The Holy Grail of climate change alarmism is to link earthquakes and volcanic eruptions to humans driving SUVs. A recent article in the Conversation returned to this theme noting “evidence” that the loss of surface ice in Scandinavia “triggered numerous earthquake events between 11,000 and 7,000 years ago”. Alas, for Earth-moving purists, the ‘evidence’ quoted showed that the only tectonic plate action was to be found in the hard drive of a researcher’s computer. Substantial earthquakes might have occurred when ice sheets lifted at the start of deglaciation, but the possibility in this case seems to lie with “postglacial rebound models”.
The wider idea is to catastrophise the weight of water on the land said to be arising from higher rainfall levels. Author Matthew Blackett, an Associate Professor of Physical Geography at Coventry University, argues that during the summer monsoon season, the weight of up to four metres of rainfall compresses the crust both vertically and horizontally. When this water disappears, the effective ‘rebound’ destabilises the region “and increases the number of earthquakes that occur”. One might wonder if draining a four metre diving pool would have a similar localised effect, although it is likely the required six inches of base concrete would cope! On his University page, Blackett declares that he is ”passionate to ensure that his scientific research is positively impactful for society”.
The feisty Australian climate journalist Joanna Nova was not in a charitable mood in reviewing this “abject drivel”. Four metres of rain means a lot to homo sapiens, she observed, “but it’s hard to believe a plate of rock 30 kilometres thick would care less or even notice. It’s all absurd.” The author probably thinks he’s being provocative, “but he’s just proving what a wasteland Big Government Science is”, she added.
Climate breakdown narratives frequently rely on higher global precipitation – when they are not claiming increased droughts, of course – but a group of international scientists recently analysed specialist satellite data and found that rainfall trends in the 21st century have become less intense across the world. The work of water resources expert Demetris Koutsoviannis has shown that the highest frequency of global-scale extreme rainfall events occurred from 1960-1980. Since then, he reported, the frequency and intensity of rainfall events have “decreased remarkably”.
Associate Professor Blackett is also up for looking at how climate change “might” trigger volcanic eruptions. Research is said to have found a correlation between glacial-load changes on the Earth crust, and the occurrence of volcanic activity. About 5,500 years ago the Earth briefly cooled , glaciers began to expand in Iceland and local volcanic activity “markedly reduced”. But the research paper quoted notes: “Numerical models suggest that smaller changes in ice volumes over short time scales may also influence rates of mantle melt generation. However this effect has not been verified by the geological record.”
Any change in seismic activity caused by the removal of huge amounts of ice is likely to be counted in hundreds and thousands of years. The research quoted says the time lag between climate influence and resultant frequency change in eruptions is “unknown”, although a time lag of 600 years is calculated for the Iceland experience 5,500 years ago. Despite this finding, Blackett goes on to claim that eruptions at two Icelandic volcanoes, Grimsvotn and Katla “consistently occur during the summer period when glaciers retreat”. It is therefore “feasible” that ongoing glacial retreat due to global warming could potentially increase volcanic activity in the future, he concludes.
At least ice gives the alarmist something to work with, but this, alas, rules out the volcanoes based in more tropical climes. Writing last year – in the Conversation, it might not be surprising to learn – Associate Professor of Volcanology and Geoscience Communications at the University of Twente, Heather Handley, said climate change is increasing the severity of storms and other weather events and these “may trigger more volcanic eruptions”. Exhibit A was an recent eruption at Mount Semeru in Indonesia whose collapsing dome after a few days of heavy rain was said to have triggered an eruption. “Rain-influenced” volcanism is also proposed for other volcanoes around the world such as the Soufriere Hills volcano in the Caribbean, and Piton de la Fournaise on Reunion island.
Human-produced rain causing powerful volcanoes to suddenly explode – you couldn’t make this stuff up. Maybe Associate Professor Handley would benefit from some critical input into her climate activism. But this is unlikely to be supplied by contributors to the Conversation.
In fact, the Conversation is obligatory reading for those aiming to keep up to date with the latest on climate, Net Zero and woke intersectionality. Handley fits in well with much of this campaign, having been lead author in a recent paper titled ‘In Australasia, gender is still on the agenda in geosciences’. In 2020, UCL Geography Professors Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis argued that racism and the climate emergency shared common causes. The Conversation claims it is an independent source of news analysis, written by academic experts working with professional journalists. To the mainstream media, it offers “media-ready” experts and “free” content. It is funded by academic institutions and receives money from a number of billionaire foundations. Media partners include Reuters, PA Media, Reach (owner of the Mirror, Express, Daily Star and multiple U.K. newspapers) and Apple News.
Needless to say, it is a highly protected green activist space where ‘hurty’ comments disputing human-caused climate change are banned. In Australia, Jo Nova is not a fan, particularly since the local site declared that climate change deniers are dangerous: “We believe conversations are integral to sharing knowledge, but those who are fixated on dodgy ideas in the face of decades of peer-reviewed science are nothing but dangerous.” Giving said ‘deniers’ a place on the platform is said to contribute to a “stalled public discourse”.
In Nova’s view, the only reason the climate debate is ‘stalled’ is due to a belief in “fairy weather control… maintained by name-calling ‘denier’ and indignant fautrage, manipulated data and unvalidated models known to fail”. This debate, she continued, will only unstall when it is hammered out through conversation, “which obviously isn’t going to happen at the Conversation”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic Environment Editor.
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Those disgusting villainous car drivers cause all this! Look at all the extra costs involved for all the ulez cameras and new 20mph speed signs and the like! The poor old councils
I know, right? They’re just trying to keep us all SAFE, and this is all the thanks they get. Terrible. Just terrible.
Bad management – the euphemism for wilful corruption.
Oh, you’re so CYNICAL
I would like to know who actually runs the council services if the council is bankrupt and therefore not functioning. Is it Serco – the ‘go to’ company that seems to be taking over all public services? What does a bankrupt council entail? Does it mean all the useful stuff like libraries, swimming pools, meals on wheels, schools etc are all defunded to the point of collapse? A girlfriend of mine was working for Birmingham City Council until just before Christmas when they were all made redundant with a ‘Merry Christmas’ and goodbye. Admittedly she was only just doing executive admin work as a contractor, wfh most of the time, but the job she did in organising payroll has now gone. An important job surely? How do council employed employees get paid?
In Oldham we have over 100 staff on salaries exceeding £100k pa and the town is a shit hole and getting worse.
We obligingly import third world disregards because central government chucks the council loadsa money for their generosity. As a result schools are full, GP services have evaporated, the hospital A & E is a horror service, plod can’t be arsed and all services are collapsing. Houses are being built across the Borough and greenfield sites are dutifully handed over once the appropriate brown envelopes have been circulated.
When times get tough the preferred solution is pay rises all round so the Council Directors award themselves inflation busting rises, the Councillors up their “fees” and pensions cost more. At last count I believe 50% of ratepayers taxes goes on pensions.
Local Councils are run by those classed as unemployable by the private sector and too many in positions of responsibility are incompetent grifters. Oldham Council is indeed the refuge of scoundrels although ‘scoundrel’ rather mollifies the troubles they bring. The council actually employed a senior police woman who had been sacked by Greater Manchester Police and paid her more money. Dead-leg rejects from other local councils routinely make appearances on the Council payroll.
It is difficult to conclude that Oldham is an exception. Local councils are rife with corruption and their officials clearly believe that if it is good for National government it is good for them.
Corruption levels in the former First world are as bad if not worse than the Third world only now they are perhaps deliberately being exposed. TPT want to Be deliberately rubbing our noses in their grafting.
We are living in a cess pit that is deepening by the day.
The public sector has always been the home of sloth and waste, except they have now given themselves some kind of catch all responsibility for social justice and ‘wellness’, the current fad subset of which is ‘mental health’.
My view.? Empty the bins, mend the roads. Spend public money as frugally as if it were your own. Get off our backs and keep your hands out of my pockets…
Well said, Neil!
Agree, get the basics right. My local council recently asked, via a survey on their website, about equality and inclusion training for the staff. Stonewall were/are doing the training and the outcome of said training/brainwashing is to have ‘Stonewall Champions” to help others, or in other words promote DIE and LGBT++++ propaganda.
A disgusting waste of taxpayers’ money, when they can’t even fix potholes or empty the bins on time, which incidentally are only emptied three weekly.
I can’t help thinking back to the time my wife was employed by an ALMO (Arm’s Length Management Organisation) owned by Leeds City Council. The purpose of the 3 ALMOs was to manage Leeds’ housing stock, and they had been created to exploit a loophole under which their borrowings did not then count towards our overall Public Sector Borrowing Requirement.
Leeds took the opportunity to create 3 of these stand-alone companies to perform the role of its own housing department, and each had its own CEO, board of directors, finance department, HR department, etc etc., with a salary structure to match, even though they sere only doing the work previously undertaken within the smaller and more economical council structure.
Eventually, and to no-one’s great surprise, the OECD ruled that these companies’ borrowings should count towards the PSBR after all, so their whole raison d’etre vanished, and they were abolished in 2013. However, Leeds CC saw no need for this to entail redundancies, so all these staff were brought back onto the council’s books, along with their enhanced salary packages.
The council now wonders why money is tight. Really?
Thanks for this insight into the council I currently suffer under.
Heck who am I kidding. We all suffer under the bloated councils, up and down the land.
Maybe time local authorities stopped supplying those ‘services’ and let the competitive private sector take over and individuals pay directly for those services they want.
Examples of this in the US, where rubbish collection was taken out of local authority hands, and a number of private collectors competed for the business with individual households choosing the service/price best suited to their needs. This meant not just one monopoly operator, but two or three serving the community paid direct by householders.
A ‘public good’ is a good that is non-rivalrous and non excludable. An example is street lighting. Nobody can be excluded from using it, and if 20 people walk down the street they don’t each get less light than if only 10 walked down the street.
The nature of a public good makes it difficult to charge an individual to use it according to how much they use, or stop them using it if they don’t pay,
In contrast, the opposite to a public good is a private good, like telephone service or electricity supply, which is rivalrous and excludable.
The situation with respect to public goods – supposedly – makes it impossible for private enterprise to provide them as they would find it difficult to charge and make a profit. There is the ‘free-rider’ problem too, whilst some households in a street might agree to pay a charge for street lighting, others might not, reasoning they could still use it without paying.
Thus – supposedly – ‘government’ must ride to the rescue and supply public goods out of public funds plundered from taxpayers.
However. The market, if given a chance can find a solution.
Radio/TV signals are a public good. Once emitted there is no (easy) way to stop an individual receiving, nor to charge individuals for how much they receive. This is why the BBC Licence was introduced to fund the early days of broadcasting.
But market solutions were available as used in the US, advertising and sponsorship. Today encryption and subscription.
So time to rethink how public services – currently in the hands of big and little government – should be supplied. A close look shows a lot of what government supplies are not in fact public goods, and too much is for minorities who use them free, paid for by the majority who don’t.
Of course a shift from public to private sector, would strip government of tax revenue and reduce their power and control. Also – more important – their justification for existing.
Leeds City Council sensibly and wisely spent a reassuring amount of money concreting huge metal posts in the ground all over public spaces which to this day hold very strong metal signs (very firmly bolted, I know) kindly reminding us all of the guidelines so that people know how to protect each other from a flu virus when they’re out walking up and down narrow steps where it may not be possible to socially distance, along canal paths, by rivers, enjoying beauty spots inside nature reserves, across fields and meadows, through football pitches, walking their dogs in the park, passing through gates and the like. Also on those other vectors of death like swings, slides, roundabouts, climbing frames which (as we all now know, thanks to these signs) can only be safely used after a liberal dousing of all the family’s exposed skin with alcoholic gel, the more slippery it is the better. I know that councils are often accused of wasting money, but in my honest opinion this was a very wise expenditure of my cash. Thanks, LCC!
PS Sorry I didn’t send you a Christmas Card, I couldn’t afford it.
I believe cordless angle grinders were among the top ten Christmas gifts this year along with high vis jackets and those new telescopic ladders…
That is heart-warming news Aethelred.
Glad to see you’re not using the DS to advertise any specific retailer of said cordless angle grinders (e.g. Toolstation £25.99, Screwfix £35.00, B&Q £28.99)
My favourite was Screwfix’s DeWalt offering, which I bought to trim an M6 threaded bar for a little job on my van. Could have done it with my junior hacksaw but access was too difficult and it was dark at the time, and the area was dangerous so I needed to be quite quick.
It is much deeper than that you can go back twenty years in terms of naive council members agreeing to arrangements based on complete nonsense from Icelandic banks. We have so long ago lost sight of what sound money means in this country. We just take it for granted that the fraudulent system will keep our assets alive as long as is needed. You might want to think about that. Deposit guarnatee schemes mean nothing if your money becomes worthless etc. You can’t carry on treating your own people like garbage.
Councils should be limited by law to only x thousand staff. The X can be discussed by relevant experts and parliament. Problem is also that councils have been lumbered by central government with low level
Policing tasks that fat, lazy, PC Woke can’t be arsed to do because they have too much high level thought crime and Non Crime hate incidents (name calling which always riles up females so the dominant female PCs demand that this evil crime is given maximum resources – another reason why allowing women to do mens jobs has back fired massively).