Hotter, wetter, scarier

We know that volcanoes change climate: An eruption’s ash and gas create clouds of debris which block the sun and causes extreme weather. But Bill McGuire suggests—citing millions of years’ worth of geologic history in his book, Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Volcanoes (Oxford University Press, $29.95)—that the reverse is also true: Climate change can produce geologic events. Melting glaciers and ice sheets can shift the mass of the Earth, producing geologic events, including “isostatic rebound”—an actual “bounce-back”—from the Earth’s crust from the weight loss when ice melts. It’s a good—and flat-out terrifying—case that we may be leaving our descendants a world that is hotter, wetter and more geologically unstable.