"Myanmar cyclone. The earthquake off the coast of Japan. The Chilean volcano. Has Earth gone bonkers? Not at all. This level of natural activity is normal for Earth, scientists say."
HUH??
The story goes on: "That also means the recent Midwestern quake (centered in Illinois) and temblors near Reno, Nev., though unnerving and frightening to locals, were just another day for Planet Earth...said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told LiveScience..."
Unnerving, frightening, but just another day?? Me no think so.
Well, the tornado data shows us that things are abnormal. A fast start to this year's season indicates that it's not just a regular day on good ole earth. There have been more tornadoes than usual. Additionally, those tornadoes have been killers: there are as many dead so far, a little less than halfway through, than there are in a regular total season. Bodes ill.
Earthquakes: last year for the first time in recorded history there were four times as many magnitude 8 and higher. This is statistically significant. Annually there is only 1 8.0+ eq per year. hand count of all 8.0+ since 1900 (year of beginning records) show many years with zero. Then, in 2007 there were 4.
As for ocean storms, this scientist claims the following in an article in a Science Tech newsletter: Earthquake sensors track rise in ocean storms All 22 stations examined showed a "systematic increase" in the number of storm-caused microseisms over the last two decades, says Aster.
The Emergency Events Database bears this out. Global disasters from 1900 to 2007 have been steadily increasing.
In the face of the data, I tend to think the first scientist quoted above should take off his rose colored glasses.
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