Scientific reports have shown that climate change, caused by rising outputs of carbon dioxide from vehicles, factories and power stations, will not only affect the atmosphere and the sea but will alter the geology of the Earth.
Melting glaciers will set off avalanches, floods and mud flows in the Alps and other mountain ranges; torrential rainfall in some parts of the planet is likely to cause widespread erosion; while disappearing ice sheets threaten to let loose underwater landslides, triggering tsunamis that could even strike the seas around Europe.
At the same time the disappearance of ice caps will change the pressures acting on the Earth's crust and set off volcanic eruptions across the globe. Life on Earth faces a warm future – and a fiery one.
Not only are the oceans and atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms and floods, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in
Temperatures in the Arctic were now higher than at any time in the past 2,000 years. Ice sheets are disappearing at a dramatic rate – and these could have other, unexpected impacts on the planet's geology.
It was not just the warming of the sea that we’ve caused the problem. As the ice sheets melted, sediments would pour off land masses and cliffs would crumble, triggering underwater landslides that would break open more hydrate reserves on the sea-bed. Again there would be a jump in global warming.
There is also a danger of earthquakes, triggered by disintegrating glaciers, causing tsunamis off the coast of countries that normally would not experience such disaster.
The Earth is trying to tell us something.
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