Tsunami warning for west coast

[KandD]

ok. all of you need to line up so we can smack the stupid out of you :dance:

I'll try to do this without preaching and put my education in marine biology behind it. I'll caveat this with I'm fairly conservative as well (I'm a biologist from Texas who's wife is in the navy... my political view are all over)

First off, science is based on proving something wrong. You can not prove something, only disprove it. Say your hypothesis is that a coin always lands heads up. You can flip it 1000 times, get heads and have strong evidence, but it only takes one outcome of tails to prove you wrong. With that, we are always adapting, modifying, and improving our hypotheses.

The issue with global warming is the RATE of temperature increases. The RATE of sea level rise. There is a natural warm/cool cycle, but it is now occurring at an unprecedented rate. There is also emerging evidence that not only is the climate changing, but increased CO2 emissions are raising the acidity of the ocean, which removes it's ability to act as a carbon sink, increases "dead zones" and causes a host of other problems.

Ice and Plate Tectonics: The earth's crust floats on the mantel. So will compare it to our boats. Say the boat is tied tightly against the docks. We load up our boat with supplies for 2012 because of the mayans' prediction, the boat will sit lower in the water, scratching the boat as it settles deeper. The same applies with our plates, as Ice builds up, it sits lower in the mantel, so as it melts, it rises. Now, the time scale of this is much longer, 100-1000 years, so if these more intense earthquakes were a result ice melt, they would be from the little ice age during the middle ages. There is also emerging research that one earthquake can trigger another, or destabilize a fault line. I haven't followed that hypothesis over the last few years though...

Environmentally, look at it this way.
If we as scientists are wrong about global warming, but we spend billions creating new, clean forms of energy, all we've done is created a clean home with more jobs.
If we as scientists are right, but we do nothing, we'll get to enjoy an ocean full of bacteria and jelly fish. We have models, and predictions for what the climate will do, but as

 

[John Nantz]

Earth's Axis shifted 3 inches

With just this one seismic event in Chile the Earths axis shifted 3 inches. Considering the apparent increase in major seismic activity the past few years it may be that the axis is moving more than it otherwise woud have.

For the person who commented about an iceberg melting and there being no change in sea level, there are a few things he didn't consider:

1. There is a lot of ice and snow that isn't already in the sea. For example, the Greenland ice sheet. For another example all the ice in Antarctica above sea level of which there is a lot.

2. When a chunk of ice breaks off, such as off the Ross Ice Shelf or a glacier tongue (that's the ice that flows from a glacier into the sea. Everybody knows that glaciers move like a slow moving river, right?), the MASS moves. Even if it melts and turns to water, the mass goes from one place on earth and is distributed to another. Hence, the gyroscopic spin of the earth changes. And when that changes even the Earth's core can change.

3. When an iceberg melts the water is distributed throughout the rest of the oceans UNevenly. This is why those who live up near little washington and are making all the laws need to be concerned because it will affect them more than some other areas.

If you happen to live inland far enough, and high enough, perhaps the effect in your area will be small. On the other hand, if you're near, I think, St. Louis, then maybe it could affect you because this (if it's the right place I'm thinking of) in an area of high seismic risk.

With regard to the comment about a melting iceberg not raising the sea level, it appears the point that was trying to be made was missed entirely. It's like trying to change the subject.