Global warming cause of increased seismic activity
In May 2006 New Scientist ran a story Climate change: Tearing the Earth apart?
All over the world evidence is stacking up that changes in global climate can and do affect the frequencies of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and catastrophic sea-floor landslides. Not only has this happened several times throughout Earth’s history, the evidence suggests that it is starting to happen again.
“The climate interacts with the Earth’s crust via the changing mass of water and ice that is shifted around the planet. The pressure of water and ice on the crust is considerable: 1 cubic meter of water weighs 1 ton, while the same volume of ice weighs slightly less, up to 0.9 tons. With this in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the loading and unloading of the Earth’s crust by ice or water can trigger seismic and volcanic activity and even landslides,” he explains.
Scientists have confirmed that during both the arrival and departure of the last ice age, there was a “link between glacial advances and retreats and the rate of global volcanism.”
So in addition to, fiercer, more frequent storms, vanishing lakes and rivers, accelerated species die-off, heat-waves, changes to the ocean currents, dead-zones in the oceans, drought and famine, collapsing mountains, vanishing glaciers, melting ice-caps,and rising sea-levels, we also are causing more earthquakes and volcano eruptions to boot. — DS
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