Who can tell us how much heat is generated and released by these quakes and how that might contribute to global warming?

I suspect the BTU number resulting from a quake that was able to push a tidal wave across the Pacific from Japan would be millions of times greater than any nuclear weapon we humans could produce.

Will need to do some research to figure out if it's global warming or George Bush's fault.

I guess we will have to count this as progress, when the head in the sand crowd has to start trying to blame the droughts and fires on, wait for it, earthquakes . . . Anything other than noticing that the models that the hallelujah chorus kept calling discredited are, if anything, too conservative to keep up with the disintegrating feedback loops that have provided the climate stability in which humanity evolved.

But, hey, hats off to you, you definitely won the war, preventing any meaningful response. It's now clear that nothing will be done and that we're simply going to roll the dice and take whatever comes up. The melting tundra and arctic methane fountains alone are going to release more gigatons of carbon than humans do before too long, and that'll be all she wrote. Well played sirs, be sure to write a family history now noting the proud role you filled. You won, be sure to claim your credit.

Who can tell us how much heat is generated and released by these quakes...

Here's your answer - for the 4.0 Oregon quake, it's 63*10^9 Joules total energy, and 22 *10^9 Joules radiated energy, equivalent to 15 tons of TNT. That's dwarfed by sunlight which amounts to 1370 W/m^2, or a total of 1.75 *10^17 Joules hitting some part of the earths' surface or cloud cover every second, or 5.50 *10^24 Joules/year.

But the glaobal warming part of your question is interesting, reletive to plate tectonics energy, as this article points out that all "human" energy systems operate at about 16 *10^12 W (5.05 *10^20 Joules/year), and all plate tectonics related energy sources (defined as the average rate of energy transferred in moving all the continents, making all the mountains, the earthquakes and the volcanoes on our planet) operate at about 44 *10*12 W (14.9 *10^20 Joules/year). This ignores the heat trapping potential for the global warming gasses; it's just the energy burned by humans. Note humans are about 1/3 of the plate tectonics values at this time, but the trend at current rates is to double in 34 years, putting us on a track to pull up equal to plate tectonics by 2060.

I posted my original replay as an objective summary of some verifiable scientific facts, without drawing any conclusions about the consequences. But after reading Seldes' response, which I agree with, I feel that I would be irresponsible in not doing so, inasmuch as there are those out there who will conclude "hey, no big deal, we're only 33% the impact of plate tectonics".

Everything is a balance, and the heat content of the earth is no exception. Heat comes in, heat radiates out, and heat is internally generated. Earth's ocean and atmospheric temperatures are a slow-moving integration of all of these sources and sinks. Add 33% to the internally-generated number that occurs naturally, and you've got impact. Add the compounding effect of the heat-trapping potential of global warming gasses, combined with the the power of sunlight hitting the earth's atmosphere, and you've got significant impact. But unlike my previous analysis, which uses historically-verifiable numbers for the human activities, and reasonable estimates for plate tectoncs, the heat trapped by GW has to be extrapolated. And therein lies the controversy - the head-in-the-sand crowd and their bought-off so-called scientists choose to ignore science and claim there's no effect; genuine scientists know otherwise, but have reasonable disagreement about the trend they are extrapolating, and the public and politicians are fed a steady diet of both fact and misinformation. We have to get off of this treadmill.

GA Seldes

I have never seen or heard any skeptic blame droughts or fires on earthquakes.

There have been global warming loons blame earthquakes on Global Warming.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/05/climate-craziness-of-the-week-uk-government-adviser-bill-mcguire-says-global-warming-is-causing-earthquakes-and-landslides/

They are the same kinds of Sam Adams lunatics pushing mystery trains, infill densities and convention center hotels etc.

Rettig,

The global warming only head in the sound crowd is the alarmist's side of the "controversy"

There are no "bought-off" skeptical scientists and they are the ones following and using genuine science. None of which claim there is "no effect" from human activities.
The steady diet of misinformation is coming from academia,
climatologists and activist organizations addicted to the attention and grant money they live large with.

Our own OSU researchers spend their time scanning the ocean with countless millions gained from a fabricated link between AGW and Oregon's so called Ocean Dead Zones.

Who Are the Wealthiest Members of the Obama Administration?

12. Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: assets of $1,907,000 to $4,705,000.
Another academic-turned-political-adviser, Lubchenco made $235,465 last year from Oregon State University along with speaker fees of just over $4,000 and $150,000 as recipient of the Zayed International Prize for the Environment. Who says being green doesn’t pay?

It's amazing what Jane lubchenco has gotten away with.

This is one of the more embellished Lubchenco dead zone snow jobs
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2008/feb/20/dead-zones-in-pacific-ocean-linked-to-global/

And boy does it pay!

http://www.piscoweb.org/files/file/Hypoxia/10-8-09%202009%20hypoxia%20update.pdf

"Barth said the ability of oceanographers to monitor and measure hypoxic conditions is improving every
year and should become even greater when OSU deploys a new network of undersea gliders and cabled
moorings off the coast as part of the national Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $386.4 million effort
funded by the National Science Foundation to gauge the effects of climate change on the world’s oceans.

To keep the funding coming Barth continues the fabricated link,
"Barth says the change in wind patterns and decrease in the oxygen levels in deep offshore waters are
consistent with impacts suggested by many climate change models."

The answer, clearly, is "green, sustainable" windmill power:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2176806/The-view-Gone-wind-Our-famous-scenery-landmarks-blighted-forever-turbines.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719