It doesn't get much better than this one.

Population (people) causes climate change
climate change is causing volcanic eruptions
therefore population is causing volcanic eruptions.

Maybe,

I'm not sure I agree with some of the mechanisms described.

Melting land-borne ice will drastically alter the pressures borne, perhaps resulting in the local effects described. Rocks liquify under immense pressure, release of pressure and subsequent adiabatic expansion and cooling induce solidification. That being said, all this pressure release and expansion may result in the geological upsets described, but not via the mechanism given.

I do not think "rising sea levels" will alter things. Thermal expansion of seawater does not alter the weight borne by the seafloor. The only change is from melting land-borne ice which is a small coontribution, spread over the entire sea and gradually applied.

Rusty

All this may be true. But to the extent that 'climate change' is due to natural phenomena and cycles, there may not be much that we can do about it.

Fred makes only a brief reference to possible human involvement in 'climate change' (which by the way in this context clearly means 'global warming') when he says: "Indeed, thanks to climate change, a human hand may already be at work."

But of course, he doesn't address whether humans are affecting climate in any meaningful way, and if so, whether by anthropogenic CO2 emissions, or alternatively land-use factors that are affecting local and regional climate by interference with natural hydrological cycles, for example.

So the key question here, given all the panic about anthropogenic CO2, is whether that CO2 is affecting climate, and if so, by how much. The physics of this seem not to be in dispute. There is a greenhouse affect due to CO2, and the magnitude seems to be around 1 deg C warming for every doubling of atmospheric CO2.

Where the controversy arises is in relation to natural feedbacks that could either enhance the warming for a doubling (positive feedbacks) or reduce it (negative feedbacks). The IPCC assumes that the feedbacks are strongly positive, but provides no evidence for these assumptions. Observation of reality (past changes in CO2 level and temperature) seem to suggest that the feedbacks are likely negative, and this is argued by quite a few credible climate scientists.

Until this key question is resolved, there really doesn't seem to be much point in discussing the possible geological impacts of climate change.

Global Warming causes everything. Obviously.Even eye problems.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/09/climate-craziness-of-the-week-bonus-eye-of-the-beholder-edition/

Persausive science based argument. Land based melt water will always collect at the lowest point, usually a fold in the crust, which is also likely to be a fault line? Extra weight on fault lines is often postulated as contributing to tectonic plate movements, earthquakes?
Also, we know that the cooling of the globe's interior causes some shrinkage, which also brings progressive tectonic plate adjustment and mounting pressure, which when released causes earthquakes?
What has not been equated, is the very rapid movement and role of the magnetic north pole, which is rushing toward Siberia at around an unprecedented fifty kilometres a year? Rhrosty.

Could it be a sign of the times as Jesus predicted. Both faith based positions.

This article is a joke.

The idea that 'climate' directly or indirectly can affect volcanic and earthquake activity is not new; the mechanisms vary; one mechanism is the variation in ice weight and consequent earth movement as described here.

One problem with this is the measurement of ice cover and the effect of Glacial isostatic adjustment [GIA]; GIA is an effect discovered through satellite measurement of such things as ice in Antarctica and Greenland; the ice levels were originally thought to be reducing because the satellite signal was increasing indicating a greater distance between the satellite and ice surface. However it was realised that instead of reducing the ice was increasing and compressing the bedrock further.

This problem has not been resolved.

Another mechanism is ENSO and the atmospheric and ocean pressure variation accompanying ENSO change, see:

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/368/1919/2481.full

The point here is that there is no conclusive evidence that ice is reducing; so when the author uses the Himalayas as an example of ice loss he is just wrong:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains

The most obvious error in this article however, is that AGW has not been proven; in fact AGW has been disproven. So while the idea climate causes tectonic activity is problematic the further idea that climate change is cause by humans is junk.

Earth's magnetic field is changing in other ways, too: Compass needles in Africa, for instance, are drifting about 1 degree per decade. And globally the magnetic field has weakened 10% since the 19th century. When this was mentioned by researchers at a recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union, many newspapers carried the story. A typical headline: "Is Earth's magnetic field collapsing?"

Probably not. As remarkable as these changes sound, "they're mild compared to what Earth's magnetic field has done in the past," says University of California professor Gary Glatzmaier.

Sometimes the field completely flips. The north and the south poles swap places. Such reversals, recorded in the magnetism of ancient rocks, are unpredictable. They come at irregular intervals averaging about 300,000 years; the last one was 780,000 years ago. Are we overdue for another? No one knows.

The geological efects mentioned in the original paper were driven by really big changes such as the melting away of vast ice sheets, as happened when the last ice age ended.. although there has been talk and a lot of forecasts that modern ice sheets will melt, they mostly remain forecasts.. But even if the greenland and antarctic ice sheets melt entirely, which is very unlikely, that change would still be slight compared to the changes at the end of the ice age. But the research remains interesting, none the less..

Here is a theory. If all funding for, what is it this week "Global Climate Change", was dropped the problem would solve itself.
Flannery and his mates are buying waterfront property whilst advising the great flood.
This article is such a hodge podge of rubbish its hard to know where to start but the ice over Greenland was two MILES thick. Tsunamis run about every 100 years and the Krakatoa one in the 1800's was three times the size of the following two.
I have to say, put a tax on climate science and let them pay us!

There is the reality of of the poles changing position and the swirling liquid iron core beneath us that reflects some of the Sun's radiation also moves our floating plates.Look at our iron centre and it's powerful magnetic field.This could also be a major source of climate changes and earthquakes.CO2 may well be a Red Herring.

I have long thought that there is probably a very strong connection between human activity and increased geological activity.

The release of carbon, stored in the earth for millions of years, in one extremely rapid event geologically speaking, is bound to be having an impact. This changes the energy balance received from the sun and directs more energy into the oceans and land-mass, not just the atmosphere.

While it may be small in terms of the total planetary energy balance, it would only take small overall changes to increase earthquakes and hence tsunamis and other disastrous secondary events.

Fault-lines all over the planet are poised to move. Just a tiny increase in energy can cause them to do so.

Could an increase in volcanic activity be connected to anthropogenic climate change? Yes possibly in the future. But much less likely than earthquake activity, which my gut feeling says is already well and truly connected.

So, living on the coast has become precarious, not so much due to the prospect of sea-level rise or increased cyclonic activity and storm surges, but due to the probable considerably increased chances of tsunamis.

A very interesting article Fred.

I think of the possibility that the opposite could occur. That is, earthquakes and continental drift may lead to climate change, due to changes in our balance and wobbles of our rotational axis.

There are many things that humans have no influence over.

It's actually those damn butterflies again.

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi652.htm

It has been well understood for years that a careless butterfly in the Amazonian jungle, temporarily forgetful of his role in the universe, may inadvertently flap its little wings and create a hurricane off the coast of W.A.

It occurs to me that if we could only track down that insensitive bloody butterfly and pluck off those wretched (but quite pretty, I understand) wings, the good folk at Rio Tinto can continue digging up the Pilbara in peace. Which of course would benefit Australia's economy no end... so what's Julia doing about it, that's what I'd like to know? Where's the Australian Army when you need it? Building communities in Afghanistan, that's what, when they should be thigh-deep in the rainforests of South America, plucking leeches from their thighs while they remorselessly track down the Elusive Butterfly of...

Sorry, where was I?

Oh yes, climate change causes earthquakes.

Of course.

What's so odd about that?

Haaa hahaha.

Please Pericles, don’t fart. It might trigger a cyclone bigger than Yasi off the north Queensland coast!

For that matter, don’t exhale either, if you wouldn’t mind!

BTW, what happened to our discussion on John Coulter’s thread?

I find the idea that there is a God far more likely than such tenuous causes for the earth moving. The energy of a small event dwarfs anything we have done. A hydrogen bomb is a mere cracker, get a sense of magnitude, just because you feel big the Earth doesn’t notice.

A wise person once said that if the title of your article can be answered with the one word "No", then you probably shouldn't be writing it.

A wise man once said that if you don’t know whether something is true or not, you shouldn’t be asserting it.

Jon, you can’t say that no is the answer. We simply don’t know if there is a connection between the anthropogenic release of fossil carbon and increased seismic or volcanic activity.

The earth spins at 1000 miles per hour or pi/12 radians per hour.
Any surface imbalance of weight will incur drifts in mass within the plastic mantle. Such drifts are most likely diffusion processes and may cause increases in density of heavy radionuclides, verging on critical mass at particular locations within the mantle. That causes an increase in HEAT that rises to the Earth's surface creating seismic disturbances.

Now human migrations to cities along with heavy related infrastructure facilities is more likely to cause such events. Slowly melting ice features at the poles, quickly rebalances itself tidally without seismic changes.

The same concept is also present in solar disturbances. Dramatic, Periodic solar flares are the result.

The bottom line is that human migrations to cities are causing enhanced seismic activity plus large POINT surface ENTROPY gradients that appear as global climate instabilities.

The whole CO2 greenhouse warming puppy appears to be a 'con' job by politicians who wish to control the masses by inventing a theory that necessitates taxation and thus political oligarchy. It won't solve climate change. It just allows economic growth to benefit specific minorities on the back of unwise human overpopulation and overbreeding. This is a short-term strategy. Ultimately the unpredictability of Overpopulation. PEAKOIL &resource WARS will end it around 2030. Expectations of 9 billion people at 2050 are pure nonsense in any THERMODYNAMIC analysis. Meanwhile the Earth's rotation will adjust GEO-Climate and start all over with some dramatically new dominant species.

If Homo Sapiens wish to remain a part of the biosphere then population control and Geothermal heat mining are essential. Not least of all because Geothermal is inexhaustable clean baseload energy that could power sub 6 billion population structures for thousands of years with clean environments that foster creativity over dumb-procreation.

One way or another the Earth's spin will rid the biosphere of DUMB politicians and dumber corporate manipulators and there is nothing they can do about it unless they come up with a power source greater than the Earth spin/Nuclear Heat cycles.

Ce n'est pas possible ca!

As Kaep indicates, our big dynamo has a spin rate of 365 r/p/year, or thereabouts: just about right for its biological development, and a few other things (a rate of only 1 r/p/year would produce a moonscape earth; and also the beauty of an Aurora Australis would be missing).
However, putting a bit of spin on the cause of earthquakes is confusing the issue; confusing it just as much as Fred Pearce has done with Bill Maguire’s information (whatever Maguire may have actually written).

Any number of things might trigger earthquakes. However, their cause is due to the sudden disbursement of energy which had already built up across snagged fault lines in the earth’s crust, as continental plates drift past each other.
There are a several such plates, a dozen or so major ones - Eurasian, Pacific, Indo-Australian, African etc., moving towards, away from, along, or riding over each other at speeds varying from about one to about nine centimeters per year; and some rotate. It’s a wild world down there.
The mass, for example, of the Indo-Australian plate moving north-east at about 7cm a year has a bit of kinetic energy at its disposal. If a corner of the plate were held up for a century, there is the potential for a sudden 7 metre jump. What triggers it is just that - a trigger for an event, no matter how unpleasant, that is about to happen anyway.

Fred Pearce, a self-professed science writer, does his status no favours by ignoring basic fundamentals

All well and good Collinset but you don't explain what makes the plates drift in the first place.

Without Earth spin, like on Venus, there would be NO plate tectonics to begin with.

Understanding this fully gives us an opportunity to prepare *GEOTHERMAL mining as a way to obviate the cruelty that will come with PEAKOIL around 2030. Otherwise we will be locked in false theories like CO2 greenhouse warming when the hammer comes down.