"Vancouver Island will rip open like a zipper, experts say."
- The Province, January 23rd, 2015
The goal of this blog, (and ultimately, an organization of the same name), is to instill trust in scientific information in future generations. Putting trust in facts again begins with creating an interest in the world around us and in understanding the processes that make up our planets and our beings. One of the first steps is to call-out and explain misinformation in the media, and this post is an example of, not only alarmism, but how that misinformation creates a distrust in science.
I grew up and now live on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, just off the west coast of the North American continent. The island is approximately 460 kilometers in length from NW to SE and 100 kilometers in width E toW, covering an area of 32,000 square kilometers of mountainous, coastal, temperate-climate perfection.
Vancouver Island lies adjacent to the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) - where the Pacific Plate and it's two smaller relations, the Juan de Fuca Plate and the Explorer Plate, are in turn being subducted below the island underneath the North American Plate. The Pacific plate is in action at several locations along it's edges, which, in addition to the CSZ, has created the Aleutian Trench, the various trenches and arcs off the eastern coast of Japan, and the strike-slip boundary at the San Andreas Fault in California. The process of the Pacific Plate being subducted beneath the North American Plate, or craton (ancient crust) began nearly 350 million years ago, when the first, unnamed terrane accreted to the edge of the continent, known then as Laurentia, and the building of Alaska, the Yukon, British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest of the United States, began. It continues to this day, and has created the Cascade Volcanic Arc in it's most (geologically) recent years, that includes Mount Garibaldi and Mount Meager, Mount Rainer and Mount Baker, and several other local volcanoes, including Mount Saint Helens.
Along the coast of British Columbia, the plate is largely in a subduction phase, but in places such as the Queen Charlotte Islands (aka Haida Gwaii), transform zones exist at the boundary, and off the west coast of Vancouver Island, the two smaller plates (Explorer and Juan de Fuca) are caught up in the mash of tectonic activity, creating swarms of transform (strike-slip) and rifting boundaries. These smaller boundaries are responsible for many of the smaller earthquakes that occur and can be felt on Vancouver Island and the BC Lower Mainland (Vancouver). We are long overdue for a 'megathrust' earthquake in this area - the last one, in 1700AD, created a tsunami over 30m in height along the eastern coast of Japan. Living on the coast we practice earthquake drills and safety from a very young age, but are never quite faced with the reality of a large earthquake. We only occasionally feel any sort of earthquake, and those most recent shaking, caused by a 4.8M quake just 12km NE of Tofino, BC, "wake" us up a little, and remind us of the precarious tectonic setting we live on.
It is when the smaller earthquakes occur, and are felt, that the general public start seeing advertisements for earthquake preparedness kits and news reports reminding us of emergency evacuation plans. For some news stations, it is imperitive that the public be informed of the nature of these events. Global News will very often have Dr. John Clague (president of APEG BC and Geologic Hazard Specialist) who can deliver a calm, fact-based diagnosis of the earthquake and remind us that we should be aware of our surroundings and have a plan in the event of the megathrust earthquake.
This is good. This is what we need to hear.
In other cases, news stations and papers present alarmist headlines and scare the public into awareness instead. Case in point is a recent article headlined by the CBC, that made the rounds in the Canadian news in January this year with some form or another of the headline:
"BC Megathrust Earthquake Will Rip Earth Open Like A Zipper, Experts Say"
(from CBC)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-megathrust-earthquake-will-rip-earth-open-like-a-zipper-expert-says-1.2917261
or, "Vancouver Island will rip open like a zipper"
(from The Province):
Even The National Post and, would you believe it, reporting sites such as http://www.blazingcatfur.ca hopped on the band wagon to spread this headline.
There are a few issues I have with this wording, as you can imagine, and if you're a geologist with any sense of plate tectonics, you're probably cringing by now.
The first issue is that no matter the headline, that this idea that Vancouver Island or the Earth itself will 'rip-open like a zipper' is not stated in the article, written by reporter Dirk Messiner of The Canadian Press.
A second, smaller issue, is the Messiner uses the term "fault line" instead of "plate boundary" a few times to describe the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which I'll forgive him for, as the mass of fault lines the lie within the CSZ are complex, varied, and numerous, it can be slightly confusing for non-geologists to get a handle on. (All the same, I would like to give him a geology lesson out of courtesy).
The main issue here is the alarmist headline. Grabbing the public's attention by being alarmist is bad enough, but we have to almost overlook that, because the main objective of a paper or news source is to sell papers or get website hits, so they want something eye-catching that people will want to read.
It's the use a headline that contains false information is far, far worse.
Getting scientific information to the public in a 'user-friendly' format is the most difficult task facing us. People will latch on to one or two understandable facts that they hear and run with it, and before long, just like the childhood game of telephone, somewhere along the line the initial information is skewed and then misunderstood completely. Take climate change for example, or the use of vaccines. Buzzwords such as "Global Warming" and the idea that certain vaccines create autism are soon rampant and unstoppable.
By putting false information into the minds of the public like this particular headline did, one is first conditioning the public to not believe the rest of the article contains any facts at all (or, on the other side of this, leading them to believe the headline if they choose not to read the article, and thus spread false information to their peers). Secondly, and most detrimentally, this creates a long term distrust in science.
My undergraduate career was spent, outside of regular studies, educating high school students and the general public on the science of climate change with ACER (Awareness of Climate change through Education and Research) (check out http://viuacer.org), as well as talking to the public about the potential megathurst earthquake during my creation of a preliminary seismic hazard map for Nanaimo. There have been many times when people of all ages have questioned the science that I have brought up, where my information was from, or even argued that I have been brainwashed by the university into believing false information taught to me instead of the truth.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but if I have been taught anything in life, it's that my opinion, however valid, requires facts to back it up. If I am wrong, or have not considered all the facts, or in some cases still have questions, I am fortunate enough to have the training as a scientist to be willing to change my opinion based on facts discovered or unearthed. I'm sure many of us have encountered those who cannot have their minds changed, even when hard, well-researched evidence is before them. Also, the skill of being able to admit you are in the wrong is a difficult skill to master...
Anger and fear are rampant when the public debate science, so it is important to be 'the bigger person' and not to give in to fighting back if you encounter those that denounce evidence of any kind. Instead, provide clear facts that you have researched yourself as a comeback. It is of the utmost importance that you know how evidence was collected, analyzed, and interpreted before you use it as a counter in an 'argument'. It can be difficult not to take public criticism to heart, but it must be done.
I am hoping this will be the only time I have to 'attack' an headline such as this, but I doubt it. With any luck, this blog can remain focused on the task at hand: how awesome volcanoes are, and how rockin' (sorry...ns) geology is!!
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