A Kind of Magic: Concerned Lefties Very Worried Japan Quake Caused By Global Warming

I almost wrote this prediction last night, but felt the unfolding story was too serious to play around with such partisan attacks.

In fact, this is not the first time earthquakes have been blamed by the Shamanistic, Magical-Thinking Left on the all-purpose Zeus-substitute of global warming. There is even a somewhat plausible (but completely bullshitty and made-up) mechanism proposed for such an unlikely causation: That when glacial ice melts it relieves pressure on the tectonic plates beneath it and thus allows such plates to shift a bit more, producing earthquakes. (Whether graphitic rock ten miles or more deep is significantly weighted down by a cover of ice no more than 300 or 500 feet thick, and whether a melting of such ice by no more than 10-20% is enough to cause such massive planetary dislocations, is a question of math and probability, and so doesn't fuss the shamans of the left too much.)

But via Hot Air, Tim Blair catches the usual idiots making the predictable animal-noises, and Reuters, of course, rushes to quote the one crank who thinks that global warming may cause earthquakes.

One concerned shaman demands to know: "And they say global warming isn't real?"

To which I answer: Yes, that's what They say, and it's because of silly-shit magical thinking of later-day neo-shamans like this.

posted by Ace at 02:26 PM

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