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Climate change and earthquakes: It's complicated http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1312571625
This is a story that contains a whole lot of yesbut. Yes, it really does make sense that climate change could trigger earthquakes. But it's very, very unlikely that that effect is responsible for any of the monster quakes we've experienced recently. And behind that apparent contradiction lies some really, really interesting science.
Let's start with a quick overview of why scientists think climate change and earthquakes are connected....
It begins with the forces that cause earthquakes. The surface of this planet, what we see, is actually the crust--just the crispy coating on a ball of nougat. The crust is broken up into large pieces and those pieces move over the surface of the gooey mass beneath. At the borders, the pieces of the crust are riddled with faults. These are places where the crust has broken and different pieces are moving in different directions--away from each other, towards each other, or slipping past one another....
Basically, it boils down to this: Climate change can trigger earthquakes. There's evidence that naturally occurring climate change did that in the past. There's some evidence that anthropogenic climate change might be doing that today. And there's evidence that we could see more climate change-related earthquakes in the future. But, if you're actually concerned about evidence (and you should be) then you can't go around, pointing to earthquakes that make the news today, and calling them consequences of climate change. And we can't oversimplify research to the point of forgetting all the yesbut.
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[Read more stories about:
climate impacts, rising sea level, melting glaciers]
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'Doc Jim says:
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Evidence is for people who don't watch FOXnews.
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