Pirate's Cove

Just because I knew you needed to start off the day with either hysterical laughing or a look of complete and total repulsed shock on your face. I’d suggest going with laughing, because you know what your Mom said about making faces when you were young

At the American Geophysical Union meeting late last month, University of Miami geologist Shimon Wdowinski argued that the devastating earthquake a year ago may have been caused by a combination of deforestation and hurricanes (H/T Treehugger). Climate change is spurring more, stronger hurricanes, which are fueled by warm ocean waters.

There’s that uber scientific word “may” again. You know, like gravity “may” cause things to fall, and the Sun “may” be a ball of nuclear fire. It’d be be nice if the alarmists would back up their deranged opinions with actual scientific facts now and then.

Anyhow, it’s interesting that hurricane action has been down the past few seasons, and, by past few, I mean the last five. Granted, Tomas dumped a ton of rain on Haiti in 2010, the same year as the earthquake, so, of course, it must be caused by ……. Sister Toldjah driving to work!

It works like this: Deforestation leaves hillsides vulnerable to erosion, which hurricanes deliver in spades. Haiti’s hills have waned to a degree, says Wdowinski, that it could affect the stability of the Earth’s crust.

The 2010 disaster stemmed from a vertical slippage, not the horizontal movements that most of the region’s quakes entail, supporting the hypothesis that the movement was triggered by an imbalance created when eroded land mass was moved from the mountainous epicenter to the Leogane Delta.

And there’s your “science,” folks. Except, it really isn’t, and deforestation is not “global warming”, or, climate change, if you want to use the nutters phrase. And hurricanes are not an invention produced by global warming, but a way of transferring heat. Weather is essentially a way for Mother Nature to transfer heat and cold.

And then there is a problem with it being called “vertical slippage,” which, according to Cal Tech

The colors show the slip amplitude (i.e., the amount by which the land on one side of the fault moved with respect to the land on the other side). The motion was mainly strike-slip (i.e., land on one side of the fault moving horizontally with respect to land on the other side).

The rupture originated at the epicenter (red star) about 10 km (6 miles) below the surface. In some places, the vertical slippage along the fault line was as large as 4 meters (12 feet), shown by red-shaded areas. This slip map was generated from a numerical model that uses seismological records from all over the world.

And with strike-slip, you still often get vertical movement as the faults slide along each other. Then it gets all sciency, which I know the Warmists hate.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.