What Causes Tsunamis?
BBC News has posted an excellent presentation on the mechanisms behind the tsunami disaster HERE.
Another excellent presentation is posted on Wikipedia HERE.
I wrote in a post last week to this blog, that some environmentalists had been falsely accused of claiming that global warming caused the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Even authors, like Namoi Oreskes, who have bent over backwards to “emphasize that the recent tsunami has nothing to do with global warming” have nevertheless been misquoted.
Other statements made by politicians, environmentalists, and even scientists have also been misquoted. And, unfortunately, some people may have purposely suggested that the tsunami was directly caused by global warming or an increase in greenhouse gases. This is of course not true but anti-environmentalists will use such statements to paint all environmentalists and environmental scientists as crackpots.
As Daniel Sarewitz & Roger A. Pielke, Jr. point out in The New Republic:
- while “global climate change is real, and developing alternative energy sources and reducing global carbon-dioxide emission is essential… the claim that action to slow climate change is justified by the rising toll of natural disasters… is both scientifically and morally insupportable”.
A major problem is that environmental issues are complex. There may be subtleties in even correct statements which are misinterpreted by the press and/or the public (as I suspect was the case with the misinterpretations of statements printed in The Independent).
Therefore, those of us concerned about or working on environmental issues have to be vigilant in several areas.
- First, we have to do our best to get the best scientific information out to the public. BBC News has posted an excellent presentation on the mechanisms behind the tsunami disaster HERE. Another excellent presentation is posted on Wikipedia HERE.
- Second, we must work extra hard to make sure our statements are based upon objective science and are as clear as possible. If our words are misinterpreted, it is very important to follow up and set the record straight.
- Third, we must come down very strongly on politicians, the press, environmentalists, and scientists who make statements that cannot be scientifically justified. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, I conducted research on acidic deposition in the southern Appalachian mountains. Our research showed that the Great Smoky Mountains were receiving some of the highest rates of human caused, acidic deposition in North America and that the high rates of deposition were likely negatively impacting soil and streamwater chemistries. At the same time and nearby to our studies, an exotic insect pest had been devastating forests of Frasier fir trees. Unfortunately, at the time a scientist made the unsupported claim in the New York Times that it was acid rain that was killing all these trees. While it is possible that high rates of acidic deposition and air pollution made the trees more susceptible to insect infestation, there is no question that the proximate cause of death in these trees was the insect itself. ( I give the example of a smoker who is run over and killed by a car. While smoking may have weakened the person, it was the car that killed him or her). While the scientist who made the baseless claim that acid rain was killing trees got a lot of front page national press, his words became grist for the anti-environment, anti-regulation critics who knew that these statements could not be justified.
- Finally, we have to stand up against anti-intellectual and anti-empirical interpretations of natural events. This is not to disparage religion, philosophy, or anyone’s belief in God or a higher power. Even if we cannot control nature, humans have a pretty good, observational and scientific-based understanding of natural processes, including tsunamis. There is no reason why one cannot both at the same time be religious and believe in an empirical view of the world. Dealing with the complex world that we live in may even require this. But we should argue against religious leaders who claim that natural events such as this tsunami were purposely caused by God. We especially must disdain those of any religion who claim that many tens of thousands of people were killed in this tsunami due to “God’s vengeance”. Here is a particularly egregious site. Rather we should applaud those religious, philosophical, and political leaders who project a positive message such as Missouri minister Roger Ray as quoted in The Tennessean:
”God didn’t send the earthquake or the tsunami. God didn’t cause people to be killed or hundreds of thousands to be left in danger. But this crisis is an opportunity to demonstrate the works of God. … We talk a lot about the love of God but we often become paralyzed by thinking too much about how we differ.
”This is an opportunity for conservatives and liberals, Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Muslims, blacks, whites, Asians and Latinos to all come together to make a miracle happen. The crisis is now and we need to act quickly.”
can u mail me elements at risks for sunami
What Carl Sagan said 11 years ago is true now. Anyway, rather than rant about God (which
i’m more than cabable of doing, i’ll just like to make a suggestion- what if the earth
naturally warms up every couple million years? just like an opposite ice age? There is
little proof either way but it seems very likely…
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Ryan,
Very good point. It is true that, over its 4.5 billion year history, the Earth has at times been warmer. A major problem for us today is not that Earth is going to get warmer but that it is going to get warmer at a faster rate than ever experienced by humans. You can see here that in the past 450,000 years and at least 4 glacial and interglacial periods, the Earth’s CO2 levels have never reached over 300 ppm. Pre-industrial CO2 was about 280 ppm (parts per million). Today the level is 380 ppm and rising at about 2 ppm per year.
Here you can see how the recent rise CO2 in began after the year 1750.
And here you can see what the projected future CO2 levels could be given “business as usual”.
We are not just dealing with a “natural” vagarie in but human-induced changes at rates in which it will be difficult for human societies to adapt.