Absence of causality between seismic activity and global warming

Abstract

There is no more consequential scientific matter today than global warming. The societal and policy implications, however, hinge upon the attribution of that warming to human activity and, specifically, continued societal reliance on the burning of fossil fuels. It was recently suggested that this warming could be explained by the non-anthropogenic factor of seismic activity. If that is the case, it would have profound implications. We have assessed the validity of the claim using a statistical technique (the method of conditional dispersion) that evaluates the existence of causal connections between variables, finding no evidence for any causal relationship between seismic activity and global warming.