Turns out it's not such a crazy argument after all.
Scientists link melting glaciers to earthquakes
Experts ponder whether tectonic activity increasing
Some scientists theorize that the sudden melting of glaciers due to man-made climate change is lightening the load on the Earth's surface, allowing its mantle to rebound upwards and causing plates to become unstuck.
These scientists point to the historical increase in volcanic and earthquake activity that occurred about 12,000 years ago when the glaciers that covered most of Canada in an ice sheet several kilometres thick suddenly melted.
The result was that most of Canada's crust lifted -and is still rising.
Scientists have discovered that the accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet over the last 10 years already is lifting the southeastern part of that island several millimetres every year.
The surface of the Earth is elastic. A heavy load such as a glacier will cause it to sink, pushing aside the liquid rock underneath.
The Greenland glacier is about three kilometres at its thickest and it is believed that its weight has depressed sections of the land under the glacier about one kilometre. In fact, the weight of the glacier is so great that significant portions of Greenland have been pushed well below sea level.
"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 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.
rockdoc123 wrote:Sweet Jesus....the guy is a glaciologist not a structural geologist or rock mechanics expert nor someone who works with geophyisics. What he is suggesting is preposterous from the perspective of rock mechanics and what we know about the response of the asthenosphere to uplift.
And Anthony Watts is just a former TV meteorologist.
rockdoc123 wrote:And Anthony Watts is just a former TV meteorologist.
Ok, you obviously think this fellow is correct. Please explain why with particular attention to the points I raised.
Nuclear fuel has melted through base of Fukushima plant
1:06AM BST 09 Jun 2011
The findings of the report, which has been given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, were revealed by the Yomiuri newspaper, which described a "melt-through" as being "far worse than a core meltdown" and "the worst possibility in a nuclear accident."
A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the company is presently revising the road-map for bringing the plant under control, including the time required to achieve cold shutdown of the reactors.
mhr727 wrote:I personally think its the other way around, the 2 major earthquakes that caused Tsunami,s from what i have read and seen, caused a slight variation in the earths axis and or rotation. i,m curious to see if these factors have increased the rate at which the glaciers are retreating. Everything i read states that since 2004 melting has accelerated. and of course it is too soon since the Japan Earthquake/Tsunami to really notice any change but it may be happening now.
January 26, 1700, a tsunami hit the coasts of Japan without warnings. In Japan, a land with a long history of earthquakes and tsunamis, the connection between those two natural disasters was well known. Inscriptions on 600 years old stone markers, located near the coastal city of Kesennuma, warn "If an earthquake happens, beware of tsunamis." An earthquake happening on the bottom of the sea can displace large quantities of water, triggering a series of waves on the surface of the sea. Near the coast the waves build up in height, inundating large areas. But the tsunami in 1700 was different, apparently preceded by no earthquake, it became known in the scientific literature as the Orphan Tsunami.
Only three centuries later the truth was discovered, in part by studying myths from British Columbia and California. In many ancient stories, earthquakes are the results of a fierce battle between Thunderbird, the master of the sky, and Whale, master of the sea. Thunderbird tries to lift Whale into the air and drop him onto land, this causes the earthquakes. Whale tries to defend himself by creating large waves with his tail, inundating the land, this causes the tsunami.
Geologists nowadays think that such stories are based on real observations of earthquakes and tsunamis. The Cascadia region of North America is characterized by a chain of volcanoes, like the famous Mount St. Helens, feed by magma rising from the underground. The magma forms when parts of the Pacific plate, pushed beneath the American continent, slowly melts. The subduction zone, where the Pacific plate disappears beneath the continental crust of the American plate, is characterized by strong earthquakes and known also as the Cascadia-Megathrust. As friction is building up over the slow movements of both plates, the accumulated energy is suddenly released when the rocks in the underground can no longer sustain the pressure. On the surface an earthquake happens. Stories about a mythical battle between Thunderbird and Whale dating back just some generations suggested that an earthquake and a tsunami happened just some centuries ago, coinciding with the reports from Japan. Carbon dating on trees killed by the tsunami and preserved in swamps along the coast put the age of that earthquake in the range of the years 1695-1720. The earthquake, with an estimated magnitude of 8.7-9.2, was powerful enough to send a tsunami across the Pacific Ocean. Crossing the sea at jetliner speed, the tsunami came ashore in Japan, to produce flooding and minor damage there.
This simulation produced by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center shows that tsunami wave, starting off the coast of Washington and Oregon as the megathrust ruptures. It traveled up the bays and coastlines of these areas, inundating locations, depositing sediments there and killing the trees, that later made it possible to date this event.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
At least 168 people have been killed and over 700 injured after a volcano-triggered tsunami hit Indonesia's Sunda Strait on Saturday, sweeping away hundreds of homes and hotels, officials and witnesses have said...
The number of casualties may further increase as rescue workers reach affected areas.
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