It was humour.

http://www.seis.com.au/Basics/Dams.html

Well, maybe. The planet has cooled by about 0.1C over the past 11 years so maybe this ‘climate change’ has effected plate tectonics and caused all those other “extreme natural events” Pete WN refers to.

Or then again, maybe not.

Also: “Other earthquakes though “may be related [to climate change]. If, for example, the polar ice caps melt you get more water in oceans or more weight in some places or pressure released in some places” which can cause plates to shift and earthquakes to occur.”

Hmm… that’s a mighty big “”if” and I don’t see a skerrick of evidence for it. But we don’t need evidence in the climate change debate because we have hyperbolic dooms-day assertions instead.

In this light, I thought it was a reasonable question (even though the answer seemed obvious). It certainly wasn’t “an absolutely goddamn moronic thing to ask”. Ouch, man.

” The fallacy only arises when it is claimed or implied that the authority is infallible in principle and can hence be exempted from criticism.”

As far as the La Paz quake was concerned I mentioned it only from interest, I certainly didn’t intend that that I thought there was a link.

As I read the above article, and got to the climate change question, my first thought was: Melanie is asking this because this is a “Crikey Clarifier” and some people “out there” might just be wondering if there is any link between increase in earth quakes and climate change.

That was my first thought. And of course the correct answer was given: no. They happen for other reasons.

Not rocket science… but let’s not assume that the writer was assuming a link in asking a question that some people might need clarity on. Give her a break.

Furthermore, even if Melanie is ignorant on these things, then as much as you might like to mock that, it does not discredit the science that identifies climate change. It just means that some people are trying to find evidence of it everywhere, including places where it is not. It does not mean that the places where the evidence is strong, is suddenly forgotten!

It needs emphasising that the seismic activity — >volcanic activity connection generally only holds for the broadest scales in both time and space. I wouldn’t be expecting new eruptions in the vicinity of this week’s quakes any time this millennium. Note however that the reverse does actually operate, i.e. volcanic activity is generally accompanied by seismic activity associated with magma and other fluid movement. But these types of seismic events are generally orders of magnitude smaller than the 7s and 8s that hit Sumatra and Samoa.

It may help to think of earthquake events around a plate as a bunch of lights set to flash on for a second at random intervals, with each flash representing a seismic event. Every so often, you’re going to get two or three lights flashing on simultaneously, even though they’re independent of each other.

Robert Barwick, I have some sympathy with what you’re saying (it was a silly question, betraying a troubling general ignorance of how our planet works), but it’s not true to say that melting ice caps will result in ‘enormous’ earthquakes. Small earthquakes, yes, in fact there has already been a measurable upswing in seismic activity around the coast of Greenland associated with ice unloading. But these are, again, literally orders of magnitude smaller than the Samoan and Sumatran events. The lithosphere is able to take up the broadly distributed vertical stresses of isostatic loads by bending and flexing, with only minimal brittle failure (i.e. earthquakes). Remember Scandinavia is still rebounding at a fair clip from the last ice age, and there’s not a lot going on there seismically.

“Not directly, not these ones, this will happen regardless,” assures Collins. Other earthquakes though “may be related [to climate change]. If, for example, the polar ice caps melt you get more water in oceans or more weight in some places or pressure released in some places” which can cause plates to shift and earthquakes to occur…”

24K Comedy GOLD!!

Using Collins’ rationale, if the entire population stood at either of the poles we could flood the globe.

Great stuff…thanks for the laugh, Mel.