PrintJune 20, 2008
CBS Pulls Unvetted Story Blaming Earthquakes on Global Warming
CBS News and the Associated Press were quick to regurgitate claims that global warming has increased the intensity of earthquakes fivefold in the past 20 years. But had either taken the time to investigate, they would have discovered that both the source's facts and credentials were, if you'll pardon the expression, on very tremorous ground.
In a Wednesday piece -- suddenly vanished on Thursday -- attributed to the AP, CBS warned in its subtitle that a new "study" has found "Seismic Activity 5 Times More Energetic Than 20 Years Ago Because Of Global Warming." Based on a Tuesday Market Wire press release, the article went on to say that:
"The research proves that destructive ability of earthquakes on Earth increases alarmingly fast and that this trend is set to continue, unless the problem of ‘global warming' is comprehensively and urgently addressed."
But the "study" the article cited passages from is, in fact, a recently published bit of hysteria entitled Earthquake Energy Rise on Earth, which, among its findings concludes:
- In the period of time when the planetary climate changed by a small fraction of one degree, earthquakes have become 5 times more energetic. How long do we need to wait until someone brings this problem to our awareness?
- One of the most plausible explanations for the systematic increase in seismic/tectonic activity is overheating of the planetary interior.
- Since Earth absorbs more energy than it can radiate, the whole planet overheats, not just the atmosphere.
- Specifically, the heat that is generated in the planetary interior (as a result of decay of all radioactive isotopes there) is trapped and the planetary interior temperatures rise. The overheating occurs because the only way for the radionic heat to escape from the planetary interior is through the surface, but the surface receives more energy than it is able to radiate away.
- Planetary interior overheating is the most serious consequence of so-called "global warming" and constitutes the main danger for humanity on Earth today.
Simply mind-boggling.
The "study" even offers a rather compelling (at first glance) graph of Earthquake energy per year relative to 1973, which shows a distinctly upward trend between 1990 and 2007. But what it fails to show is a longer ranged chart which would have immediately silenced the alarm by betraying a much greater energy release in quakes of the 1st half of last century.
So then, just who conducted and published this "study?" An Australian scientist by the name of Dr. Tom Chalko, MSc, PhD and a group that calls itself the NU Journal of Discovery. The same Dr. Chalko and NUJOD that, in 2001, issued a "research paper" which asked in its title the question certainly on everybody's mind -- Can Earth explode as a result of Global Warming? That little beauty warned that:
"Overheating the center of the inner core reactor due to the so called greenhouse effect on the surface of Earth may cause the meltdown condition, enrichment of nuclear fuel and a gigantic atomic explosion."
Chuckling through each of Chalko's papers, you might wonder just how the planet Mercury manages to keep it together. Or just where this man -- who boasts an alphabet at the end of his name -- acquired such unique insight.
Here's a clue: Chalko also runs a website for followers of the Thiaoouba Prophecy, which preaches that advanced beings from the planet Thiaoouba abduct one Earthling every century and impart unto the chosen-one the true meaning of life. According to the latest doctrine ascribed to these extraterrestrial Goracles:
"material technology, without spiritual knowledge, is leading us to inevitable global catastrophe on Earth. Technology should ASSIST in the spiritual development and not be used (as it is used now) to enslave people within a monetary system and materialistic world, which are both temporary anyway."
Oh yeah, these cultists also claim that the dinosaurs were destroyed when "one of [its] 2 small moons crashed into the earth" millions of years ago.
So then, a man who believes that Al Gores from outer space warn of a technology-endangered planet himself warns that manmade global warming is cataclysmically destabilizing the very foundation of that planet, and the mainstream media prints it as fact. Any guesses when CBS last reported that global temperatures have been trending downward for almost 10 years?
And yet they wonder why we call them hysterics and alarmists.
