EARLY Wednesday morning a 8.3 magnitude earthquake caused a tsunami in the Pacific, killing at least 140 people in Samoa and Tonga. Later in the day a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit western Sumatra in Indonesia, drowning hundreds of people and burying thousands more under rubble.
Many in Samoa claim the warning system in place failed because an alert was only received after the tsunami hit. The official line has been that when the earthquake is close to land, the technology is such that there is simply not time for adequate warnings.
Brisbane-based engineer, now publisher, John McRobert, disputes this assessment claiming major earthquakes have precursor seismic shocks hundreds of kilometres below the Earth’s surface, and the transmigration of the energy, and the path to the surface can be accurately predicted:
“IN the early 1960s, a visionary Chief Engineer of the Queensland Co-ordinator General’s Department, John Kindler, called all of his engineering staff to a meeting (there were about 40 of us). He gave a dissertation about how development close to the frontal dunes at the Gold Coast was of concern, and of the (even then) huge economic risk of major storm assault on the coastline. He asked for two volunteers to spend a few years at the Dutch Delft Hydraulic Laboratories, the world’s leaders in handling storm erosion. Two volunteers stepped forward and from that the Beach Protection Authority was established to perform some excellent work in protecting our coastline from storm damage. The group was eventually absorbed into the Harbours and Marine Department.
In those days, Australia was considered to be a stable geologic platform with no volcanic activity, very few local earthquakes, and the word ‘tsunami’ wasn’t even in the lexicon.
The action was around the ‘Ring of fire’ in the Pacific, and in 1962, the failure of earth scientists to warn inhabitants of the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands of a damaging volcanic eruption demanded action, and this resulted in a remarkable collaboration between Dr Claude Blot, a French volcanologist, and John Grover, an Australian earth scientist, who found and proved answers to long lead-time, accurate, early warning of volcanic eruptions and great earthquakes. They showed that these major events had precursor seismic shocks hundreds of kilometres below the Earth’s surface, and the transmigration of the energy, and the path to the surface could be accurately predicted. Some of the most dramatic examples of this is told in John Grover’s book, Volcanic Eruptions and Great Earthquakes (here I have to declare that this book was published by my company).
The Grover/Blot team was broken up for political reasons – it was deemed more politically acceptable to let the events happen without warning, than to make a prediction which could be wrong and which could therefore create unnecessary panic.
John Grover died a few years ago, but his work is being continued by a seismologist based in Canberra, Dr Dong Choi. After the Sumatran tsunami, I asked Dr Choi if it could have been predicted. The answer sent prickles up the back of the neck when he said ‘The data fits’.
But mainstream academia refused to review the John Grover book, and here we have seen another fast and furious catastrophe in the Samoan region. It had no warning. How would the Gold Coast cope?
We are spending billions chasing a will’o’the’wisp gas called carbon dioxide which is essential to life on Earth, and which is driven by climate, not by puny man-made emissions, and ignoring real research as to how to predict and manage natural cataclysm.
Where are our priorities?
John McRobert
Brisbane, Australia “
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I stopped by to see what mischief the planet-rapers’ enabler and her minions are up, and I must give you credit for being quick off the mark. Two stupendous earthquakes within days of each other and you are already spreading the word that they have something to do with what happens deep within the earth.
That’s the way to go, the time tested method: Distract attention from the real cause in order to deny its effects.
Attention, tortured earth to Carbon Spewers: It’s climate change, stupid.
Respectable science long ago established the link, and that means, of course, the sock puppets of globalist corpatism must deny it.
Read this and think up some fresh tactics, you soot-soaked carbon-aras:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327273.800-climate-change-may-trigger-earthquakes-and-volcanoes.html
There must be a law that states when you live in fear of a specific disaster [like AGW] the real blow will always come from left field.
That said, although we get lots of tiny quakes our plate is pretty inert so what are the chances of a serious one?
http://www.seis.com.au/
The good professor Melbourne geologist Bernie Joyce is forecasting Volcanic eruptions left, right and centre over Victoria S.D. Lately he’s been to Geelong and is asking the Geelong community to consider a volcanic disaster plan for Anakie.
Why don’t we send him an email and ask his opinion on forecasting earthquakes?
I know Dong Choi personally – This is a statement usually put as a footnote, but put here for the record.
The issue is simply our understanding of earth tectonics.
The evidence, so far, is that we can’t predict earthquakes.
Now let’s sit back wand read what Luke, SJT, SOD, and all the other Lambertians have to comment here.
I don’t know….. If there was a strong and definite precursor signal, it would have drawn attention a long time ago….. Lotsa seismologists dream of that sort of stuff…. So obviously it is not definite and it is not strong.
…. but there is no harm in looking into it I ‘spose.
Les, Your comment has been noted. Jen
Have you used any of your scepticism on this idea?
SJT,
Have you ever watched any of the series of videos by Alain de Botton?
I recommend you start with ‘Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness’.
There is a lot about Socrates and the difference between ‘sheep’ and ‘thinking people’ … people who take time out to reflect and search for the truth however uncomfortable. De Botton talks about the importance of taking a rational and logical approach to issues.
Indeed the video says a lot about my approach to life which is much more than just healthy scepticism.
Cheers,
The cyber gods don’t approve of my latest message. I’m not sure what triggered the automatic rejection. Was it California’s San Andreas Fault?
Rising Tide – did you read the conclusion at the end of the article you linked to?
here it is again:
For now, it is unclear just how much climate change will affect the frequency and intensity of quakes and eruptions, says McGuire, because Earth’s sensitivity to climate is only now emerging. There is not yet enough data to build predictive climate models linking the two systems.
“There is not yet enough data to build predictive climate models linking the two systems.”
janama,
These two systems have been linked forever but the tiny ACC bit addition, if it exists at all, for only the last 60 years.
But of course, whether it is adding or subtracting pressure, this tiny, “soot soaked” bit is the culprit.
Get a life, Rising Tide.
janama,
The earth is sensitive to climate? I thought it was the other way round – that changes in the earth system are noted partly by changes in the climate.
I thought we might be in another scientific dark age, now I am certain.
In any case for any one interested, the geomagnetic field is now thought to be caused by the oceans, according to new research – http://tinyurl.com/noktwz and yes, there is a link to climate change as well.
Louis,
For lack of evidence, I can’t accept the currently fashionable hypothesis regarding geomagnetism. Ditto for Ryskin’s hypothesis.
“Everyone accepted this, but in reality there has never been any proof,” said Gregory Ryskin, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University in Illinois. ‘It is just an idea we have accepted for a long time without questioning it enough.’
“His research suggests that Earth’s magnetism is actually linked to ocean movements. The salt in seawater allows it to conduct electricity, meaning it generates electrical and magnetic fields as it moves.”
OK, I’ll be the straight man for this scientific joke. It’s my understanding that in an ocean current, the charge carriers–anions and metal cations–are always moving at the same speed and in the same direction. The magnetic fields created by the two classes of ions cancel out. Am I missing something here?
Larry
I have yet to read the paper myself – if it is online that is – and no electrons travel opposite to the positive particles in an electric or magnetic field. They might be moved en-masse by the ocean currents but until I read it and get to understand it, I am as clueless about it as you are, but if earthquakes are in fact electric discharges down below – then I can start to see some sort of connection with the oceans and the atmospheric lows that, unlike the highs, develop into powerful rotating vortices that can be best explained by the action of electric currents connecting the earth’s surface to the Van Allen Belts. (I’m not saying the currents enter the earth, since electrons move in direction, anions the opposite and both are electric currents).
But no one has really bothered to study this in detail – I doubt you would get any funding from government since the implications are profound. A colleague (plasma physicist) is looking at explaining the geomagnetic field as due to some moving electric charge on the earth’s surface but I ‘ll see what his opinion on this research is first. It’s all rather novel and cutting edge.
Larry
I have yet to read the paper myself – if it is online that is – and no electrons travel opposite to the positive particles in an electric or magnetic field. They might be moved en-masse by the ocean currents but until I read it and get to understand it, I am as clueless about it as you are, but if earthquakes are in fact electric discharges down below – then I can start to see some sort of connection with the oceans and the atmospheric lows that, unlike the highs, develop into powerful rotating vortices that can be best explained by the action of electric currents connecting the earth’s surface to the Van Allen Belts. (I’m not saying the currents enter the earth, since electrons move in direction, anions the opposite and both are electric currents).
But no one has really bothered to study this in detail – I doubt you would get any funding from government since the implications are profound. A colleague (plasma physicist) is looking at explaining the geomagnetic field as due to some moving electric charge on the earth’s surface but I ‘ll see what his opinion on this research is first. It’s all rather novel and cutting edge.
I hadn’t heard about the tsunami in Samoa the day it happened,but arrived home midday for lunch to find a throng of people out of their cars standing around on the hill where I live looking at the sea? I later found out that the whole country had been put on tsunami alert, with cops clearing the beaches,helicopters racing up and down with loudhailers telling everbody to clear the coastline,and traffic jams of people heading for the hills!
I thought that this resembles AGW hysteria to a tee. Nothing observable happened to the sea. They say there was a 40cm swell.! What a fizzer. What a dis appointment for the civil defence teams.
Like the AGW alarmists nobody had any sense of perspective . How far away from NZ is Samoa? what, several thousand miles! Nobody observed a stone dropped into a large pond?What sort of magnification of this event was going on in the minds of these people?
Where was their sense of proportion?
Rising Tide,
You are either joking, or are a joke.
Cheers,
Mr. McRobert,
I find your argument and assertions unconvincing.
You offer no evidence, only assertions and conclusions.
Regards,
Mr Hunter
The evidence is in the John Grover book (which you should be able to borrow from your local library), and in the ongoing newsletter ‘New Concepts in Global Tectonics’ (which may be found using Google).
Good hunting
John McRobert
Mr. McRobert,
After a brief hike in google, it appears Mr. Grover had some very broad interests.
I can see how he would have gotten into political trouble.
I will see what is available on this side of the globe.
Having read a bit about how difficult it is to predict volcanoes, I remain dubious.
Hunter,
Predicting volcanic eruptions is indeed difficult, especially when the physics is wrong.
Think of a volcano as an electric discharge from an Earth that behaves as a leaky capacitor. Volcanic eruptions are generally preceded by significant changes in the local geomagnetic field, and one suspects electric field as well.
As magnetic fields can only be modulated by electric currents, and indeed only produced by electric currents, then this should be enough for those with inquisitive minds to work on.
Given the centuries of volcanic studies, one would have thought by now that if a particular theory hasn’t any predictive value, then it would be ditched.
It’s probably the intellectual analog of drug addiction.
Louis,
I think it depends on what you mean by ‘predictive power’.
There are good ways to predict short term if a volcano is getting ready to erupt.
Here is a link with a list of things being done now to predict and mitigate volcanoes.
http://www.usgs.gov/science/science.php?term=1698&type=theme
As far as an electrodynamic theory of volcanic function goes, if you can come up with a reasonable theory that involves evidence, go for it.
YOu have done pretty well talking about a complex significant electrical relationship between the sun and earth.
Hunter,
Brave indeed anyone who thinks a volcano could be mitigated – 🙂 Geology lost a couple of souls when St Helens erupted – and the weird thing is that those ash deposits are now lithified and properly called rocks.
I can explain kimberlite eruptions electrodynamically but haven’t put pen to paper to write an article for a journal – but that mechanism cannot be extended to other volcanic eruptions such as the explosive types like Mt St Helens, Vesuvius etc. No one has seen a kimberlite erupt, but from the mining of and exploration for these unique volcanos we do know that the craters are machined downwards into the earth by some vortex mechanism. A Russian scientist has proposed a plausible mechanism for this in a generalised way by an electrical interaction between the Earth and a passing alien body – meteorite/planet/comet etc. The crucial factor is that the intruder/alien object had to be electrically active as well.. He has shown (published in New Concepts of Global Tectonics Newsletter) that this intruder when passing close by the Earth could set up significant electrical stresses in the upper mantle region causing kimberlite and associated volcanic clusters to erupt to the Earth’s surface. These events seem also associated with global biospheric mass extinction events, though using the existing geochronological model, such connections are implausible due to the long periods of time between the events. A meteorite passing close by causing a specific kimberlite eruption, after which a species extinction occurs 1 millions years later, is a bit of a stretch for the imagination. I mentioned this to Megan Clarke (then the research scientist for WMC Limited (now absorbed into BHP-Billiton) during the early 1990’s and suggested that maybe there a problem exists with our understanding of the geological time scale. Her reply, which remains vivid, was to the effect that mainstream science could not contemplate such scenarios for fairly mundane reasons, ie the uniformitarian timescale of an Earth 4,500MA old.
Fair enough.
But the kimberlite model above cannot explain present observations of the more numerous “garden variety” volcanos dotted over the Earth. Those erupt in the absence of an external interloping cosmic body, although I have a sneaking suspicion that our AGW posters have a secret weapon in the form of a super carbon based alien who will arrive in our skies to acidify the oceans, melt the ice caps, and generally cause us grief; this conclusion is based on some evidence because recently someone in the UK was reported to have stated that melting of the polar ice caps (there’s only one) will cause increased volcanism etc.
One of the puzzles is the Pacific Ring of Fire, a quasi-circular structure along which most volcanoes are located. This is presently explained by plate tectonic theory but that theory is holeyer than most religions.
What we do know empirically is that the Earth’s polar regions are the locii of immense Birkeland currents connecting the Earth with the solar system (the Sun is simply a bit player here), Peratt etc and also Kristian Birkeland’s experiments with the terellas. When those electric currents increase in power density (amps increase), the dark mode currents then jump to glow mode which we see as the auroras. But electric currents need to be connected, or the circuit has to be completed, and my guess is that there are shallow electrical conduits between the north and south poles of the earth, and that these might be the “subduction” zones.
Subduction zones are simply two disparate crustal rocks abutting against each other and would normally be described at the local scale as a fault zone. Electric currents seem to prefer such linear paths, or structures since these are of lower resistance than the adjoining massive blocks of rock, and which from simple observation would need to be deep in order to melt the lower crust that, infrequently, erupts to the surface as volcanoes.
One recent observation this year (or last year) by US researchers pointed to rotational motion being observed in the ejecta of an active volcano which together with the electrical effects (lightning etc) points to Birkeland currents connecting the surface of the earth to, I am told, the Van Allen Belts.
I’m not dogmatic about this since I am, after all, an exploration geologist who from experience knows that data trump everything.
Since scientific ideas are always provisional, my present model for volcanoes is that they seem to be the locis of electrical leakages from the Earth, as a leaky capacitor, to the plasma of space along linears between grossly disparate rocktypes (AKA subduction zones).
That’s what I think now but that is quite likely to change after a night’s rest when I might recall some other observation that I forgot about, but which I now realised was relevant. Such is the nature of the scientific mind that has to be contrasted with the religious mind that isn’t allowed to change.
Hunter,
Having wrote that, then how to predict?
Well, you caught me with my pants down.
I “was” toying with the idea the that as the Solar Sunspot Activity was at a minimum, the galactic electric currents were reduced, and that this would cause cooler states.
Maybe.
Depends on the scale factor – for what what is observed in a plasma fusion device in microseconds, can be shown in space. Herein is the problem.