Climate data shows June 2010 to be Earth’s hottest month on record
Last month was the hottest June recorded worldwide, figures show. US government climate data suggests 2010 on course to be warmest year since records began
Must We Hack Our Planet’s Atmosphere?
The failure of recent efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions has built some momentum toward expanding research on geoengineering options. Although everything possible must be done to shift to a sustainable and energy-efficient economy – along with changing to simple life-styles and putting a cap on the world’s population – all this will not be enough to eliminate the danger of runaway climate change.
Somehow, we have to find a safe way to remove the huge amount of excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. To analogize, diet and medicine alone won’t cure our planet; surgery will also be required. Too much CO2 in our atmosphere not only contributes to global heating, sea-level rise, more severe storms and desertification; it has also caused a 30% increase in ocean acidification, and this too threatens the life of everything on Earth.
Climate Change’s Sea Level Rise and Coastal Earthquakes
The 8.8 EQ on Chile’s coastline is a reminder of what we might see more frequently as the sea level rises in coastal areas already susceptible to large EQs, both in the Pacific Ocean’s “Ring of Fire” and in island volcano settings such as the Canary Islands and those of the Caribbean.
In such areas where EQs are common near coastlines, the fault lines are in an uneasy balance that occasionally slips. The overburden on such faults includes all of the rock and soils on the land side and a mix of hydrostatic pressure and sediments on the ocean side. As sea level rises with ice melt from global overheating, ocean faults experience symmetrical hydrostatic pressures increases on both sides of a fault. But near land, the increase is asymmetrical with only the ocean side experiencing an increase in overburden.
Because of the asymmetrical change, one would expect a period of adjustment where EQs in coastal zones became more common than at present.
