Earthquakes are extremely local events.

Lyell was influenced greatly by James Hutton, whose similar ideas came fifty years before Lyell's. Malcolm Rider's book Hutton's Arse, describing three billion years of geology in the northern Highlands of Scotland, is a cracking good read, plenty of good science and humour (and Malcolm hates wind turbines, which is fine by me!).

I suggest you stop making yourself look idiotic, Iains, by constantly deriding what you see as others' lack of knowledge in fields in which you yourself are clearly very shaky. If your scientific acumen was really as sound as you pretend it is, you wouldn't need to keep appealing to authority in your rather unfocused way.