Postmedia - Humankind may be culprit in spike of severe quakes

Severe earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and now Japan have experts around the world asking whether the world's tectonic plates are becoming more active -and what could be causing it. Some scientists theorize that the sudden melting of glaciers due to humanmade climate change is lightening the load on the Earth's surface, allowing its mantle to rebound upward and causing plates to become unstuck…

Andrew Hynes, a tectonics expert at McGill University, said the issue is not so much the load shift on the Earth's crust, but rather the increased fluid pressure in the fault that lubricates the rock, allowing the plate to slide. Decompression from melting glaciers could cause an increase in volcanic activity by releasing the liquid rock and its explosive potential, Hynes said.