There will be more and worse Tsunamis until global warming is dealt with

[w4rma]

I think that there needs to be a new and renewed discussion about the Kyoto Treaty right now while this unprecidented environmental disaster is still on the minds of folks.

Maybe *something* good will come out of this disaster. Small as it may be.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Unclear that Climate Change caused the Tsunami.

[w4rma]

4. There has never been a Tsunami as bad as this one in documented history

as far as I know. Global warming is the most likely culprit since it's only started at the beginning of the industrial age. It's gotten MUCH worse and has increased in speed since then.

[Walt Starr]

24. there have been far worse tsunamis in geological history

and a worse in terms of size and destructive power tidal wave caused by a rock slide in a bay in Alaska in 1958

[w4rma]

35. What caused the rock slide, btw?

A melting glacier?

[Walt Starr]

36. Nope

Normal occurence.

[w4rma]

37. And that normal ocurence would be a (edited to add source)

melting glacier?

"It now appears most likely that the wave was due to the release of water from an impounded glacial lake."
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF7/763.html

[librechik]

41. I see(after reading article)--maybe not an earthquake

because that would have been my guess. Interesting

[Walt Starr]

42. Okay, here's a Tsunami in recorded history that far exceeds this one

The eruption of Krakatau on August 26, 1883 produced a series of large tsunami waves generated by the main explosion, some reaching a height of nearly 40 meters (more than 120 feet) above sea level, killed more than 36,000 people in the coastal towns and villages along the Sunda Strait on Java and Sumatra islands. Tsunami waves were recorded or observed throughout the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the American West Coast, South America, and even as far away as the English Channel.

Global climate change caused by greenhouse gases was not occurring at this time.

[peacebird]

64. pardon my ignorance - but how would global warming affect plate tectonics?

i agree global warming is a serious problem, but i am not at all sure how one can tie it to an earthquake?

[tuvor]

2. In what way does global warming affect earthquakes? n/t

[w4rma]

5. Maybe the Tsunami would not have been as bad without weather conditions

created by global warming. Note that one of the results of global warming is the melting of the ice caps, which increases the amount of water in our oceans.

[tuvor]

8. By how much?

I'm having trouble seeing that the oceans would be deeper by only the smallest amount.

I'm not saying global warming's not a problem. I'm just trying to visualize what HAS melted spread over 3/4 of the world's surface, and I can't see that it would be enough to affect the size of the tsunamis to any significant degree.

However, I HAVE been known to be wrong on occasion. :)

[w4rma]

10. The water levels in Venice, Italy have risen more than 6 feet in 100 years

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venice/solutions.html

[tuvor]

16. According to the article

Global warming is responsible for the rise in the global sea level. That's not a surprise (wish they said by how much), but Venice seems to be unique:

"To make matters worse, Venice has been sinking over the centuries, due to the natural settling of lagoon sediments and the indiscriminate pumping of freshwater from a deep aquifer beneath the city."

[w4rma]

20. Yes, that is also a problem, but that problem doesn't affect the barrier

that they have been looking into building (they might have started building it now). But one of the big controversies over that barrier is that the ocean levels keep rising and at the rate they have documented the water level increase they will have to tear down the barrier to the sea and build a taller one and keep doing that becaue the sea levels *are* rising quickly, now.

[tuvor]

22. But if that's all attributable to global warming

there should be at least anecdotal evidence and barriers and such, in other parts of the world.

I could be much less of a pest if you could provide me with information saying just how much the global sea level has risen in, say, the past 150 years. :)

[w4rma]

30. South Florida's sea level has risen about 12 inches since 1846.

It is still rising today, at a rate that is equivalent to 8-16 inches per century. That rate is 6-10 times faster than the average rate of sea level rise along the south Florida coast during the past 3,000 years.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/0/85256c870070ee7285256c610078deb6?OpenDocument

Sea level rise today: Sea level is rising at around 2 mm a year, which is at a faster rate than over the last 5000 years (less than 1 mm a year), but still slower than the average rate (5 mm a year) predicted for the next 80 years. We are certain of the processes that have played an important role in accelerating the rate of sea level rise in the last century. These are the loss of mid-latitude glaciers in the Alps, Andes, Rockies etc, together with the impact of rising sea temperatures on the ocean's volume through thermal expansion. Scientists are still unclear on the role played by the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in contributing to sea level rise.
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Key_Topics/IceSheet_SeaLevel/

Large sections of Chinese coastal regions gradually disappear under rising sea levels because of global warming, severely impairing the country's social and economic progress.

According to the latest observations from domestic tide stations, the sea level along China's coastline has maintained a rapidly rising speed over the past five decades. The elevation even accelerated in recent years with an annual increase of 2.6 millimeters (0.1 inch).

Meteorologists predict that in the next 30 years, the sea level will continue to rise by one to 16 centimeters (6.304 inches). By 2050, it will be six to 26 centimeters (10.244 inches) higher. The increase will probably reach 30 (11.82 inches) to 70 centimeters (27.58 inches) by the end of the 21st century.
http://www.china.org.cn/english/30646.htm

[tuvor]

34. Thank you! n/t

[rman]

55. a major tsunami is 30ft tall

so a few inches or even a few feet won't matter much.

[Silverhair]

52. No. Venice is sinking. Water can't rise in one place and not another.

Remember, water seeks it's own level. The sea level is the same everywhere. Local weather can temporarily pile up water, sometimes as much as 30 feet, but that is only for the duration of the weather event. Then it drops back to normal.

However, Venice IS sinking.

[bill]

57. the same way sheeps bladders prevent them! n/t

[osaMABUSh]

3. Also, the absence of mangroves and coral reefs contributed

to the damage.

The most amazing thing to me was that they are not finding any dead wild animals. Humans and domesticated animals are so out of touch with nature that they cannot sense danger innately.

[msongs]

6. link to your source for these "facts"? eom

[unpossibles]

11. it was all over the online news

such as Yahoo, etc. Go to their "most popular" stories, and you will find at least a couple.

The animals got the hell out of there while they could.

[tuvor]

17. Which facts?

That there seem to be few dead animals, or that humans are "out of touch"?

http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news/?ei=ISO-8859-1&c=&p=animals+tsunami

[w4rma]

7. I agree about the reefs, etc. They acted as speed bumps and barracades to

tidal waves such as this one. Also dampening the intensity.

[formernaderite]

45. Using that rationale, one could argue if no humans had built ...

...structures next to beaches, this would also be a moot argument.

[blackangrydem]

9. Here we go...B.A.F.

Blame America First.

[w4rma]

13. I think you are the one who conjectured that global warming is

America's fault. Not me.

[Benhurst]

14. Yeah, but that's bound to happen when you have a corrupt , evil

gangster as your head of state.

[tuvor]

18. That wasn't my impression.

Everyone contributes to global warming.

[JI7]

50. you have some unusual posts

for someone who i assume is a Democrat .

[Stuckinthebush]

12. While global warming is a serious problem...

The tsunamis were not caused or affected by it.

I guess a convoluted causation path can be developed that would have the changing tides due to global warming affecting the tectonic plates, but it would be a stretch.

The only thing we can blame for tsunamis is the volatile nature of our planet's core. If we didn't have a free moving crust, then we would have a dead core which would signal doom for the planet because of a loss of its magnetic shield. So, in a weird way, thank the gods for tsunamis.

What we desperately need is a warning system all over the globe like we have in the Pacific. It is sad that it had to take a massive disaster to get the scientific and world communities to pump up efforts in this area.

[w4rma]

15. Rising water levels increased the size of the tidal wave.

Rising water levels are caused by global warming melting the ice caps.

I don't see a mechanism for how global warming could have caused an earthquake.

[Stuckinthebush]

19. It would take a lot more melting to have a significant wave increase

But it is a theory.

Of course, the size of the wave is not as much a function of the amount of water as it is in the amount of force that displaces the water. Sure, if you have an underground earthquake in 2 inches of water, the wave won't be large, but an added inch or three to the amount of water historically being displaced would not significantly increase the wave size.

[w4rma]

21. ALOT has already melted. Think about how much water you would have

if you just skimmed off 1 inch from the top of the oceans.

[Stuckinthebush]

23. Yes, but the overall effect of that water is 1 inch

Due to the area it covers.

No doubt...global warming is a huge danger to our planet. Also, the amount of melting is massive. However, in the effect on the power or intensity of a tsunami is minimal at best at the current time.

[w4rma]

26. I think this tsunami proves you wrong. It's the biggest in documented

history. But, then again maybe it doesn't prove you wrong since ocean levels have risen much more than 1 inch in the past 100 years.

[Stuckinthebush]

28. Again, this is a function of the size of the earthquake

and the amount of upheaval from the underwater plates, thereby, displacing the water on top of the plates in which the force is a function of the size of the wave and the distance it traveled. The amount of water on top of the plate being one or three or five inches more than 100 years ago will not have a significant impact on the wave size.

There are many, many things we can blame on global warming and I applaud our efforts to do that. This is not one of them. We diminish our effectiveness as environmentalists when we point to every natural disaster as being directly related to global warming. Earthquakes and the destruction caused by earthquakes can not be directly linked to global warming.

[w4rma]

32. Nono, an earthquake with less water on top of it WILL create smaller tidal

waves. It's ridiculous to state otherwise. The amount of water is most *definitely* part of the function which would determine the size of the tidal wave created.

Also you have to remember that global warming affects the weather in strange ways, shifting air currents to places where they didn't used to travel. These changes in weather would likely affect *where* the Tsunami would land and even if it would hit land.

[Silverhair]

47. Consider the ratios.

Global warming has added at most one inch to sea level. The earthquake took place about 400,000+ inches under the ocean. I don't think one more inch on top of 400K inches is going to make much difference.

[karlrschneider]

51. I'm sorry, but your knowledge of physics and meteorology isn't very good.

And I wonder about other scientific/mathematical areas as well. Here's a simple problem for you to ponder: You tie a rope around the world at the equator (assume it's an even 25,000 miles and the surface is completely smooth)...pull the rope tight...then cut it and "splice" in another piece of rope exactly ten feet long. Now suppose you can support the rope evenly all around the world (at the same height)...how high above the surface will it be?

[AtTheEndOfTheDay]

54. bs

Go educate yourself before you spout. This isn't true. Energy passes through water. Energy isn't the same as water. More or less water in the ocean isn't relevant to the energy in the wave.

[Walt Starr]

43. This is NOT the biggest documented tsunami

The Krakatau eruption on August 26, 1883 far exceeded this one.

A series of large tsunami waves generated by the main explosion, some reaching a height of nearly 40 meters (more than 120 feet) above sea level, killed more than 36,000 people in the coastal towns and villages along the Sunda Strait on Java and Sumatra islands. Tsunami waves were recorded or observed throughout the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the American West Coast, South America, and even as far away as the English Channel.

[AtTheEndOfTheDay]

53. Water isn't displaced by wave energy.

Water is the medium through which the wave energy passes. More or less water in the ocean is irrelevant to the amount of energy in the wave. That's like saying sound waves would be louder if there was more atmospheric gases in our atmosphere. It doesn't work that way.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. At this point, the increases in ocean levels are not enough to

materially influence the height of a thirty-foot wave.

It's been a while since we had an earthquake of this size. The last ones were in the 1960s, in Alaska and Chile. The Alaska earthquake started a tsunami that reached 21 feet in Crescent City, California.

http://www.drgeorgepc.com/Tsunami1964Calif.html

The 1960 Chile earthquake, one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, started a tsunami that devastated Hilo, Hawaii, killing 61 people, and reached Japan traveling at 750 km per hour, killing hundreds.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/dec/26tsunami.htm

This is the first time in recent history that a large tsunami has hit densely populated areas on low-lying ground. The tsunami from the Alaska earthquake was strongest on the Oregon and northern California coasts, which are relatively unpopulated and where cliffs rise up fairly sharply from the beach.

Neither Hawaii nor the Chilean coast nor the section of the Japanese coast that was heaviest hit by the 1960 tsunami is heavily populated compared to Indonesia, Sri Lanka, or especially, southern India.

[formernaderite]

46. actually the more shallow the water the worse the tsunami....

...if the water had been deeper caused by global warming, we'd have had less destruction. Is everyone donning tinfoil here?

[cali]

31. Thanks for your sane and patient posts to this

thread. It seems to me that attributing this disaster to global warming has little basis in reality. As you so cogently pointed out the dynamics of the tectonic plates have little connection to global warming. Nor, as I understand it, would coral reefs stay the power of the waves that were created by this earthquake. Global warming is serious enough without attributing to it natural disasters that it has very little, if any, impact on.

[w4rma]

33. I do not see a mechanism for earthquakes through global warming, either.

And I've stated that a few times in various posts now.

The variables that global warming affects are the water levels and the weather (air currents, high/low temperature areas, etc.). These variables would affect the tidal wave by increasing the size of the tidal wave and changing the direction and therefore denoting where the tidal wave would land.

[cali]

38. I need to see some peer reviewed articles

in reputable journals before I buy into that. Sorry, your word is simply not good enough. BTW, describing a tsunami as a tidal wave is a misnomer. Tides have nothing to do with it.

[TyeDye75]

27. Until this kind of damage....

is wrought upon North America or Western Europe nothing will be done.

And when somethibng is done I fear it will be much too little much too late

[Karenina]

40. The "assumption" that "WE HUMANS"

are somehow in charge ist lächerlich!

We HAD our chance to mitigate the negative effects of our proliferation about 40 years ago and DID NOTHING. All bets are off.

[hatrack]

29. I don't understand the linkage you're implying here

Climate breakdown is a serious problem, but I don't think it has anything to do with plate tectonics. There have been bigger earthquakes and bigger tsunamis in the past, and will be far into the future.

Aside from thermal expansion of the oceans and slighter higher sea levels (which wouldn't have too much of an effect on the Indian Ocean tsunami, given the size of the event), I don't see the connection here.

[forgethell]

39. What will be done about

the massive growing pollution caused as the developing world climbs into modernity, industrially, socially, etc. This alone will swamp any positive effect Kyoto might have. And the dangers of their NOT developing is shown in the disaster of the tsunami. Tidal waves occurred before the industrial world, and will continue long after life is extinct on this planet.

[formernaderite]

44. This tsunami was due to an earthquake....

....sorry, but I've never heard earthquakes attributed to global warming. Maybe you need to adjust the tinfoil....

[REP]

48. What Does Global Warming Have To With Plate Tectonics?

I have yet to see anyone who links tsunamis and global warming answer this. The answer is: nothing.

Global warming is real and serious but anyone who links it to plate tectonics is not doing anyone any favors.

[iwantmycountryback]

49. I don't think this had anything to do with Global Warming

This was a top of the Richter scale earthquake that happened underwater and caused these tsunamis to form.

[theboss]

56. Does anyone take science anymore?

How on earth could global warming cause a 9.0 earthquake? Any explanation would be nice.

[Jesus H. Christ]

58. I think she has a point.

Global warming will cause coastal flooding, which could exacerbate a tsunami.

But of all the reasons to slow global warming, the irrational fear of tsunamis is pretty low on the level of things to worry about.

[theboss]

60. There may be a very small point somewhere in the paranoia

Yes, coastal flooding could conceivably exacerbate the effects of a large-scale tsunami. But we are probably talking about a miniscule percentage. The bottom line is that a 9.0 earthquake is going to cause immense damage whether the water is 42 inches deep or 42.5 inches deep.

But the attempt to tie the two undercuts the entire global warming argument, which needs to be taken seriously. But it also needs to be approached scientifically.

[pmbryant]

62. Thanks for the sensible post

And thanks to the others posting sensibly in this misguided thread.

--Peter

[txaslftist]

59. We need to do something about plate-tectonics, too.

Stop that durned mantle shifting.

[Ravenseye]

61. I have a T Shirt that says "Stop Plate Tectonics"

I love how many people have stopped me over the years when I wear it, asking what plate tectonics are....then when I tell them they are still interested in how we can stop it....*sigh*

[txaslftist]

63. nyuk nyuk nyuk....

Seriously. Didn't anyone pay attention in 8th grade Earth Science?

[peacebird]

65. REUNITE GONDWANALAND!!!

http://members.tripod.com/~paleoartisans/reunite.htm

:toast: