Posted on 06/09/2006 3:16:04 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Imagine the surface of Earth as a giant trampoline that accumulated a slab of ice over the winter, and you can get a sense of what a growing number of scientists say is in store for the planet as glaciers keep melting.
Once the trampoline's ice turns to water that drips over the edges in the warm days of spring, the concave elastic slowly rebounds to its original flat shape. That's how Earth responds as glaciers retreat, and the consequences promise to be ... interesting.
The reason is that one cubic meter of ice weighs just over a ton, and glaciers can be hundreds of meters thick. When they melt and the water runs off, it is literally a weight off Earth's crust. The crust and mantle therefore bounce back, immediately as well as over thousands of years. That "isostatic rebound," according to studies of prehistoric and recent earthquakes and volcanoes, can make the planet's seismic plates slip catastrophically, and cause magma chambers that feed volcanoes to act like bottles of shaken seltzer.
"It's unavoidable that glacial retreat will induce tectonic activity," says geoscientist Allen Glazner of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The connection between melting glaciers and earthquakes isn't to be confused with a myth that zipped through cyberspace after the 2004 Asian tsunami. It claimed that global warming (which is not even two degrees above historical averages so far) heated magma, causing seismic plates to shift. No.
Instead, the world-wide melting of glaciers portends a seismically active future because of isostatic rebound and also because the meltwater from liquefying glaciers adds mass atop oceanic plates. That creates a teeter-totter effect, further destabilizing the planet's crust. "Recent findings reinforce the idea that the solid earth and the climate are inextricably linked," says Prof. Glazner.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Clinton didn't even sign it, he had AlGore do it for him. As I recall, he presented either the treaty itself or asked the Senate for a resolution about the treaty. Whichever, it was overwhelmingly defeated, by something like 90 votes.
Oh geez, what tripe. The next thing they'll want me to believe is that war is peace and that we've ALWAYS been at war the Oceania.
And this is supposed to explain the seismic activity in the Charleston, SC area??????? I don't think so...
Charleston just rocks, I guess...
We are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
So in other words, the Senate slapped it down real hard previously, but its still Bush's Fault.
Huh? I'm sorry, I just can't swallow that, particularly when he uses the term "unavoidable". The science is nowhere that precise. How about everyone in North America jump at the same time and disrupt the earth's rotation?
Further, I consider the source to be suspect because UNC is very liberal.
Lol, yes it does. In more ways than one!
Help the sky is falling,
"No contest. (And only applicable to the south pole anyway.)"
That's my thought too. HOWEVER, parts of the earth that were covered in ice about 10,000 years ago (over a mile thick here in Seattle - but thank God for global warming) are still on the rebound. It's not much though. And it doesn't mean more earthquakes, etc.
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