is more evidence of the unicorns.
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Experts say global warming could affect geological hazards such as earthquakes because of the way it can move large amounts of mass around on the Earth’s surface. Melting glaciers and rising sea levels shift the distribution of huge amounts of water, which release and increase pressures through the ground.
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So what. It isn’t like glaciers have never melted before. I am waiting for an alarmists to provide any example of an earthquake greater than 4.0 magnitude caused by isostatic rebound. They won’t come up with it either. I have yet to hear from a reputable geologist that would dare put up with this nonsense but when you drag money through a university such as Berkeley, you never know what might take the hook.
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These pressure changes could make ruptures and seismic shifts more likely. Research from Germany suggests that the Earth’s crust can sometimes be so close to failure that tiny changes in surface pressure brought on my heavy rain can trigger quakes. Tropical storms, snowfall and shifting tides have all been linked to shifts in seismic activity.
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Are you sure this isn’t from the National Enquiror. Heavy rains can cause earthquakes. Show me where. Tropical storms and snowfall. These people are a joke. I half suspect the article is from April 1. These people must believe in fairy dust and unicorns.
I won’t go on. They say there is no evidence and of course there is no evidence. I think the money would be better spent vacinating the unicorns.
Note: I have no problem with funds going to study isostatic rebound but it shouldn’t be funded under the false shadow of AGW. Earthquakes in general are far more important to study than minor settling (and that is what isostatic rebound is) from melting ice.
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I think it is prudent to spend money trying to understand why volcanoes erupt when they do and why earthquakes happen when they do. Clearly people have been working on the earthquake problem for a long time and made very little progress in forecasting earthquakes, but that doesn’t mean we should give up. I don’t believe similar investments have been made in volcano forecasting, presumably because most eruptions have been distant from US population centers, but that doesn’t mean that it will always be the case and it could be useful to expand research in that area. However, I don’t think the research should be specifically oriented toward whatever minor effect climate change may have on earthquake or eruption frequency, we first just need to learn more about why these things happen when they do. If we can get some handle on the mechanics of these events we can use those results to understand what effects isotatic rebound may have on their frequency, but we need to understand the primary causes first.
As the effects of geologic activity, such as erupting volcanoes in Iceland, can have an enormous impact on civilization then yes, absolutely, without a doubt more research should be done into the causes and impacts of such events as well as improving the ability to predict their occurrence.
The government our goverment should be researching into global warming alot more its affecting are climate for the first time ever ive studied global warming for 7 years and the earth is heating up even the oceans and rivers have gone up by about 3 degrees which is really bad its destroying life and yes the volcano in iceland due to the heating of the inside of the earth we will expect more volcanos the already shifting plates of our earth is happening which explains all the earthquakes
The next thing that I expect to hear about people causing volcanic eruptions is that the Mount Vesuvius eruption that buried of Pompeii and Herculaneum was caused by Caesar invading Gaul 100 years before the eruption.
I’ve just had a thought. They say that sea levels are rising and it’s caused by melting ice packs and glaciers. Perhaps the rise is caused by the tectonic plates sinking due to the weight of the ice. If we get the ice to melt, the plates won’t have too much weight on them and they will stop sinking.
Ridiculous you say. Then explain this. [1] Clearly, these structures are man-made and date back to way before the invention of the SUV. How did they get so wet?
It’s the end of theories of islands and seashores being flooded by a rising tide of melted ice. It’s the sinking plates that are doing it.