Climate of Our Future

Climate Crisis Coalition

The Earth Fights Back
By Bill McGuire, The Guardian Unlimited, August 7, 2007
“Looking back to other periods in our planet’s history when the climate was swinging about wildly, most notably during the last ice age, it appears that far more than the weather was affected. The solid earth also became restless, with an increase in volcanic activity, earthquakes, giant submarine landslides and tsunamis. At the rate climate change is accelerating, there is every prospect that we will see a similar response from the planet, heralding not just a warmer future but also a fiery one… In the Mediterranean region there was a close correlation between how quickly sea levels went up and down during the last ice age and the level of explosive activity at volcanoes in Italy and Greece. The link was most obvious following the retreat of the glaciers around 18,000 years ago, after which sea levels jumped back up to where they are today, triggering a 300% increase in explosive volcanic activity in the Mediterranean in doing so. Further evidence for a flurry of volcanic action at this time comes from cores extracted from deep within the Greenland ice sheet, which yield increased numbers of volcanic dust and sulphate layers from eruptions across the northern hemisphere, if not the entire planet. But how can rising sea levels cause volcanoes to erupt? The answer lies in the enormous mass of the water pouring into the ocean basins from the retreating ice sheets [which]… seems to be sufficient to load and bend the underlying crust. This in turn squeezes out any magma that happens to be hanging around waiting for an excuse to erupt.”
Bill McGuire is the director of the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre. His book Surviving Armageddon: Solutions for a Threatened Planet is published by the Oxford University Press. His next book, What Everyone Should Know About the Future of Our Planet: And What We Can Do About It, is published by Orion in January next year.