The devastating 8.3 earthquake striking the south of Samoa on Tuesday that triggered a tsunami followed several hours later by the 7.6 quake 30 miles off the east coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra raises questions about climate change.

As reported here, Clive Collins, senior seismologist for GeoScience Australia says that while these particular quakes are not linked to climate change, others would be. Melting ice caps put more water in oceans which creates more pressures and causes plates to shift. Writing in the Huffington Post, political organizer Wade Norris says climate change has produced a whole lot of shaking going on. "How can this be? Well, the Earth's tectonic plates have sensitive fault lines, which when triggered to move, cause earthquakes and volcanoes. As a sphere, the Earth 'reflects' vibration internally, so that an earthquake in the South Pacific is picked up by seismologists across the world - say in Alaska. The Indonesian quake resonated so strongly that it set off quakes in Alaska ... These may have been the first wave of people who have died in a widespread fashion from the unintended effects of climate change. And yes, even though as some will argue, tectonic plates have been moving for thousands of years, it is a fact, that the climate is changing, the Arctic is heating, and Ice Quakes are increasing, all due to human made pollution."

If climate change is affecting the world like this already, how will it be in a few years from now? Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has warned that the 2016 Olympics might be the last. "It could be that the 2016 Games are the last Olympics in the history of mankind," Ishihara told reporters at a Tokyo 2016 press event ahead of the vote. "Global warming is getting worse. We have to come up with measures without which Olympic Games could not last long. Scientists have said we have passed the point of no return."

Tokyo, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid are bidding for the 2016 Olympics.
Last year, the British Forum for the Future put together a series of scenarios which included