Top scientists call for research on climate link to volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides and tsunamis

Periods of exceptional climate change in Earth history are associated with a dynamic response from the solid Earth, involving enhanced levels of potentially hazardous geological and geomorphological activity. This response is expressed through the adjustment, modulation or triggering of a wide range of surface and crustal phenomena, including volcanic and seismic activity, submarine and sub-aerial landslides, tsunamis and landslide ‘splash’ waves glacial outburst and rock-dam failure floods, debris flows and gas-hydrate destabilisation. Looking ahead, modelling studies and projection of current trends point towards increased risk in relation to a spectrum of geological and geomorphological hazards in a world warmed by anthropogenic climate change, while observations suggest that the ongoing rise in global average temperatures may already be eliciting a hazardous response from the geosphere.

Lots of people have asked me whether there has been any connection between global warming and the recent earthquakes and other geological activity.  Today, the UK’s Royal Society published an amazingly timely special series of scientific papers on the topic.  Seven leading experts co-authored the editors’ introduction (quoted above).

Reuters reported on Friday, “A thaw of Iceland’s ice caps in coming decades caused by climate change may trigger more volcanic eruptions by removing a vast weight and freeing magma from deep below ground, scientists said.”  Last week, FoxNews reported, “A huge glacier has broken off and plunged into a lake in Peru sparking a 23-meter high tsunami wave that destroyed a nearby town.”  Local governor Cesar Alvarez said: “Because of global warming the glaciers are going to detach and fall on these overflowing lakes. This is what happened.”

We already knew that methane hydrates were at risk of destabilizing and becoming a positive or amplifying feedback to global warming (see “Science stunner: Vast East Siberian Arctic Shelf methane stores destabilizing and venting“).  Two articles in this issue go further:

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UPDATE:  Six companies have left the Chamber’s board and thirteen joined since last year.  Brad Johnson has the story in this excerpted repost. Read more

Obama Wants Senate to Tackle Climate Bill After Wall St. Reforms

President Obama expects the Senate to move on to comprehensive energy and climate change legislation once it finishes work over the next few weeks on Wall Street regulatory reform.

“This is one of these foundational priorities from my perspective that has to be done soon,” Obama said of the climate bill Friday during a White House meeting of outside experts helping the administration on economic recovery plans.

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Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, a critic of the US Chamber of Commerce’s reactionary stance on climate policy, has left the lobbying giant’s board. A Wonk Room review of the Chamber’s website found that six companies have left the board and thirteen joined since last year. Siemens USA’s George Nolen, another critic of the Chamber’s climate opposition, has also left the board. Duke and Siemens are members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which helped develop the Waxman-Markey climate legislation that the Chamber opposed. In October 2009, Rogers had indicated he still believed his board membership was worthwhile:

“I feel like the chamber is open to evolving their thinking,” Duke CEO Rogers said in an interview. He said he thought he could push the chamber “to the center” on the issue by staying on the board.

He has evidently decided otherwise.

Although both Duke and Siemens publicly criticized the Chamber’s stance on climate policy, neither publicly announced they were leaving the board. Last year the utilities PG&E, Exelon, PNM Resources, and PSEG ended their membership with the Chamber, unable to reconcile their support for climate action with the Chamber’s denial of the science and hard-line opposition to President Obama’s clean energy policies. The Wonk Room has not ascertained whether Duke and Siemens have left the Chamber entirely, although it appears Siemens is still an active member.

Last year, USCAP had eight members on the U.S. Chamber board. This number is down to four (Alcoa, Dow, Deere, and IBM), with Siemens and Duke Energy leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce board and ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar leaving USCAP.

Purported climate action advocates Pepsi and IBM, who were on the board in the beginning of 2009, have returned to the board in 2010. With the enactment of health care reform, the health care industry has stepped up its involvement with the nation’s largest lobbying group, as health insurance giant WellPoint, pharmaceutical maker Sanofi-aventis, and private hospital group Clarian Health have joined the board.

The US Chamber of Commerce has also become more sinful, with the addition of US Smokeless Tobacco’s CEO Peter Paoli and Michael Leven, the president of Las Vegas Sands, the casino owned by right-wing billionaire Shel Adelson.

Here are the changes from last year to now:

This analysis was assisted by the Public Accountability Initiative‘s LittleSis.org project.

My new book is now In Stock at Amazon.com, so you can buy it today (click here).  You know you want to after getting all these Climate Progress posts for free for so long.

And if you have already bought a copy (thank you very much), buy one for a friend.  Or a frenemy!

The journal Nature editorialized in March: “Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.”  Say what you will about Climate Progress, I figured that out a few years before Nature.

The timing couldn’t be better for Straight Up:  America’s Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions.  It’s the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman are going to introduce their bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill a week from today.

The bill will tee off the most important environmental and energy debate of our time.  In the book, I put the core issues of the debate “” climate science, clean energy solutions, and environmental politics “” in perspective.  Here’s the back jacket:

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Talk about bad timing.  Just weeks before the most deadly mining disaster in decades, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) “” a front group of big utilities and coal companies — compares mining coal to fighting in Afghanistan:

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Weather reporters can teach climate science

A little more than half, or 54 percent, of U.S. weathercasters accept that climate change is happening. And in many local television newsrooms, weathercasters have become the de facto science reporters at their station. Edward Maibach, who headed a recent study surveying professionals in the field, sees this as an opportunity for enhancing their role as informal science educators.  Science Progress’s Andrew Plemmons Pratt has the story in this repost.

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