Global Warming makes California more Earthquake prone Around Town, posted by a, a resident of the Adobe-Meadows neighborhood, on Apr 21, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Isostasy, which is the rebalance of the Earth's outer layer, occurs when ice melts. Scientists have found that with the melting of glacial ice, areas near active tectonic plates become more liable to having earthquakes.
Posted by Awake, a resident of Stanford, on Apr 23, 2008 at 10:40 am
"a" you are a classic religious dogma practitioner.
Here is just one of many facts that you eco global warming people overlook or dismiss. There is classic truth in the computer world that with garbage (data) in you get garbage (data) out.
Al Gore is not a scientist nor is he trained in meteorology. Yet he travels the world using climate data that he can neither verify nor explain the method of acquisition. The translation of this behavior is either he is a blowhard or a preacher.
So for those who are fair minded have a read of this: Web Link and consider just this simple question.
Posted by sam, a resident of Stanford, on Apr 24, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I don't know what all the fuss is about. The web link on the initial posting gave a comprehensive overview of how the scientific community studying our earth, and in particular glaciation, reports on the earth's changes over the last 20,000 years.
Of course I wonder how Adam and Eve coped with it since they supposedly lived only about 6,000 years ago.
Posted by a, a resident of the Adobe-Meadows neighborhood, on Apr 30, 2008 at 7:32 am
And who was it that accused me of chicken little mentality? There's a new article out in the Weekly about earthquake preparedness, Reno is getting rocked by swarms of earthquakes and there was another earthquake that just hit this morning in Northern northern California near Eureka.
People just don't want to prepare because preparing means admitting you're scared and coming face to face with reality is hard work.
Posted by Willard Chariot, a resident of the Green Acres neighborhood, on Apr 30, 2008 at 7:57 am
My my you people are perfect, come on down and I will drain your wallet with all the feel good green you need!
Al "PT Barnum" Gore
If global warming is laughable (insert lack of provable facts) on its own then earthquake cause by global warming is the Great Roman Hippodrome of comedy.
Posted by a, a resident of the Adobe-Meadows neighborhood, on Apr 30, 2008 at 9:26 am
Well, since you obviously haven't bothered to click on the link which I have provided for you, which also has many links to various scientific theories, I'll cut and paste some of what this link contains. You ought to read it. Geesh.
from the link:
State of Stress and Intraplate Earthquakes
According to the theory of Plate Tectonics, plate-plate interaction results in earthquakes near plate boundaries. However, large earthquakes are found in intraplate environment like eastern Canada (up to M7) and northern Europe (up to M5) which are far away from present-day plate boundaries. An important intraplate earthquake is the magnitude 8 New Madrid earthquakes that occurred in mid-continental USA in the year 1811.
Glacial loads provide more than 30 MPa of vertical stress in northern Canada and more than 20 MPa in northern Europe during glacial maximum. This vertical stress is supported by the mantle and the flexure of the lithosphere. Since the mantle and the lithosphere continuously respond to the changing ice and water loads, the state of stress at any location continuously changes in time. The changes in the orientation of the state of stress is recorded in the postglacial faults in southeastern Canada (Wu 1996). When the postglacial faults formed at the end of deglaciation 9000 year ago, the horizontal principal stress orientation was almost perpendicular to the former ice margin, but today the orientation is in the northeast-southwest, along the direction of spreading at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This shows that the stress due to postglacial rebound had played an important role at deglacial time, but has gradually relaxed so that tectonic stress has become more dominant today.
According to the Mohr-Coulomb Theory of rock failure, large glacial loads generally suppress earthquakes, but rapid deglaciation promotes earthquakes. According to Wu & Hasagawa (1996), the rebound stress that is available to trigger earthquakes today is of the order of 1 MPa. This stress level is not large enough to rupture intact rocks but is large enough to reactive pre-existing faults that are close to failure. Thus, both postglacial rebound and past tectonics play important roles in today's intraplate earthquakes in eastern Canada and souteast USA. Generally postglacial rebound stress could have triggered the intraplate earthquakes in eastern Canada and may have played some role in triggering earthquakes in eastern USA including the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 (Wu & Johnston 2000). The situation in northern Europe today is complicated by the active tectonic activities nearby and by coastal loading and weakening.
[edit] Recent Global Warming
Recent Global warming has caused mountain glaciers and the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica to melt and global sea level to rise. Therefore monitoring sea level rise and the mass balance of ice sheets and glaciers allow us to understand more about global warming.
Recent rise in sea levels has been monitored by tide gauges and Satellite Altimetry (e.g. TOPEX/Poseidon). In addition to the addition of melted ice water from glaciers and ice sheets, recent sea level changes are also affected by the thermal expansion of sea water due to global warming, sea level change due to deglaciation of the last Ice Age (postglacial sea level change), deformation of the land and ocean floor and other factors. Thus, to understand global warming from sea level change, one must be able to remove these other factors, especially postglacial rebound, since it is one of the leading factors.
Mass changes of ice sheets can be monitored by measuring changes in the ice surface height, the deformation of the ground below and the changes in the gravity field over the ice sheet. Thus ICESat, GPS and GRACE satellite mission are useful for such purpose (Wahr, Wingham & Bentley 2000). However, glacial isostatic adjustment of the ice sheets affect ground deformation and the gravity field today. Thus understanding glacial isostatic adjustment is important in monitoring recent global warming.
Posted by a, a resident of the Adobe-Meadows neighborhood, on May 12, 2008 at 11:29 am
I'll say it again...Global warming makes the Earth more earthquake prone. Since I last posted this thread we've seen several rare types of earthquakes:
1) Reno has unusual swarm of earthquakes lasting weeks. Web Link
2) China sees largest recorded earthquake killing hundreds. Web Link
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