Mocking the Claim that Climate Change Caused the New Jersey Earthquake Is the Right Response, Fox and CBS

A New Jersey senate candidate, Christina Amira Khalil, was quick to blame climate change for the 4.8 power earthquake that impacted New Jersey and New York. Analysts, commentators, and politicians were quick to mock and decry Khalil’s social media post, on X, and rightly so. There is no evidence climate change caused that earthquake, or any other earthquake for that matter.

“Khalil posted on X, ‘I experienced my first earthquake in NJ. We never get earthquakes. The climate crisis is real. The weirdest experience ever,’” reported Fox News. CBS in Austin Texas also covered Khalils scientific gaffe, in a story, titled “Senate hopeful mocked for blaming East Coast earthquake on ‘climate crisis.’”

Khalil’s post was widely mocked on X and elsewhere.

“Holy crap. I was just joking about people blaming climate change and then this genius pops up. A Senate candidate no less!,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) wrote in response to Khalil’s claim, in a post on his own X account.

Fox News among other outlets noted that the Kyle Mann, editor-in-chief of the news satire site, The Babylon Bee wrote, “Gonna have a call with my Babylon Bee writers to figure out how we failed to come up with ‘the earthquake was caused by climate change’ before the libs did.”

Among the hundreds of posts making fun of Khalil’s claim was a fact check posted by X itself, a “Community Note” stating, “NJ is located near a fault line, and has often experienced earthquakes.”

In response to the dozens of derisive comments, Khalil eventually deleted the post and made her account private.

A few fringe writers have suggested that climate change might cause earthquakes by increasing or decreasing the weight of water along fault lines, but NASA is quick to point out there is no such thing as “earthquake weather.” Although “microseismicity—tiny earthquakes with magnitudes less than zero, far smaller than humans can feel,” due to changes in water or ice and snow volume above fault lines, is real, it is normal and has not increased in frequency or power amid climate change. NASA jokingly writes that any connection between climate change and earthquakes is “shaky.”

To be clear, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has never stated nor implied that climate change has or even could cause earthquakes.

The rapid derision and mockery Khalil received for her claim that climate change caused the early April earthquake in New Jersey and New York was well earned. Her claim that climate change causes earthquakes will join the pantheon of other idiotic climate assertions made at one time or another like that climate change has contributed to divorce, mental illness, hyperactivity, childhood attention deficit disorder, rising crime rates, rising drug use, “cultural erosion,” the increased likelihood of space satellite collisions, and inflation. None of these phenomena are in any way connected to climate change except in the twisted minds of the researchers, media outlets, and politicians attempting to profit in some way from making such a connection. A hearty guffaw is a perfectly justified reaction to such claims, and perhaps the most appropriate reaction.