Global Warming Can Cause Earthquakes - Scientific Studies Confirm
It may sound surprising but according to scientific studies, human induced climate change has direct effect on how the Earth's crust moves.
[Recent earthquake in Amatrice, Italy. Photograph by Filippo Monteforte]
Global warming speeds up the melting of glaciers, causing the massive weight on the Earth's crust to be reduced. This also causes the crust to rebound (it is called "isostatic rebound").
This activity can increase seismic activity, revive faults, and decrease pressure on magma chambers that supply volcanoes.
Such events happened few times within Earth's history, and the scientific evidence points out that it has started to happen once again. It does not mean that each earthquake or volcanic eruption in following years must be linked anthropogenic climate change.
There are consequences for all parts of the world where glaciers and active faults occur at the same time, but of notable concern is the continental shelf around Greenland. That is where a large melting of ice sheet may trigger earthquakes intense enough to cause underwater landslides, which then could generate tsunami.
[Polar bears are losing their habitat and migrating south due to melting ice caps]
Melting of ice sheet and rising sea level, also mean that previously exposed continental margins, which constitute about 28% of the oceanic area, would become flooded with water.
When last ice age finished, the extra weight was enough to revive faults and trigger earthquakes around the rims of all major ocean basins. Some of these are suspected of causing enormous landslides on the sea floor.
These landslides could bring about to large scale emissions of methane gas from the solid gas hydrate deposits, which are confined within marine sediments.
Because gas hydrates have been found to be located around the margins of ocean basins, so any eruptions of gas may be triggered by rising sea levels or rising sea temperatures. This, in turn can trigger underwater earthquakes in the surrounding area.
References:
"Climate-driven polar motion: 2003–2015"
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/4/e1501693
Melting Ice Sheets Can Cause Earthquakes, Study Finds
"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080314-warming-quakes.html"
"How Melting Glaciers Alter Earth's Surface, Spur Quakes, Volcanoes"
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114981650181275742
"Climate change: Tearing the Earth apart?"
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025531-300-climate-change-tearing-the-earth-apart/
"NASA: Global warming is now changing how Earth wobbles"
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-nasa-global-earth.html
"Melting ice sheets changing the way the Earth wobbles on its axis, says Nasa"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/09/melting-ice-sheets-changing-the-way-the-earth-wobbles-on-its-axis-says-nasa
Climate change is a serious issue with effects rippling far beyond just temperature. The sheer number of studies pouring in illustrating the measured effects of climate change to this point has been staggering. What to do about it is the debate we need to have. One question we also need to figure out an answer to is, can we stop the increase in global temperatures? I do not know the answer to it, maybe we can not?
Here you go. One of the articles:
https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S38/51/51I69/index.xml?section=topstories
(and thank you for vote! :-] )
Thanks for finding that article by the way!
So then the answer is not stopping carbon from entering the atmosphere but rather a way to sequester excess carbon already there. If we can get our net carbon production into the negatives, maybe that will be a solution? I know that carbon sequestration is an active area of research at the moment, for a variety of reasons.
Carbon sequestration methods may be an addition to tackling the problem but they currently offer little effect and are inefficient. Unless we want to perform more of natural carbon sequestration through regeneration of natural environment (reforestation etc). We cannot rely just on such technology.
The most important thing is to reduce our damage to ecosystems (like through overfishing, pollution, animal farming etc) and at the same time reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. We must shift towards renewables. Even if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it will make little difference if we decimated ecosystems beyond regeneration.
We must to these now, not in 10 years.
The climate would still warm up after these changes, but it is the matter how much and how rapidly it will warm up. If we apply those changes it will still be hard to live for next generations but survivable
If we do little like we currently do then we are certainly doomed.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/531531/carbon-sequestration-too-little-too-late/
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/can_carbon_capture_technology_be_part_of_the_climate_solution/2800/
Yes, you are right. Sadly, my posts about climate change has been one with the least interest... And this is the most important issue facing humanity right now... I guess posts from playmate models, users such as "halo" or quackery health advices are more important to Steemit whales and ordinary users.
About stopping. We cannot stop it. We can only slow it down. I have read some scientific estimates which say that even if people suddenly disappeared from the surface of the earth (and all infrastructure stopped), it would take few hundreds of years for the environment to reverse back to pre 1950s state.
I, myself have accepted that we have already passed a point of no where environmental degradation has gone so far that is uncontrollable exponentially heading towards the state which is unable to sustain human species any longer.
I wrote a post about it that got some upvotes in the past, so I don't think there is no interest among the community here. I will likely write about it again in the future, but its not my area of expertise so I don't think I can be the most effective educator in the climate change sphere.
I think that It doesn't matter that is is not your expertise :-) The more the better, in my opinion. You can still read up share information verified by otherr credible scientists, when you find time. Non of the scientific subjects are in my expertise but it doesn't mean that I don't trust expertise of these scientists. We just have to keep pounding this information over and over to people's heads ;-)
I will be honest, I used to not believe in Global Warming at all, but it doesn't really matter, the idea of polluting the environment to where we can no longer feed ourselves is a terrible thing and that alone should be enough of a reason to make a change. Since most of us were born after all the rivers were damned to prevent fish from spawning and after companies began dumping toxic sludge into the ones that still flow, we are not used to the idea that food comes from the land, so no one knows enough to care. When we are told don't eat the fish more than once a month we somehow think this is normal. It is a real shame and we need to fix this if we want to survive.
Yes we need to fix this but fixing this require dramatic changes in our own lifestyles not just relying on deceitful politicians.
Btw, I'm glad that you have accepted the evidence and stopped being unbeliever :-)
i used to believe too. however, if you stop relying on pop science and dig in to the papers, you will find there is no possibility of human caused climate change. only our ability to poison our local environment against ourselves. don't waste your time as i did believing in this global warming fantasy. do the work, and you'll see. don't pretend to know science. do what a real scientist does and try to prove yourself wrong, not me, not anyone outside of yourself.
learn the trivium method and the quadrivium and then prove it to yourself. learn how to actually interpret the data for yourself. don't take the word of these made-for-public-consumption articles with the endless appeal to authority. i can construct false arguments all day using nothing but nasa press releases, but that doesn't make them true. there are sky watchers all over the planet. check nasa's data against them. learn the logic, do the math, yourself.
climate change is causing more seismic and volcanic activity. we didn't have anything whatsoever, to do with it. try doing a search for climate change on other planets in the solar system. the sun is doing this. the sun's umbral field is weakening. as the solar shutdown continues we should see increased cosmic ray activity, causing an increase in cloud cover. however, there is the added factor of the falling of the atmosphere. as sunspot activity lessens, the energy coming into the earth system falls. that energy is what pushes our atmosphere up. lightning is often the discharge of the potential in the atmosphere to earth. we need solar flares. we are running short. on earth it will be exacerbated by volcanic activity, most of which is undersea. also, the earths magnetic poles are shifting, the earth's magnetic field is weakening. we didn't do that, it has been happening since the 1600s. venus is slowing it's spin. we didn't do that. mars has shown a distinct increase in seismic activity.
on saturn it can be seen in the variation in periodic, usually predictable storms. also, saturn is slowing it's rate of spin. we didn't do that. jupiter has gained a new red spot and lost an entire planetary band. we are not complicit in any of this. all we are guilty of is spraying poison in our air, water and the merest tiny layer, just at the surface of this gigantic sphere. the furthest we humans have gone down is approximately 7.68 miles and the diameter of the earth is approx. 7926.28miles at the equator. the diameter of the sun is about 109 times that. are you beginning to see something of the scale, and our insignificance in relation to it? we didn't do it. there is absolutely no possibility that if we ran all coal fired power plants in existence at full capacity for 1000 years, that we could have even the minutest effect on the spin of venus, let alone saturn. our climate is changing. that much we know. so is the climate of the other planets in the solar system. we can waste our time doing silly things that will have no effect, while pointing fingers at each other, or we can get to business learning about what is actually happening and how to help each other survive. deindustrializing civilization is not going to help. it will only cost more lives. i wish you well. you seem passionate about this. i implore you. educate yourself before trying to inform others. i can't tell you how horrible it feels to spread untruths for years with the best of intentions and then find out you were wrong. i was where you are less than 10 years ago. we live in a soup of devious propaganda, it's not just the koch brothers, there are many competing interests. follow the money. learn the trivium method, and you'll be able to sort out the data for yourself. good luck.