August 9, 2007
SORRY, COULD YOU TRY TO ANTHROPOMORPHIZE THE PLANET A LITTLE MORE...:
The Earth fights back: Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis (Bill McGuire, Tuesday August 7 2007, Guardian)
Unlike most apparently intractable problems, which have a tendency to go away when examined closely and analytically, the climate change predicament just seems to get bigger and scarier the more we learn about it.Now we discover that not only are the oceans and the atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms, floods and ever-climbing sea levels, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in too.
Looking back to other periods in our planet's history when the climate was swinging about wildly, most notably during the last ice age, it appears that far more than the weather was affected. The solid earth also became restless, with an increase in volcanic activity, earthquakes, giant submarine landslides and tsunamis. At the rate climate change is accelerating, there is every prospect that we will see a similar response from the planet, heralding not just a warmer future but also a fiery one.
That's one scrappy little Gaia he worships there. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 9, 2007 7:18 AM
Uh, any chance the volcanoes, earthquakes, etc. CAUSED the climate changes in the first place? I'm just sayin'...
Posted by: Jim at August 9, 2007 7:54 AM"It may be no coincidence that one outcome of increased volcanic activity is likely to be a period of falling temperatures, as a veil of volcanic dust and gas reduces the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface. Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something. It really would be worth listening before it is too late."
Err, perhaps it's that nature constantly seeks its own stasis and there's nothing we can do to change it, no matter how super our conceit leads us to believe we are. Doom doom I tell you, unless we all repent and follow the prophet. And guess who that is.
"The Prophet" eh? I used to worry that my son was being led astray by this drivel thirty years ago when he was in high school. Little did I know what real worries were in store for us.
I once stood in the harbor of the old Roman city of Ephesus. Apparently a thousand years ago it was one of the largest cities in the world. Nowadays the coast is about 15 miles away from the old harbor. Climate changes. Destroying our own economy won't stop that.
Posted by: lebeaux at August 9, 2007 8:09 PM