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« Lord, what fools these mortals be, » exclaimed the fairy Puck in Shakespeare’s « A Midsummer Night’s Dream. » Obviously, Puck was talking about climate hysterics who blame everything unusual that happens these days on climate change.
It was inevitable, then, that the earthquake on Friday on the East Coast centered in the New York/New Jersey area would lead to learn-ed men and women of science (and not so learn-ed men and women) drawing the logical conclusion that because it’s bad and it happened on this planet, it had to be due to climate change.
For the record, earthquakes are the result of stresses building up along fault lines in the earth that suddenly « slip » shooting one fault over another causing the earth to move. These are massive forces at work, dwarfing any attempts by humans to control or affect them.
But if you look really, really closely and wish really, really, hard, you can see climate change at work in the earthquake.
Dr. Antonios Marsellos, an associate professor in the Department of Geology, Environment, and Sustainability at Hofstra University, tries to explain.
« An earthquake is based on tectonic plates, and New York is sitting on a ‘lazy’ plate, which is good, meaning we do not have so many earthquakes, but there are other things that happen — too much rain or drought, » Dr. Marsellos told NBC New York.
The rain can lead to floods that if they go on long enough, could result in landslides. The slides can « lubricate » faults and may be a reason for the increased frequency of quakes, explained Dr.
